This might be touted by many as a “wonderful spiritual classic,” but if you are a Christian, I’d stay away from this one. It is gnostic to the core. I bought it hoping to learn about Catholic hermaneutics – what a dumb mistake. That’s what the teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church is for! Stick to documents of Vatican II and you won’t get lost. Plus, they are just as exciting and an easier read than this heady book of ‘secrets’!

Not everything with a Catholic label is authenitcally Catholic: Found these comments about a couple of the books endorsers on another website: “The similarities between centering prayer and Transcendental Meditation are striking. “As an ex-TM mediator,” says Fr. Finbarr Flanagan, O.F.M., “I find it hard to see any differences between centering prayer and Transcendental Meditation.” Frs. Keating, Menninger, and Pennington authored centering prayer at a time when St. Joseph Abbey had received several retreats involving Eastern religions, including Transcendental Meditation. I cited Fr. Pennington’s praise for the Hindu guru and author of Transcendental Meditation. This involvement in eclecticism has continued. Fr. Pennington has not just attended an e.s.t (Erhard Sensitivity Training) session but has served on its board. Frs. Keating and Pennington gave endorsements, appearing on the dust jacket, for Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey in Christian Hermeticism. The tarot is a deck of cards used in fortune telling. Fr. Keating calls the book “the greatest contribution to date toward the rediscovery and renewal of the Christian contemplative tradition.” Fr. Pennington says it is “without doubt the most extraordinary work I have ever read.” Amity House, the publisher, is heavily New Age. The Library of Congress has classified the book under “occult sciences” and “cartomancy.” ‘Nuff said.
Rating: 1 / 5

This book, Meditations on the Tarot, is for the ardent spiritual “seeker” what the Davinci Code or Harry Potter are for the common folk. All cater to the perennial desire to tap into the hidden powers seemingly latent in the cosmos and man via, what the (anonymous) author, “Unknown Friend” calls, “the authentic experience of mysticism, magic, and gnosis.” Even though the book carries an afterward by Cardinal Hans Urs Von Balthasar, it can in no way be reconciled with traditional Christianity based on faith and reason. The author attempts in this book to present a universal spirituality combining such genuine Catholic mystics such as St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila with the occult doctrines of such as Eliphias Levy and Louis Claude de St. Martin. This occult theosophy, as recounted by the author, is generally based on a supposed innate divine potential of man taught by the mythical Egyptian sage, Hermes Trismagistus, and the doctrine of “coincidentia oppositorum” or fusion of all opposites;above-below, heaven-earth, male-female, light-darkness, good and evil.

This is a fascinating and seductive book, however, caveat lector, all that is spiritual is not good or of God. Remember the 1976 words of Pope Paul VI: “Evil is not a deficiency, but a highly efficient spiritual being who is both pervasive and perverting. This is a terrible reality, but true.”

Hamilton Reed Armstrong, AGDEI

Rating: 1 / 5