Tarot Horror Movie Unleashes Concerns Around Tarot

It isn’t new for horror movies to take something innocent and twist it into something dark. From dolls, to children, to even smiles, the horror genre has almost done it all.

This might be why Tarot is focusing on a demonic tarot deck.

The horror movie Tarot is about a group of teens who accidentally unleash evil through a cursed tarot deck. They must find a way to escape the gruesome fates the cards foretold. With a rating of PG-13, the film made by Sony aims to attract a teen audience.

What is Tarot?

Tarot is a method of divination that is more easily accessible than other forms such as pendulums and automatic writing. It is a way to self-reflect and understand yourself more. Tarot cards mainly offer guidelines and a way to unwind and seek answers people may not have seen before.

In a standard tarot deck, there are 78 cards, and within those 78 cards are three major categories: the Major Arcana, Minor Arcana, and the Court cards. The Major Arcana is a continual journey, while the Minor Arcana and the Court cards focus more on what is currently happening in your life.

Major Arcana

The Major Arcana represents 22 cards in the deck and depicts a spiritual journey from the beginning (The Fool) to the end (The World). These cards hold several life lessons and contain archetypes on the cards.

These archetypes are what is shown in the Tarot movie.

Normally, these cards help you see where you are in your life and the key things you need to remember.

The High Priestess represents wisdom and patience.

The Hermit reminds you to take time alone and give yourself grace as you grow and change.

The Hanged Man emphasizes self-reflection and introspection. It also reminds you to sit and understand yourself before transformation.

These cards are integral to the deck and have helped me learn more about myself.

Minor Arcana

The Minor Arcana is broken up into four suits. In a standard deck, it’s Cups, Wands, Swords and Pentacles. Depending on the deck, there are variations to these suits, and they can go by different names, but the meaning of the cards stays the same. Cups mainly represent intuition, feelings, and relationships. The Wands represent passions and ambitions. The Swords represent conflicts and struggles/overcoming them. Pentacles represent wealth and career.

Over quarantine, many people from Gen-Z, myself included, went to Tarot to calm their thoughts and bring themselves peace. Everybody has different methods of choosing cards and splitting their deck to do readings.

I use it to learn more about myself and take a step back from the world around me to ground myself again. I’ve also used it as a helpful tool to collect my thoughts.

Horror movies are all about creating fear. I love horror movies because they scare me, and I know I’m not alone in this thought, but you have to question if the fear within the film hurts more than it helps.

The film Split added more stigma and fear towards people with DID and caused a massive wave of distress.

What Happened With Split?

Split was a 2016 horror movie with a killer who had 24 personalities. M Night Shyamalan directed the film.

CNN released an article detailing what the film got right and wrong about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Universal and Shyamalan ignored several signatures of psychiatrists and therapists, as well as people in general when they demanded the studio to make a PSA discussing that people with DID are rarely violent.

When Split was released, many people took the depiction of DID in the film as fact rather than myth. They believed that people who have DID are dangerous when that isn’t the case. It emphasized the stigma around DID rather than quelling it. When it comes to a case where many people don’t fully understand this disorder, there’s a responsibility to acknowledge that. What this movie does is perpetuate stereotypes amongst the community who have this disorder. The PSA would have subdued that fear.

Psychiatrist Dr. Garrett Marie Deckel, a DID Specialist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, stated, “You are going to upset and potentially exacerbate symptoms in thousands of people who are already suffering.”

While I’m not saying the Tarot movie is as extreme as the case is with Split, I hope that people won’t be afraid of tarot or demonize the people who practice it. Lately, tarot has been more normalized within media like TikTok and Instagram, and it would be a shame to go backward rather than forward.

In horror movies, there have been numerous times where the villains are outsiders, like in Split, and deal with the corresponding stigma.

Stigma Surrounding the Spiritual Community

While most people know that tarot is relatively harmless, some believe tarot to be evil. They believe those who do it are conversing with the devil.

This fear is what caused me to be nervous about telling my friends and family I wanted to get into tarot and start collecting decks. Even in college, I would hide my tarot decks because I don’t know how my friends will react if they see them out.

I got better and more open about my practices, but I believe this movie will only reinforce the harmful stereotypes and stigma. This could lead to more people being against tarot and make people afraid to try it out.

The Tarot Deck

The deck itself is scary on purpose. It is a horror movie, and the characters on the cards emphasize that. The characters on the cards each hunt down the teen who pulled their card in a gruesome and suspenseful action.

That is not how tarot works. The movie depicts tarot in this manner to create the scare that the movie needs. I hope people will realize the film is fictional and tarot does not function that way. Tarot can be learned from and shouldn’t be feared.

Tarot is a practice that the film twists to be scary in true horror movie fashion. It is a fascinating premise, but I’m more worried about the aftermath of the film being released.

It would be interesting if the characters figure out why the deck is cursed and how to lift the curse. I can’t say too much since the film is not out yet, but all I can say is that I hope there will be some accuracies within the film versus all of it featuring tarot to be evil.