Gil Stafford is an Episcopal priest and theologian and a former university president. He’s spent a lifetime pondering the stories and myths of the Bible and the last twenty years seeing these mirrored with understandings derived from the Tarot.
Stafford is not the first Christian theologian to write about the Tarot, but he may be the first to do so under his own name. Tarot cards are typically thought by Christians to be taboo, like Ouija boards. There’s one now classic work written and published anonymously a quarter century ago called Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. So as a Christian with a public intellectual platform, Stafford exhibits courage by seeking to understand the psychology and magic of Tarot. The result is a book many Christians will probably read in secret.
“We encounter the characters of the Bible reflected in the Tarot,” Stafford explains in an early chapter. “And as pilgrims, we’re attentive to those who manifest in our dreams with something to teach us.”
Just as the Bible is not a single book, the Tarot is also a sort of polyglot book, with each card as one of its chapters. Stafford goes deeply into the symbols of the Tarot, showing parallels in the pages of the Bible. Both “books” are packed with such symbols, and Stafford shows how they are full of hidden truths.
He begins by explaining the origin of Tarot and its picture-card sets. Twenty-two of these cards are called the Major Arcana which means “Greater Secrets,” and the remaining fifty-six cards in a typical Tarot deck are called the Minor Arcana, meaning “Lesser Secrets.”
The Greater Secrets are explored in Stafford’s book in chapters 4-25. These make up the bulk of it. They include the characters of The Fool, The Magician, and The High Priestess — so perhaps you can already glimpse how parallels between Tarot and Bible characters take place.
Most valuable are the reflections offered succinctly at the conclusion of each chapter. For example, at the end of chapter 12 are these:
- Where do you see yourself in the Strength card?
- Where have you witnessed strength laced with wisdom?
- Why do you think the Tarot has identified the archetype of Strength as feminine?
- From where does your strength come?
Then, the book’s final chapter is worth the price of admission by itself: “The Practice of Reading the Bible and the Tarot.” The author offers five specific and detailed spiritual exercises, followed by multiple other “steps to go deeper” that include using both Bible and Tarot when making difficult personal decisions and interpreting dreams.
