Tarot For Freemasons

I Can't Avoid It Any Longer

Note:

I’ve always found Tarot to be quite fascinating, and my work with it actually predates my involvement with Freemasonry by quite a lot. I find many parallels between it and our Ancient Craft, and find many Masons to be interested in it.

I’ve made a couple of attempts since Emeth was founded to discuss it here, but neither of those attempts brought forth fruit. It isn’t something that I’m especially comfortable writing or talking about.

But, I think it is important. I think that it is important to provide my perspective for Masons who know little to nothing about it, but who are interested in it. Perhaps I can show them a path forward. Perhaps comments on this post can provide other paths or signposts.

Photo by David Gavi on Unsplash

I’m doing this today, because for the past week, it has continually come up. At last weekend’s Esoterica conference there was no presentation about Tarot, but it was mentioned by a number of different Brothers, and me and the other guys from my Lodge talked about it a great deal on our drive home.

When I got home from the conference, I checked the Magpie Mason’s Blog as I often do, and I found that he had written a post about Pamela Colman Smith and Brother Arthur Edward Waite, and the famous Tarot deck they had created.

Early Saturday morning I began writing the post below, and had it about half completed by the time I left for Lodge a little bit before noon. I had been expecting Masonic Education about Sacred Geometry, but that wasn’t really the topic. The actual topic was a set of cards, similar to the Tarot, but using geometrical symbolism instead of traditional Tarot symbolism. Despite the differences in symbolism, apparently the cards are used in the same way as Tarot cards. A close cousin so to speak.

I finished the essay this evening, and took another visit to the Magpie Mason. Lo and behold, he had a second post about Tarot. His second in a week.

I imagine that had it not been for the Lodge meeting today, and all the other encounters with Tarot over the past week in Masonic contexts, I probably would not have published the essay below. But hey, clearly Tarot is on the minds of those Masons I hang out with and read at this time for some reason, so here you go.

If this subject is not of interest to you, please don’t torture yourself or waste your time reading the essay. I’ll be back with more traditional Masonic topics very soon. If however you do have an interest in the subject, then perhaps the words below can highlight some possibilities and get you pointed in the right direction.

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Introduction

While not a part of Freemasonry, Tarot is intimately connected with Freemasonry.  If in no other way, through the creators of the most widely used decks of Tarot cards and the men who influenced them.

In 1781 Antoine Court de Gebelin (member of Lodges Les Amis Reunis and Les Neuf Soeurs, where he was joined by Brother Benjamin Franklin) wrote an essay about Tarot as part of a larger work.  In that essay he explored his ideas about the Tarot, primarily his view that they were created by ancient Egyptian priests in order to transmit arcane wisdom down through time.  He also connected the Trumps to the Hebrew alphabet and suggested using the Tarot for cartomancy, or Tarot Readings.

In 1909 the Rider company published the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck.  The most popular and widely used Tarot cards today.  The cards were painted by Pamela Coleman Smith, under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite (Worshipful Master of Runymede Lodge and Honorary Past Grand Senior Warden of Iowa.)  Arthur Edward Waite’s accompanying book A Pictorial Guide To The Tarot was then published in 1911.

The second most popular Tarot deck today is the Thoth Tarot.  This deck was painted by Lady Frieda Harris under the direction of Aleister Crowley.  Crowley published a companion book to the deck in 1944.  Crowley’s membership in Freemasonry remains the subject of debate today.  There is disagreement as to his status as either an irregular or a regular Mason.  I do not hold a strong view either way, other than to say that if you were leading the UGLE, knowing what you do about Crowley’s public reputation, would you admit that he was a member?

This very brief history is included simply to show that the first person to claim that the Tarot was created in order to transmit secret knowledge, and that Tarot reading was possible, was a Freemason.  That the most popular Tarot decks in use today, those decks that are universally recognized as Tarot were created by Masons.  Regular or Irregular.  Clearly Freemasons are intimately connected with the Tarot and its uses.

That said, it is my experience that while a great many Freemasons have an interest in the Tarot, most are quite reluctant to talk about it.  Perhaps this is because of its connection to fortune telling, or the view of many that it seems somehow a feminine endeavor.  Whatever the reason, despite many of my Brothers telling me that they are interested in Tarot, actual discussion of it most often seems halting and strained.  I myself have made a couple previous attempts to put down my thoughts about it here on Emeth, both those attempts falling far short of the mark.

As Freemasons however we should not be wary of discussion about the Tarot, or the practice of it.  As briefly shown above, our Brothers have been intimately connected with it in the past as well as today.  Just as with Freemasonry, Tarot speaks in the language of symbolism.  Something we should all be well versed in and comfortable with.

