Crafting Characters with Tarot Archetypes and AI's Precision
Yes you can combine tarot and AI, and let's discuss how you can do that.
Before I get into this, I want to acknowledge that many people may disagree that blending AI with tarot is natural.
But I am not here to discuss anything "natural." This is all about being creative and thinking outside the box.
I blocked someone here because they began to harass me after they clearly disagreed with me on this topic.
That is fine to disagree, but when it turns into harassment, it is not tolerated. Anyway, I digress. Now, let's get into this!
Character creation is both an art and a science. For centuries, writers have used archetypes to create personalities that resonate with readers.
Tarot cards, smothered in symbolism and timeless archetypes, have long inspired storytellers.
In recent years, AI has emerged as a powerful tool for refining and personalizing character development.
As previously mentioned, many people hate this idea, but let's face it.
AI is the future, and the best thing you can do is embrace it without it doing all of the work for you.
Therefore, you absolutely can blend it with tarot for creative uses. And I will tell you now how you can do that.
The combination of tarot and AI insinuates a peculiar synergy of creativity and precision for bringing characters into reality.
Understanding Tarot Archetypes
Tarot cards are more than a divination tool as I have said many times; they are a repository of human experiences, emotions, and roles.
The 78 tarot deck cards are divided into the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana.
The Major Arcana contains 22 cards, each representing significant life themes, such as The Fool (new beginnings), The Empress (nurturing and creativity), and The Tower (sudden upheaval).
These cards embody universal archetypes that reflect the human journey.
Besides, the Minor Arcana are divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles, discussing day-to-day experiences and subtle emotions.
Each suit is assigned to an element: fire for Wands, water for Cups, air for Swords, and earth for Pentacles.
The cards within each suit represent specific challenges, victories, and character traits.
Tarot archetypes can be used as a framework for understanding their characters' motivations, conflict, and growth during the development of said characters.
For example:
The Fool: An innocent dreamer embarks on a new journey. He can be reckless, but he is full of promise.
The High Priestess: A mystical figure, led by intuition and secret knowledge, often takes the mentor or mystic role.
The Five of Cups: A figure weighed down by loss and regret but at an edge where, with a change in perspective, he might just find hope.
The Role of AI in Character Creation
Artificial intelligence has turned writing on its head by offering tools that can analyze data, generate ideas, and give insights into a topic with uncanny precision.
With AI, writers are able to:
Generate Character Profiles: By inputting prompts about a character's background, goals, and personality, AI tools can create detailed character sketches.
Refine Dialogue: AI will also suggest natural, context-appropriate dialogue that fits the personality and tone of the character.
What If" Scenarios: Let the AI run the characters through various situations to explore how they would react, keeping in mind the cohesiveness and consistency of their personalities.
Analyzing Archetypes: AI can single out repetitive concepts or archetypes from classic stories to help a writer understand how to innovate or allude to age-old tropes.
Marrying Tarot and AI
The magic happens when tarot archetypes meet up with the power of AI analysis. Here's how you can combine them to create unforgettable characters:
1. Start with a Tarot Spread
Draw tarot cards to determine the outline of your character. For this, a simple three-card spread will do:
Card 1: Who are they now? This card shows their current state or main traits.
Card 2: What do they want? This card shows their goals, dreams, or inner conflicts.
Card 3: What stands in their way? This card reveals challenges or enemies.
For instance, if you draw The Hermit, The Star, and The Devil, your character might be a thoughtful loner who feels hopeless and uninspired yet is captive to addiction or other self-destructive behaviors.
2. Feed the Insights into an AI Tool
Now, take that archetypal information from your tarot spread and enter it into an AI writing assistant like ChatGPT. You might feed something like this into the AI:
Hermit-a loner scholar-dreams of inventing something that will change the world but suffers from self-doubt and addiction, the Devil.
From here, the AI can develop an in-depth character profile that outlines how they look, where they come from, and any peculiar traits in their behavior.
3. Develop Unique Interactions
Use AI to have your character interact with others in such a way.
For example, suppose your Hermit-like character finds someone who is much like The Emperor- a figure of authority and structure.
In that case, AI can determine how the dialogue or plot scenarios might go from their opposite dynamics.
4. Refine with Tarot Themes
As the story goes along, continue to draw cards for character development.
For instance, a person who finally overcomes the grasp of The Devil may draw Strength to show new-found courage and resilience within themselves.
Let the AI describe how it is evident in action and thought.
Case Study: A Character Born from Tarot and AI
Imagine you are to create the character of a protagonist in a fantasy novel. You drew three tarot cards, say: The Fool, The Queen of Wands, and The Tower.
