The Crafts: Wixes, Spells, and the Weaponized Placebo Effect

See that is how they really get you. They make you wonder if it's just you losing shit like always, or it's them, or if your losing shit like always has always been them. WHO KNOWS. I SURE AS FUCK DON'T.

 

so I did a tarot reading today about my situation with my (abusive) ex
the cards told me he doesn't want me in his life and that I'm prolonging the inevitable and I feel shitty :)
there's never been a time when my tarot cards weren't right...do you guys think doing another reading is a bad idea? it'll probably say the same, right?

 

@chaoticArbiter no they'll probably be like, why the fuck are you asking again

 

sighs
yeah I kinda figured

 

i have a rain jar that's made of sturdier stuff than plastic this time and i left it out where it will proooobably not fall over. i might go back outside and gather some rocks to put around it in a little circle so it has more support, though (i love being in the rain when i'm not carrying something electronic on me, so i don't mind).

also probably going to do a tarot reading for my house spirit to see if there's anything else i can do for them on sunday, since i'm not currently at my apartment (i'm visiting family). i brought my deck with me, so i might do a reading tomorrow too depending on time. i've been wondering about a former friend. i get the feeling she wants nothing to do with me, but i'd like to have a better idea of what i should do, if anything.

 

Anyone here have an opinion on using one of these two online sources instead of a physical tarot deck?
http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/playing-card.htm
http://tarotlore.com/tarot-reading/

Does anyone find that it matters? Does either/both of these work? Do you find that one works better than the other, or at any rate differently?

I'm going to be completely honest and admit I'm trying to see if anyone else noticed the same... things... about these as I did, but I don't think I know how best to phrase it to ask directly.

 

@soulgender ok i'm the first one to admit that i'm new to to tarot but both of these just...don't seem accurate at all? like, with the springhole.net one, it's just a random card, which is fine, because if you know tarot you can just go off of your own feelings, even if i get the feeling from reading their about that the person behind springhole does not actually care about tarot or take it seriously.

tarotlore, though, is somehow worse. it's archaic, and also super negative. and bossy. i tried a few readings and i felt like it was wrong every time. that could just be me, though.
(also tarotlore might be kinda sexist??? it kept talking about how certain cards might mean different things for ladies)

 

I don't see any fundamental issue in having computers do the shuffling and drawing. If my gods can speak through cards then why not through the internet? Though I'd not bother with the readings presented to me by the sites. So basically I'd use it by rolling up a spread/card and then doing a reading myself. That's just a personal thing for me though. I would look more at the second one but I can't? Something's up with the server it says, so I guess I'll look at it later perhaps.

I will say that mentioning of differences in readings based on gender does make me wary of the tarotlore one, though. I tend to distrust heavily gendered things in this realm. I do feel that there's use of reading things with sex or gender in mind like, say, if you were doing readings about pregnancy. Still I am a very wary person when it comes to gendering things outright.

 

ah ok i checked and you can technically do your own reading with the "advanced" option with tarotlore, so that's not terrible.

 

@pinnedbutterfly Thanks! Can I ask for clarification on a couple of points?

When you describe tarotlore as archaic, negative and bossy, are you referring to the cards or to tarotlore's opinion about the cards? If you ignore the card descriptions, is it still bad in the same way? When your readings were wrong every time, would they have been wrong if interpreted the way you generally interpret tarot cards, instead of tarotlore's way?

Can you clarify what your issues are with springhole.net? Is it just that the person creating it didn't believe in it? Does that make a real difference, in your experience? It's just a random card, yes, but is it a worse random card than drawing a single card from a physical deck?

@Aondeug Thanks! Is the issue with gender just an issue with their interpretations, so that it wouldn't matter if you ignore their ideas?

 

@soulgender for tarotlore, i was talking about the card interpretations they included in the readings, which i realize now have nothing to do with the cards themselves. ignoring the descriptions and using my own interpretations, i definitely get readings that made more sense (i checked the interpretation of one of the cards and it made so much more sense than their interpretation on the site).

as for springhole, the fact that it's random isn't a bad thing! i was mostly just disappointed that the person who made it didn't actually seem to care about tarot. which...probably doesn't matter in the long run, since tarot is a tool. if i ignore the intentions the person had when making it, i think i could probably use it just fine.

the only thing is i'm just not a big fan of the aesthetics of the tarotlore deck, and i like being able to see the images on the cards, so i'm not sure springhole would work for me, either. but i'm also very happy with my current deck and forgot to do an interview with both of the online decks, so there's that to consider, too.

 

I'm bigendered and in my experience New Agey or Neo-Wiccany things tend to be rather shitty on gender. Lots of gender essentialism, focus on procreation and sex, and so on. So on reflex I mistrust tarot readings that involve gender based differences in the readings of cards. Unless I know the reader in particular I am not inclined to trust it once I see that.

 

how would a card have gender based differences? what is the point of that?

 

gender based differences and so much het. for example a card that indicates a female person near the inquirer, for a guy inquirer she's obviously into him, for a lady inquirer she's just a pal. -sideeyes-

 

With the face cards they can be read as specific people involved in the question if they match the gender of the card in question, as an example. Some cards also probably get things like pregnancy related crap tacked onto them when some people read things.

Winterykite's shit is stuff I've seen too. I dislike these methods heavily.

 

*annoyed hissing noises*
that sounds very stupid

 

It's very dumb, yes. I can see why it happens I suppose but it's dumb.

 

i ignore those parts from my reading manual if i'm using it (i need to for the favole tarot, b/c the images arent tarot imagery, but victoria frances art slapped onto tarot cards, and the minor arcana except page, knight, queen, and king don't have art beyond the specified number of items), tbh

and yeah, the het and gender stuff is such bullshit.
(what if i want the ladyshaped person close to me to be into me, hmmmm?) (but the cards tend to grok that youre gay) (or whatever you happen to be) (the cards are better than the manuals)

 

it's super dumb
some people are not het
some people are not cis
what the fuck, people who assign gender bullshit to magic-y stuff

 

I do contextually in certain readings but it is a very contextual thing. Some of my weird little lucky things are gendered too. Like the cloth I set out for Bríghid to bless on Imbolc one year for a friend of mine who's getting married. SHE NEEDS IT.

I'm a weirdo though soooo