Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Mapophilia or Cartomancy?

For some reason, an ad popped up on my screen for a psychic reading, and I decided to look at it, because really?  I mean, if those people really are psychic, and they put that message on my screen, well, it's kind of a message within a message, if you follow.

At any rate, the particular psychic offers the service of "cartomancy", which I assumed was another word for a romance with maps.  Which made me think they really are psychic, because how else would they know about my thing for maps?  This seems perfect, I thought to myself, but now I'm thinking it to you, because I began to envision me with my vasculum and my thing for maps, getting guidance for the future.  As if a metaphorical candle dropped onto my computer screen.

Alas, it's not that at all, but rather, using cards to predict the future.  From Wikipdia:
Cartomancy has also been criticized for not providing a proposed physical mechanism by which cards could be used to predict one's future. Additionally, there have been no tests to date that show that cartomancy does any better than chance in either predicting the future or determining traits about individuals, despite large incentives to cartomancers who can show a successful test
 I hate to confess how much time I've spent on this, but the point is, I think I have way too much time on my hands.  I also think I need a service dog.

2 comments:

  1. See, there, I'm learning something new from you AGAIN - cartomancy. Although I think I already knew what Wikipedia would say about it :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, I think Wikipedia is a better source than this blog! But thanks for reading anyway.

    ReplyDelete

I'm excited to report that the author Celeste Ng has selected m y modern love essay to read for the Modern Love podcast next week. Suc...