In my view, there are three primary ways in which Freemasons can greatly benefit from the use of Tarot.  The first is through meditation on its symbolism.  The second is through divination.  The third is theurgy or the manifestation of will into reality.  I will explore each of these in the sections to follow.

How To Learn Tarot

It is my view that the Tarot can be most easily learned one card at a time, over the course of 78 or more days.

Step one is to purchase a Tarot deck.  The best way to do this is in a metaphysical shop that has sample decks open for thumbing through prior to purchase.  While looking at the available decks, I believe that you’ll want to keep a couple of things in mind.  First of all, I think that when just starting out, it is important to purchase a deck that utilizes traditional symbolism.  The Rider-Waite-Smith (plus its close derivatives) and the Thoth are both excellent choices.  Moving too far from the symbolism of these two decks risks making the learning of that symbolism much harder.  Secondly, it is important to pick a deck that ‘speaks’ to you.  While this concept is impossible to explain, it is easy to experience.

My best advice is to consider the Rider-Waite-Smith, those decks sharing its imagery, and/or the Thoth.  Choose the one that you best connect with.  As for me, after working with the Tarot for more years than I’ve been a Mason, I’m most often working with the Smith-Waite Centennial Edition, which is the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith just with slightly muted colors.  I’ve got lots of other decks, from common to quite rare, but I find that I always return to Rider-Waite-Smith.

If the area you live in does not have a great metaphysical shop, cards can be ordered online, and some sites do provide many or all of the card images.

Then purchase a book about Tarot, illustrated with the deck you have selected, or better yet a dozen books about Tarot, not limited to those illustrated with the deck you have selected.  Probably most of us will want to end up somewhere between these two extremes.

Bring your new deck home, shuffle it, and each morning select the card from the top of the pile.  Look at the imagery, and think about what the card might possibly mean to you.  Then open up your book(s) and see what the authors of those books say about the card’s meanings.  Your cards will come with a ‘Little White Book’ that will give the traditional meanings of each card.  Then go about your day with the card in mind.  Discover what events of the day correspond to the card.

The goal here is not to memorize the meanings of the cards as stated by others, rather to gain a broad overview of the meaning of the symbolism to others, and more importantly to yourself.  Just as with Masonic symbolism, what is important is what the symbolism means to you personally, not to anyone else, but it is helpful to discover the perspective of those who have considered it in the past.

This is also an opportunity, if you happen to have more than one deck design, to bring out the same card(s) from another deck(s) to see how different artists portray the same basic symbolism.

Doing this exercise, one card per day, for 78 days will give you a very solid grounding in the symbolism of the Tarot, and will build a strong connection between you and your cards.  Once you have done this, you are ready to begin using them for meditation, divination, and theurgy.

It is of course possible to speed up this process, but this is the easiest way for those who only have a limited amount of time to study the cards each day.

Meditation

Using the Tarot for meditation is perhaps the most socially acceptable way of utilizing them.  Many will stop short of discussing divination, more theurgy, but most will not be concerned with discussion about meditation.

There are a number of ways the cards can be used for meditation, perhaps the most common is exactly how I described learning to read them above.  Simply pull a card, ideally at random after shuffling in the morning, and see what events of the day correspond to that card as they are experienced.  A variation is to pull the card at night, and reflecting upon the events of the day, discover where those events corresponded with the card.  Keeping a daily journal of these correspondences can enhance the experience for some people.

Similar to this method, pull the card for the day, but instead of seeing what events correspond with the card as you experience them, focus on the meaning of the card and as you go through the day, ask yourself how the lesson conveyed by the card can be utilized to affect the situations you encounter in a beneficial way.

Another method is to use your imagination to project yourself into the scene depicted on the card.  Interact with the scene, ask questions, build a story.  This will likely take some practice, and may feel awkward at first.  My best advice is to ‘fake it till you make it.’  In no time you will find that this projection comes naturally.

In time you may wish to move your meditations to larger, more vibrant scenes.  You do this by drawing more cards and creating a spread.  Two or three cards, drawn at random, can tell a larger story that you can meditate upon, or project yourself into.

One of our Washington Lodges purchases a Tarot deck (Rider-Waite-Smith) for each of their candidates.  Prior to the candidate’s First Degree they select the card that they believe most closely matches him and his personality.  They then cut the card in two, using an irregular cut, and provide him with half, explaining that it is his token for entrance into the building, and instructing him to bring it when he comes for his Degree.  When he arrives at the building they match his token with the half of the card retained by the Lodge.  After the Degree, they ask the new Brother why he feels they chose the card that they did for him.  This is a wonderful way of meditating on a single card, within a Masonic context. As for the candidates, they seem to find this quite profound, one Mason showed me his cut Tarot card on a Zoom meeting just the other day. He had it framed and it hangs on the wall of his home.

