It’s been a while since I gave an Etteilla deck-in-progress update. I finished working on Card 18, The Hermit, oft named The Capuchin (an order of Franciscan friars) or simply titled with the keyword “Traitor.”
As I was drawing, I got to thinking about the qi in works of art, per the qi of their artists. That in turn got me thinking about the qi of AI and AI-generated images.
If we are to believe in the principle of qi as a force imbued in all things that are sentient or created by sentient beings, then works of art have qi.
In fact, that has always been one of the fundamental factors of valuing art from a Taoist perspective — assessing the qi of the artist’s hand apparent in the art.
Random photo inserted here because pretty. Don’t hate the player hate the game.
I’m looking forward to many and different voices adding to the discussion “Social Media Witchcraft: A Community Conversation About the Things That Divide Us” via the hashtag #OcculTea. The hosts are kickstarting the conversation off with these videos from Ella Harrison, Polish Folk Witch, and The Redheaded Witch.
“All members of the occult & witchcraft community – not just content creators or big names, but everybody” is invited to participate in this discussion, with the hope that the hosts might later facilitate a live community panel.
If you’re reading my blog in the year 2024, then you probably already know a thing or two about me. But in case you’re new here by way of the hashtag, hi! I’m the author of three books: I Ching, The Oracle; The Tao of Craft; and Holistic Tarot. You’ll often find me as a keynote at various tarot and witchy conferences.
By day I am a practicing attorney and my career obligations occupy most of my time. Writing and creating educational videos on topics I’m passionate about and reviewing books and decks to help promote artists and creatives are my hobbies.
I was born and raised in the cultural traditions of both Buddhism and Taoism. I trained in Buddhism, spent nearly every summer month from early childhood until young adulthood at monasteries sweeping floors, doing shaolin (badly), and meditating. There’s this joke among us Asians that you know an Asian kid grew up in Buddhism when they don’t know any of their masters’ names. Because they were all just shi fu to us. =)
As a tarot deck creator, it’s not enough to just do the art; you have to create social media content with your works-in-progress to keep up engagement….. Otherwise, how will you get people to buy your deck once you’re done with it?….
I saw an editor friend’s repost of this Vox article, “Everyone’s a sellout now: So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?” by Rebecca Jennings. It’s about the pressure on authors today to have a preexisting popular platform before publishing a book, or any creative work product for that matter. How well a book sells is determined by how well the author self-promotes. Pertinent to the circles I run in, let’s talk about tarot and witchy books.
Social media influencers have democratized culture, but perhaps have also diluted specialty creative industries. Instead of an experienced, established industry expert who is the gatekeeper of what ought to get published, the consuming public is now collectively the “gatekeeper” determining who The Algorithm will favor. Publishers are yielding to the consumer public opinion, via numbers, on who ought to be published.
Top selling books are not necessarily by the most knowledgeable virtuoso in that field but rather, are by whichever charismatic personality has the most followers on YouTube and TikTok. Therefore, to be a top selling author, you need to cater to that consuming public. It’s not about your resume, curriculum vitae, or credentials; it’s about your personal brand.
Inspired by that article, I thought I’d share my experiences on having to navigate social media, personal branding, and platform building as an author.
I first intuited what felt like a waning phase in terms of activity and creativity in the tarot industry in 2022. But, you know, maybe it was just me. So I dismissed the thought.
Earlier this year, I started seeing comments in discussion forums from people in our community that were echoing those same thoughts. Apparently it’s not just me! I think people are really feeling it.
So I wanted to talk about my observations of the state of the tarot union as it stands now, at the close of 2023.
By “questionable” I mean authors whose morality, political beliefs, sociopolitical affiliations, or credibility have been put under compelling scrutiny.
Perhaps more so than any other subject area of interest, when you navigate religious, spiritual, and occult spaces, you have to conscientiously assess and process where you stand on this point. While the issue of where you stand on condoning the reading or the publishing of works by questionable authors is ever present, it floated to the top of my thoughts recently with this announcement by the publishing house Inner Traditions:
Instagram: @inner_traditions
To explore this case study, I recommend clicking on the above IG posting and reading the comments, because I’m not going to re-post the nutty alt-right supporters who resorted to name-calling, homophobia, misogyny, and mocking people’s pronouns. There are also a few very long and thorough comments, too long to fit in a single screenshot, so I won’t be re-posting those either, though they’re worth a read.
