Tag: professional tarot

We Made The Machines

The only real oracle is human intuition. We made the machines that make the art.

public domain image via creative commons

I’m as cyberpunk as the next Tarot reader.

Probably way more so. There are reasons why I thrive doing email readings. They are my best work, tbh.

But there are also reasons why I love using the Lofi Girl / Lofi Chill aesthetic to describe my Tarot style. I can be all synthwave and cyberspace but still keep the lo-fi human touch which is the whole point of Tarot in the first place.

78 cards raised to the power of near infinite combinations of any one shuffle raised to the power of layout position times the different layout possibilities – is a bigger number than I can calculate. Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great explainer on TikTok about the shuffle thing.

Tarot excels at dealing with human thoughts and emotions but there are some things about the human condition and external environment that early Tarot readers could never imagine.

Imagine what will come to be that is off the far front of OUR radar.

If I were to create a brand new Tarot card, it’d be technology of some sort. Maybe a cyberpunk looking radio telescope. I think some oracle decks already have cards like that.

Artificial Intelligence and machine made art is one thing early Tarot readers probably never envisioned If they imagined it, I’m guessing it would have been understood in a different context. I’m reminded of Arthur Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Their magic is our AI.

We made the machines that make the art. I wonder if anyone has made a Tarot deck with ChatGPT yet. If not, it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.

Regardless of who or what or how the cards are generated, the one, the only, the true oracle is pure human intuition. Cards are just tools no matter what tools humans use to create the cards.

As far as I know, you can’t mimic intuition with a bot.

All I know is that I don’t use any of it.

Email is as technical as it gets with my readings. The readings will always be me, a keyboard and a photo of your unique real-world actual physical cards in a real world, actual, physical card layout – no AI at all.

The problem with AI right now is not so much the technology as the copyright. I actually like the AI generated aesthetic that is everywhere on social media these days. I’d love to have book covers look like that – but I’d feel terrible taking a REAL artist’s creation for a book cover without their knowledge or consent. So I haven’t even played with AI for fun yet.

I know the amount of work it takes to write something and write it well. I respect copyrights and intellectual property and expect the same in return. While the posts on Sage Sips blog are non-derivative noncommercial attribution share alike creative commons 4.0 licensed. That means you can quote and share all you like so long as you give me credit for writing it, don’t change it and don’t charge money for it. Fair enough, right? Especially considering everything here is my own creation, my own hard work – no AI help at all.

Next up is the three card Energy Path reading for the week that will post on Monday, but for now it’s time for my lo-fi human self to go get another cup of coffee.

See you at the next sip!

Once in a Blue Moon

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There is a Moon vibe still out there.

Two days ago was a “blue moon.” It’s not common, but it’s not spectacular. It’s not something that is going to grab you by the nose and make you look. A blue moon is just two full moons in the same calendar month. It is a subtle thing because most of us go through life not knowing what phase the moon is in on any given night. No matter what the cool social media graphics show, the moon is the same color it always is.

It was also a “super” moon. Google “perigee” and “apogee.” Orbits aren’t perfect circles. They are off a little, just a tiny bit ovalish and wobbly. Sometimes the moon passes just a little bit closer to earth and seems a tiny bit big-ish because of it. That’s a so-called super moon — any full moon during a close perigee kind of orbit.

These little details don’t happen often, and they both happen at the same time less often, but it is still one of those natural cycles we’ve been talking about. It’ll be a while, but there will be another super blue moon in time.

Super moons and blue moons are slow and subtle things. So are tides and seasons and the growth of trees. That’s the kind of changing and shifting energy that has been around lately. Slow, gradual, gentle change but change nonetheless. Even continental drift will get you to the other side of the planet eventually.

I suspect energies will move on come Monday’s Energy Path reading. It feels like the gentle cycle change has peaked and is drifting beyond. Here I again I intuitively hear the song “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Beyond Thunderdome)” It seems like energies are gently moving beyond thunderdome, not back to paradise.

Weekly Digest:

Last Week’s Energy Path (three card Tarot reading)

Wednesday Oracle

Coming Soon:

Monday — Energy Path for September 4–11

Wednesday — “Odinsday Oracle” (aka I like alliteration)

Announcement: Fall hours

Announcement: Halloween Party Favor Tarot readings

Announcement: AI policy 

Email Tarot is OPEN, no appointment needed.

Parallax

Originally published 5-27-2010

“Camera 1, Camera 2, Camera 1, Camera 2” ~ Wayne’s World 2

Ever play with that trick of eyesight? Close one eye, and hold up a pencil so it lines up with an object in the distance. Then switch eyes and the pencil seems to jump to one side. Things don’t line up the same way.

In astronomy, this is called parallax. In anatomy, this phenomenon where the brain combines two slightly different views from two slightly different viewpoint gives us depth perception…it allows us to see distance. Two eyes lets us live in three dimensions. It helps us to not walk into objects and learn our environment the literal hard way.

A similar idea is true in Tarot and psychic work. Getting a reading isn’t predicting the future…it is getting a second look, a separate viewpoint to combine with our own that lets us see with greater clarity and understanding. It helps us be a bit more perceptive, and not have to learn every lesson the hard way.

Two third-eyes are better than one, in other words.

Even those of us who do readings professionally will sometimes GET one to improve our understanding and fill in any blind spots. 

I like to think that when psychics read for themselves or consult a fellow psychic, it works like binocular vision. Two readings from two people gives two views that can be fused together into a higher quality, more useful vision.

Another example is the VLA, “very large array” of radio telescopes. It is made of 27 or so radio antennae all linked together to work together like one big dish, one configuration is over 20 miles across. Working together, the telescopes have capabilities magnetudes more than any individual telescope. If we combine our logic, know-how, and life experience to work together with oracle tools (tarot, runes, palm lines, what-have-you) and other intuitives, we can increase our understanding and spiritual growth by magnitudes.

If one eye is closed, then depth perception doesn’t work. If one telescope is down, the array doesn’t work as well. We each bring our part to a reading. The sitter (learner, seeker, client) has a part to play too. When we do a Tarot reading, we work together. I translate spirit, but it is up to you to understand and apply the message. We work together like the telescopes in the VLA or two eyes together to see farther. Working together, we see with more clarity. Together we are clairvoyant.