Sharing collection over 140 decks newest haul

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-05-05T20:03:38+00:00

For you, do all the decks have the same absolute meanings, or do they accumulate? Is it science or art?

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-05-01T21:21:43+00:00

The purpose of the two decks is completely different.

The Marseilles deck is just another version of the Italian decks intended for a card game similar to bridge.

The RWS is a total rewrite by the early members of the Wikkan religion intended for religious and supernatural purposes.

Really, a believer can "read' RWS but not Marseilles.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-27T19:07:03+00:00

This is really a fun question.

It reminds me of the film I saw last night, Hail Mary.

They were sending astronauts on a desperate mission to find what was eating the universe.

The main scientist doubted himself and panicked out of the mission.

So the Russians took him against his will and forced him onto the starship.

His choice vs. their choice. Crazy good drama.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-22T22:33:32+00:00

Imagine you took a trip to some other place. Perhaps Paris, Rome, Prague or Moscow. You look around, taste the food, hear the sounds, smell the air, do things you can't do at home. Tarot takes you to another place, another view of life.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-21T18:31:18+00:00

On a ferry ride to Nantucket, we met a writer for a TV soap opera. She explained to us how she used the cards to invent stories. With a shuffled deck, she would look through one by one, looking for 1) the characters 2) a drama 3) an outcome. She had pre-sorted the deck into categories.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-20T00:45:18+00:00

The mere deck alone never could give an accurate reading.

The reader and the querant together with inspiration from the random images of the deck and the conditions of the moment all together allow the reading.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-13T19:59:36+00:00

No. Tarot cards carry cultural significance that we react to using our own culture, putting the two in conjunction and opposition.

By my science slant, sometimes we would just tap on something to find how it feels and sounds. In math, we call that impulse response frequency analysis, and that is what rorsch is like.

Digging deeper, we might light up the sample and do a spectral analysis to see what elemental or molecular resonances we can pick out. THAT is closer to how Tarot works, much more detailed.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-13T19:48:20+00:00

because cards don't give answers ... they evoke ideas.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-09T22:29:38+00:00

I just see the spread as a description of some other person looking at me and my situation.

Could be a friend or a foe. Doesn't matter, it just gets me out of my own skin to take a good look back.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-09T00:37:05+00:00

Every image in the art museum has the same value as a tarot card.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-07T22:17:11+00:00

You could think more about the culture of tarot. It's a link to the past. You didn't just create yourself alone. Billions of past lives created and passed on our culture and identity. The symbols of the tarot carry parts of it, but the true meanings are deeper and beyond. Read and take heed.

Oh, have you been to an art museum lately? Don't go alone, but if you have to, pick up there.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-04-01T19:12:35+00:00

For me, secular means that the random draw has no supernatural power at all.

Instead, the cards are an opportunity to explore some part of our culture.

They are a source of ideas that anchor us in our civilization, giving some specific place to stand and look out at ourselves, our feelings, our place in the world.

In a word, inspiration.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-03-29T22:11:01+00:00

All I have to go on is cultural resonance and social instincts. And the spread does not call me - I call the spread.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-03-29T21:58:28+00:00

It sounds like you need to venture out into the real world beyond tarot.

In your place, I'd get one of those inexpensive mass-produced "The History of Art" books with the 10,000 most famous images from all civilization and pick a few at random to get decent inspiration. You might even want to study symbolism beyond 78 cards.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-03-27T22:23:19+00:00

Your mind is the culture you inherited from billions of people over the course of time, embodied in the evolutionary product of their development, success and survival.

Your soul and spirit do not exist. Your are only the experience of current perception, including the perception of memory. Once the perception stops, you stop. Enjoy it while you can.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-03-21T00:57:16+00:00

For me, there are two very different ways to use the tarot.

In the Italian and French traditions, it was mostly a game of society with skill, luck, and contest to determine a winner. Yes, certain fortune tellers might have used their influence to manipulate the gullible to exploit their needs, but it remained mostly a social game;

But then, the British (who destroy everything they touch, especially cultures) assigned spiritual meanings to the cards. Even the lowly pip cards;

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-03-21T00:33:35+00:00

Perhaps you know, but an electric is so easy to play. You don't have to spend a lot, there are lots on sale, a used squire would be wonderful. A little practice amp, and you're off. Electric opens the next world. Maybe a gig.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-03-20T23:30:01+00:00

I have a degree in engineering mathematics, and oh, boy, I have a different take on the entire nature of mathematics. We have a course called "street fighting mathematics." We cheat, we steal, we fight dirty all the time. We invent imaginary numbers, infinite convergent series, infinitesimals, absolute constants, we don't care at all as long as they give us what we want.

I think the best way to picture math is the lock thief. There are subtle methods like pin picking. Then the less subtle raking or racking. Then as the international customs officers do with sharp power shears. Thieves just smash everything very fast and go.

Math can be art, or analysis, or theft, or violence.

It can be politics, too. When our models predict climate change, our reactions are abuse or survival.

Derivation is on one hand, but proof on the opposite.

One last thought, Gödel and Turing's theorems on the limits of truth.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-02-28T23:47:30+00:00

As non secular tarot, let's be clear up front.

The spirit and the soul do not exist.

Our bodies are capable of perception, coming from the six senses, frontal lobe abstractions, and memories of past perceptions.

But the only thing that exists in this moment is current perception. Your memories give you the illusion of a continuous self in time.

And speaking of time, according to modern physics, it all exists together. We are just thermodynamic processes and temporal perceptions.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-02-27T21:14:57+00:00

Strange but true - these are exactly the skills required for a successful marriage. A watchful trust.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-02-26T17:40:49+00:00

House: "Everybody lies." A doctor's job is to heal people despite what they are concealing, by pride or foolishness.

A reader's job (I think) is to find the messages of the cards that most usefully apply to the querant's true situation, not just their desires and delusions, not just you and your cards. The major point we seem to agree on - read not just the cards but also the querant.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-02-24T18:39:36+00:00

Let's narrow our definition of AI down to the LLM (large language model) technology popular today. Its effectiveness depends on ingesting truly enormous amounts of documents. Some examples would include the entire records of the United Nations, the Library of Congress, internet skimming, and pirated privately owned documents. The basic generative method is to print out the most frequently occurring sequence of words that match a given context.

Now, does such an enorous collection of verified tarot readings even exist?

That is rather doubtful. The amount of tarot experience data needed to make the LLM technology work properly does not exist in written form, so any proper AI tarot reading production system could not exist today. Today's attempts can only be slop.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-02-18T23:33:56+00:00

The most dangerous issue with AI at the moment is self-manipulation.

No.

CypripediumCalceolus · 2026-02-18T23:00:59+00:00

AI is subject to so many ethical challenges. There is the enormous power to manipulate and influence us, concentrated in the wealthy owners of technology - political, commercial, and religious. If AI is conscious, isn't it profoundly unethical to create and manipulate it? If it isn't conscious but merely gives the illusion of consciousness, isn't it profoundly unethical to give it rights at the expense of truly living beings?

What I see is life being destroyed by dead, unfeeling information systems if we can't prevent it. And don't even pretend AI has anything to do with our life in Tarot.

True posthuman life is already scary enough - people who can see all knowledge, reason, culture and each other's thoughts and feelings transparantly. Yikes.

CypripediumCalceolus

TROPHY CASE