I exported two and a half years of my own tarot practice into a database to prove the cards had been picking my cards. They hadn't - but something quieter was true underneath, and it survived.
And so profoundly Gestalt. Meaning isn’t sitting in the card like a prize in a cereal box. It happens in the meeting: you, the image, the history you bring, the life you’re in, all of it rubbing up against each other.
What I loved most was that you didn’t protect your favourite idea when the numbers took it apart. You kept looking. And what was left was subtler, stranger, and much more beautiful.
I finished this with that happy feeling of having watched somebody think properly without squeezing the wonder out of it.
Very cool read, and the kind of thing I’d do if I used tarot daily. I believe the tarot is an excellent mirror.
I don’t believe in divination. I do believe in the collective unconscious and that archetypes are basically part of being conscious. The Major Arcana are part of Carl Jung’s inspiration when he first described this thing that connects us, and how it can guide us, or confuse us.
I can read tarot. I don’t have a current physical deck, but I believe it can be a good tool for self-examination. The dark mirror.
The way you’ve done your study is awesome. I also keep a lot of logs of different stuff over long periods of time. My ‘pill tracker’ app has 10 years of date:time:drug:dose, lol. I also save every prompt I use with AI.
It’s likely this originates from a similar place, given our close age. Collecting is what I’ve traced back to. In the 80s, the mainstream suddenly realized that comics and cards weren’t just a throwaway hobby for kids. After a Mickey Mantle sold for $6.2k, and price estimates for an Action Comics no 1 were in six figures.
At this same time, therapy and psychiatry were first reaching a lot of kids. Parents with an overly active or rough child were offered Ritalin, but the idea was unsettling. Therapists all over the US started recommending collecting.
Collecting anything the kids liked, could arrange, and keep track of cards they were missing…. Made a lot of us collectors. It worked in me. Haha. I sold off all the collectibles from my childhood in the mid-00s. I wasn’t able to get very much for them.
Didn’t matter at all. I learned that the act of collecting and the practices associated with it were what mattered. So, I wound up collecting data.
Oh, this was delicious.
And so profoundly Gestalt. Meaning isn’t sitting in the card like a prize in a cereal box. It happens in the meeting: you, the image, the history you bring, the life you’re in, all of it rubbing up against each other.
What I loved most was that you didn’t protect your favourite idea when the numbers took it apart. You kept looking. And what was left was subtler, stranger, and much more beautiful.
I finished this with that happy feeling of having watched somebody think properly without squeezing the wonder out of it.
I am literally tickled pink to receive this feedback. Thank you so much. 🙏
Very cool read, and the kind of thing I’d do if I used tarot daily. I believe the tarot is an excellent mirror.
I don’t believe in divination. I do believe in the collective unconscious and that archetypes are basically part of being conscious. The Major Arcana are part of Carl Jung’s inspiration when he first described this thing that connects us, and how it can guide us, or confuse us.
I can read tarot. I don’t have a current physical deck, but I believe it can be a good tool for self-examination. The dark mirror.
The way you’ve done your study is awesome. I also keep a lot of logs of different stuff over long periods of time. My ‘pill tracker’ app has 10 years of date:time:drug:dose, lol. I also save every prompt I use with AI.
It’s likely this originates from a similar place, given our close age. Collecting is what I’ve traced back to. In the 80s, the mainstream suddenly realized that comics and cards weren’t just a throwaway hobby for kids. After a Mickey Mantle sold for $6.2k, and price estimates for an Action Comics no 1 were in six figures.
At this same time, therapy and psychiatry were first reaching a lot of kids. Parents with an overly active or rough child were offered Ritalin, but the idea was unsettling. Therapists all over the US started recommending collecting.
Collecting anything the kids liked, could arrange, and keep track of cards they were missing…. Made a lot of us collectors. It worked in me. Haha. I sold off all the collectibles from my childhood in the mid-00s. I wasn’t able to get very much for them.
Didn’t matter at all. I learned that the act of collecting and the practices associated with it were what mattered. So, I wound up collecting data.