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A Dominican friar in 1450s Bologna sat copying a deck of playing cards, adding allegorical figures that would become the earliest known tarot. He worked in a monastery where the Bible was read aloud at meals. The cards he drew were not forbidden. They were not sacred either. They were a mirror of the world the friar knew, a world where scripture shaped every image, even the ones used for games. The relationship between tarot and the Bible is not one of conflict but of deep, often overlooked influence: the Bible supplied the symbolic vocabulary that early tarot makers drew from, and the church supplied the cultural framework that made those symbols legible.

What the First Tarot Decks Borrowed from Scripture

What the First Tarot Decks Borrowed from Scripture

The oldest surviving tarot decks, the Visconti-Sforza cards from mid-15th century Milan, predate the occult associations that define modern tarot. These were luxury playing cards for the nobility, commissioned by families like the Visconti and the Sforza. The trumps, called trionfi, depicted figures that a Christian viewer would recognize instantly: the Pope, the Emperor, the Hanged Man, Judgment, the World.

The Hanged Man is the clearest example. Modern readers often see him as a figure of suspension or sacrifice. A 15th-century viewer would have seen Judas Iscariot. The image of a man hanged by one foot was a standard medieval depiction of Judas’s suicide, found in illuminated manuscripts and church murals across Europe. The Visconti-Sforza Hanged Man even has the same short tunic and purse of silver that Judas carried in Passion plays. The card was a moral warning, not a spiritual posture.

The Judgment card, showing an angel blowing a trumpet over rising dead, comes directly from the Book of Revelation (20:12-13). The World card, with a female figure in an oval wreath, echoes the medieval image of Christ in Majesty surrounded by the four living creatures of Ezekiel’s vision. The four creatures, the tetramorph, appear on the corners of the World card in many early decks: the lion (Mark), the ox (Luke), the man (Matthew), and the eagle (John).

The tarot did not invent these images. It borrowed them from the visual language of the church, the same language that filled stained glass windows, altarpieces, and illuminated Bibles.

Why the Church Never Condemned the Tarot

Why the Church Never Condemned the Tarot

A common assumption holds that the church banned tarot as heretical. The historical record tells a different story. No papal bull, no synod decree, no inquisition manual from the 15th or 16th centuries mentions tarot by name. The earliest known legal action against tarot came from civil authorities, not religious ones. In 1397, the city of Paris banned card games on working days. In 1423, Saint Bernardino of Siena preached against dice and cards, but he condemned gambling, not the images themselves.

The reason is simple. The early tarot was a game. It was played for stakes, for entertainment, for the same reasons people played chess or backgammon. The cards were not used for divination until the late 18th century, when occultists like Antoine Court de Gébelin and Etteilla began to reinterpret them as a repository of ancient Egyptian wisdom. By that time, the church had bigger concerns than a card game.

The Bible itself contains passages that have been read as condemning divination. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 lists “anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens” among abominations. Leviticus 19:26 forbids “divination or soothsaying.” But these prohibitions were aimed at specific practices of neighboring pagan cultures, not at a card game played by Italian nobles. The church’s silence on tarot suggests that no one in authority saw the cards as a spiritual threat.

How the Bible Shaped the Major Arcana’s Structure

The 22 trumps of the Major Arcana do not map directly onto the 66 books of the Protestant Bible or the 73 books of the Catholic canon. But the structure of the Fool’s journey, the narrative arc from the Magician to the World, follows a pattern that any medieval Christian would recognize: the progression from innocence through fall, suffering, judgment, and redemption.

The Wheel of Fortune card, numbered 10, draws on a biblical theme found in Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job. “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). The wheel turns, the mighty fall, the lowly rise. The card’s message of impermanence echoes the biblical wisdom tradition.

The Devil card, numbered 15, has been read as a figure of bondage and materialism. In the Visconti-Sforza deck, the Devil has claws, bat wings, and a third face on his belly. The image draws on medieval depictions of Lucifer found in Dante’s Inferno and in illuminated Bibles. The chains around the necks of the two smaller figures, loose enough to remove, echo the biblical idea that sin is a voluntary bondage (John 8:34).

The Tower, numbered 16, shows a structure struck by lightning, its inhabitants falling. The image recalls the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), where human pride is shattered by divine intervention. The lightning bolt, a symbol of God’s judgment, appears in the Bible as fire from heaven (Genesis 19:24, Revelation 20:9).

The Star, numbered 17, shows a woman pouring water from two jars. The image echoes the biblical theme of living water (John 4:10, Revelation 22:1). The eight-pointed star above her head has been read as the Star of Bethlehem or as the morning star of Revelation 22:16.

What the Minor Arcana Owes to Biblical Symbolism

The four suits of the Minor Arcana, cups, wands, swords, and pentacles, do not come from the Bible. They come from the four classes of medieval society: clergy (cups), nobility (wands), military (swords), and merchants (pentacles). But the numbers assigned to each suit, the pips, carry biblical resonance.

The number 4 appears throughout the Bible: four rivers of Eden, four winds, four corners of the earth, four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The number 7, the number of cards in each suit, is the number of completion in scripture: seven days of creation, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven churches. The number 10, the number of pip cards in each suit, recalls the Ten Commandments.

