Well, it works. Once you get past the various ideological notions that have been superimposed upon the Tarot for the previous two centuries, you have, at heart, a set of 22 symbols, each a common image and idea in the culture out of which the Tarot arose, and which are deeply ingrained in the patrimony of Western thought. Even outside the Christ-haunted South, the Christian Humanism which energized the Renaissance, in many ways an attempt to re-connect with the classical past, is part of our intellectual heritage, though the Christian element is often obscured.
Put simply, to study and contemplate the images of the Tarot is to get in touch with the big ideas which inspired the giants upon whose shoulders we stand today. You tend to do what you think about and become what you do; Aristotle will tell you as much. Thinking about the virtues, the Four Last Things, love, death, etc. is certainly an effective means of transforming yourself.
Some would counter that the Tarot is evil, or at least "new-age mumbo jumbo." The Tarot isn't evil. The thing itself is a game, nothing more, a set of cards used for amusement. Their use as a divinatory tool is quite recent; the use which I advocate, as a tool of meditation, reflection, and self-discovery, even more so. A good or neutral thing used for a bad purpose does not become bad itself.
The recent (last thirty years or so) trend of the Tarot as a self-help device is, more than anything else, an application of the structures of psychotherapy, in particular Rogerian therapy, to the symbols. This structural similarity lends a certain credibility to this approach to Tarot, in fact, a number of professional readers are also clinical psychologists. The upshot of all this: when the associations with witchery and devils is set aside, an association which is, in my opinion, wholly manufactured, there is no reason why Tarot may not be accepted in its new found role as a source of wisdom and guidance.
C. Affholter
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