How I Discovered the Spiritual Roots of the Tarot

by Russell A. Sturgess, author of The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot

In 1988 I won a trip to the USA. Just a few months earlier I met Dr. Gerry Jampolsky in Brisbane, Australia, at a weekend workshop that he had been invited to present. I was so inspired by his “Attitudinal Healing” programs that I wanted to learn more. He invited me to come to his Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, where I could do more training and participate in real-life group-work with families who were confronting catastrophic illness with their children. Providence made that trip possible. To value-add my experience, I was also told about Susan Trout, Ph.D., at the Center for Attitudinal Studies in Washington, D.C. (now the Institute for the Advancement of Service in Alexandria, Virginia), and once again good fortune in regards to the timing meant I was able to attend her trainings in D.C. at that time.

While in the States, I reached out to a couple massage colleges to see if they were interested in learning about an Australian approach to Osteopathic Massage. Once again the “paper angels” were working overtime, as an opportunity presented that eventually saw me returning several times a year to present workshops all around the USA, as well as speaking at conferences and conventions. This all made it possible for me to do more study into Attitudinal Healing. Inspired by my training with Susan Trout, I became keenly interested in “spiritual symbolism.”

Being raised in a strongly Christian home, some of what I was learning challenged my core religious beliefs. My intrigue with sacred symbolism eventually lead me to Sallie Nichol’s book Jung and Tarot, which I found to be totally fascinating. I had no tarot background, and in fact it was taboo. But here, Nichol was proposing a link between Christianity and the Tarot, and that struck a chord with me. My interest in the Tarot was focused on the area of sacred symbology, not “tarot reading.” More particularly, it was channeled into just one aspect of the Tarot – the major arcana of the Marseille Tarot.

Through my training with Susan Trout, and my ongoing research into sacred symbolism, I began focusing my mandala drawings that had become a significant part of my new spiritual practice into the symbols and characters from the trumps (the major arcana) of the Marseille Tarot. I had also become very interested in recording and reflecting on the symbolism of my dreams.

One vivid dream that I had at this time included an encounter with a disproportionally large snake. In the first part of the dream I was hunting this mammoth snake, which I cornered but was unable to kill. As the dream progressed the snake was hunting me. It managed to corner me as well, but it, too, was unable to do any harm. From that point forward I became obsessed with drawing two overlapping ouroboros styled snakes. Little did I know at that time I had actually discovered a sacred key for unlocking a deep mystery that had been hidden for hundreds of years.  

In 1995 I was in Boston presenting at a conference for the American Massage Therapy Association, just a couple of weeks before Christmas. While Christmas shopping, I came across a game shop that looked interesting. As I moved through the store I passed a counter that contained a diverse display of tarot card decks. I had never owned a set of tarot cards even though I had been studying them, possibly remnants of my Christian upbringing. My eyes were drawn to one particular set of the cards and I heard a voice say, “Buy them.” I laughed at how ridiculous this all seemed and walked on. The voice then insisted I go back and buy that particular pack of Marseille Tarot cards. The insistence was so strong that I went back and bought the cards, my very first set of tarot cards.

For the next decade I continued to draw mandalas that included the trumps, contemplate their spiritual meaning, and research what other people had discovered in this context. I decided in 2006 that I wanted to write about what had been revealed to me during this time and made the decision to live in Italy for as long as it took to write the first draft of a book on the subject. I recall walking off the plane onto the tarmac at Ciampino airport near Rome, and having the unexpected, overwhelming sense that I had returned home. It was bizarre as there are no Italian roots in my family. Yet I really felt like I had come home, and funnily enough, providence stepped in again and provided accommodation, a vehicle, and a network of wonderful people to support me during my time there.

A couple of weeks into my sojourn of what would eventually be a 10-month stay, my “predestined” connection with Italy was again highlighted. I was visiting the Abbey of Monte Cassino, not far from my Italian residence, where I wanted to witness live Gregorian chanting. While sitting quietly in the simple wooden congregational chairs waiting for Sunday mass to begin, I heard a voice, just as if someone was behind me leaning forward and speaking to me. The voice said, “Welcome back, you have chosen to return to complete a work you began but never finished, and you have been drawn to that place where it commenced. You were ready to share this knowledge and understanding at another time, but it was premature and your work was befittingly interrupted. It is appropriate that you return to this place (Italy) to recommence the work.”

