Thursday, February 17, 2022

Visualize the devil, and he doth appear.

I’ve been experimenting with truly random card selection, using Random.org. Since this means drawing cards “virtually” on a computer, I decided that just before each virtual draw I should visualize myself physically drawing and turning over a card.

The first time I did this, I was a bit surprised that when I visualized turning over the first card, it was a specific card that presented itself to my mind’s eye: the Two of Wands. When I clicked "Randomize," though the actual card I got was the Nine of Pentacles, which is not at all similar.

The visualization of the second card was vague and generic, with no specific card appearing in my mind.

When I visualized turning over the third card, I got a extraordinarily clear mental image of the 15th trump, called the Devil -- specifically of the devil's face as portrayed on the Rider-Waite version of that card. I dismissed this, thinking it had come to mind only because that card had featured prominently in my recent "Reading for 2022" -- but when I clicked "Randomize," the card that came up was in fact the Devil.

There are 78 cards in the deck, so if you guess the card twice, the probability of getting it right at least once is roughly 1 in 39 (or 1 in 26, if we count this as three guesses instead of two) -- not extraordinary, but still "statistically significant" by the arbitrary standards of the Studies Have Shown racket, so it seemed worth noting.

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