The Court Cards

The Court Cards often represent personalities in life, either existing or idealized. The Page typically the starting point, or the "fresh face" of the suit in question, and exemplifies an unrefined trait. The Knight then reflects upon the good and bad sides of that trait when developed. From there, the Queen and King represent the pinnacles of achievement within the realm of the suit (Wands, Cups, Swords or Pentacles) with the Queen usually representing the Yin/feminine aspects and the King taking on the Yang/male aspects.

Wands

1. Page - Jump (Van Halen)
2. Knight - Word up (Wild Cherry)
3. Queen - Promiscuous (Nelly Furtado)
4. King - Rasputin (Boney M)

Cups

1. Page - The Moth (Aimee Mann)
   
2. Knight - The Luckiest (Ben Folds)
3. Queen - Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
   
4. King - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Farewell (Tan-Dun/YoYo Ma)

Swords

1. Page - Add it up (Violent Femmes)
2. Knight - Fight the power (Public Enemy)
3. Queen - Xena Warrior Princess: Main Theme (Joseph LoDuca)
4. King - Star Wars: End Credits (John Williams)

Pentacles

1. Page - Bust a move (Young MC)
2. Knight - I'm an adult now (The Pursuit of Happiness)
3. Queen - She sells sanctuary (The Cult)
4. King - The world is not enough (Garbage)
   

Pentacles

Pentacles is a suit of work, realism, organization and practicality

1. Money (Pink Floyd)
2. The Reflex (Duran Duran)
3. Heigh-Ho (The Seven Dwarves)
   
4. Every breath you take (The Police)
   
5. Hold on (Sarah Mclachlan)
6. Greenbacks (Ray Charles)
7. Money for nothing (Dire Straits)
8. Colonel Bogey March (Bridge Over the River Kwai)
9. Why don't you do right? (Jessica Rabbit)
10. If I had $1000000 (Barenaked Ladies)
    

Swords

Swords is a suit of intellect, action and truth.

1. Star Wars Main Theme (John Williams)
2. Underwhelmed (Sloan)
3. Two out of three ain't bad (Meatloaf)
4. Here in my head (Tori Amos)
5. Battle without honour (Tomoyasu Hotei)
6. Walking after midnight (Cowboy Junkies)
   
7. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Ennio Morricone)
8. Rat in a cage (Smashing Pumpkins)
9. Apart (The Cure)
10. Hurt (Johnny Cash)
    

Cups

Cups is the suit of emotion, introspection and insight. Lots of Jazz, Blues and Ballads here.

1. One (U2)
2. You're the one that I want (John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John)
3. Girls just wanna have fun (Cyndi Lauper)
4. How soon is now (The Smiths)
5. Stretched on your grave (Sinead O'Connor)
6. Linus and Lucy (Vince Guaraldi Trio)
7. When you wish upon a star (Jiminy Cricket)
   
8. Hide and Seek (Imogen Heap)
9. Big time sensuality (Bjork)
10. Concerning hobbits (Howard Shore)
    

Wands

Wands is a suit that suggests energy, creativity and adventure. As such, a lot of these songs ended up being from the Pop or Hip Hop genre.

1. Pure Energy (Information Society)
   
2. Shakey thing (Furnaceface)
3. I can see clearly now (Holly Cole Trio)
4. Freedom 90 (George Michael)
5. Ball of confusion (Love and Rockets)
6. U can't touch this (MC Hammer)
   
7. Tubthumping (Chumawumba)
8. Thunderstruck (AC/DC)
9. The Impossible Dream/The Quest (Man of La Mancha 1965 cast)
10. Going the distance (Cake)
    

The Major Arcana

Here's the first bit of my iPod Tarot playlist. If you try this at home, folks, you might start with these cards, as since they tend to represent the Big Themes of life, they lend themselves well to songs.

1. Fool - Don't worry, be happy (Bobby McFerrin)
2. Magician - I've got the power (Snap)
   
3. High Priestess - Samain Night (Loreena McKennitt)
4. Empress - Boudicea (Enya)
5. Emperor - Speak softly love/The Godfather Theme (Andy Williams)
6. Hierophant - Another brick in the wall Part 2 (Pink Floyd)
7. Lovers - La vie en rose (Edith Piaf)
8. Chariot - We will rock you/We are the champions (Queen)
9. Strength - Patience (Guns 'N Roses)
   
10. The Hermit - The lonely shepherd (Zamfir)
11. Wheel of Fortune - Spin me round (Dead or Alive)
    
12. Justice - Ghostriders in the sky (Johnny Cash)
    
13. Hanged Man - Upside down (Tori Amos)
    
14. Death - It's the end of the world as we know it (Great Big Sea)
15. Temperance - Closer to fine (Indigo Girls)
16. Devil - The Beast (Concrete Blonde)
17. Tower - Armageddon days are here again (The The)
18. Star - Never an absolution (James Horner)
19. Moon - Toccata with fugue in D minor (Bach)
    
20. Sun - The Four Seasons, movement 1 (Vivaldi)
21. Judgement - Washing of the water (Peter Gabriel)
    
22. World - What a wonderful world (Louis Armstrong)
    

Fame regained

Ah good. Now that I've managed to learn wiki a little better, I managed to revert the wikiHow article back to my old account. Formatting is going well, and soon, I hope to submit it to the Featured Articles review.

The wikiHow

I discovered wikiHow, and it turns out that it's a much better forum for this project. I've migrated it over there. Too bad I've posted it Anonymously...oh well. There goes 15 minutes of fame. :-)

The premise...

Welcome to the iPod Tarot!

The premise of this site is simple. Everyone's been talking for ages about the fact that mp3 players have revolutionize HOW people listen to music by allowing anybody to carry The Soundtrack To Your Life in a pocket. It seemed to me (like to so many people) that my iPod had an eerie ability to pull tunes out of the blue that corresponded exactly to the current mood or had some strange relevance to the situation at hand. And out of a playlist of...6000 songs??

This brought to mind an old sci-fi book by Tom Deitz:

In the novel, the main character can predict the future by listening to an oldies radio station and interpreting the songs that come up. Recall that this was written in the early 1990s, before iPods were anything more than a kooky Cupertino Codeword. My friend Stephe Teather brought up the whole songs-as-oracles concept while watching me read from my Aquarian Tarot deck years ago. The concept came up again recently when another friend, Les Blackwell, began to get the sneaking suspicion that my iPod was reading his thoughts; he had mentioned that the first album he ever bought was Ghostbusters and, within minutes, the Ghostbusters theme song came on over the speakers! (And this is out of a library of 6000+ songs on full random...). Furthermore, the machine appears to "know" that Les gets the twitches from Tori Amos, as it seems to play a disproportionate amount of her music whenever he's around, just to make him crazy.

So I figured, if my iPod is actually psychic/possessed anyways, why not formalize the notion by making a "Tarot Playlist"? Now...plenty of people have tried a similar shtick by trying to do readings off of the Full Random output of their mp3 player; try to Google the words "iPod Tarot" and, apart from this site, you'll get dozens of playlists that insert song titles into the various slots of the Celtic Cross and come up with an interpretation. My take on using the iPod as a tarot deck is a little bit different. Rather than trying to free-associate meanings from a large list of songs, I'm going to try to create for myself a predetermined list of songs that I've already linked back to the original meanings of the 78 cards in a standard tarot deck and then see how we do using that limited set to predict the future.

Are you with me? Here goes!