Is Tarot really bad karma? This was a recent search term on this blog and it has been something I needed to answer for myself. Though I suspect there may be a difference in interpretation of that question.

My practice and self is constantly being challenged to integrity and moral correctness. In other words, I *do* concern myself as to whether I’m doing something which is of value, appropriateness, and gifted to me from a higher power. A question I often asked myself is: Should I be doing this? Are You okay with this?

Before every reading or reading session, I ask the higher power and spirit to guide me to tell the seeker anything they really need to know to move forward in their lives. This is essentially “prayer” and I guess I ask to be a medium in which the Creator and spirit can speak through.

Some religions, for example, the Catholic church is against divination. And in fact, less than 10% of my reading is focused on divination. In fact, I really don’t like divining much for clients and could easily do without. In fact, if a client asked me “not” to divine I would be ever so happy to honour that request and the reading would still be “very very enjoyable and productive”.

I like questions like: How does he/she feel? What should I do? How should I approach this problem? What’s happening? I want this for my future, any ideas how to make that happen? Questions like that. Not fortune telling questions like: When will I meet my future husband? Where will I meet them? What will they look like? Will we get back together?

Of course these fortune telling questions are normal and I have sometimes caught myself asking the same things; however, Tarot and other tools of divination and discovery are best to be used for discovery conversations. Why are you really in the place that you are? What happened? And when you figure some of that out, you can manifest and create your “own” future.

So what do Catholics and others say about divination and Tarot? (Please be reminded most of which is said, is dogma: A religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. Dogmas do not necessarily come from any bible but from man’s interpretation.)

The Esoteric Origins of Tarot: More than a Wicked Pack of Cards

Tarot has long been regarded as taboo, due to obscure associations that predate its 19th-century occult associations. Roman Catholic sermons inveighing against the evil inherent in playing cards (though not necessarily tarot reading) can be traced to the 14th century.

“The following is the official Church Dogma on Divination and Magic. It is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church . As you can read it in no way condones consulting the dead, divination, sorcery, magic, mediums, new age, Occult practices and so on.

Divination and magic

2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.[48] Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health – are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.”

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism_of_the_Catholic_Church and http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm