Pick a Card, Press “Play”: Understanding Digital Divination through Tarot Readings on YouTube

The paper seeks to explore the practice of digital divination by focusing on tarot card readings on YouTube. Drawing on Cicero and Tedlock’s classification of divination, it situates this divinatory practice as a hybrid comprising both mechanical and intuitive means of knowing. Through a qualitative content analysis of three English-speaking tarot readers and their videos, the paper examines the mechanisms through which tarot card readers conduct these mass readings. They use mechanisms such as symbolic interpretation, channeling, and intuition to interpret the cards. Further, feminization and commercialization of digital divination are explored. The viewers’ reception, whether affirming, skeptical, or humorous, is captured through their comments to understand the participatory nature of the practice. The audience’s intuition, alongside that of the readers, is examined as a key element in the divinatory process. Further, videos criticizing these tarot card readings, particularly from a Christian theological stance, are considered.