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Tarot for Christians: Lessons from Christ’s Fool

Tarot for Christians is available at multiple retailers, click on Where to Buy (above) for details.

The main character of tarot’s first card is The Fool, and Tarot for Christians is the adventure of that innocent wanderer. THE FOOL is a simple traveler through the deck, growing and learning, experiencing and living.

The author — a retired archbishop of the Old Catholic Church — brings his knowledge of metaphysics and traditional symbolism to these misunderstood “flash cards.” Each of the major cards in the deck is a station on the Fool’s journey. The archbishop explains his take on each of the major cards with humor and eager anticipation of the wisdom to be found in the images.

The Fool’s adventure is a meditation on life, not an attempt to peer into the future. It is a lesson for today, not tomorrow. Tarot for Christians is the loving and personal journey of Christ’s vagabond, and he wants us all to join him.

“It had me after the first paragraph of the introduction! Finally a text on the mystical tarot for Christians. It is insightful and easy to read, and it made me laugh out loud.“
–Agatha Cassella

Tarot for Christians (back cover)

• Philosophy : Metaphysics (PHI013000)
• Self-Help : New Age (SEL503000)
• Body, Mind & Spirit : Tarot (OCC024000)

Open Library library card.

Dr. Wagner is a proud member of the Authors Guild. He is the Coadjutor Emeritus — as an archbishop — of the North American Old Catholic Churches and a past president of the World Conference of Old Catholic Churches. He was written extensively on mystical and New Age topics, especially on how they jive with modern christian spirituality and religious practices. His views on religion — sometimes controversial — try to keep the tyranny of organized religion in check while empowering individuals to be the best adherents their conscious allows. He rails against church abuses and supports individual seekers every day, sometimes to the consternation of religious leaders (the ones in the fancy robes). Yet, Dr. Wagner has the wattage. He is a retired archbishop and holds both a Master of Liberal Arts and a Doctor of Theology. His credentials as an archbishop are vastly stronger and better documented that the current pope and most of the Roman College of Cardinals. His bottom like: if you are a cleric who doesn’t care for the church’s members, Dr.

Thanks for supporting Dr. Wagner’s ministry

It has been so hard over the past few years. He developed chronic pancreatitis following and acute version of that condition coupled with a heart attach and stroke. He refuses to whine or grumble (at least not about that). The office at Mystic Ways Books objects to this attitude because it’s like Dr. Wagner is trying to run up the scoreboard. He reminded me that pancreatitis is just one more log on the fire. He started with Hodgkins are the advance age of five:

“You try going to your first day of kindergarten bald from the chemo. You gotta look tough. In control. Macho. I didn’t exactly pull that off, but several kindergarden “bullies” sort of adopted me while I recovered.”

The archbishop — now retired — continues to work with others, quietly and through his books.

He retired for health reasons, having spent five months in the hospital in 2010. Because of that, he is no longer able to book public speaking events. Some days are great. Others… let’s just say that you don’t want to count on him being at your event with bells on. 

Thank you for supporting him. Tarot for Christians was entirely written after the long hospital stay. He will deny it but facing the call to those heaven lights has changed him. Nothing can make him more mellow! But has more deep insights than ever before, and they are presented in his typical easy-to-read style. If you pick up this book, it’s hard to put it down.

Click on “Where to buy” (above) for more outlets, including wholesale information.

This is the second edition of Abp. Wynn Wagner’s powerful little book about healing and self-acceptance.

Are you a Catholic who no longer practices your faith? Do you feel closed off from the church because of your political or lifestyle circumstances? In Archbishop Wynn Wagner’s enlightening, supportive, and sometimes gently irreverent book, Recovering Catholic: How to be Catholic without being Roman Catholic, you’ll discover an entirely new way of looking at, and participating in, the Christian world you once loved.

The author, who considers himself a recovering Catholic, introduces us to the Old Catholic Church, where 100% is Catholic, and 0% is Roman Catholic. So what’s missing? Dogma, unfair judgment, homophobia, racism, and levels of discrimination we prefer not to discuss outside the church, and which the Roman Catholic clergy refuse to acknowledge inside the church. This book and this man will remind you about the joys that exist in a religion that loves and accepts. Amen to that!