The court cards, Page, Knight, Queen, King, have been read as representing the four evangelists or the twelve tribes of Israel. These interpretations are later additions, imposed by occultists rather than original to the deck. But they show how naturally the tarot invites biblical reading.

The Bible in Modern Tarot Interpretation

Contemporary tarot readers often draw on biblical imagery without knowing it. The Judgment card is still read as a call to spiritual awakening, a theme that runs through the prophetic books of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation. The Hierophant, numbered 5, is still read as a figure of religious authority and tradition, echoing the role of the high priest in the Temple of Jerusalem.

Some modern decks explicitly incorporate biblical figures. The Alchemical Tarot includes Adam and Eve. The Herbal Tarot includes the Tree of Life from Genesis. The Tarot of the Holy Light uses Christian mysticism as its framework. These decks treat the Bible as a source of archetypal power, not as a competing system.

The relationship is not always comfortable. Some Christian groups reject tarot as incompatible with faith, citing the prohibitions in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Other Christians, particularly in the mystical traditions of Catholicism and Protestantism, have found the tarot useful as a tool for meditation and self-reflection. The Lectio Divina tradition of reading scripture slowly and prayerfully has a structural parallel in the way tarot readers meditate on a single card.

Notable Figures Who Connected Tarot and the Bible

Antoine Court de Gébelin (1725-1784), a French Protestant pastor and occultist, published Le Monde Primitif in 1781, arguing that tarot was a survival of Egyptian hieroglyphic wisdom. He connected the cards to the biblical patriarchs and to the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition that interprets scripture through numerical and symbolic methods. His work launched the occult tarot tradition.

Eliphas Lévi (1810-1875), born Alphonse Louis Constant, was a French occultist and former seminarian. He synthesized tarot, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism into a system he called “the science of the magi.” His book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856) mapped the 22 tarot trumps onto the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Lévi saw the tarot as a visual Bible, a book of wisdom encoded in images.

Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942), the co-creator of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and a Catholic convert. He wrote extensively on the Bible and mysticism. His deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, is the most widely used tarot in the English-speaking world. Waite deliberately infused the cards with Christian symbolism, most notably in the addition of the Christ figure to the Judgment card and the inclusion of the Garden of Eden imagery in the Ace of Cups.

Paul Foster Case (1884-1954), an American occultist and founder of the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA), wrote The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages (1927). He interpreted the tarot through the lens of the Bible and the Kabbalah, arguing that the cards encoded the same esoteric teachings found in scripture. His work influenced generations of tarot readers.

Common Misconceptions About Tarot and the Bible

Misconception: The Bible forbids tarot. The Bible forbids specific forms of divination practiced by neighboring cultures, but it does not mention tarot by name. The church never condemned tarot as a tool of divination until the 20th century, and even then, the condemnation was limited to specific uses, not the cards themselves.

Misconception: Tarot is a form of biblical prophecy. Tarot is not a prophetic text in the biblical sense. It is a tool for reflection and insight, not a source of divine revelation. The Bible claims to be the word of God. Tarot makes no such claim.

Misconception: The tarot was created as a secret Christian text. The earliest tarot decks were created as playing cards for the nobility. The occult interpretation of tarot as a repository of secret wisdom emerged in the late 18th century, three centuries after the first decks appeared.

Misconception: Tarot and the Bible are incompatible. Many Christians use tarot as a tool for meditation and self-reflection. The two systems share symbolic vocabulary and structural patterns. The tension between them is a matter of interpretation, not inherent conflict.

FAQ

Does the Bible mention tarot? No. The Bible was completed centuries before tarot was invented. The earliest tarot decks date to the 15th century, and the Bible’s canon was closed by the 4th century.

Can Christians use tarot? Some Christians use tarot for meditation and self-reflection. Others reject it as incompatible with their faith. There is no single Christian position on tarot.

Is tarot a form of fortune-telling forbidden in the Bible? Tarot is used for divination by some readers, but it is not inherently a fortune-telling tool. The biblical prohibitions on divination (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Leviticus 19:26) are directed at specific practices, not at all forms of reflective inquiry.

What biblical figures appear in tarot? No biblical figures appear in traditional tarot decks. The imagery draws on biblical themes and symbols, but the cards do not depict specific biblical characters. Some modern decks include figures like Adam and Eve or Jesus.

The Bible and the tarot share a common language of symbols, numbers, and archetypes. The tarot borrowed from the visual vocabulary of the church, and the church’s scripture supplied the framework that made those images legible. The relationship is not one of opposition but of influence, adaptation, and reinterpretation. To read the tarot is to engage with a tradition that has always been in conversation with the Bible, whether the reader knows it or not.

For a deeper exploration of how tarot draws on religious and philosophical traditions, see our guide to tarot symbolism. You may also find our glossary of biblical and occult symbols useful for understanding the shared vocabulary between these two systems. And if you want to trace how the tarot evolved from a card game to a divination tool, our history of tarot covers the key figures and texts that shaped the modern deck.