This article examines tarot divination's roles in storytelling and sociocultural contexts for young women, suggesting multifunctional uses.
How should we grapple with the recent upsurge of online tarot divinatory practices among women in contemporary China? In this article, I conceptualize tarot divination as an art of storytelling that oscillates between truth-telling and imagination. On the one hand, a divinatory narrative can be truth-telling, functioning as a form of experience-sharing, emerging from and reflecting the sociocultural contexts of young Chinese women’s lives. On the other hand, it can be understood as a creative invention, envisioning future possibilities through intricate plots and symbolic interpretations. Moving beyond the conventional framework of auspiciousness versus inauspiciousness, I argue that tarot divinatory stories are multifunctional. By examining how they shift between reality and invention, and past and future, this article highlights the ways in which young Chinese women engage with online tarot divination as a distinctive form of care, self-reflection, and meaning-making.
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Ziqing Zhuang (2025) studied this question.
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