Paperback

ISBN: 978–1-938964–01-5

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble

e-Book

ISBN: 978–1-938964–02-2

• Amazon Kindle
• Apple iBookstore
• Barnes and Noble (Nook)
• Kobo

Wholesale

• Ingram (Christian Advance catalog)
• LibreDigital (e-book aggregator)

This is the preface to the second edition.

This is a short book because it’s just a starting point.

The hardest thing for my own journey was coming to terms with the fallibility of what I once thought to be infallible. “The Church” had been so wonderful. I know this because that’s what the church told me. It was an important player in my eventual entrance into my eternal reward. It was the most essential part to getting my sorry ass into heaven. Again, I knew this because that’s what they told me.

They said I didn’t deserve anything more than to lie around for eternity with cockroaches crawling over my bones as they turned back to dust.

One by one, the walls of that fortress collapsed. It’s a shame, and it really hurt me.

But I saw how the Church of Rome treated women and my LGBT friends. It was shameful.

It was little things. They continue to say they’re the most vital organization of God, but it didn’t ring true. The greatest composer of classical music — Johann Sebastian Bach — was Lutheran. How could that happen?

I saw the pope being petty. I read how they treated people during the Spanish Inquisition and the invasion of the Americas by the Conquistadors. One of Rome’s popes helped Nazi criminals escape Europe after the second world war, and they excommunicated a South American bishop who complained about it.

They fight the notion that a woman can be in love with another woman. There’s to be no living together or touching. And then they wag their clerical fingers at lesbians, accusing them of being promiscuous and being incapable of settling down.

So much pain inflicted. I was disillusioned.

I was also one of those boys who was abused by employees of the Roman church. I stared in disbelief when the Vatican equated predatory behavior with sexual orientation. That’s wrong. It’s one of those “judge not” things they ought to go into the people’s side of the confessional booth to talk about.

This booklet is about how I worked through all my issues. I no longer “hate” the Roman church, although I poke at them every chance I get.

Thanks so much for reading my little book.

I promise a happy ending.

Second Edition

The second edition of this title is expanded and in full color (both paperback and e-book).

There are some lingering first editions available. The cover of the first edition either shows a woman praying or has no artwork of any kind. If you want the second edition, look for the cover shown on the right (crosses and big sky). Mystic Ways Books is grateful for your support, regardless of the edition you buy.

Paperback

ISBN 978‑0985–5981–5–0

• Amazon USA
• Amazon Deutschland
• Amazon UK
• Amazon France
• Amazon Italia
• other outlets are in the pipeline

e-Book

ISBN 978–0–9855981–6–7

• B&N Nook
• Amazon USA (ASIN B008JIHN8M)
• Kindle Deutschland
• Kindle UK
• Kindle France
• Kindle Italia
• other outlets are in the pipeline

Wholesale

• Ingram (Christian Advance catelog)
• If you deal with another wholesaler or aggregator, you may find A Pilgrim’s Guide in their catalog.

This is from the first chapter of A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Old Catholic Church.

Introduction

The Elevator Version

The “elevator version” of anything is a summary that you can get through in just the few seconds you spend in an elevator. Because we have the word “Catholic” in our name, most people want to know how we are different from the Roman Catholic Church. So here is the “elevator version” of that:

	Old Catholic	Roman Catholic
Openly gay priests
Closeted gay priests
Marriage after a divorce
Same-gender weddings
Trained/licensed priests
Criminal check on all clergy
Tons of rules for believers

In the Old Catholic Church sexual and gender orientation are not impediments to any sacrament, including Holy Orders and Matrimony.

Of course the Romans have gay priests. They just have to lie about it.

By church law, each lay member’s faith is sovereign (NAOCC).

Being Different

We are not to throw away those things that can benefit our neighbor. Goods are called good because they can be used for good: they are instruments for good, in the hands of those who use them properly.
Clement of Alexandria (150–215)

Unlike other modern branches of Christianity, the Old Catholic Church isn’t a “melting pot” with every ladle from the pot looks like every other ladle. The Old Catholic Church is more like a tossed salad, where every bit is going to be identifiable as a distinct item.