The symbolism of the Tarot is universal.  The individual cards are ways of expressing things we encounter each and every day.  Ultimately the deck is an unbound book, the story of which changes each time with every shuffle.  

Much like viewing our actions against the square, or circumscribing them with the compasses, we can gain insight into the events of our lives by viewing them through the lens of a card or cards.  Ultimately we can use the cards in this way to explore ourselves, fulfilling that ancient command to ‘know thyself.’

Likewise, as we can, by contemplating them, learn deeper meanings for the square and compasses, we can, by contemplating the symbolism of the Tarot, learn deeper and deeper meanings for it and its imagery.  Through study and contemplation, we can pull back the veil to discover meanings behind the common meanings, just as we can pull back the veil to discover deeper meanings behind Masonic symbolism than what we learn through the ritual explanations.  By applying this deeper knowledge to ourselves and our actions, we can move forward along our personal mystical and spiritual pathway.

Divination

When you first begin working with the Tarot, you will likely find that some cards really ‘speak’ to you.  Their meanings come quite naturally to you whenever you see them.  Other cards might be more difficult.  You may need to consult the book(s) in order to refresh your memory of their meanings, or you may have trouble figuring out how they ‘fit’ into the story created by a spread of cards.  This is completely natural, it is only right that sometimes we will struggle with a card, if the artwork, imagery, symbolism, or message is more difficult for us.  It will go away as we continue working with the cards, eventually we will reach a point at which readings flow easily and naturally.

This is not unlike Masonic symbolism.  Some symbols in the Lodge will come easily for us and attract our attention.  Others we may struggle with.  Ultimately however we can find valuable insight.

I believe that when working with the Tarot, it is important that we ‘know’ what the standard meanings of the symbolism are.  This is work, but valuable work, as these standards have been created by countless minds, contemplating the images for as long as the Tarot has been utilized.  We need to have a baseline with which to work, and that baseline is the traditionally accepted meaning of each card.

Once we have that baseline though, intuition should take over and mix with the traditional explanations when and as needed.  Our own insight and intuition will provide much more valuable readings than simple repetition of memorized meanings.  Masonically, let’s consider the square and compasses.  The square represents the earthly side of man, the compasses the spiritual side.  When we are new to Masonry, the square is ascendent, it rises above the compasses because we are working on ourselves, we are working to learn the lessons of Freemasonry and how to apply them to our lives.  As we progress through Masonry, the compasses begin to rise, eventually overtopping the square, illustrating that our spiritual nature is now ascendent over our earthly nature.  In much the same way, we eventually need our spirit to read the cards, informed and grounded by the accepted meanings, but unafraid to add our own unique understanding and intuition.

Eventually we will come to a point at which we can read the cards naturally.  When what they are communicating to us will just flow out of us.  It will become second nature, and we won’t have our doubts getting in the way of the message.  When this time comes, we are ready to begin reading the cards for ourselves or others.

Our Brother, Arthur Edward Waite described divination as a way to see behind the veil.

For practical purposes, I think we can divide the kinds of questions we might seek answers to through Tarot into three broad (and overlapping) categories.

The first of these are questions about ourselves, our inner natures, motivations, desires, and our will.  By contemplating Tarot spreads drawn for questions of this sort, we are fulfilling the ancient command to ‘know thyself.’  We are learning about ourselves, and learning how to change that which we seek to change.

The second of these are questions about events, things, or people, in the past or the present.  By contemplating Tarot spreads drawn for questions of this sort, we are able to gain valuable insight into why something has happened or is happening.  We may gain insight into our own role in the situation, how it could be improved or avoided in the future.  

The final category of questions are those questions about the future.  When contemplating Tarot spreads drawn to gain insight into the future, we must remember that the future is not fixed.  It is impacted by myriad people and incalculable numbers of events.  Our spreads can point out the most likely possibility at that very moment.  Whatever possibility that is however can be changed.  The future can never be fixed, for it has not happened yet, and because between this moment and the next, a great many unforeseen circumstances could well come into play.  But, by contemplating future spreads, we can gain valuable insight into things we may well want to change in order to work towards a more positive outcome.

There are as many Tarot spreads as there are Tarot readers.  More probably.  I personally use a very simple five card spread, but that is simply because it ‘speaks’ to me.  Quite likely, some other spread will ‘speak’ to you.  Most books on the Tarot will offer a selection of spread designs for consideration, you should use the spread(s) that are most comfortable for you.  And if you ever want to get just about as complicated as building a rocket to visit the moon, check out the Golden Dawn’s Tarot spread as explained by Israel Regardie! And yep, that’s the same Golden Dawn that was founded by three Freemasons in London, 1888, and that laid the groundwork for the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck.