Here's how this character will take shape:
The Fool: Your character is a young, adventurous spirit ready to leave village life.
The Queen of Wands: He meets his mentor, charming, who triggers creativity in the young man and allows him to awaken the fire within his determination.
The Tower: A disastrous occurrence- perhaps the mentor's betrayal or some sort of natural disaster- prompting the character to rethink their purpose.
After filling these characteristics in an AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT (I personally like ChatGPT better than Claude, but that is me), you're given a character profile:
Name: Sarah Duskwood
History: Sarah grew up in a sleepy farming village with dreams of seeing the outside world beyond that forest.
Personality: Optimistic and a tad impulsive, Sarah is usually good at massing people to her cause but stumbles upon inner self-doubt after falls.
Conflict: Sarah must confront her idealism against hard, cold realities of betrayal and ruin.
Further down, the AI furthers this with subplots, such as Sarah finding she has concealed magical abilities relating to her mentor's betrayal.
These can be further fleshed out with more tarot pulls, further deepening the complexity of the character.
The Benefits of Merging Tarot with AI
The combination brings together the intuitive, symbolic richness of tarot and the structured, data-driven precision of AI. This will give you:
Depth: The tarot will help in keeping your characters multilayered with emotions and psychological backgrounds.
Clarity: AI interprets abstract archetypes into tangible details without falling into clichés.
Efficiency: AI speeds up the brainstorming process to let you actually tell stories.
Inspiration: Tarot adds unexpected twists, keeping the juices flowing.
Tips to Success
Leave open to interpretation: Tarot cards are a tool for sparking your imagination and should never be prescriptive. Trust your instincts on how to adapt their meanings.
Use AI as a collaborator, not a replacement: While AI can enhance your creativity, your unique perspective gives characters soul.
Experiment with spreads and prompts: Try different tarot spreads and tweak your AI prompts to uncover new dimensions of your characters.
Go Deep: Both tarot and AI are deep. The deeper you understand their capabilities, the more powerful a storyteller you become.
Crafting characters with tarot archetypes and AI’s precision is a game-changing approach for modern storytellers.
Tarot provides the heart and soul, while AI offers the structure and polish.
Together, they empower writers to create characters that are not only memorable but also deeply human.
So, shuffle your deck, fire up your AI tool, and let the magic begin!
Subscribe also to my YouTube channel, https://youtube.com/@CreativeTarotInsights and also, don’t forget to listen to The Tarot Table podcast and subscribe.
Again, perspective, depth and intelligence [yours, not the ‘artificial’ kind 😂].
AI left the gate and won’t be returning. Issues will arise and society will grapple with them as they do. That is not new.
AI is in infancy; or maybe, it is a zygote. Sooner, not later, AI, VR and will meet quantum mechanics. The application of it to computing will effect an unimaginable leap.
At my age [think 70s], I can only speculate. But my two week old grandson will never recall a day when this stuff, wasn’t.’
HOW AI is used with The Tarot will matter. It is one thing to feed a program a few cards and get an artificial [if polished] reply. It is another matter to use AI intelligently to extend one’s practice with the cards.
A while ago, I tasked an AI program to generate a spread for a monthly draw. My intention was to develop a new, hermeneutic [interpretative] strategy every four weeks.
In the course of a year, one can develop a formidable store of tools for one’s practice with such a plan. This is something AI won’t offer unless asked and given appropriate ’coaching’ so it conceives the task correctly.
The other day, I tasked an AI program to develop a Tarot deck Marseille reading strategy based on a fusion of the principles and practices of both the Open Reading [Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov] and Concept blending.
The program repeatedly put both systems side-by-side [in parallel] — like a half dozen times. Fruitless and frustrating! Finally, I gave an example on the order of …
Mentally merge insights from multiple cards, allowing intuitive connections to explore how themes interact to create new meaning from innovative insights.
It worked as I wanted. So I now have a robust, multiple-step reading strategy fusing two powerful systems, for a specific deck.
But again, without a grasp of the concepts, without knowing what to ask, and without knowing how to instruct the program — what would you have?
At this point at least, one’s grasp of Tarot mechanics [or anything else] will make all the difference for what one is or is not able to do with AI. And as the technology becomes more prevalent, people will see that difference with increasing clarity.
Again, a fine post. Don’t let the critics get you down. Thanks for the work.
This is so innovative and a really exciting way of thinking outside the box. Have you looked into similar creative experiments with AI and Alchemy/Mysticism?