Every country has its own distinct Old Catholic Church. Germany has its Alt-Katholiken in Deutschland. In the Czech Republic, it is the Starokatolická církev v Ceské republice. The United States has the North American Old Catholic Church.

The Dutch church can’t impose dogma on anyone outside the Netherlands. Swiss bishops have no standing in the operation of the Austrian church. Each of the national churches has its own teachings, practices and traditions.

What’s more, each bishop in each national church has more “freedom” than a bishop in another denomination. An Old Catholic Bishop can authorize a liturgy or patron saint that applies only in the bishop’s jurisdiction.

On top of that, each lay member’s beliefs are sovereign. There is no church authority that can order any individual to believe or act a certain way.
It sounds like chaos, but it works nicely.

Here is something I hear from time to time: “if this church was able to make room for somebody like me, then I am responsible for making room for somebody like you.”

In fact, it is the way the Christian church started. Bishops were responsible for a jurisdiction, but each individual was responsible for himself or herself and for helping the next guy.

The arrangement is weird enough that we have to call it a mystery. A mystery is something we can partly understand, but nobody can grasp the entire meaning completely.

Somehow the church as a whole is the Mystical Body of Christ, and each national church stands as an incarnation of that Mystical Body, and every individual personifies (brings to life) the Mystical Body. The Church is Christ-ness, and you are what makes this Christ touchable. If a hungry person reaches out, you are there to be touched. If a prisoner cries for God, your ears are what hear the cry. If a sick person seeks help, you are the one who is there with comfort.

Taken as a whole, this isn’t like Christ. It is Christ, and you are as integral a part as anybody. What are you supposed to be doing? I have no idea: I barely know what I’m supposed to be doing, for crying out loud. I do know that God needs you. God needs all of us.

And I know one other thing: what you’re supposed to do is something you can do. Nobody is given a load that can’t be carried, and nobody is given a load that is useless or helpless. When Mother Theresa of Calcutta was working with the old and the sick, somebody snarled “You can’t help these people: you’re old and sick yourself.” Mother Theresa of Calcutta responded, “I wasn’t called to be successful. I was called to be faithful.”

And so it goes.

A Bestseller at Amazon.com 100% Catholic. 0% Roman Catholic. The OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH has been around for hundreds of years, but few people today know about it. Larger groups that use the word “Catholic” rarely like to admit its existence, but it does exist. It is completely Catholic, but without the pope, the Inquisition and all the guilt. Archbishop Wynn Wagner introduces you to the beliefs of this small group of Catholics with their modern philosophy that is wrapped inside a very traditional liturgy. Expect to be amazed at the spiritual tools that are available to you today. When someone says you can’t marry because you are gay, or that you can’t be a Catholic priest because you are married or a female: read this book and find your answer.

Some books that introduce a religion are dry and boring. If that is what you want, don’t look in these pages. Archbishop Wynn Wagner brings the Old Catholic Church to life. This is a Pilgrim’s Guide, and the archbishop is the first to let you know that he is just another pilgrim. When he doesn’t know the answer, he tells you. He tells you in ways that may leave you chuckling.

When he talks about the majesty of our Old Catholic Church, he speaks with the authority of someone who walks-the-walk. The “Pilgrim’s Guide” is more than a simple introduction, it is a tour of what can be your spiritual life with a tour guide who lives the subject matter on a daily basis.

Archbishop Michael V. Seneco, First Presiding Bishop
North American Old Catholic Church

 

Retail: everywhere
Wholesale: Ingram, Christian Advance catalog.

Tarot for Christians: Lessons from Christ’s Fool

Tarot for Christians (second edition)

Paperback

• Amazon (.com)
• Amazon UK (.co.uk)
• Amazon Germany (.de)
• Amazon France (.fr)
• Amazon Italy (.it)
• Amazon Spain (.es)
• Barnes and Noble
• CreateSpace

e-Book

• iBooks — iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch
• Sony Reader Store
• Amazon Kindle (.com) — (ASIN B008C2C5XS)
• Amazon Kindle UK (.co.uk) — (ASIN B008C2C5XS)
• Amazon Kindle Germany (.de) — (ASIN B008C2C5XS)
• Amazon Kindle France (.fr) — (ASIN B008C2C5XS)
• Amazon Kindle Italy (.it) — (ASIN B008C2C5XS)
• Amazon Kindle Spain (.es) — (ASIN B008C2C5XS)
• Barnes and Noble Nook
• Kobo

Wholesale Distributors

• Ingram (Advance catalog) — paperback/returnable (CSS1098553) [recommended]
• Baker & Taylor — paperback, e-book
• Gardner’s — e-book

Tarot for Christians: Lessons from Christ’s Fool

“I WANT TO do a book about tarot,” I told my agent.

