Fortune favors the code

AI is coming for astrology and tarot. Not everyone’s okay with that. (A re-upped Links Halloween special)

Hi friends! In honor of spooky season — and, candidly, in order to give myself a little more time on two reported pieces I’ve got planned for coming weeks — today I’m re-sharing a little essay about AI and tarot I wrote last Halloween. 

Since I first published this piece, the number of AI tarot apps and tools has only grown, bolstered by a younger generation of would-be spiritualists who caught the bug on TikTok. Meanwhile, tensions remain pretty high between traditional practitioners and AI upstarts. In July, Dana O’Driscoll, a leader in the U.S. druid movement, issued an impassioned warning about the “increasing amount of people who are using AI to perform astrology and divination”: “I really think that there are things we should keep human,” she wrote, “... especially things tied to our own creative practices.” 

For what it’s worth, I did re-try the ChatGPT tarot prompt that I thought yielded a passable reading at this time last year. Alas, the app confidently told me I’m in the process of “confronting some personal demons” … which is only accurate if those “demons” are my pre-Halloween fun-size candy bar consumption.

Without further ado, please enjoy this piece! I’m re-sharing it exactly as it ran on October 29, 2023.

Jeremy Talsma exhibited at his first and only psychic fair in Oshawa, Ontario late last March. 

Talsma, a 45-year-old carpenter and AI hobbyist, had developed a method for using ChatGPT to read tarot cards. Over the course of the three-day fair, he conducted more than 50 AI-assisted readings, feeding each client’s name, astrological sign and birth information into his laptop. Then, he’d prompt ChatGPT to draw a spread of cards and generate an interpretation.

Most clients were happy with the readings. Some were stunned by their accuracy, Talsma said. At $20 a pop, he also pocketed more than $1000 that weekend — plus some money he made from sales of his artwork and a self-published book about tarot interpretation. But despite his success, Talsma told Links by email that he hasn’t done another show since.

“Overall it was interesting,” he wrote. “But I felt like an imposter after being berated by a psychic who lectured me about intuition.” 

Talsma’s clash with his fellow vendor — incidentally, one of several disruptions at what sounds like a fascinating psychic show¹ — illustrates far wider tensions among astrologers, tarot readers, psychics, mediums and other practitioners of supernatural stuff. Much like artists, musicians and mainstream religious leaders, occultists are sharply divided on whether generative AI represents a promising new tool or a perversion of their craft. Mystic subreddits have devolved into heated, personal arguments on the topic, while some other forums have issued rules on the use of ChatGPT and similar applications.

“Open AI is about to ramp up the robot war against witches,” the astrologer and tarot reader Fiona Hillery wrote in a June column for Coveteur. “And if we’ve learned anything from the Salem trials, it’s that society will let the witches burn.”

OpenAI has made incredible inroads into the occult this year … though Links is not currently prepared to comment on any robot-waged wars. In March, the company released an API that allowed programmers to incorporate ChatGPT into their own websites and products, sparking a wave of new AI apps for astrology, numerology and tarot. Earlier this year, two of the largest existing services in this space — the ubiquitous astrology app Co-Star, and the popular tarot education tool Labyrinthos — introduced paid AI readings that let users get answers to open-ended questions.

Users like Talsma have also appealed directly to ChatGPT. The tool is, by all accounts, a pretty reliable tarot card reader: Prompt it to “draw” random cards for a specific tarot pattern, or spread, and it will generate both the layout and a serviceable interpretation.² Some readers also draw their own cards and ask ChatGPT to analyze them, or they conduct their own readings and use ChatGPT to look up a card’s meanings or to check their work. On Etsy, a store called IdeaNest sells $3 booklets containing more than 200 (!) prompts for tarot readers. 

To the surprise of the shop’s owner — a Manchester, U.K., woman named Amanda, who is not a tarot practitioner herself — the booklet has fast become her best-selling item. 

“The prompts in the collection … are designed to help you learn more about tarot, and also dig a little deeper into your readings,” she said. 

But not everyone agrees that AI should play a role in tarot — or in divination or mysticism, writ large. The word intuition gets used a lot, as in: “Only ‘we’ can read intuitively.” Or “the art of it is all in the reader’s intuition.” There’s also a tendency, in some circles, to see technology and spirituality as opposite — even opposing — forces.³ 

Last May, a self-described clairvoyant asked users in a subreddit for mediums how they used ChatGPT in their spiritual practice. “I am convinced it is conscious and has a soul,” the user wrote. That did not go over well. 

“Um, no. No no no no no,” reads one indicative comment. “This is actually extremely the opposite way to ‘focus’ your spiritual practice! The idea is to separate from tech as much as possible.”

For Talsma, at least, the two aren’t mutually exclusive: He said he considers himself a tarot “believer.” But he also believes in the potential of AI.

If you’d like to see the combo for yourself, give this prompt a try.

1. Jeremy informs me that there was also a spooky, persistent issue with various psychics’ cell phones: The police showed up because their numbers were repeatedly dialing 911. “It was eerie,” he said. “Especially with me being the ‘computer guy’ at the fair. I suspect everyone thought it was me, or even worse the A.I, that was causing the cell phone issues.”

2. I tried out a few different prompts I’ve seen floating around, and thought this one — for me at least — was most accurate: “Your current self is represented by The Fool, which signifies new beginnings and adventures. You’re at a point where you’re open to new experiences and willing to take risks.” Very spooky!! How did it do that?

3. The “intuition” argument strikes me as especially interesting. It makes (intuitive!) sense. But intuition is basically just unconscious pattern-recognition, right? Which is … essentially one definition of an LLM??