Machines and Computers

In examining Tarot as a product of the Industrial Revolution, I saw that it was and still is a mystical art developed in conjunction with the mass-production of the cards and books. From there, I turned towards Tarot reading by machines and computers.

My own projects included a Tarot Reading Program based on the interpretations and art of Don Lewis. We were using the program to generate basic readings with minimal interpretation. The program was part of an education system, which allows readers to see many readings and possible combinations. This program is directly a machine-based system, which was simply an automated book.

Yet, while many readers say that machine-based readings are not good, we do find that they have quite a history, developing as the 20th century began and grew. Beginning from the electrical-mechanical reading machine such as Madame Zita (1905, Roover Brothers) and Grandma Prediction aka Cleveland Grandma (1925, William Gatt Mfg.) we see organized readings for a coin. Despite Tarot often being seen as an occult practice and banned, these types of machines would continue to develop as a part of the public amusement.

Computers came, and the Nintendo video game Taboo: The Sixth Sense, (1989) was the first and only video game with two warnings. The first warned that this was a mature game, and the second that this game was for entertainment only. Tarot Mystery emerged in 1995 for the PC, and The Electric Tarot in 2002 for multiple computers. In each case, these programs were a direct result of the system of card graphics, definitions, and keywords as the way to give a cold reading on demand and request. In 2017, we now have all manner of Tarot Software and even mobile apps. The site, Tarot.com alone gives over 6 million visitors machine based readings monthly. So all biases against machine readings are quickly forgotten by many users. After all, as entertainment, a machine works as well as a person.

Ultimately this software demonstrated to me the depth of the Tarot Industrial System. The reading by machines directly mimicked the human readers, with only differences in style and amount of content available, in this case the human voice vs. computerized text.

So, in Tarot and all cartomancy, there is a uniformity imposed by the medium of printing the cards and books, defined by the publishers, that establishes the standards by which Tarot could be interpreted and expanded upon, regardless of whether the reader is human or machine.

Now, recognizing that Tarot is a fully developed product of the Industrial age, today in it’s golden age of mass production, the system perpetuates.

So as I looked at what people believe, I saw that while virtually every Tarot Reader follows the industrial system, people accept that the reader taps into something more, something beyond the cards. This they call intuition. In machine readings, it appears to be a tool of externalized self-intuition where the querent fills in the machines gaps.

The mechanism by which Tarot readings are given is identifiable.