Conversation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
right, so i did not talk about this at all, lemme lay out some stories that seem plausible to me. in more detail, the “minimal but respectful take” here seems to me psychological: that tarot and astrology are two different scaffolds on which to hang intuitive psych reads
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Han Seoul-Oh
@laughinghan
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Replying to @laughinghan and @QiaochuYuan
You lead with the physics-compatibility of tarot and astrology, and I would love to hear a plausible story about that. Genuinely trying to be curious and open-minded about it
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
(actual friends of mine into tarot and astrology claim something more interesting is happening than this; i want to lay this out explicitly as a *minimal* take, a lower bound, that might be the easiest place to go after total skepticism)
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
(i also want to say pretty explicitly that this is based on almost no actual research into tarot and astrology, just vague guesses based on stuff i’ve picked up passively on twitter and john michael greer’s blog, likely i am misunderstanding or naive about important stuff here)
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
in the psychological take, people who are good at tarot reads or reading astro charts have strong psychological intuitions and are good at reading people, and the tarot cards or chart details are opportunities to creatively draw these intuitions out
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
there’s a lot of wiggle room in how to interpret any particular card or any particular thing in a chart, and the take is that a skilled reader fills in this wiggle room with their own intuitions, much of which may be operating subconsciously until drawn out in this way
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
this is more satisfying as a take on tarot than on astrology; it only attempts to explain chart reads and has nothing to say about e.g. mercury retrograde. to go further we need to go beyond just humans having good intuitions to talking about cyclic phenomena in nature
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
so, there are three particularly obvious cycles in nature: day and night, the phases of the moon, and the seasons. it would not be at all surprising to see, and we do see, nature time all sorts of stuff according to these cycles, much animal behavior, etc.
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
for the vast majority of the history of life on this planet there was no light pollution at night so nature would be exposed to a brilliant sea of stars every night. the stars generally move in concert, except for a small handful - the wanderers, or “planetoi” (“planetai”?)
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
the planets move sometimes together with the other stars and sometimes opposite (“retrograde”). the timing of when specific patterns of stars are in specific places in the night sky (constellations), and of the movements of the planets, are both also cycles available to nature
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
so plausibly nature could also sync more subtle phenomena to these more subtle rhythms. insofar as this is happening it would be happening in the entire biosphere at once, potentially producing coordinated changes in many organisms, including humans
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
this would be stuff happening at a low level biologically, similar to but more subtle than circadian rhythms, with a genetic component - not stuff it feels like you have any conscious control over. insofar as this affects the state of a mother through pregnancy and at birth…?
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
this story provides a potenial mechanism for the birth chart of a person to contain actual signal, not just be a source of random inspiration, so it now actually predicts that you would get worse results with a fake birth chart. tarot would need a separate story
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
some of these changes may be consciously accessible to the intuitions of some people. and, to some extent the more people believe astrology the more true it becomes, as more people synchronize their lives to astrological rhythms
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
e.g. if astro people all collectively coordinate to treat mercury retrograde as the time for such-and-such behaviors and moods, then… to some extent, those are the behaviors and moods that happen for them and the people around them during mercury retrograde!
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
behaviors and moods are also infectious - e.g. if a small group of people coordinate to be a huge asshole to everyone on their lives on a specific day of the year, they’ll piss off other people who will also be assholes that day, and if they keep doing it every year…?
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
if i try to be any more detailed than this i’ll likely get more wrong than right, this is not meant to be an argument convincing to an entrenched skeptic but food for thought for someone who is on the fence. so i’ll stop here for now
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