Merge branch 'main' of https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/SI20

web/historyoftarot/index.md

@@ -1,2 +1,42 @@
-The history of Tarot Cards According to History
+---
+title: History of Tarot
+author: Ada
+
+---
+
+:::::{#historyoftarot .has-images}
+
+# An hypothesised and randomly factual History of Tarot Cards
+
+What follows is the story of a deck of cards and of all the more-or-less believable claims that were made about its origin. This brief history was complied following sources that attempted accurate historic recalling instead of the most commonly shared semiotic, occultist story. However, despite all efforts all the found sources told a convoluted story due to the misinterpretation of age, sources and authorship common in any ancient text on magic and mysticism (Dummett, 1993). As such, the following text will recall the disproven stories that were told about the origin of Tarot, some factual sourced material and a modern description of its usage.
+
+When we talk about Tarot cards we are talking about a deck of playing cards composed of ten numeral cards and four court cards(Jack, Knight, Queen and King) for each of the suits, Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins. Alongside these more common cards Tarot includes 22 'trump' cards with allegorical illustrations. The trumps form a sequence, usually numbered from 1 to 21, with the single card of the Fool being separated (Decker, Depaulis & Dummett, 1996).
+
+This specific deck of cards' history begins at the bottom of a well in Norther Italy, in the 1440s, where we place its first appearance in history. From there we can easily find links to the common usage of these cards in Norther Italy, from Milano to Bologna e Ferrara (Steele, 1900). These cards, initially called *Trionfi* and then *Tarocchi* are thought to have been intended to be used for card games, regardless of their occasional usage in future-telling (Dummet, 1993).  This finding helps us trace a factual beginning of Tarot but leaves an open question to how these cards gained their place as the primary tool used in modern occultism and mysticism for cartomancy. 
+
+![Image of the First Tarot Deck](Visconti-Sforza-Tarot.jpg)
+
+While this is where the story began to intricate itself, it can still be seen that the first wide spread future-telling uses appeared in France in the 18th century. 
+
+At this point the history of tarot beings to be influenced by what each fortune teller imagined the history of the cards to be. To fully disclose this I will first attempt to estimate the most notable occultists that used the cards and wrote historical notations about their deviance and then the stories they told about them.
+
+The first encounter we have between Tarot and magical theory and practice happens in the *Monde primitif,* an incredibly long essay about Tarot cards written in 1781 by Antoine Court de Gébelin. With this text, the pastor began what would be the endless repository of arcane esoteric wisdom within Tarot that will follow the cards for generations (Chisholm, 1911). In this text, Gébeling attributed the cards' origin to ancient Egypt, a theory that is to this day shared as truthful. This belief was based on an erroneous link to "The Book of Thoth", an ancient Egyptian text about magic that is believed to have been spread through Europe by Romani people. This belief was then substantiated by a similar essay by the by the comte de Mellet(Decker, ). Promptly, a Parisian fortune teller named Jean-Baptiste Alliette, professionally known as Etteilla, having found these theories, adapted the esoteric view of the cards to his own uses. He switching his own practice from traditional French piquet cartomancy to the use of a self-made Tarot card deck. This deck was based on the previously shared Hermetic ideologies and was named "The Book of Toth"(same).
+
+![Image from Etteilla's Deck](etteilla.jpg)
+
+The next fundamental spin that was given to the cards' background was down by Éliphas Levi, another French esotericist. Levi repudiated Etteilla's theory and integrated a version of the cards that was closer to the original to his own Cabalistic magical system. However historically mistaken was Levi's understanding of the cards' travel from Egypt to Judea into Jewish tradition, it nonetheless revolutionised the cards in ways that live on till today. His Cabalistic theory about signs being letter, letters being absolute ideas and absolute ideas being numbers can be seen in even modern iterations of tarot.
+
+From here on over, Tarot's journey speeds up as the cards leave France and become absorbed into new esoteric movements like Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism and spiritualism (Decker, Depaulis & Dummet, 1996).
+
+Before we make a jump through time to the next biggest relevant development of Tarot, I will share the last of the three false widespread theories about the origin of Tarot, the first two being Egypt and Judaism(despite its influence in modern tarot).
+
+This last theory is harder to trace back to one esoteric influence, but nonetheless claims a Chinese origin to the cards. Most likely, this is due to the similarity with the I Ching, a divination manual from around 1000 BC. The manual was grounded in cleromancy, the production of random numbers to predict divine intention. However, there is no traceable connection between Chinese cleromancy and Tarot divination. Modern analyses of Chinese Tarot divination draw direct correlation between Western occultism and Tarot divination, leaving little room to imagine any direct causation starting from China (Fu, Li, Lee, 2002).
+
+For the purpose of this recalling but unsurprisingly for those familiar, the next big step will bring us to the late19th century in Britain, in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was a secret society devoted to occult Hermetic Kabbalah and one of the largest single influences on Western occultism as a whole (Jenkins, 2000). While the society itself had a wide curriculum, including astrology, alchemy and geomancy(soil divination), our only concern at the moment is with their links to Tarot cards. 
+   
+In 1909, two mystics and members of the Golden Dawn, A.E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith published with the Rider Company a deck of re-made Tarot cards based on the society's magic system. These cards, later known as the Ride-Waite Tarot(Dean, 2015). This deck was based on the Sola Busca deck, with symbolism being taken from Levi's descriptions and Egyptian and Christian symbolism. This deck has become the paradigm and touchstone through which modern occultists think of Tarot. Between the distribution of this deck and the use of the cards in the Golden Dawn, it became axiomatic among followers many traditions of mysticism that the Tarot is an essential component of any occult science.
+
+![Image from the Raider-Waite deck](Rider-Waite_Pents.jpg)
+
+Nowadays, Tarot is emblematic and incredibly wide spread as the most common future-telling method and device. Thousands and thousands of different formats exist, often falling under the category of Oracle cards and as such not having the clear formatting rules of Tarot but still implicating divination and self-reflection through the interpretation of allegorical illustration.
 

