iPod Tarot?

[iPowers]

Hopefully saying this won't make me look stupid or idiotic. I"m a HUGE fan of music, and this idea came into my head. If only this were to exist, I think this would be cool.

Is there a way to develop a spiritual connection with an ipod or a mp3 player to the point, that when you wanted a reading, you would shuffle your songs and the lyrics of the songs would give you the reading and if you wanted to clarify you could skip to the next song? (or move on in a reading if it is a spread)

I've seen tutorials on changing songs with lyrics that match the meaning of each card in a tarot card deck and shuffling it in a playlist, but I feel like that doesn't mean as much.

I've been assuming what I said is impossible, and even people said that it is a stupid idea, but I just had to ask because honestly, if it were possible, I would so love to do something like that.

[entropy]

The moderators may move this over to divination. Others have played around with this idea and giving readings according to the songs that came up on random shuffle. Basically, you can use the pattern of grass clippings for divination if that's what speaks to you. There aren't too many rules beyond the basic tenant "first do no harm."

[Alta]

To me the only issue would be for doing this for anyone besides yourself. I am fairly sure that you could create a personal deck in this way. But people's reactions to songs are so different, I doubt you could make anything universal enough.

[closrapexa]

I think it is theoretically possible and at least, if you were the reader, you could develop an emotional relationship with 78 different songs over time. However, one of the things Tarot is built upon is the fact that it is through sight that we gain most of the information in our world. Hearing is a sense that is not nearly as developed in most people. Again, theoretically, a Celtic Cross could be ten songs you would "read" according to the order they come up. Personally I can't see myself doing such a thing, as a static picture rather than a song gives much more room for the imagination. A song would give me maybe a keyword or two, but that's just me, because it is so much more direct. A classical piece would perhaps stir more up, but that would make for much longer readings. It would also entail much more linear readings, as I tend to skip back and forth in spreads according to an order that is special to each reading according to what I judge is important. A playlist wouldn't give me that flexibility.

However, there are cases when someone's senses were so different and alien that they perceived things very differently from most other people. Helen Keller, blind and deaf from a very young age, used her fingers to do everything from "see" things to read to communicate. She wrote that she relied on them so much that she would waggle her fingers in the air when trying to remember things. She would move them when taking walks (which she did through the use of guide ropes in land she owned) as a way of thinking. I guess that in her case, a breath of wind could be enough to stir up a powerful memory. In her context, this makes perfect sense, and is actually ingenious.

There is only one way to test your theory, try it!

[iPowers]

Originally Posted by closrapexa

I think it is theoretically possible and at least, if you were the reader, you could develop an emotional relationship with 78 different songs over time. However, one of the things Tarot is built upon is the fact that it is through sight that we gain most of the information in our world. Hearing is a sense that is not nearly as developed in most people. Again, theoretically, a Celtic Cross could be ten songs you would "read" according to the order they come up. Personally I can't see myself doing such a thing, as a static picture rather than a song gives much more room for the imagination. A song would give me maybe a keyword or two, but that's just me, because it is so much more direct. A classical piece would perhaps stir more up, but that would make for much longer readings. It would also entail much more linear readings, as I tend to skip back and forth in spreads according to an order that is special to each reading according to what I judge is important. A playlist wouldn't give me that flexibility.

However, there are cases when someone's senses were so different and alien that they perceived things very differently from most other people. Helen Keller, blind and deaf from a very young age, used her fingers to do everything from "see" things to read to communicate. She wrote that she relied on them so much that she would waggle her fingers in the air when trying to remember things. She would move them when taking walks (which she did through the use of guide ropes in land she owned) as a way of thinking. I guess that in her case, a breath of wind could be enough to stir up a powerful memory. In her context, this makes perfect sense, and is actually ingenious.

There is only one way to test your theory, try it!

Haha for sure. Though I own almost 20000 songs. It'd be amazing to ask my ipod a question and the 10 songs that represent it come up. Do you think it'd still be possible rather than just a bond with the closest sngs?

[2dogs]

