AUTHOR’S NOTE: I just heard about TikTok tarot readings that are generic and algorithm-based. (I stay even farther away from TikTok than I do from YouTube.) One user of the service mentioned that they received prompts from TikTok urging “Interact four times to claim this energy.” It sounds to me like the platform is “fishing for clicks.”

This concept of “claiming the energy” echoes the premise behind so-called “collective” YouTube readings that are completely impersonal. These “purveyors of conditional wisdom” (putting it kindly) assume that everyone who accesses the readings will take from them whatever seems to fit the reality of their own circumstances and ignore the rest. I find this notion to be “reaching” even more than the typical remote reading in which the querent has no active involvement beyond asking the question, and I hope the online followers aren’t paying for the “one-size-fits-all” advice (although I’m sure someone has found a way to monetize it by now).

Most online readings strike me as entrepreneurial hustles since there is no rational way they can be adequately tailored to a seeker’s individual conditions (although I’ve developed a reasonable workaround for this failing as described elsewhere). They are based on the idea of “universal psychic energy” into which the reader can dip to obtain supposedly valid insights at a distance, something that I’ve argued against for years. Now it looks like the assumption is that AI can do it as well as any human diviner and perhaps better, which makes it seem even more “pat.” The old-school “gypsy fortune-teller” has become a faceless robot, and gullible social-media addicts are eating it up.

I value the “live” interaction that face-to-face tarot reading provides, and believe that arm’s-length online engagement degrades its effectiveness and certainly its immediacy. It’s obvious that, in these emotionally-disconnected times and the electronic isolation that has replaced eye-contact, those who accept this cheapened version of the reader’s art have no direct awareness of the in-person original and don’t know any better. While it can be proposed that a Zoom session offers an equivalent opportunity for direct dialogue, it still feels like faux discourse to me. In his book Tarot Beyond the Basics, Anthony Louis has devised a way to personalize the Skype reading that I’ve adapted for my own email approach, but nothing beats having a sitter across the table.

It’s increasingly apparent that the practice is straying farther-and-farther away from its roots and is beginning to resemble a parody of what it once was. The situation reminds me of the tale of the blind men trying to explain the nature of an elephant; if you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like, you won’t know whether you’re getting the “real deal” or just a pale imitation. If you’re paying good money for it, more’s the pity.