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Tarot for Hackers

by zephyrfalcon on 12/29/19, 8:17 PM with 46 comments

• by juped on 12/30/19, 4:35 AM

  The use of tarot decks for divination dates back only to the 18th century, well after magic stopped being useful (because all the skilled or talented magicians rebranded to "scientists" or "naturalists"), so I'm skeptical of its value as a system of symbols and motifs. (You will find preachers condemning it much earlier, which is often cited wrongly as evidence of its use for divination, but they were condemning card games, not divination.) For me, it's like squeezing blood from a stone, despite the cool illustrations that look like they should form a symbolic system of Rider-Waite (1910!).

  If you're serious about your magic, you should probably cast the I Ching for this sort of thing (imo).

• by CharlesW on 12/30/19, 5:05 AM

  If this intrigues you, Oblique Strategies[1] (online version[2]) might also interest you.

  Although created for artists (musicians in particular), it can help reframe almost any creative endeavor in interesting ways.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

  [2] http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html

• by blamestross on 12/30/19, 1:52 PM

  Tarot cards and similar forms of divination can be really useful if you use them right.

  The cards you draw are random and have little significance. A GOOD tarot reading asks you to reflect on how your life fits to the cards you drew. It doesn't tell you anything you don't already have in your head. It just provides a context to present your personal crises and reflections to yourself. Done well it gives you a chance to reflect and learn about yourself. It has no power over anything but your own mind.

  I consider myself a "Rationalist Chaote" Ritual, Faith and "Magic" have power, abet a small one. They are useful tools for intentionally modifying your own behaviors and outlooks. They are not a replacement for therapy or medical attention when you are having issues but they are a tool you should keep in your arsenal of self-improvement.

• by ghthor on 12/30/19, 11:40 AM

  I've been doing quite a bit of research into the origins of the tarot deck.

  From what I've found is heavily based in hebrew mysticism, aka Qabbalah. The 22 major arcana are symbolic representations of the meanings of the 22 letters of the 22 alphabet[1]. My most recent finding is even more exciting. The 4 suites numbered 2-10 come out to to 4×9=36 cards. 36×2=72. The myth about the 72 3-letter names of God matches here, where each of the numbered suite cards Carrie's the meaning of a pair of 3-letter names from the set of 72.

  [1] I've been researching why the 5 final forms used in the 27 letter alphabet were not included and I dont really know why. I've made a deck adding new major arcana cards for to include this discovery.

• by saagarjha on 12/30/19, 5:31 AM

  Sounds a bit like rubber-duck debugging: you solve problems by explaining them outside of your head and hope that can get you to think about them in new ways.

• by kixiQu on 12/31/19, 9:25 PM

  Someone else has already linked to Oblique Strategies, but I wrote a ~response to Christine's blog post. Mine is about randomness, Tarot, and Oblique Strategies: https://lesser.occult.institute/introducing-randomness-into-...

• by chrisbennet on 12/30/19, 1:24 PM

  My girlfriend used read them.

  One day I said to her: “Maybe they don’t predict the future, maybe they make the future.”

  I don’t think she’s touch them since.

• by hcarvalhoalves on 12/30/19, 9:06 PM

  That’s a great use of tarot cards. I’ve heard of it being used to help on therapy and decrease anxiety, but using it to help debugging is an ingenious one.

  I believe it helps anytime you have a difficult challenge and don’t know where to start, or your previous attempts failed, by introducing some randomness and instigating lateral thinking.

• by Buge on 12/30/19, 6:30 AM

  I don't think drawing a random tarot card will help me write a better postmortem. If I started doing so my colleagues would probably start to doubt my judgement. Maybe skimming through all the tarot cards in order to pick relevant ones might be useful though.

  Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate.

• by pickdenis on 12/30/19, 6:30 AM

  I'm curious what the significance of the tarot cards is here. Why not just write the following article: (this also serves as a TL;DR)

  When you encounter a problem with your program, consider the following in order:

  - your Motive

  - Facet (localize the failure)

  - Immediate Past (what changed to cause this problem)

  - the Action (that you need to take)

  - the desired Result

  While the message is valuable, I'm not a fan of the obfuscation.

• by amerine on 12/30/19, 5:25 AM

  I’m grateful for Christine. I had the pleasure of working with them before, and one of the things I appreciate is their openness around idea sharing. Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the negativity.