How do feel about electronic tarot?

An interesting topic.

I tend to the Baudrillardian view. In former times, society and people created their reality to meet their needs and aspirations. These days it’s the other way around - some profit-driven entity creating a reality to drive the needs and aspirations of people and society.

Technology is fine until people become dependent on it. There can be nothing worse than a gadget failing at the wrong moment. (My daughter's Kindle failed 3 months after purchase, while she was overseas!)

Cards, paper endure for a long time. Consumer electronics don’t. But I live for the moment. There are applications for things that could or should be on paper but aren’t, so once something is in the electronic digital realm, the possibilities open up.

I have no "apps" at the moment but when the need arises to capture a medium, I'll go for it.

I started with Ace of Star's Galaxy Tarot app about 4/ 5 years ago. I was really sceptical about it to be honest. It is much more accurate than I thought it would be! I wouldn't use it for spreads for other people but I would for myself! I find the daily card extremely accurate. My theory is that my phone is nearly always around me, it has to have my energy on it somehow!

when I travel I only use apps now! I have quite a few tarot apps now!

I do have a fear that people might use it in a sort of flippant American "Magic 8 Ball" way, it's much easier to check for answers all the time and also people might use it for tarot but never learn tarot. But for me it fits in well with my tarot learning and usage

So these apps "do an interpretation" too?

I've written before about how I love tarot apps, but I have even more now that additional high quality options have come out. For reference, I have all of the apps by Galaxy Tone (Galaxy Tarot, CBD TdM, Darkana, Tarot Illuminati), and most of the Fool's Dog decks (Steampunk, Housewives, Witches, Rosetta, Shadowscapes, Paulina, Ellis, Bonefire, Tarot of Trees, Holy Light, Mythic, Druidcraft, Wildwood, RWS/Tarot!, Hidden Realms). I love the historical decks available via TarotBot/Liberus (Vacchetta, Soprafino, Dodal TdM, Noblet TdM, Visconti.) I also have the Under the Roses and Gilded Reverie Lenormands, Tarot Touché (good but kind of outdated now), and the Elemental Tarot app. My favorite way to do a mobile grand tableau with Lenormand is to go to the MiniLen website, and then take a screenshot.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my real decks, and love to just sit and shuffle cards. But I also love that I carry 25+ decks with me everywhere I go, all in my phone or tablet. They look great all lit up on my screen, and I like that I can zoom in to see detail. I especially ADORE the privacy of the mobile apps, because no one needs to know I'm pondering something very personal or important at any given moment (not even my husband if we're sitting on the sofa together, ha!) Unsurprisingly, I have chosen to turn off all of those pesky audio noises and voices in each of my apps.

I now have many decks electronically that I wasn't sure I wanted in the physical, but since they're so cheap compared to paper decks I felt the freedom to experiment with my choices, and that's been fun. I usually just draw single cards, but I enjoy using the bigger spreads, too. I love how I don't have to take a picture of my reading like I do with physical cards (if I want to come back to it) because the apps either save them by default (Fool's Dog), or I can save the ones I want (Galaxy Tone).

Since many of these apps come with extensive text for each card, I can choose to have a 2-for-1 experience of my readings, too. First, I read my spread as I normally would, my own way, then I go through and read the text almost as a separate bibliomancy reading, which usually gives me something useful to contemplate.

I don't find there to be any difference in "accuracy" or relevance between the electronic readings and physical readings that I do. I think much of that comes down to our own expectations. If you're deeply suspicious of an app's ability to give you a good reading, I wouldn't be surprised if you were dissatisfied with your results. ETA: If you think about it, synchronicity is synchronicity, whether it's between cards and our lives/minds, or between digital code or electrons and our minds.

Lilianne said:

As BBC Watchdog managed to tease out, the life expectancy of a Kindle is about 3 years.

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While your specific hardware device might only last a few years, any apps you purchase will transfer to your future devices with the same operating system (like Android or iOS), so there's no limitation in that way in case anyone worried about that!

I don't have anything against it, personally, it's just not my cup of tea. I enjoy having the physical deck to look at (since part of the appeal for me is also the artwork) and shuffling it in my hands. People should do what works best for them, though, and if someone finds that electronic decks work well for them and it's also more convenient (due to money or space) then I don't see why not.

I personally wouldn't rely on a deck's interpretations, though. I'd probably read it as I would a LWB, to know the artist's take on the deck and the cards, but I'd ultimately interpret them myself the usual way.

Chimera Dust said:

I don't have anything against it, personally, it's just not my cup of tea. I enjoy having the physical deck to look at (since part of the appeal for me is also the artwork) and shuffling it in my hands. People should do what works best for them, though, and if someone finds that electronic decks work well for them and it's also more convenient (due to money or space) then I don't see why not.

I personally wouldn't rely on a deck's interpretations, though. I'd probably read it as I would a LWB, to know the artist's take on the deck and the cards, but I'd ultimately interpret them myself the usual way.

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Two nice things about apps versus paper:

The artwork you love can be seen in all its glory in a MUCH larger size, so you can really examine the details. Shadowscapes is a perfect example of this.

