John Gilbert was a teacher of alternative spirituality active in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. He was born in 1938 in Dakota into a Christian household, but his personal spiritual vision called him in other directions. Gilbert was an extraordinarily capable tarot diviner, as well as teacher of tarot, eventually founding the Tarot Institute. He was also the presiding bishop of the Universal Gnostic Church and the House of Independent Bishops, and the head of the Magickal Order of the Golden Dawn, the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, and the Modern Order of Essenes. Gilbert played a very active role in the Ancient Order of Druids in America. He died in 2021 in Wyoming, where he had moved with his wife Charlene, to be close to his children.
