If your tradition says yes, then for you it is. Dena does not try to talk anyone out of their own faith. What she can say is what she actually does: she does not predict the future and does not speak to the dead. She reads the cards as a story and tells it back to you.

Will a tarot reader tell me if my partner is cheating?

Dena will not. She does not read about people who are not at the table. What she will talk about is why you are asking, which is usually the real question underneath.

Do I have to believe what the reader believes?

No. Nobody who sits down is asked to believe what she believes, and she does not tell anyone to leave their church.

Answers

Is tarot a sin?

Q: What about Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and Leviticus 19:31?

Those passages warn against divination, sorcery and consulting the dead. Dena reads them as being about going somewhere other than God for power and for knowledge of what is coming, which is the thing she refuses to do. She does not tell anyone what is coming.

If your tradition says yes, then for you it is, and I am not going to talk you out of your own faith. That is the honest answer and it is the one I give at the table.

What I can tell you is what I actually do, because most people asking this question have been told tarot is one thing when the thing I do is something else. I do not predict the future. I do not speak to the dead. I read a story out of a spread of cards and I tell it back to you, and what it means is almost always something you already knew.

The verses people quote at me

The passages that come up are usually Deuteronomy 18:10 to 12 and Leviticus 19:31. They warn against divination, sorcery, consulting mediums and seeking out spirits of the dead. People quote them at me and they are not being rude. They are being careful, and careful is reasonable.

Here is what I say. Those passages are about going somewhere other than God for power and for knowledge of what is coming. That is exactly the thing I refuse to do. I do not tell you what is coming. I have never told anyone they were going to be pregnant next week, or that someone was cheating, or that a person in their life was going to die. I would not know, and pretending otherwise is the part that is actually a lie.

Whether that distinction satisfies your church is not mine to decide. I am telling you where the line sits for me.

Where I think the gift comes from

I think it comes from God. I have never thought otherwise, and I say the word out loud because dancing around it would be dishonest.

My gift to tell this story comes from God, just like when a violinist plays you a piece of music that is God. We need to stop idolizing the person, because they are just an instrument. Dena

That is not a claim that I am special. It is closer to the opposite. Everyone has the gift. Maybe it is not the narrator and maybe it is not the violinist, but it is something, and yours is not smaller than mine because mine happens to involve a table and a deck of cards.

And God is God to each religion. If you are Muslim it is Allah. If you are Christian it is God. Nobody who sits down with me is asked to believe what I believe, and I have never once tried to move somebody off their faith. That would be a strange thing to do to a person who came to me for calm.

What the cards actually are

Tarot started in fifteenth century Italy as a card game, tarocchi, played the way people play any trick-taking game. The divinatory use came centuries later, in eighteenth century France. The deck most readers use today, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, was illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith and published in 1909. Its images are a picture language: a tower, a fool, a woman holding two cups, a figure walking away from something.

That history matters here because it is the difference between an object and a practice. The cards do not do anything. They are a set of pictures rich enough that a person can find their own life inside them, which is also true of a parable, a piece of music, or a novel.

What I will not do, which is most of what worries people

I do not

Tell you the future
Speak to the dead
Tell you whether someone is cheating
Read about a person who is not at the table
Curse, remove curses, or sell you protection from one
Tell you to leave your church

I do

Read the cards as a story
Tell you what I am getting and let you say what it means
Keep the reading about you
Say I do not know when I do not know
Stop if it turns harmful

The one I get asked about most is the cheating question. Somebody wants to know if their partner is being unfaithful. I do not answer it. How would I know. What I will talk about is why you are asking, because that part is yours and it is usually the real question underneath.

If you are still not sure

Then do not book. I mean that plainly. A reading is not a thing you should do while feeling like you are getting away with something, because you will spend the whole sitting defending yourself in your own head instead of listening.

If you do want to come and you are nervous about it, the first reading is free, you can stop it at any point, and you can leave without paying anything or explaining yourself. That is not a sales line. It is the only arrangement that makes sense if I actually believe the gift is not mine to sell.

First reading is free. In person in Ocean City, or online from anywhere.

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