web/intro_aglaia/intro_aglaia.md

@@ -0,0 +1,168 @@
+Introduction
+
+The last trimester was an attempt to understand the notions of games and
+rituals. Instead of introduction we will try to unravel this mysterious
+journey as well as keep questioning and collaging.
+
+We mapped the common characteristics and the differences between the
+latter in relation to ideology and counter-hegemony. We practiced,
+performed, annotated rituals that were connected (or not) with our
+cultural backgrounds while we questioned the magic circle. We dived into
+the worlds of text adventure games and clicking games while drinking
+coffee and talked about class, base, superstructure, (counter)hegemony,
+ideology, materialism. We discussed about how games and rituals can
+function as reproductive technologies of the culture industries. We
+annotated games- focusing on the role of ideology and social
+reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of the world and created stories
+with it (modding, fiction, narrative) while focusing on community,
+interaction, relationships, grief and healing.
+
+The eventual product of this process is a console, a magical object, a
+wooden container, a promising healing. How the unpacking of notions of
+games, rituals, ideology, superstructure in relation to the
+witch-hunting can become the midwiferies of a healing box? How practices
+of heal and care can work as counter-hegemonic acts that can cure and
+liberate our souls and bodies from patriarchical and capitalistic
+fetters?
+
+We didn't manage to provide you with comprehensive and solid answers or
+conclusive statements. The truth is that this wasn't our plan. Our
+intention was to create openings for debate or even conflict, to map a
+territory, to invite those who would like to join us.
+
+> *"What if you are playing tetris and the tetris gods give you
+> something apart from the usual seven tetrominoes, like an unexpected
+> pregnancy or the end of capitalism?",(Steven)*
+
+Starting with rituals we can claim that they can be understood as
+instruments in the struggle for the exercise of power. Organized by
+*repetition*, they (re)connect the individual to the collective,
+creating a vision towards a given perception of society. Participation
+in this creative act is determined by several factors, for example, a
+ritual's function, its relationship to hegemonic power, a collective's
+politics and objectives, etc.
+
+> *"Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in
+> conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this
+> ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled,
+> course of things. Ritual relies for its power on the fact that it is
+> concerned with quite ordinary activities, that what it describes and
+> displays is, in principle, possible for every occurrence of these
+> acts. But it relies, as well, for its power on the fact that, in
+> actuality, such possibilities cannot be realized.(Smith,1980)* "
+>
+> *"Ideology talks of actions: I shall talk of actions inserted into
+> practices. And I shall point out that these practices are governed by
+> rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material
+> existence of an ideological apparatus(\...)Ideas have disappeared as
+> such to the precise extend that it has emerged that their existence is
+> inscribed in the actions of practices governed by rituals defined in
+> the last instance by an ideological apparatus",(Althusser,1970)*
+
+Similarly, videogames create worlds. Often, those worlds mirror our own,
+reproducing certain ideals and values as norms through their narrative,
+game play, design. This trimester we explored world-building
+characteristics found both in rituals and videogames. We critically
+considered those worlds, identifying the key points and elements through
+which specific videogames and rituals circulate political, cultural and
+social values. While this world-building might be interpreted from an
+angle of implicit and explicit bias rooted in hegemonic values, we
+investigated the generative, creative possibilities of such
+characteristics.
+
+> *"The main task of mass culture is to create, reproduce, and manage
+> particular kinds of subjects --- workers, consumers, individuals,
+> citizens ---required for current conditions. To perpetuate their own
+> existence, mass media must succeed at representing the violent
+> coercion of capitalist systems as natural laws: Of course you have to
+> pay rent to live inside; of course you have to buy food to eat; of
+> course you have to work if you want to survive. The production of a
+> fungible, disposable and migratory working class requires the
+> alienation and atomization of communities into individuals, which
+> involves destroying the village, kinship structures, indigeneity, and
