Brittany Muller - Contemplative Tarot

Thank you for buying this

St. Martins Publishing Group ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here .

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy .

For my grandfather, George, who showed me how much curiosity a faith can hold

By Carl McColman

Everyone knows social media is a mixed bag. We are all painfully aware of how online networking services contribute to political polarization or have provided a channel for the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. But there are real blessings and benefits associated with social media as wellfrom reconnecting with a long-lost friend from second grade to finding a group of people who share exactly your tastes and interests in art or fashion or whatever. Social media has also helped people with unique or distinctive spiritual values or practices to find one another. And so I felt such a rush of excitement when I first stumbled across Brittany Mullers Instagram feed, where she combines beautiful photography, including images from the tarot, with insightful meditations on the cardsall written from a clear Christian perspective.

Many Christians might wonder, Why bother with the tarot? and tarot enthusiasts might reply, Why bother with Christianity? But as Brittany Muller and her many thousands of followers can attest, there are plenty of us who find meaningful connections between our faith and the strange and wondrous symbolism found in the cards.

Take, for example, the Temperance card (XIV in the major arcana). This fascinating image presents an angel, red wings spread wide, an aura radiating around the beings blonde hair. Holding two large chalices, the angel is pouring water or some other fluid from one to the otherbut its pouring at a forty-five-degree angle, a physical impossibility. Likewise, the angel is standing with one foot on a stone and the other slightly submerged in a pool of water, but the angels weight appears to be borne by the foot in the wateragain, beyond the laws of ordinary physics. Surrounded by irises and a pathway leading to distant mountains before the setting sun, the entire scene feels like something from a dream.

Christians recognize temperance as a fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:2223), from a Greek word that means self-restraint or self-control. It implies mastery or power over the self. But it also brings to mind the word temperature, which signifies the measurement of heat or cold, particularly in the human body; we take someones temperature when trying to determine if they are sick or well.

So in a matter of minutes, this dreamy angel has encouraged me to consider how taking the measure of what is going on inside of me can be an important way of assessing my wellnessor lack thereof. Which brings me to why I, as a Christian, continue to study and appreciate the vivid and marvelous imagery of the tarot. Its a tool for getting to know my interior life, just like a thermometer or a stethoscope can aid a doctor in diagnosing (knowing) whats going on in my body.

The images of the tarot tell a story. This has been called the Fools Journey, from the card enigmatically numbered zero in the major arcana. I mentioned the pathway behind the angel of Temperanceit is one of many paths, roads, and other passages found in the seventy-eight images of a modern tarot deck. From the Eight of Cups to the Six of Swords to the Chariot in the major arcana, numerous tarot images evoke a sense of being on the move. I suppose it is a clich to say life is a journey, but clich s exist because they point to something commonly experienced. We experience life as a journey because there is movement, in time if not through space. I am not the same person I was a decade or two ago, and neither are you: not only have nearly all the cells of our bodies changed entirely, but our very sense of self has adapted to new experiences, insights, and understandings. You cannot step into the same river twice applies as much to you as it does to the river. Yet while there might be a kind of temporal uniformity to the journey of life: we can expect to be a child for our first twelve years, an adolescent for the next six, a young adult for a decade or two after that, and so forththere is also great variety: we all mature at different rates, age at our own pace, experience growth or decline, self-improvement or self-neglect in rhythms uniquely our own. The insights that enlightened you in college might remain hidden from me until I am elderly. So we are all on a journey, but what a rich, complex, and multivalent journey it is.

The seventy-eight images of the tarot seem to tell some sort of silent story, an almost mythic tale of its own. In this sense, the Fool is like Joseph Campbells hero with a thousand faces and the tarot itself is like Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi ushering Bilbo Baggins or Luke Skywalker into their own strange and life-changing adventures. But while we may watch Star Wars or read The Fellowship of the Ring to be entertained, the journey of the hero asks more of us: we are invited to bring our own journey into conversation with the strange and mystifying symbols we find in this deck of cards.

Christian interpreters of the tarot, from Valentin Tomberg and Mark Patrick Hederman to Brittany Muller, typically either ignore or reject the cards reputed ability to predict the future. Tarot for reflection, not divination is how Brittany so succinctly puts it on her Instagram page. There is a very simple reason for this: Christians dont believe in fate. The truth will set you free, promised Jesus, and we take him at his word. If I am free, then I do not have to break out in a sweat if the Tower card or the Ten of Swords shows up in a tarot spread. Which brings us back to the question of why bother with the cards at all. Brittanys distinction between divination and reflection is the clue to answer that question.

The seventy-eight images in the tarot are distinctive, unusual, ethereal, sometimes strangely beautiful, and at other times may seem unsettling or even disturbing. But if youve taken an honest look deep within yourself lately, you probably can recognize that there is remarkable beauty and unsettling stuff within your own heart, too. The journey of the Fool through the weird landscape of the tarot offers us a reflection on our own journeys, no matter how predictable or chaotic they might be. And because the tarot offers us images rather than lots of words, it bypasses the watchful dragons of the rational thinking mind and appeals directly to the hidden places deep in our subconscious.

This brings us back to the forty-five-degree-angle pouring of the Temperance card, which is one of several clues in the tarot that suggest these images are invitations into a dreamscape.

Truly, the tarot is reminiscent of a dreama long, complex, and wondrously mystical dream. From swords to cups, knights to castles, angels to flowers, the images found in the cards seem sublime, meditative, otherworldly. Trying to interpret these cards can seem as daunting as trying to make sense of the uncanny logic and random reverie that visits you or me or anyone while sleeping. The best dream interpreters will encourage you to view your dream as a kind of deeply symbolic story you are telling yourself; there is no one right way to interpret the dream (as if symbols in our subconscious could only have one fixed meaning), but by having a kind of conversation with your dream, it can offer you surprising insights into the hidden places within your own psyche. The tarot can function similarly: a reflection, not of some immutable truth out there, but of the liberating truth of the Spirit found poured into your very heart (Romans 5:5).