8-28-18 Recent Tarot Trend as New Age Idolatry

Recent Tarot Trend as New Age Idolatry - By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz - www.breakingisraelnews.com

 

You shall not eat anything with its blood. You shall not practice divination or soothsaying. Leviticus 19:26 (The Israel Bible™)

 

Sales of tarot cards have risen sharply in the last year as self-proclaimed witches claim that divination and dark-magic are effective in opposing President Trump. One end-of-days expert cites this as an illogical yet divinely guided step in setting the stage for the Messianic showdown in which the two sides, Good and Evil, are clearly defined.

 

The BBC published an article last week noting a 30-percent increase in sales in tarot cards last year, citing data collected by US Games Systems, a publisher of tarot games. Tarot may be a modern trend but it's roots are ancient, with some sources claiming the deck has its origins in the Book of Thoth, a legendary tome of Egyptian occult and idolatry. Based on four suits, tarot cards are similar to common playing cards but with some significant differences that serve its primary purpose: divination.

 

The Latin root of the word 'divination' means "to foresee, to be inspired by a god," but the Torah expressly forbids the practice.

 

Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer. Deuteronomy 18:10

 

Rabbi Daniel Asore, a member of the Sanhedrin, noted that the anti-divine aspect of divination is precisely the reason why the practice is proscribed and considered one of the more egregious forms of evil.

 

"Diviners and witches both try to take God out of heaven, out of the world, and replace him with 'self','" Rabbi Asore told Breaking Israel News. "They assign the power to nature and try to control it using esoteric methods that do not include God. This has ancient roots but in our era, it has taken on the appearance of New Age. Even if it looks modern, it is exactly the same as the idol worship we read about in the Bible."

 

Rabbi Asore explained how divination works as an anti-God mechanism.

 

"New Age wants to convince people that they are divine, that the power is inside of them," Rabbi Asore said. "They want to disconnect people from the Bible and prayer, which sets God firmly in all of Creation, in every aspect of your life."

 

"Atheists, like all Satanists, see themselves as the ultimate authority, independent of any higher rule, so morality becomes entirely subjective," he said. "Since the self is the center of the universe, they are anarchists, believing in limiting the world's population through war, abortion, and non-productive relationships. Nature has usurped God's eternal aspect, so the individual is the all."

 

Tarot is making a comeback in other forms as well. Last May, Dior, one of the the most prominent names in fashion, based their summer collection on a feminist version of the tarot deck. The image from the death card, a skeleton huddled in a fetal position encircled by a molting snake, featured prominently in their line of casual wear.

 

Karen Vogel, the designer of the feminist tarot deck that served as the model for Dior explained the choice of the death card.

 

"It's not necessarily about physical death," says Vogel. "[It's about] the beauty of the shedding of the skin that a snake does, that we can transform our lives."

 

In an interview with BBC, Vogel credited the current interest in tarot to the election of Donald Trump.

 

"Our societies are going through an extreme sense of alienation," Vogel said. "People are lonely and angry. Tarot helps them to cope with insecurity in these difficult times."

 

The BBC article cited another occult phenomenon as a negative reaction to Trump's election: the #MagicResistance movement, a monthly call on social media to curse the president using explicitly arcane methods. Rabbi Asore explained the use of witchcraft and divination in politics is "Witchcraft, or its real name, Satanism, is explicitly a power struggle, which is why it is so readily dragged into politics. Satanism, in its essence, pits the adversary against God.". "Though this power struggle has been brewing throughout history, today, when we are so close to Moshiach (Messiah), the role it is playing in politics could not be clearer.

 

"The politicians who believe that man can control all aspects of the world are coming from a belief system based in Satanism, whether knowingly or not," Rabbi Asore said. "This New Age form of witchcraft and divination is idolatry dressed up so it can be used as a tool of the New World Order."

 

Rabbi Pinchas Winston, an end-of-days expert and prolific author, noted that tarot and black magic were an incongruous choice for atheists and people who rejected religion.

 

"If you want to be secular or atheist, if you say that you went to a church or synagogue and rejected it, that is okay," Rabbi Winston told Breaking Israel News. "But to go to something that is straight-up idolatry, openly embracing evil, that is not a logical decision."

 

"Anytime people act illogically and don't notice it, it is a sign that Divine hands are setting the stage," Rabbi Winston said, explaining that this was all part of a "Messianic endgame."

 

"According to Jewish sources, the end-of-days will see an enormous polarization of good and evil," Rabbi Winston said. "This is so that when we stand before God and he asks us 'why didn't you choose good?', no one can say they couldn't see the difference, that good and evil were not obvious. No one can say that they were kind of good. The end-of days is all or nothing, with the ramifications clearly spelled out."

 

Winston explained that this process of clear good versus clear evil was clearly true in how American politics has played out in recent years.

 

"Obama was the first step of this polarization but he was able to hide most of the polarization and dress it up as social justice," Winton said. "He could hide the evil he promoted, make it sound like good. So people who supported him could support evil but give the excuse that it was reasonably presented as good. To accomplish that, they need to be masters of disguise, to hide the truth even from themselves. They need to embrace Hollywood. They need for it to be all about appearances and subjective reality because the truth is too painful."

 

"Trump is one step further," Rabbi Winston said. "There is no hiding. You either love him or hate him, and he doesn't know how to hide the truth in pretty words. Good and evil are laid out for everyone to see."