+> many other previous forms of meaning-producing structures, leaving a
+> gap which ideology must fill. While the fundamental structures of
+> domination --- racism, patriarchy, heterosexuality, etc. --- form the
+> bedrock of this ideological apparatus, the complexity of the always
+> expanding and changing capitalist system requires an equally flexible
+> set of subsidiary tools capable of rapidly adjusting ideology en
+> masse. In general, media emerge not to meet the demands or desires of
+> individual users but to accommodate what the predominant mode of
+> production requires.",(Osterweil,2018)*
+
+Our intention was to look into rituals and their overlap with video
+games as a way to explore \"forbidden\" or otherwise lost knowledge
+erased by oppressive systems (e.g. witch hunts). Understanding games and
+rituals as gateways to alternative ways of relating to Nature, each
+other and (re)production of life, labour, etc, we played together by
+writing fan fiction and spells, developing rituals, analysing and
+creating games together.
+
+> "S*ims as just social reproduction: some values are certainly given by
+> the game (make money to buy nicer things, progress in your career by
+> doing tasks that improve your skill, charisma is a skill but not
+> kindness) , but also ideology is put into the game by the player. The
+> player chooses what to reproduce and often share in the \"gallery\" or
+> on social media. Community being so important in this game then means
+> that the crux of the social reproduction is happening when the choices
+> you have made in the game are broadcasted. Did you create a
+> heteronormative white thin nuclear family that made a lot of money? or
+> did you choose to play differently?",(Ada)*
+>
+> *"The Communist Party of Second Life (CPSL) aims to be a Marxist,
+> internationalist and revolutionary organization for all communists in
+> Second Life. The CPSL aims to spread understanding of Marxism among SL
+> citizens, to organise support in SL for the class struggle in RL,
+> including all struggles of the working class against imperialism and
+> the bourgeoisie, its state and wars.",(Lydia)*
+>
+> *"The act of the modder's appropriation of the pre-existing game is
+> also similar to Michel de Certeau's cultural 'poaching'.De Certeau's
+> everyday bricolors make do with remixing the privatized spaces and
+> products of consumer society that they find themselves inhabiting and
+> using. Rather than being passive consumers, ordinary people invent
+> varied subversive tactics for stealing back the given of everyday
+> life. De Certeau writes, 'Everyday life invents itself by poaching in
+> countless ways on the property of others'."(Schleiner,2017)*
+
+Meanwhile, we went through the witch as a magical practicioner, as a
+resisting body, a border figure. *"Federici presents the witch "as the
+embodiment of a world of female subjects that capitalism had to destroy:
+the heretic, the healer, the disobedient wife, the woman who dared to
+live alone, the obeha woman who poisoned the master's food and inspired
+the slaves to revolt." Behind the witch hunt, she uncovers a joint effort
+by the Church and the state to establish mechanisms of gendered control
+of bodies that immanently resisted newly instituted regimes of
+productive and reproductive work"(Timofeeva,2019).*
+
+*"Sorcerers have always held the anomalous position, at the edge
+of the fields or woods. They haunt the fringes. They are at the
+borderline of the village, or between villages. But sorcerers not only
+exist at the border: as anomalous beings, they are the border itself. In
+other words, the borderline passes through their bodies.",(Deleuze, Guattari,1980)*
+
+How the understanding of the witchs' hunting that happened a few
+centuries ago in relation with the figure of the witch as marginal,
+rebellion entity can shed light on the contemporary witch-hunting. How
+this knowledge can provide us with tools of empowerment, emancipation,
+resistance and make us reimagine counter-hegemonic practices of
+collective care and healing?
+
+Console is an oracle; an emotional first aid kit that helps you help
+yourself.
+
+Console invites you to: open the box and discover ways of healing;
+
+Console provides shelter for your dreams, memories and worries.
+
+Face the past and encounter your fortune.
+
+Console gives you a new vantage point; a set of rituals and practices
+that help you cope and care(of yourself and of the others)
+
+Console asks everyday questions that give magical answers.
+
+Console invites you to self reflect, explore your subconscious, spin the
+wheel of fortune (and pick a card), explore what is possible beyond what
+is obvious, guide you into\... \[the future and past\], creates stories
+...

