Does it still make sense to read Tarot, when you can ask ChatGPT?
Is there value in doing things old school, even when you have the potential answer to all your questions literally in your hand?
As you may have guessed, given that this is a newsletter where I talk about Tarot, the question in the title is rhetorical. Yes, I am fully convinced it still makes sense to read Tarot, EVEN if you could give a little context and ask the same question to ChatGPT, and you’d get an answer in a second, without consulting and paying any reader.
But why is that?
The first argument that comes to my mind is environmental. Arguably, you’ll buy one Tarot deck and use it for years. Whereas, with ChatGPT you’re consuming energy for each single query. Anything will use up energy, even saying “please” and “thank you”, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed a couple of days ago — not that this will stop people trying to get on the machines’ good side before their eventual uprising.
This is a good argument because there’s data behind it, and it speaks to the fact that humanity is actively destroying the environment, but it’s not the best (in my opinion, obviously). I’m giving my personal point of view here: whenever I hear someone passionately speaking against using AI due to its burning energy and subsequent environmental impact, I feel annoyed — and I suspect that this might be a lot of people’s reaction, too.
I gave it some thought, and I realised it’s because of these two reasons:
I would lie if I said that ChatGPT hasn’t been helpful when it comes to lightening the burden of having to deal with tedious tasks (writing boring emails, performance reviews, cover letters, SQL, and the list goes on) fully by myself.
And these are things that I HAVE to do; I do NOT want to, but I cannot escape them. If I’m forced to work on mind-numbing tasks, why should I feel guilty for delegating them to a machine, so that all I have to do is to tweak the output a bit — isn’t that its purpose?
In my head, I’m going: What do YOU know about my carbon footprint?
I am aware that this is a gut reaction, but, when I hear the environment argument, I take it personally. I’ve never owned a car and I don’t drive in general1. 99% of the time, I move either on foot or on public transport. I almost never go on holiday or travel2, hence I fly very rarely. I’ve never had AC in any house/apartment I’ve lived in since I was 19. I don’t keep my radiators on high during winter. I buy new clothes maybe twice a year and mostly to replace old ones. And so on. True, I do not know how ChatGPT usage compares to driving a car, flying, etc., but surely given the above I can afford a query here and there, if it makes my life a little easier?
So for me, the best argument is simply this: using your brain is important.
Reading Tarot forces you to THINK.
And I mean, really think. You have a bunch of cards in front of you, and you know you’re gonna have to work to come up with a reasonable answer. You’ll need to make connections, not only between them, but also between the various areas of your knowledge: when you’re reading Tarot, you’ll often make connections that span from art and literature, to philosophy and anthropology, to occultism, to TV shows. It’s a great gym for your brain.
[…] taking the time to wrestle with challenging ideas on your own “can give you surprising insights or perspectives that wouldn’t have been otherwise available to you.”
This quote is from an article I recently read, which explores “The case for using your brain — even if AI can think for you” (I highly recommend it). While the article reminds us how humans have been offloading the burden of some tasks to technology for a very long time, it also points out that some things are best left to us. The connections we make when we’re sitting in front of a blank page (or canvas!) trying to come up with ideas, the sudden epiphany we have when we’re going for a walk — all these will more often than not wield unpredictable, surprising results, which will help us hone our craft, become more creative, etc. This is something a machine just cannot give us.
Reading Tarot teaches you patience.
In 2025, patience is a skill that we master less and less. I’m certainly not the first person to point this out. Everything is at the tip of our fingers: takeout, shopping, Google searches. You might ask, Well then, why would I need to master patience?
The answer is simple: because you’ll need patience to wade through the sea of challenges life throws at you. Examples:
You get laid off: more likely than not, especially during a recession, it will take you months to find a new job, not seconds
You start practicing a new skill: you’re not going to become decent at it until you’ve put a few hundred hours in, at least
You break up: good luck getting over that in the blink of an eye
And I could go on. My theory is that when shit hits the fan, we’re now more than ever unprepared to deal with the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to overcome challenges.
So, I find major value in an activity like Tarot, where you have to sit with your cards sometimes for hours before getting to a conclusion (*if* there even is one, that is).
These were my 2 cents on Tarot vs ChatGPT. I hope you’ll all now go use your brain to do something you love :)
Talk soon!
Angelica / Maeveryn
Mostly because it terrifies me, but that’s a story for another day.
Cue sad violin music.