Within days my writing began in earnest. I would arise between four and five in the morning every day, generally writing until 2pm. I had a laptop, the trumps from my pack of tarot cards, and one reference book on symbolism. My partner made the observation after a time that she felt like she was in a ménage a trois, the book being the “other woman.” Each night before bed I would take the card I was working on and spend some time contemplating it. I would then place it under my pillow before going to sleep. It was as if I was downloading the deeper messages of the cards. The morning after sleeping “on” The Magician card something astounding occurred. Looking at the card, it was as if the hat being worn by The Magician lifted off the page. I suddenly realised that its shape was similar to the overlapping circles of my mandalas. This was the key for unlocking the deeper spiritual meaning of the cards!

While taking a moment to absorb all of this, the Strength card came to mind as she was wearing a hat with a similar shape. Within the hour I had the cards laid out in the same shape as my mandalas and immediately saw that The World card pulled it all together. It was then that I finalized the lemniscate layout of the trumps of the Marseille Tarot, inspired by the hats of The Magician and Strength. In that moment, the sacred mystery of the cards was revealed.

It became evident that the trumps of the Marseille Tarot were first and foremost a sacred map, a map that detailed the nature of the “world of illusion,” the passage through the “dark night of the soul,” which then led to the “treasury of light” and the “kingdom of heaven.”

My first attempt at explaining this deep mystery was self-published in 2009 in a book entitled Metanoia: Renovating the House of Your Spirit. Just over a decade later, a decade which included more on-going study and research, and personal and professional application, I published an expanded understanding of this sacred mystery in my new book, The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot: The Cathar Code Hidden in the Cards. My expanded understanding of this sacred map would give new meaning to the Tarot, where the lemniscate layout of the cards transformed Tarot from being a divination tool to a teaching tool for enlightenment.

The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot has three areas of focus; the origins of the trump cards, their purpose/message, and what their relevance is to each person (more especially in 2020 and moving forward). In terms of their origin, this book proposes the idea that the Cathars of Southern France and Northern Italy used “portable stained-glass windows” in the form of illuminated manuscripts to house their theology of love since they did not have churches. After their demise in 1350 at the hands of the Catholic Church, I show how their images were transposed into the format of playing cards, which had recently appeared in Western Europe from the Middle East. After the French invasions around 1500 we see the cards turning up in Paris and taking on a canonical format that would later be called the Marseille Tarot.

Essentially, the trumps of the Marseille Tarot captured the “theology of love” of the Cathars, which detailed how one becomes aligned with Christ consciousness (Temperance, The Star, The Moon, and The Sun cards), and the cards reveal in detail the maturation of that journey.

In The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot I also reveal how the Cathars’ theology was almost completely inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, one of the few scriptures referenced by the Cathars. In particular, my book explores how the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount are the inspiration for the last sequence of 10 cards in the trumps. These 10 cards detail how The Fool (who represents us all) makes their way through the “Dark Night of the Soul,” and then has to pass the test of the Flaming Sword. It then describes the passage through the Treasury of Light which finally brings The Fool to the test of the Cherubim. The Flaming Sword and the Cherubim were the two gate keepers placed at the Eastern gate of the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled.

Having been born again, born of the water (The Moon card), and now of the spirit (The Judgement card), The Fool can stop their recycling (the Cathars believed in reincarnation) and enter back into the kingdom of heaven (The World card).

These portable stain-glass windows also possessed the knowledge that was necessary for real-life application. Together they explained what one would have to do to replace unsustainable values with sustainable ones. The radical limits brought about by Covid-19 highlighted the un-sustainability of the values that most of us have been living by. If it wasn’t for Covid-19, then, as I point out in the book, the values of The Magician’s illusory world, wealth (The Pope), power (The Emperor), love (The Lovers), and fame (The Chariot) would be shown to be unsustainable by natural justice (The Justice), ageing (The Hermit), and misfortune (The Wheel of Fortune). Everything about the major arcana of the Marseille Tarot explains how the illusionary values were unsustainable and how to be sustainably aligned with spiritual values.

As the adage goes, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” In 2010 I developed a personal mentoring program based on the deep mysteries of the Tarot, as they had been revealed to me. The evidence of the divine nature of the trumps of the Tarot was in its application. Others have learned how to facilitate the program, which has resulted in hundreds of lives being profoundly transformed over this last decade, through what is really the Western approach to mindfulness. Check out my book to learn more about how to apply the Cathar Code of the Tarot in your own life.