web/oracle/interpretationtext.md

@@ -1,10 +1,19 @@
-*He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream.*
+---
+title: Oracolotto
+author: Ada
+
+---
+
+:::::
+
+*They who dream of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; they who dream of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While they are dreaming they do not know it is a dream, and in their dream they may even try to interpret a dream. Only after they wake do they know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream.*
 
 *And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too.*
 
 **Zhuàngzi**
+**莊子**
 
-### ✧ Preface
+# ✧ Preface
 
 Have you ever woken up feeling like there is a word, at the tip of your tongue, in a language you don't quite understand?
 
@@ -27,6 +36,10 @@ There is a possibility, that you have read thus far because you wish to remember
 
 You may also choose your own path, disregard what I said and make your own game, read old or future dreams or even play the lottery. The tools are now in your hands.
 
+:::::
+
+:::::{.hide-on-web}
+
 ### ✧ How to care for the Oracolotto
 You may have been told that objects do not have spirit and have believed it. If you have, I suggest you tuck the inner skeptic into bed and let the curious child out to play for the following sections. You see, the Oracolotto, like any Tarot or Oracle, does not believe itself to be an objects. In fact, it thinks that no object is just a thing, but most exist in the spiritual plane as well. As such, all objects have a soul, a spirit that connects to yours.
 
@@ -399,10 +412,4 @@ The Good Wine may not be drunk yet, completion is not within reach yet. The end
 **✳** tarot correspondence: 20. the world.
 