I believe, based on my own experience, that Tarot works.  But I don’t think that anyone knows how it works.  Magick?  A reflection of the subconscious? An affirmation? Psychic ability? Intuition? Communication with the spirit world or divinity? Higher self? Psychological impressions? Shared consciousness? Shift of perspective? Collective unconscious? Who knows?  We can’t know, not truly anyway.  But, we can prove to ourselves that Tarot works through the experience of working with Tarot.

That is the important thing we must remember.  Reading about Tarot is great.  Learning about Tarot is great, but to understand and experience Tarot, we must use Tarot.  Just like Freemasonry, to truly understand it, one must live it.  It can never be understood by simply reading about it or talking about it.

Theurgy

I don’t know if theurgy is the best word to use for this section of this essay, but it’s what I’m going with.

We can manifest change in ourselves, our lives, and in the world around us.  Indeed, that is the very stated purpose of Freemasonry, to help us become better men, thereby improving the world and the lives around us.  The Tarot can help us accomplish that change.

I believe that properly focused our thoughts are a form of power.  That they emanate from ourselves, manifesting, and shaping our reality.  But that this is much easier said than done, because our thoughts are usually disjointed, disconnected, unfocused, and chaotic.  But, we can change that.  For discrete periods of time anyway.

In order to do this, we need to carefully consider, and decide, what it is we want to accomplish.  What is our true will at this moment in time, at this point in our lives?  This requires deep reflection within ourselves, and the Tarot can help us explore and find our will.

Once we have a very clear understanding of our true will, our need or desire, we should consider, and map out, all possible pathways along which this could manifest into our lives.  Our work here can not accomplish that which is impossible by the laws of nature.  We can not stop the sun from rising.  We can however manifest change into our lives if that change has pathways of probabilities through which it can come.  By simply identifying and considering these pathways, we are already working to manifest the change we seek.  The Tarot can also help us to identify these pathways, and any blocks within them that we might be able to remove.

When we clearly understand our will, and the pathways by which it might be realized in our lives, we need to concentrate our entire focus on the achievement of that goal.  Energizing it as best we are able, and sending it, unconfused, out from ourselves.

This is where the Tarot becomes extremely important.  Instead of asking a question of the cards and laying them out in a spread seeking answers, we hand select the cards and lay them out in a spread showing that which we seek, and showing that we have received it.  In other words, we purposely chose and lay out the cards in order to illustrate the future as we will it to be.  Our future self as we will ourselves to be.

Once the cards are set to illustrate our achievement of our will, we use those cards to focus our thoughts and energy, then send it out from ourselves.

We then, when we have finished this ritual, with whatever embellishments we may choose to add, live as if we have already achieved our will, banishing all worry and doubt about it from our minds.

Much as with divination, we have no way of knowing how this may work.  Many theories abound, but no one can truly know.  Affirmation?  Positive thinking? Magick?  We can’t know.  But we can, by utilizing it, prove to ourselves that it does work.  That is again the key.  We can’t understand Tarot unless we work with Tarot.  

Conclusion

Tarot is a symbolic language created in order to communicate understanding about spiritual and mystical concepts.  In much the same way that Freemasonry contains a symbolic language designed to communicate moral, spiritual, and mystical concepts.  It can be used to study ourselves and our natures, used to give us new ways of thinking about the questions that are important to ourselves or others.  It can also be used to focus and concentrate our thoughts on that which we will to have in, or change about our lives.

One can believe that the cards work for esoteric reasons, or one can believe that the cards work for scientific/psychological reasons.  It truly doesn’t matter.  All that matters is if they work, for you.

Exactly as with Freemasonic symbolism, there are no right or wrong answers in Tarot.  Tarot symbolism is unique to every individual, just as Masonic symbolism is unique to every individual.  This is because each of us views these symbolic languages through our own personal lenses based upon our own personal experiences.

I think it proper and appropriate to close this essay by putting one of Brother Albert Pike’s disclaimers into my own words:

What you may have found to be of value in this essay, keep and study further.  What strikes you as wrong, discard.  Know that I am only pointing out that which I find, you might well find something quite different.

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Just as with almost every Sunday, tonight we will have another Rummer & Grapes gathering over Zoom. 7:30 Pacific Time. The email with login information will go out to paid subscribers early in the afternoon. This will be our 70th weekly gathering! Please join us if you are able!