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Comment by maxbond | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this is a "very intelligent woman in a PhD program" who has a hobby that she shares with her friends, that's no reason to suspect she and her friends can't discuss "important things."

My understanding as an outsider is that astrology, tarot, etc function as a shared vocabulary and mythology to communicate about mental health and life's troubles. I think for most people the occult elements are largely aesthetic.

Throughout history people have used occult aesthetics to create a heightened experience. Sometimes that can help you commit to the process and get more out of it. (And other times con artists use it to get you to let your guard down, c'est la vie.)

Personally it's not for me, but when I got to know people who were into it, and did some readings to humor them, it made sense to me.

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Also people can have interests that aren't that serious or have no impact on their lives. Sometimes I've met people that it seems as if some of their interests are basically long-trolls of their friends and family. So if the SO likes astrology, who cares?

> Throughout history people have used occult aesthetics to create a heightened experience.

Yes and even among hackers. Porting doom to a microwave oven for instance.

Yes, but the hackers don't tend to think literal demons will invade earth unless the ~crystal chakras are aligned~ doom is ported to everything more complex than an opamp

Porting Doom to something weird is a hobby. No one actually believes the game is anything other than a silly game. It's not much different from building model ships in bottles: a very interesting and impressive technical exercise, but ultimately a task of zero practicality.

This is also an interesting/insightful comment. But again, Tarot (and especially Astrology: you cannot really change when you were born) do not encourage self analysis and especially any attempt to change your own mental models/way to do things.

Hugo Pratt, author of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corto_Maltese - hinted at this in one of stories about the character. Allegedly Corto met some sort of Gypsy palm reader when he was just a teen. The Gypsy checked his palm and told him his life line was short, so he would die very young. His reaction: he took out a knife and cut his own palm to make the line longer.

The latter part is usually missing when you use Tarot, Astrology etc.

There is also a desire to know "what will happen to me", but I think that divinatory magic can help even if you are 100% rational: http://www.pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html

Learning to accept that some things are beyond human control is a mental health victory in itself.

To the kind of person who wants to find a proximate cause for everything, "I didn't get the job because Jupiter is in Scorpio" is much less toxic than "I didn't get the job because the hiring committee is racist".

Maybe you didn't get the job because you weren't a good fit for the job, or maybe you didn't get the job because the hiring committee simply found someone else just as good and flipped a coin. Sometimes there's a good reason for something, sometimes it's just happenstance. Trying to make up nonsensical reasons for things is pointless.

You generalized tarot and astrology based on the predictive elements often seen in the media.

You are completely ignoring the primary motivation of both practices which is very much in attempting to understand yourself.

It's a shame when those who decry alternative systems do so using flawed logic.

To be more precise, I generalize the tendency that people have in trying to "externalize" their problems. And "traditional therapy" can have the same effect: "whatever, the root of all your problems is your parents".

What I am trying to say is that most people will not dig further and most importantly will not even try to put some honest work in trying to understand things in order to try to repair these.

And assuming I am right, Astrology is not really helping much, because if you are "stubborn because you are a Taurus or whatever" what are you supposed to do? What kind of corrective practices will Astrology suggest?

Please enlighten me (I am not sarcastic): in all my dealings with people who were interested in Astrology (interested beyond the most superficial interest) everybody was trying to "understand", a minority was trying to "predict". But nobody had any Astrology-based best practice to "heal" or "repair".

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