“A prisoner devoid of books, had he only a Tarot of which he knew how to make use, could, in a few years, acquire a universal science, and converse with an unequaled doctrine and inexhaustible eloquence.” –Eliphas Lévi
I just was sent a ruling by a United States District Court regarding the possession of a tarot deck in a prison. The court found that:
“S***, a Wiccan, uses tarot cards for religious purposes. DC (Department of Corrections) policy requires inmates to check out tarot cards from a chaplain and prohibits keeping cards in cells. S*** asserts that this policy violates his rights under RLUIPA by inhibiting spontaneous readings. A DC expert witness testified that the policy was necessary to prevent
- gambling, as tarot cards can be manipulated for use as playing cards;
- trafficking, since card readings could be conducted in exchange for goods or services;
- psychological control, as some prisoners may believe tarot card-holders have special powers; and
- gang symbols on tarot cards, which could be used to promote or defame gangs, leading to violence.
“Ruling for the DC officials, the district court noted that S*** checked out the tarot cards numerous times, that prison chaplains never rejected his check-out requests, and that DC policy permits S*** to keep other Wiccan religious items in his cell. The court found that, even if the check-out system burdens S***’s religious beliefs, it is the least restrictive policy that promotes prison safety while accommodating S***’s religious beliefs.”
This shows Wicca being afforded the rights of other religions in prisons—yeah! It’s only been in the last few years that soldiers could be buried in military graveyards with a pentagram on their gravestone—a battle that took many years and the jumping of more hoops than any other religious organization in order to accomplish.
It’s interesting that this ruling identifies tarot as a Wiccan religious item while acknowledging that it can be used in other ways. Whether or not the prison authorities are right, I would like to suggest to that prisoner and others that one of the powers of tarot is its application in the Art of Memory, so that being able to create the cards, in all their detail, in the mind’s eye is a very powerful way of working with them.
I’d like to get your thoughts in this poll and in the comments.
Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me
Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog 
15 comments
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February 1, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Rachel
While our first thought might be, of course he should have his Tarot deck! in fact, the arguments made by the prison authorities make sense. I was struck by the one about people having a superstitious fear of Tarot so that someone could use them to manipulate others. We can assume that this prisoner would not do that, but if he could have them, so could others who might not be as principled as he. On the other hand, if he checked them out numerous times, he still would be able to use them to scare others. In our world of serious readers these sorts of issues never come up, but they are part of Tarot.
February 1, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Jack Gerber
I was a psychologist in a large urban prison for more than 30 years. This kind of harassment is extremely common in such institutions. There is absolutely NO reason why this person could not keep a Tarot deck in the cell. The rest is excuses because the prison authority’s main goal is to maintain control over the inmates. The courts in the U.S. have had to become vigilant because of the horrendous abuses that prison authorities have routinely engaged in. They are particularly hostile to pagans. This does not apply to every prison administration, of course, but it is very common.
February 1, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Pitch313
I don’t think of my Tarot decks as “religious” items, and I don’t consider my readings as “religious” acts of devotion or whatever. But I think of divination as a practical and down-to-Earth skill set that enhances living in all its dimensions. (I really learned divination using I Ching. Tarot came later.)
What is allowed or not allowed in prisons has become something of a test for what Paganism is. One consequence, it seems to me, is that more and more of Wicca and Paganism gets defined as “religious,” because that’s what allows prisoners to do it or use it. Even if it wasn’t considered, in the non-prison Pagan/Wiccan world, as “religious” at all.
February 1, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Anon
I was doing a year-log sentence for a drug charge in Canada 30 years ago. I was 19 at the time. I had my girlfriend bring me in a tarot deck (RWS) and the only book I could find (Eden Grays’s Guide..). I guess the authorities had no idea what they were about anyway.
I remember building a special tarot box to keep the cards safe – sanded and glued together from found wood bits and pieces, and hinges handmade from bits of metal stolen from the kitchen. Lined it with blue nylon fabric from postal mailbags.
I did my first readings for others after I figured i had learned enough of the meanings…. Fellow inmates used to come to me with such questions as “Will my wife wait for me?” “Will I get parole?” Often, the answers were negative. Some of these guys were pretty scary and so I also learned how to soften the telling, and not once was I beaten up. In fact, in hindsight, I think the cards gave me a measure of protection and respect from the truly evil people in there at the time. Kind of like an oracle I suppose.
In any case, while i am not happy to have been there, I sure am glad I had that tarot deck. I haven’t been back since, I wonder what happened to it and the little box I made for it…
February 2, 2009 at 7:54 am
Kaira Sherman
Hi Mary,
Thank you for bringing this important post up! I agree with Jack. there is absolutely no reason a tarot deck could cause harm within the prison. It’s not a weapon of destruction. If anything, it will allow the inmate to better process what they’ve been through, and bring a higher vibration to themselves, as well as anyone they encounter. Using the tarot would allow the inmate to rise to a higher level of being and I believe, ultimately get him out and back to freedom! I agree with Jack again in that the authorities of the prisons who want to ban tarot decks are not coming from a fair place, and wanting to control for the wrong reasons. Similarly to many Christian fundamentalists who go around telling others that it’s not okay for them to trust their own intuition if it’s not written in the Bible!
I happen to believe that Tarot was created as a road map to Enlightenment.
That’s my ten cents worth.
Thanks for reading my post!
Blessings,
Kaira
February 2, 2009 at 9:37 am
Susanne
I am always bothered a bit when ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ are placed together in an overlap meaning. I do use the Tarot Cards for spiritual pathworking and do find, through it, a multi-layered spiritual map, if you will.
Religion, for me, is a man made hierarchical system which has a lot more going on than spiritual pathworking, although that can be a successful part of it.
