How Tarot Works and Why We Need It Now: Insights From an MSc Dissertation.
Image: The Modern With Tarot, Lisa Sterle
Tarot is having a moment.
Within the zeitgeist of ‘secular spirituality’ practices, Tarot is surely amongst the most popular. Sales of decks have rocketed since the pandemic as all kinds of people seek answers to the questions of life.
A growing number of therapists and coaches integrate Tarot into their practice, and I regularly use it in boardrooms to help executives with decision-making and perspective-shifting.
But what is Tarot, and what do we know about how it works?
Tarot is a deck of 78 image-based cards, structured into:
The Major Arcana, describing the human journey from innocence (The Fool) to experience (The World)
The Minor Arcana, describing everyday human life through four suits - Wands (energy), Cups (emotions), Pentacles (physicality or behaviour) and Swords (intellect).
Traditionally used for fortune-telling, modern-day practitioners are more likely to use Tarot for personal and professional growth. Our reaction to each card can reveal a lot about the inner workings of our psyche.
But what if there’s more to it? What if Tarot is more than just a sophisticated Rorschach test? WHY is it such a transformational tool?
Existing academic research is scarce, and I wanted to understand how Tarot really WORKS. What is actually happening during a Tarot session - psychologically AND spiritually? And it just so happens that I could explore this within the rigorous framework of my MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality & Transpersonal Psychology.
For the last year, I have been carrying out a dissertation on ‘How do Tarot practitioners experience the use of Tarot as a tool for psychospiritual growth?’. NB - ‘psychospiritual growth’ = the interwoven processes of psychological development and spiritual awakening.
I interviewed eight experienced practitioners who use Tarot for psychospritual client work, and followed a rigorous analytical process. Eventually, a theory emerged:
Copyright Victoria Smith-Murphy, 2025
Three Intelligences Work Together
Practitioners described a sort of ‘collaboration’ between
Human intelligence (the context that a practitioner brings to Tarot.)
Tarot intelligence (the mechanics that make Tarot more than a deck of cards.)
Images that act as portals into new possibilities.
The somatic or emotional resonance that different cards evoke.
The universal human experiences represented by the 78 cards.
Transpersonal intelligence (a higher power that’s invited to reveal itself through the cards, whatever language someone uses for that power.)
These three ‘intelligences’ provide the context for Tarot to be transformational.
Tarot Supports the Process of Growth
Then, when working with Tarot, a process unfolds:
Co-creation — A shared space of presence, openness and choice-making.
Consciousness-shifting — Tarot takes us beyond our ‘thinking mind’ into the worlds of emotion and imagination. It helps us access new information in our unconscious, moving us through moments of ‘stuckness’.
Ego expansion — The 78 cards represent the entire spectrum of human experience from mundane to divine. Engaging with this spectrum helps us revise the story of who we are and what’s possible.
For many practitioners, Tarot bridges psychological insight with spiritual awakening — a form of participatory spirituality that supports growth on all levels.
So what?
This model helps us understand why Tarot feels so potent, and how it catalyses real shifts in mindset and choice-making. My hope for this research was to create a robust framework that made the ancient wisdom of Tarot more widely accessible to a wider audience. In particular, I’d love to reach two communities:
Coaches and therapists. I believe this research demonstrates how Tarot can help practitioners in supporting clients to develop a more expansive and interconnected sense of self.
Corporate leaders - or indeed anyone - who spend their days in the rigidly-cognitive world of capitalism, and yet are curious about the spiritual dimension of life. Tarot offers a structure to explore intuition, archetype, and soul.
I’d also love to hear from fellow Tarot practitioners, to see how this research gives them language to articulate the deeper impact of their work.
Tarot is a tool for transformation. And if individual transformation is the gateway to collective change, as spiritual teachers suggest, then this moment in history demands that we take seriously all the help we can get.