Challenge of the announcement with all of the above aforementioned was predictable. What kind of took me by surprise was the strength and volume of voices who were saying, “This is totally fine. Hey liberals, stop being such babies.”
When I made this video, I genuinely did not think there’d be anything controversial about it. I will even continue the assumption now and say that if you actually watch it in the entirety, you, too, would not reach the conclusion that it’s trying to be anti-male. Nor will you find it laced with any ulterior motive of gender politics.
Heck, now in retrospect, I probably could have titled the video “Tao Te Ching & the Divine Feminine.” Right? It’s just that I have a complicated relationship with the concept of “divine feminine” hence I went with “feminist metaphysics.”
Within hours of its posting, I received the following comments:
This blog post starts with my reaction to the above responses, but then I’ll go off on a tangent to share some unfiltered ramblings with respect to Eurocentric Taoism and cultural appropriation.
Fun fact: That blue-toned banner of mountains was taken in Miaoli, Taiwan, from my ancestral lands. ❤
The very first video I posted to YouTube was in October, 2014. It’s been 9 years. And I thought I’d take a pause from regularly scheduled programming to reflect on those 9 years.
To do so, I’m combining several TarotTube or Pagan Youtube (Occult Tube?) community tags on the subject. If you loiter in any of those networks then you may have seen some. I’m going to do my response as a blog post. And I think that in and of itself probably says something.
The selfie function is hard. I never know where to look…
This is a TarotTube tag started by @Kelly Bear but I’ll be participating via blog post. =) I was tagged by the lovely and precocious @JessReadsCards. The prompt is to share 5 tarot decks, 4 tarot books, 3 tarot spreads, 2 tarot reader habits or tarot reading paraphernalia, and 1 piece of advice (or alternatively, 1 tarot card you’d like to embody).
Ack. You can see my Invisalign attachments in the above photo. And of course now that I called it out, it went from 50% chance you’d see it to 100% chance you’ll see it. Also, shameless off-topic plug for my new book, I Ching, The Oracle. The first few months after an author has released a book, you’re just gonna have to brace yourself for a lot of promo. =D
I don’t have a dog in this fight, no skin in the game as they say. There is more benefit to me opting out of this conversation and staying quiet. In fact, speaking up would be ill-advised; I only stand to lose.
First, a quick statement about my personal background, as that will be context for my perspective. I am a self-taught illustrator and in the late 90s was highly skeptical of using digital art in tarot. Everything people who are against AI are saying right now about AI in tarot art was exactly my perspective of digital illustrator tools in tarot 30 years ago (because I did not understand digital art).
At the time I was alarmed to see how many digital artists could create something with the computer that looked almost too perfect, and do it so quickly, but then if you take away their tech and put a pencil in their hand, they could barely do freehand sketches.
However, my judgmental opinion was on the basis of a very superficial understanding of digital art. As I learned more about the process and was exposed to more digital artists as individuals, getting to know the intricacies of their creative process, the more my opinion evolved. I met more and more digital artists who could do phenomenal freehand sketching, and who had simply chosen digital software as their medium, not unlike deciding on acrylics, or pastels, or watercolor, or clay.
Posted an author unboxing (actually no, it’s not really an unboxing) and first impressions (is it a first impressions?) of my third book, I Ching, The Oracle.
Then decided to swing by over here on my blog to repost and share some additional personal ruminations. Here are some of my thoughts and reflections after publishing three books.
Holistic Tarot debuted in 2015, then The Tao of Craft came out in 2016. I didn’t publish another book until 7 years later, 2023.
There’s this unspoken pressure on writers to crank out books on a fairly regular, repeating basis. To be clear, no one demands it of us; it’s more of an unspoken self-imposed peer pressure. You look around and all your colleagues are writing a book a year.
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