 **✳** zodiac correspondence: all signs.
-
-Bibliography
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
--   Paola De Sanctis Ricciardone, *Il tipografo celeste. Il gioco del lotto tra letteratura e demologia nell'Italia dell'Ottocento e oltre*, Bari, Dedalo, 1987. ISBN 88-220-6066-0
--   Michele Zezza, *La smorfia ossia Il nuovo metodo per perdere denaro, e cervello con maggior sicurezza al gioco del lotto*, Napoli, Torchi della Società filomatica, 1835.
--   莊子*,* 齊物論*, 12. Zhuàngzi, "Discussion on making all things equal," 12. from Zhuàngzi, Burton Watson trans., Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 43. ISBN 978-0-231-10595-8 [1]*
+:::::

web/pacifist-fortnite/index.md

@@ -7,11 +7,11 @@ author: Stephen
 :::::{#fortnite .has-images}
 # Sometimes the world as it is and the world as it could be are devastatingly close to each other.
 
-Is there any point in imagining something that is so similar to the nightmare we already live in? The future is a dream but it's just that dream where you remember putting your keys somewhere but where, and you're wandering around looking for them for what feels like hours. Was it real or not isnt important you were still there. Why are we staying here, what's even here for us? If you don't get them, they'll get you first. Then you wake up and you still can't find the fucking keys. But sometimes it's sunny and you're standing there and there's something cinematic about the whole thing, is it worth it just to be there for that maybe. There's really no difference between a dream about falling and a dream about flying. 
+Is there any point in imagining something that is so similar to the nightmare we already live in? The future is a dream but it's just that dream where you remember putting your keys somewhere, but where? You're wandering around looking for them for what feels like hours. Whether it was real or not isn't important, you were still there. Why do we stay here? What's even here for us? If you don't get them first, they'll get you. Then you wake up and you still can't find the fucking keys. But sometimes it's sunny and you're standing there and there's something cinematic about the whole thing, is it worth it just to be there for that maybe. There's really no difference between a dream about falling and a dream about flying. 
 
 :::::
 :::::{.hide-on-web}
-You search the entire planet, all seven planets, drinking every last drop, and still no fucking keys. You're just watching the whole thing anyway so enjoy it I guess. If you get the rifle you can use the scope on it to see things in the distance, but then again maybe you don't need to see that far. The start is always the best part. Maybe I left them in the bathroom for some reason? Can I help them, even one of them? They are all so busy killing each other I don't think they can hear. The forests are beautiful here. One time I sat down with some of the bots and really got to know them. Until the players arrive they just sit there together, chatting. They're really nice actually. And then a player ran up beside us, saw that we weren't trying to hurt them, and left. Maybe they were helped, or changed somehow.
+You search the entire planet, all seven planets, drinking every last drop, and still no fucking keys. You're just watching the whole thing anyway so enjoy it, I guess. If you get the rifle you can use the scope on it to see things in the distance, but then again, maybe you don't need to see that far. The start is always the best part. Maybe I left them in the bathroom? Can I help them, even one of them? They are all so busy killing each other I don't think they can hear. The forests are beautiful here. One time I sat down with some of the bots and really got to know them. Until the players arrive they just sit there together, chatting. They're really nice actually. And then a player ran up beside us, saw that we weren't trying to hurt them, and left. Maybe they were helped, or changed somehow.
 
 The only reason I'm still here is because you're still here. 
 

web/papa-louie/index.md

@@ -48,5 +48,6 @@ To cope with grief, Papa Louie performs various rituals to unlock a new stage in
 And so our story goes like this: 
     The Onion ring mafia kidnapped Papà Louie's clients, and he lost his Pizzeria. However, along with this external change, he lost his identity as a pizza owner/maker. He is full of grief and seeks ways to cope with grief and ease himself. He tries different rituals throughout this process, builds his new identity and overcomes his troubles.
 
-![The Storyboard](papa-louie-story)
+![The Storyboard](papa-louie-story.jpg)
 :::::
+