I do not see the Tarot Cards as representing any one religion. Certainly they have had a lot of Pagan input and are used by many Pagans, but Hermeticism, which has contributed greatly to the development of the Tarot Cards, is a Christian mysticism pathworking, which I think is not fully understood by many who use the Tarot Cards. This is certainly and particularly not understood by the Christian Churches, oddly enough, as well as some followers of the Western Esoteric Magical tradition, and apparently prisons.
My own spiritual pathworking transcends organized religion but sometimes touches specifically on the various teachings of organized religion. I began my spiritual life, in this lifetime, through the teachings of my family (ancient) my Amerindian neighbours (ancient) and through the auspices of organized religion (common era). I have travelled many spiritual miles since the days of my youth. The Tarot Cards, in my old age, accompany both the spiritual and psychological parts of me and the worlds I inhabit. They reside in my head and my heart, which is ultimately a good place for them.
As for the attitudes within the prison systems. I suppose if one becomes a prisoner one is at the mercy of the whims of the prison personnel and the particular system that has been devised by the various personalities of that personnel. However, a Tarot Deck book would be all that was needed to facilitate learning the Tarot and placing it firmly in ones mind and heart. Once there, all the variables of the cards are accessible within one’s internal life.
May all prisoners be blessed with the Wisdom contained in the Tarot Cards.
February 3, 2009 at 2:28 am
Vandana
Hello.
February 3, 2009 at 7:16 am
Deborah Lipp
How we understand “religious,” outside, with free access to a wide variety of religious objects and means of expression, is very different from how a prisoner must understand “religious.” A Wiccan prisoner must develop a practice without access to nature, without an athame, without most of what most of us place on our altars, and without a community.
An object like a tarot deck, with an ancillary relationship to religion, thus becomes central in these confined circumstances. I point this out because I don’t think the poll can reflect this.
February 3, 2009 at 11:13 am
Ross Caldwell
Do they let prisoners keep ordinary cards in their cells?
You can gamble, read and pass threatening “gang” messages with those too (Ace of Spades anyone?)
February 3, 2009 at 11:15 am
Ross Caldwell
Ah sorry… just read your article again, and its says that they prohibit cards in cells. So the religious angle is the issue.
February 3, 2009 at 11:20 am
Ross Caldwell
I voted “religious item”. I think the trumps represent a Christian mystical doctrine, albeit orthodox, and thus when I study them I am reading them no less “religiously” than when I study the Bible or any other scriptures, or frescoes, or other religious artwork.
I mean packs made that way of course. Some tarots don’t have a religious message, and some regular kinds of cards do.
February 4, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Mark
While I use my tarot decks for spiritual purposes I am a little unsettled by the Dept. of Corrections considering tarot to be mainly “Wiccan”.
I am Pagan but not Wiccan. But still there are others who are not Pagan who enjoy tarot as much as anyone.
And Besides, inmates ARE allowed to have a regular deck of playing cards in their cells. One could just as easily use that for trafficing and gambling. I do readings with regular cards all the time.
They (DC) SHOULD allow tarot as well too.
Mark
Aurora, CO
USA
February 4, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Stevie
In trying to imagine the prison administration’s perspective on things, you have to realize just how much paperwork and permission-giving they have to go through already. *Everything* is regulated. Making the effort to let this person have any access to Tarot cards represents a lot more work on the part of the administration than we ever see from the outside. In comparing Wicca and Paganism to other religions that have far fewer props, you can see where people might start to become irritated at all the extra work. I think it is wonderful that this prisoner has access to Tarot cards, and I truly hope that he can advance his spirituality and that of others while he is working with them. But I do not see them as *necessary* to the practice of these faiths.
February 5, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Quiet
There are paradigms of thought in other professions apart from the justice system which disparage the Tarot.
At a national conference in 2002 I remember hearing a psychiatric nurse belittle patients in drug treatment centres who wanted to use Tarot on the grounds that it encouraged fanciful and magical thinking. She was referring specifically to women who had the diagnosis of ‘personality disorder’ (a very common diagnosis in women with drug/alcohol problems).
Consequently tarot cards were not allowed in that very well known treatment centre. From memory, I think that magical thinking was incorporated into diagnostic criteria for various illnesses in the DSM of the time.
I remember thinking then that her opinion was based on a personal fear and rigid thinking and the need to control something that she could not really work with. I felt some discomfort as I had just discovered the Tarot and was beginning to work with it.
I think that the Tarot is still often seen as ‘magical’ and ungrounded and that there is still a lot of ignorance about its potential uses. Tarot was was discouraged in the drug and alcohol treatment agency where I then worked yet art therapy was being introduced and is still used with a great deal of success. Both the tarot and art therapy draw deeply on the individual’s internal reservoirs of symbolic understanding.
Perhaps all this is peripheral. However, I think that in the prisons concerns about the use of tarot might be baased based on a little bit of ignorance, labelling and the need to control.
I love the quote from Levi, Mary. I haven’t seen it for years.
Many blessings.
February 5, 2009 at 2:37 pm
mkg
I want to thank everyone for the depth and thoughtfulness of your comments. It’s obvious there are no easy answers.
I’ve been thinking that although I don’t normally consider tarot a religious item, if I were in prison I might change my mind as tarot would keep me linked to the principles I find most important, and it would aid in my learning the spiritual lessons that got me into that place. Context can make a difference.
I certainly respect the right of others to see tarot as a religious item and to fight (in the courts) for that right. I also understand that prisons have to have rules.
The poll (at this point) shows that over 90% of those responding see tarot as having a spiritual (though not necessarily religious) function. The remaining 9-10% should also be respected for their pov.
Mary