Hi iPowers,

I went through a series of strange coincidences that drove me into looking at Tarot, and some of those were iPod related. When I first became aware of certain Tarot related numbers such as 78, 22 and the number of a significant card, I had just created a playlist of my 50 favourite albums. As I was getting coincidences between the music and lyrics and events going on around me I looked to see if the number of tracks was a multiple of 78, which it wasn't, so I was initially disappointed. However, my attention was then drawn to one of these albums, a concept album about the Major Arcana and the only Tarot album in my whole collection. For some reason the tracks on this seemed to be coming out in random order. Much later I discovered I had not got the "CD 1 of 2" and "2 of 2" right, but at the time it was a complete mystery. So the idea came to me to subtract the 22 tracks on this from the total, and I realised this left exactly 7 x 78 tracks and 7 x 7 albums. I thought about how I could arrange these to correspond to 7 decks for quite some time, and decided on the 7 planets. I then felt that each group / artist should match one planet, so that all the albums of one group would stay together in one "deck", I think the most albums for any group was 6, with 7 complete albums totalling 78 tracks in each "deck". Surprisingly, I actually managed to come up with a correspondence between each group and planet such that this worked out. Of course I wasn't satisfied with this and had to take it further, so went on to repeat the process by assigning a planet to each of the 7 albums within a "deck", based on the title or cover art. To match the 7 planets to 7 albums like this proved much more difficult, but it worked out in the end by using a lot of background knowledge. For example I was stuck on "Live 1974" for ages, but then found this was the year the first space probe reached the planet Mercury, and similarly "71 Minutes" of travel at the speed of light would bring you to the orbit of Saturn. After this I tried matching the individual tracks to specific Tarot cards. I could only do this by re-arranging the order of tracks within a particular album (which is what a record company does anyway, they are not always in order of recording), based on lyrics, feeling etc., but this was now becoming a real struggle, probably I didn't have enough knowledge of the cards to match them up very well and some correspondences were very tenuous. Finally I scanned in a Tarot deck, trimmed the images and replaced the image for each track with the corresponding scan, and then I was finally able to do the draws by random shuffle. Of course with 7 "decks" there was the possibility of doing the Father Ted three Death cards in a row thing, but that never happened. There were some spooky matches - I was particularly impressed by Hawkwind's "Ten Seconds Of Forever" that matched the 10 of Swords before any track rearrangement - and some albums matched a sequence of the Major Arcana straight away, but ultimately I gave up on the project and went back to regular Tarot cards as too many of the lyrics were just clashing too much with the feelings of each card. What I learned from the whole experience, and others, was that there are many hidden patterns and correspondences in the world, if only you look deeply enough, but that some are a lot easier to work with than others. Possibly a truly advanced being would see meaningful patterns in everything around them, which would be an amazing experience, but at the moment I feel that Tarot cards have been designed to give us a more structured and comprehensible set of ideas and correspondences by in a way cutting down the amount of material we have to work with and concentrating on the clearest and most important elements. Anyway, enough of this bizarre rambling now, I think I'll go and listen to some music!

[2dogs]

On second thoughts, from my recent experiences with Oracle cards I would suggest you experiment with selecting songs from the full 20000 with random shuffle, draw a Tarot card at random to go with each song, and interpret each song and card pair together. Look for correspondences between the lyrics, title, album title, artist name, artwork etc. with the individual symbols in the card and the meanings you have for it. For example the music may help you pick one of the possible interpretations of the card.

[2dogs]

Having posted this I felt I should give it a trial, and for the first experiment have chosen the Mystic Dreamer Tarot. My iPod currently has 1270 songs on it.

1. 7 of Swords / Wild Space 6 by Conrad Schnitzler - a wary and nervous looking woman runs around a campsite grabbing swords, the music is edgy with a rhythm that alternately speeds up and slows down.

2. Temperance (Rx) / Wild Space 5 by Conrad Schitzler (well he was known principally as an experimentalist ) - a woman sits calmly in the midst of rushing waterfalls, the music is remarkably similar to 1 but with a much faster, if not intemperate, rhythm. The tempo and reversal seem to emphasise the rushing water rather than the calmness.

3. Page of Cups (Rx) / What Is Love by Subject Esq - a young woman on a beach looks questioningly at a small fish poking out of a chalice she is holding up, the song lyrics describe various qualities of love such as someone helping to get you back on your feet. Perhaps she is considering whether there are plenty more fish in the sea.

4. 3 of Pentacles / Sungod Dub by Godflesh - an artist is painting a picture of a tree on what appears to be the wall of a church, within an arch above which are three pentagram signs. "Dub" refers to a musical remix and also to layering something on top of something else, as in dubbing voices onto film soundtracks, so maybe the artist is covering up an earlier painting such as a religious image.

5. 10 of Pentacles / Dream by Mahavishnu Orchestra - a happy couple dance in front of a castle, a woman in white, possibly a nightdress, with a crystal ball on a staff, stares in the other direction. Behind her is a seascape with no connection to the castle. The music is instrumental so the only correspondence is the idea that this woman is dreaming the castle scene, perhaps looking back on it with nostalgia.

6. Ace of Pentacles (Rx) / Eyes On Mars by Chrome - a woman in black looks back over her shoulder as she leaves a beautiful sunny garden containing colourful flowers and butterflies, heading into a landscape obscured by mist, a distorted and melancholy tune speaks of hurt, but not going away even from a distance of a thousand miles, due to being "anti fade". This suggests the bitter sweet emotion of remembering an idyllic place or experience that one was forced to leave behind a long time ago.

That's worn me out now, so on that unhappy note I think I'll call a halt for tonight.

[Alta]

To me this is an interesting and useful exercise. Clearly we experience the world through all five senses and it does seem reasonable that tarot could 'come in' through any of them. In this case, the emotional reaction via the sense of hearing, filtered through whatever the 'music section' of the brain is.