Silence.

“Hello?” I said into the phone. “You still there?”

She hung up on me.

“You hung up on me,” I said to her when I called back.

“No,” she said. “I hung up on a crazy person who needs supervision.”

“You don’t want the book?”

“I don’t know what to do with a book for Christians about tarot.”

That’s the reaction so many of us have. Tarot is a set of 78 pieces of rectangle cardstock and ink. You have 78 cartoon-like drawings, and we fear them like each one is done with some kind of material that is corrosive to the soul. If you’re a proper Christian, you don’t like the images or what they represent (regardless of what that might be).

The most popular deck in use today was drawn by a woman who specialized in illustrations for children’s books. But we pack all kinds of overtones and innuendos and power and angst into these 78 sketches.

There was a time when I hated tarot. I was afraid of it because my family told me that hating the cards is what all good little Christians would do.

I was a good little Christian. Being a good boy is what made me want to live. It made me a solid member of the Christian community because I bound myself to the same rules and attitudes of everyone else.

When I questioned the order of things, my parents reminded me that I was just a kid. They said there were experts who denounced things like tarot. When I asked why, they told me it was obvious. They said that I was trying to “know better” than the really smart people who went to great schools and universities and had their names festooned with letters of honor: Reverend and Doctor and PhD and ThD and MA.

Nobody can know everything about everything. We had too many topics to master, and I should leave “fortune telling” alone because the experts said it was the devil’s work. When I asked them were tarot was mentioned in the Bible, they got angry. They said I was inviting Satan into my soul.

They’d start quoting the Old Testament: “If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.” Leviticus is always the Go To Book for bigots and scalawags.

They warned me not to give tarot and astrology the time of day.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
[Matthew 2:1–2]

Wait. What? The stars told the three wise men to come visit Jesus in the manger. They came to visit from the East. Holy men from the East. If I add up those numbers, carry the one, scrunch my eyes just so… the three wise men were actually astrologers, and they were coming from Persia (now Iran).

Mommy slapped me when I suggested that, of course. You can’t “un-think” something like that. I knew the Magi were into astrology. Those sly Iranian geezers on camels were plotting the stars.

Mommy said it was better to accept their teaching on satanic things like tarot. They didn’t want me to stir the pot.

“The best way to turn muddy water into clear water,” she said, “is to leave it alone.”

My ears always turn that kind of admonition into a dare.

—– 

Jesus founded two churches. Most people today know about the second one, but the original group is more fun.

Our Master hung out with all the wrong kinds of people during His earthly ministry.

He was a party guy. The first miracle passed down to us in the gospels was changing water into wine at a wedding celebration.

“Dude!” I imagine myself saying at that wedding party in Cana.[1]

Jesus hung with scoundrels and the sick and the scum of society. He cared about prisoners and kept crowds of bullies away from the disenfranchised.

Society hated them because they weren’t up to society’s standards. Followers of Jesus weren’t proper people. They were riffraff, uneducated herds of ruffians. The hoi polloi.

I love rabble rousers. Jesus apparently fit in nicely. He was such an outsider that his own people had him murdered, killed by the upstanding citizens. They said he was such a criminal that he didn’t deserve to live.

[1] Cana doesn’t exist today. It was probably a village in what is Northern Israel. A few think it was in the southern part of modern Lebanon.

—– 

Constantine (272–337) started the second Christian church. He was the Roman emperor who first said Christianity was proper. He did it for political reasons more than anything.

Constantine told Roman society that it was okay to be a Christian. Citizens who wanted to suck up to the emperor left their non-Christian religions as fast as their brown-nosing chariots could race.

After politicians and middle-managers got their hands on the dogma, everything changed. The cross — Christianity’s central symbol — went from a crude depiction of a dying man to a stylized figure in vestments and jewels.

