Between packing and seeing some final things in Nanjing I expected there to be more opportunities to write these posts. Looks like that was mistaken.

It’s definitely spring, and all the students are getting excited to begin the semester. Classes started today and there’s a clear increase in the amount of international students in the area. The weather’s nice, the windows are open, and less people are wearing coats.

Since the 22nd I’ve been up to a bit!

Goodbyes

We had a last “all hands on deck” final supper last night that included pretty much everyone I would consider a close friend who is currently in Nanjing. We got as many dishes as we could manage, drank some great baijiu (天之蓝) and had some fun conversation. Afterward we were all going to meet at Talking, but I got wrapped up in some real estate stuff and ended up missing out on some good times with some friends that had to go home before their dorms closed. When a real estate middleman says “一分钟” it can sometimes mean 40 minutes, and “马上到了” can be more than an hour.

Coding

Continued work on revising the coding challenge. It’s a great sign that they’re providing detailed feedback and spending time reviewing it. Here’s hoping I can impress them with the latest revision – it’s even more concurrent than before. Basically that means more channels and goroutines.

There likely won’t be much more of this until I’m back in the states.

Tarot

This grew from a minor obsession on 2019-01-23 to something the entire group has been getting into in some capacity. Since a friend and I read Dorowsky’s Way of the Tarrot we’ve been having discussions about the cards one-by-one, practicing readings, considering different spreads, and thinking about the mechanisms and actions of the reading itself in a psychological-therapeutic aspect. The conclusion we both arrived to is that there might not be magic, but is a ritual which makes the querant think about their situation.

The one spread I am enjoying right now goes with the following: Arranged from the querant’s left to right, cards are drawn from the Major Arcana by the querant and put face down in the following order: 1. Vertical, 2. Horizontally placed over it, 3 and 4 placed vertically above each other to the right of 1 and 2. Then a final card is drawn from the Minor Arcana and placed to the right of 3 and 4.

The querant reveals the first four and are discussed, with 1-2 being the present and 3-5 being the future. 1 is the current situation and 2 is the current challenge. 3 and 4 are the future, and 5 is a number which will be significant (ie the predictions of 3-4 may happen in n hours/days/weeks/months)

If you’re a sceptical person like me and wonder about the validity of such a ritual as a Tarot reading, a good exercise would be go search “tarot reading” on youtube and find one of the 10,000+ videos, most of which are composed of multiple readings. Put into your mind a question (which if the titles of the videos are any indication, is 90% going to be about a guy/relationship/partner…) and genuinely listen to the answers. Typically, you could find truth in most of the readings. This isn’t magic, but very general responses and a therapeutic nature.

Anyways, my friend and I would sometimes hang out at the bar and get drinks with friends, and he or I would usually bring our decks to work on understanding it all when we got bored. As a frenchman he was fond of the Tarot of Marseilles and me the American Waite-Smith. Sometimes we would have friends that were interested in a reading so we would indulge them.

More than half of the people we did this with were interested, and some even had that look on their face afterward that indicated it reached them in some way. I read for my roommate last night, and today in conversation she framed some of her thoughts on her current relationship situation using the reading from the previous night. It might not be magic, but sometimes people really need some genuine advice under the guise of mysticism.

A note from Chinese philosophy on how these ritualistic actions can aid. Xunzi 17:13: “[…] One performs divination and only then decides on important affairs. But this is not for the sake of getting what one seeks, but rather to give things proper form. Thus, the gentleman looks upon this as proper form, but the common people look upon it as connecting with spirits.” This ties into the Rujia concept of Ritual / Li.

Tarot as Divination from a Christian Perspective

My upbringing is such that Tarot would be classified under “divination” or “spiritualism,” as referenced in the bible in places like Deuteronomy 18:10-12 or Leviticus 19:31.

Now if I was having a debate with a Christian about the Tarot being classified under these, I would want to get more in-depth with these words and definitions with them. For example, let’s go through the words through biblehub:

Lev 19:31 talks specifically about not turning to “Mediums or Spiritualists.” Medium is defined from the original Hebrew as communicating with ghosts and spirits. Spiritualists are specifically people communicating with spirits or a wizard.

Deuteronomy is more of the same words from Leviticus, so we should look at the New Testament since the argument could be made that those Old Testament laws are made irrelevant by Jesus’ sacrifice and tearing of the temple curtain. Here they are also the same, and if interpreted liberally would include interpreting stars and omens (the Greek ‘magos’).

Looking into all the original Hebrew and Greek words for “divination,” “witchcraft,” and “soothsaying” draws allusions to interpreting omens, divining the future, and most commonly consulting spirits.

My reaction to a Christian criticism of me performing Tarot readings would be that I acknowledge no magic within the cards, no spirits are consulted, and mostly it is to be thought about as “be careful of what these cards indicate in the future.” This might not be what everyone that performs Tarot readings would agree with, but it is at least my interpretation. The cards can be used for card games in France, looking at problems, and by some to predict the future.

But this is for naught: Beyond these arguments, a common reply is simply “Why draw Tarot when you could pray?” Those who lean on the Bible could point to Isaiah 8:19.

Why am I so defensive and worrying about this? There’s a lot of people out there that see Harry Potter, the His Dark Materials trilogy, and Dungeons and Dragons as of the devil and unfit for consumption by a “good Christian.” Tarot would likely be put as even more satanic than these, on the realms of Ouija boards and astrology. This is something I’ve encountered a lot personally, and relationships can be damaged by my choices of interests and activities. So it really helps to research and write things out here in these journals, which is exactly what I’m doing here! I don’t plan on lying about this stuff and keeping it really hidden as something that interests me, so it helps to have some understanding of where their argument comes from.

Chess

Actually haven’t done nearly anything with this for a month now. My roommate said it best when I’ll obsess over something for a few weeks and then drop it in favor of something else. I got a lot farther with chess than most of these, but lack of interest by the people around me coupled with a lot of bad losses led me to forget about it.

Things I’m Liking

-Delta’s Baggage Policy: I get to check two bags. More room for gifts!

Misc

Referring to someone as “my french friend” or other reference to nationality in this respect doesn’t feel much different than “my black friend”. Nevertheless this form of reference feels like the only way I can rationalize it – It’s not really appropriate for me to put people’s names here where anyone on the internet could get personal information about these people. On the other hand my china retrospective posts have some names, but it speaks in a more general tone than the daily and personal nature of these journals.