Comments on: Extra Tarot-strial

By: Barton Paul Levenson

Barton Paul Levenson — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:36:03 +0000

Nigel Depledge writes:

[[At least the Golden Compass (or, to give it the original title from the novel, Northern Lights) acknowledges itself to be fiction.]]

Albeit fiction with a heavy-handed message in it repeated over and over and over and over and over again until your head explodes.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 12:34:59 +0000

At least the Golden Compass (or, to give it the original title from the novel, Northern Lights) acknowledges itself to be fiction.

However, BA, surely Pigasus was saved rather than doomed?? Saved by the BA in his tarot reading. I.e. this is all a load of mumbo-jumbo, so do not consider it to have any real predictive power.

By: Lyle Gaulding

Lyle Gaulding — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:24:40 +0000

I recall reading (somewhere) a claim that the tarot was developed at the University of Fez as a sort of universal language. This would have nothing to do with fortune telling. Obviously the communications would be highly ambiguous. It occurs to me that reading the alethiometer symbols in The Golden Compass would be very like reading the tarot.

By: The Centipede

The Centipede — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:00:49 +0000

Tarot: the Plot Manatees of Human Existence?

By: LarrySDonald

LarrySDonald — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:10:24 +0000

Slightly off topic, Tarot is one of those things I’m pissed off about on a whole different odd level. I was shown the system (i.e. the fortune telling deal, not the for use in games deal) by someone without any supernatural beliefs, introduced roughly as “Hey, check this out. They have these cards, each representing an emotion or vibe. Then you combine them to represent a sort of combo of when those states would occur. Even just throwing out three cards, you have one random emotion from 78!/75!, that’s 456456 fairly well defined emotions. Using the traditional things with more cards and the addition of positioning, you can generate near-endless random emotional state descriptions!”.

In that sense, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea. It’s like a mechanical random devils advocate in conjunction with personal feel, throwing out endless variations of “Suppose perhaps this it’s like this instead?” on emotions. Then, I realized if you have a deck and use it for anything, people will think you think there is more to this then picking random pieces of paper and combining their meanings into something (sort of like how Family Guy is written according to Southpark) but rather some whackjob idea that a random state is clearly the right one rather then a so-so thinking point without having to involve more humans. Worse yet, it appears to validate this belief among those that hold it, perhaps making the odd belief more acceptable. Doh! I guess it’s back to just ranting on message boards..

By: Michael Lonergan

Michael Lonergan — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:10:28 +0000

I also want a Pigasus. My daughter would love him!

By: k9_kaos

k9_kaos — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:03:49 +0000

Pigasus rules! He should have a nemesis, called Foldemort, who always tries to destroy him with magic, but always fails because it isn’t real. Or something.