—– 

I have lots of non-Christian friend. Many of them don’t like “the church.” It’s like two camps, and they can’t stand each other. What my non-Christian friends don’t like is the second church of Constantine. I think lots of them would find our Master an absolute hoot. They’d like the liberal / pacifist / activist who partied with society’s riffraff.

—– 

My cousins fit into the second incarnation of the Christian church. I don’t and never did.

I can see my cousins wince at the idea that their cousin would write a book suggesting that such a devil’s tool as tarot could be useful, a set of meritorious flash cards with useful lessons to help us grow and flourish.

My cousins will be calling me a sorcerer over this book. If that’s what they think, I will just turn the other cheek (or turn the other adverb, or whatever one turns in this situation). It isn’t true. If I were a sorcerer, my cousins would be covered in warts by now. I won’t correct them because I think it’s cute. Also, it’s a distinction that gives me the edge at family picnics and the invariable “discussions” at those outings.

Those of us who fit into the Master’s original church group don’t fit neatly into the second group.

“Don’t talk to that heathen, Johnny,” I can hear my cousins say. “He’s evil.”

—– 

The truth is far less dramatic. I use tarot as flash cards. They challenge my noggin without dragging words into the discussion. They are so jam-packed with imagery and symbols that there’s an almost inexhaustible supply of novel facets that attack my preconceived assumptions about the spiritual world.

They’re great, and they annoy my cousins, which makes them even more valuable.

Tarot speaks to the right side of my brain.

My left-brain gets assaulted with words and ideas from all kinds of places, but my artistic right-brain is ignored in my modern, internet-savvy daily life.

The left-brain is where engineers live. It’s analytical and precise. It’s so busy being accurate with the botany that it forgets to notice that a red rose is one of God’s creations that deserves a standing ovation.

Tarot presents images — archetypes — to my right brain. It communicates with images instead of words. I see and recognize, without having to parse and translate.

The rose is just the rose.

The people who design tarot decks add titles at the bottom of each card: magician, devil, moon, and temperance. It sends those of us with left-brain afflictions into tailspins. Words on so many of the cards are just a ruse. We can get a hint about the meanings, but the minute we start taking those letters too seriously, the whole thing goes south.

I’ve more insights by staring at the images and letting my brain wander. When I see something that is in contradistinction to some expert’s reality, the expert loses. Sorry, experts.

—– 

I’ve used tarot cards as flash cards since I was a little kid.

For years, I’d cut my tarot deck to select one card in the morning. It was my card of the day. I’d carry that card with me and stare at it when I had some downtime.

Some days I’d look at the card. Some days the card would look back at me. It was a dance.

When I’m writing one of my fictional novels, I get into a rut from time to time. My secret for writer’s block: cut the tarot deck and select a card. It isn’t that there is some kind of cosmic something-or-other going on. Maybe there is; maybe not. The point is that the image on the random card mounts an assault on my writer’s block. The symbolism, the archetype, in the image shakes whatever was causing my mental constipation. It has worked over and over.

—– 

I did an actual tarot reading one time too. Once. It was sort of a reading. I laid out the cards and consulted a big book to see what each position was supposed to tell me. It was awful. I am the most inept prognosticator in the history of tarot. Every time I tried to take that reading seriously, I burst into laughter.

My guardian angel was laughing at me. Hosts of cherubim and seraphim were laughing so hard that they started passing gas, and that isn’t a pretty thing to happen.

As a result of that reading, I swore off the practice.

If you want to learn how to “read” the cards and tell the future, I’m not the one to come to. I haven’t any advice.

What’s more, I don’t think the future is any of my business.

The past is the past. It doesn’t even exist. The only way we can interact with the past is to think about it, and that thinking is happening NOW. Bad thoughts about the past include shame and regret. Those are just thoughts, and they can ruin the present.

Same thing for the future. It doesn’t exist. We can only think about it, and our thinking happens NOW. Bad thoughts of the future can be dread and fear, but they’re just thought patters. The future doesn’t exist, and our bad thought only muck up the present.

If you want to get your head off into the future, that’s all up to you. I have enough trouble with NOW. Adding time-shifts to my NOW complicates things beyond pleasure.