Once a niche instrument for occult enthusiasts, mystics, and fringe spiritual groups, tarot cards are a highly trendy item you can pluck off a Walmart shelf today. They’re no longer considered just a tool for divination either. In the modern world, tarot cards are used in many games as well as for self-reflection, spiritual guidance, and storytelling. There are even “Christian” tarot card decks available now.
For years, tarot cards were viewed by the majority of Christians as off-limits because of their connection to divination, which Scripture strictly prohibits. But today, views have softened as these colorful, illustrated decks have been absorbed into mainstream culture.
But Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of the spiritual warfare podcast “Strange Encounters,” warns: Tarot cards, regardless of stated purpose or Christian branding, are “highly, highly dangerous.”
Rick begins by recounting the strange history of tarot cards.
They began as a regular card game — with no spiritual element whatsoever — in Italy in the early to mid-1400s.
“But then in the 1780s, French occultists … took these cards, and they started to make it popular that … these cards held some sort of ancient Egyptian secrets, and this is when they started the fortune-telling,” Rick recounts.
“I don’t want to be sitting down anywhere throwing out a bunch of cards that are used by the occult for some sort of fortune-telling because we know that that’s divination, and the Bible completely, I mean, rejects that. How this has crept into Christianity, I will never know,” he adds.
Rick then reads from Deuteronomy 18:10-12: “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD; because of these same detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.”
To those who think tarot cards, psychic mediums, and fortune tellers are all a hoax, Rick issues this dire warning: “If you start dabbling in these cards, it opens the user up to demonic forces because what you’re saying to demonic forces is, instead of seeking guidance from God, … you want to seek guidance from whoever shows up.”
And spiritual beings do show up, he insists. But they’re never on your side.
“Evil spirits — that’s who you’re going to deal with,” he says.
“You may very well get a supernatural message from these cards. … But it’s not from God, and that’s where the caution is. … It’s misplaced trust. We trust in God and God alone.”
To hear more of Rick’s biblical wisdom, watch the full episode above.
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