Journaling/interpretation: The "meanings" part of many apps is fully customizable (Fool's Dog apps are brilliant at this, allowing you to chose to show short meanings, full meanings, only your own that you input, or a combination.) You can journal very easily, and your readings are searchable in the Fool's Dog apps too. Need to find an obscure meaning you noted down one day last year on the Empress? Run a search of your journal for the word "Empress", and watch every instance pop up for you automatically.

And that's just the start. I can take a screenshot of a spread or an individual card to post here. I don't need a ton of space to lay out cards, so I can do it anywhere. All my readings can be looked at anytime, anywhere, and I can add thoughts to my journal in a few clicks. Shuffling doesn't make as much noise, if any, so I'm not disturbing my husband when he's trying to sleep. And so on...

Don't get me wrong, I love paper decks. But I use my apps far more often.

jolie_amethyst said:

Two nice things about apps versus paper:

The artwork you love can be seen in all its glory in a MUCH larger size, so you can really examine the details. Shadowscapes is a perfect example of this.

Journaling/interpretation: The "meanings" part of many apps is fully customizable (Fool's Dog apps are brilliant at this, allowing you to chose to show short meanings, full meanings, only your own that you input, or a combination.) You can journal very easily, and your readings are searchable in the Fool's Dog apps too. Need to find an obscure meaning you noted down one day last year on the Empress? Run a search of your journal for the word "Empress", and watch every instance pop up for you automatically.

And that's just the start. I can take a screenshot of a spread or an individual card to post here. I don't need a ton of space to lay out cards, so I can do it anywhere. All my readings can be looked at anytime, anywhere, and I can add thoughts to my journal in a few clicks. Shuffling doesn't make as much noise, if any, so I'm not disturbing my husband when he's trying to sleep. And so on...

Don't get me wrong, I love paper decks. But I use my apps far more often.

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Thanks!

I've considered most of these factors before but I still prefer my paper decks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not close-minded about the idea of using electronics and I'm glad so many people have enjoyed using apps and had a good experience with them.

However, it's personally just not for me. It's one thing to look at the zoomed pictures in an app and it's another to read with them. When it comes to decks I like for the sake of their artwork, then I'd get them electronically if I didn't feel like buying them or if they were cheap. When it comes to decks I truly want to read with, though, I really enjoy being able to hold the card in my hands, turn it around, shuffle, lay out the cards, etc.

It's just a process that I like, same as how some artists prefer working with materials like paint or clay and others prefer using digital techniques.

The biggest draw for me is really only the ability to zoom the cards to take in all the details, not much else. I haven't seen a lot of the decks I like available in that format either.

As to the rest, it doesn't matter a lot to me. I tend to take my notes or journal on a scrapbook/sketchbook I own, and I enjoy it. I wouldn't have as much patience to type it all out, I vastly prefer jotting down diagrams quickly and getting it over with. If I needed to post a picture of a reading here, I'd just take a quick picture with my phone. I don't have a husband so I can shuffle as noisily as I want, hehe.

It's really just a matter of individual preference. I didn't mean to come across as a snob who disapproves of apps. As I said, I can see why people would like them but I personally don't enjoy them as much. The only thing I disapproved of in my post was the idea that one should take the app's own interpretations at face value, I think that even in electronic format, we should still interpret the cards... otherwise, where's the fun in it?

Chimera Dust said:

The only thing I disapproved of in my post was the idea that one should take the app's own interpretations at face value, I think that even in electronic format, we should still interpret the cards... otherwise, where's the fun in it?

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Absolutely!

I do think of apps as a convenient learning tool, and since I'm very much still in that stage, perhaps that's their major appeal for me. As I advance and lean a bit less heavily on double checking everything with books, perhaps I'll add more paper decks to my collection. (Though the single paper deck I own is actually a duplicate of one of my e-decks. LOL)

I'm also a major e-book reader, and that probably contributes as well. I rarely read on paper nowadays.

But paper isn't going out of style any time soon, that's for sure! No worries about e-decks replacing physical ones entirely, I think a lot of people would rather feel the cards in their hands.

jolie_amethyst said:

The artwork you love can be seen in all its glory in a MUCH larger size, so you can really examine the details. Shadowscapes is a perfect example of this.

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After seeing SO many people raving about the large detailed pictures on a thread here about Shadowscapse, I did it. I spent the $3.99 and leaped into the app world. Very glad I did! The grahics are In fact AMAZING & awesome as everyone claimed on the Shadowscapes app, and Fool's Dog does have great features. Here is a thread here specifically about how awesome Fool's Dog apps are http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=196427

There is a little dragon in the tree of the Shadowscapes 7 of Pents that I never noticed in my paper cards and that detail added enormously to the 1st app reading I did for someone else. (note: The book definitions did not work for that reading. They were way too restricted and did not make sense with the question....)

jolie_amethyst said:

I can take a screenshot of a spread or an individual card to post here.

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Can anyone share how to do this from an iPad?

I never could figure out how to post an iPad screenshot here, so I emailed the reading to myself, then went to my computer and scanned my paper cards to post from there because I just cannot figure out how to do this

screen shot

Can anyone share how to do this from an iPad?

I never could figure out how to post an iPad screenshot here, so I emailed the reading to myself, then went to my computer and scanned my paper cards to post from there because I just cannot figure out how to do this

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For a screen shot via the iPad, just depress the home button (belly bottom at the center bottom) and power button at the same time. You'll hear a click sound, and the screen has been saved to your photos. Happy capturing!