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New Tech for Occultists?
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
Arlington, VA

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Wednesday, 23rd June, 2010 - 10:30 am
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Any interesting new tech appearing on the horizon that looks promising for technomagic?

I'm really enjoying my iPad, and I do have a few magical programs loaded on it (Runes, Tarot, some other stuff) but so far I haven't really done a lot with it in a magical context besides store a gigantic occult library on it in pdf format. wink  It does still feel like it has great potential for such use, though.

What else is out there on the cutting edge of magical tech?

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Arethinn
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Wednesday, 23rd June, 2010 - 3:21 pm
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Cel has “Beautiful Tarot” I think the app is called on his iPad, but I don’t think he’s really gotten into using it. I don’t think he’s enough into runes to want a rune app. What’s “some other stuff”?

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
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Wednesday, 23rd June, 2010 - 8:14 pm
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I don't have Beautiful Tarot, but I do have the FairyTale Tarot (which is awesome) and Tarot HD (which has a nicer interface).  The Rune App (just in case anyone else non-Cel wants it) is The Runes: A Human Journey.  I think it's one of the best rune apps available.

 

“Some other stuff” is mostly non-magical apps that I've adapted for magical purposes (or can, should the need arise).  I've got iEphemera Lite to help me track the phases of the moon.  Drawing apps that let me draw on top of a picture for workings directed towards a particular target using sigil-magic or reiki symbols (there are lots of these, I have several).  Scrolling-marquee type apps for mantra repetition.  (My favorite is one called BBoard).  Bookman to hold all of my magical PDFs in a nice little library format.  iRelax (ambient sounds) for meditation.  iTunes or Pandora for musically or vocally-based version of the same.  Possibly some others could be adapted to magical purposes too.  The Google Maps app would probably be decent for dowsing.

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Arethinn
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Thursday, 24th June, 2010 - 4:35 pm
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:

I’ve got iEphemera Lite to help me track the phases of the moon.

I just keep all that in my head, heh. Cel has this awesome astronomy app (I forget the name, and he’s not online right now) that uses the iPad’s location info to show you the sky as it is over your head right now, and is sensitive to what direction you’re facing. It’s like an electronic planisphere.

Drawing apps that let me draw on top of a picture for workings directed towards a particular target using sigil-magic or reiki symbols

That’s a neat idea.

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
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Friday, 25th June, 2010 - 10:31 am
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Arethinn said:

I just keep all that in my head, heh. Cel has this awesome astronomy app (I forget the name, and he's not online right now) that uses the iPad's location info to show you the sky as it is over your head right now, and is sensitive to what direction you're facing. It's like an electronic planisphere.

Heh, I've tried keeping it all in my head and I never seem to be able to.  Too many holes, I guess. wink

I've seen the planisphere apps, and I have to be honest, I don't fully understand their purpose… are they just maps so that you can find particular constellations while stargazing, or what?

That's a neat idea.

*grins* Thanks. 🙂

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technobushi

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They're good for stargazing, and calibrating your telescope properly.  I suspect they would work well for astrologers too, those who engage in that sort of thing (I don't personally believe in the validity of astrology myself, but that is probably a separate discussion there).

It is your own planetarium in your pocket, and I thoroughly approve.

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Arethinn
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:

I've seen the planisphere apps, and I have to be honest, I don't fully understand their purpose… are they just maps so that you can find particular constellations while stargazing, or what?

Well, yes! That’s exactly the point: it’s a map of the sky (including planets in the case of the app). Even as much as I love astronomy, I still can’t reliably recognize every constellation or named star (I know very few named stars actually, and more winter constellations than summer), so a map is helpful.

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The Doctor
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:

Any interesting new tech appearing on the horizon that looks promising for technomagic?

The Amazon cloud.

XML-RPC APIs.

Shortwave radio works pretty well for certain things. Modems do, too, but it is becoming difficult to find landlines these days (at least where we live).

UDP is always fun. ICMP less so due to its restricted payload. SIP has potential but we have no access to a SIP proxy anymore.

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O. Scribner

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Wednesday, 3rd October, 2012 - 9:54 am
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(I hope it’s socially acceptable netiquette on this forum to revive old threads. I assume that it is, because this forum has a relatively low volume of posts, and because I think I saw a thread where Jarin did the same. I’m pretty sure it makes more sense to reply to the only thread in this sub-forum instead of making a new thread on the same subject.)

I’ve spent a long time on AppShopper picking out apps for my iPad. (AppShopper has better search tools than the App Store.) Here are the relatively magical or spiritual ones that I use. Or, at least, that I found and expect that I might use. 

  • Universal breathing: Pranayama free, sold by Saagara. It uses sounds and diagrams to tell the user when and how to inhale and exhale, so your breathing exercises don’t fall out of rhythm, but keep a steady tempo. It’s sort of like using a metronome. I’ve used this before yoga, singing, and exams, and it makes a noticeable difference.
  • The philosopher’s garden: Tree of life, sold by ServiceMedia. An interactive, immersive game for learning about the Kabbalah. It’s very pretty, I wish there were more educational programs set up like this. I don’t get a *feeling* about the Kabbalah like it’s WHOA TRUTH. But I figure I should learn about it anyway, because it will help my understanding of a lot of occult and cultural concepts, particularly the Tarot.
  • LS Epic Tarot for iPad, by Lo Scarabeo. I spent ages trying to find the perfect Tarot app. You have a logbook of all readings, ability to take notes on whole readings or individual cards, ability to write your own meanings for the cards, reversals, several spreads, and a variety of actual Lo Scarabeo-published decks to choose from. (Unfortunately, the app doesn’t include my favorite Lo Scarabeo deck, Egypt Urnash’s Silicon Dawn. I have a hard copy of it. Even though the digital version would be missing spot-gloss features, I’d feel safer about using the app for travel. The nice thing about Tarot apps is that cards never get lost or bent. Oh, and you don’t need Internet access, like you would to use the Tarot reading features on Aeclectic.net, Tarot.com, or Llewellyn.) Its flaws are that its default card meanings all assume that you’re asking about romance, and it doesn’t give different card meanings depending on card positions as Tarot.com does. Don’t any other Tarot apps or programs offer the latter feature? Anyone here know?
  • TarotPac HD Free, by Tobytek. I used this one for a lwhile before spending the money on the above.
  • Alethiometer, by Nimble Phonics. A simulation of the divination device in Pullman’s series of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials. It has a lot of advantages over other divination systems: you have to think more about the formation of your question because you have to deliberately choose three symbols to describe it, and you can get the same symbol several times in a reading, emphasizing its importance.
  • Psycards, by Keith Chan. Kind of a novel little oracle deck. I don’t think I’ve seen hard copies of this.

There are a few topics where I expect to find the perfect app answer, but I haven’t found them yet. I’ve tried a few I Ching apps, but I haven’t found any that do all the things that I would hope for it to do. Any recommendations? Any recommendations for yoga apps, too?

I’ve found less spiritual, magical, or occult software for the PC, since I’m more cautious about installing things on there, where weird software could do more damage.

  • Journey to the Wild Divine. Biofeedback hardware and software. (I stumbled across it second-hand, for a tiny fraction of the cost.) The software immerses the user in a Myst-like glamorous landscape, where you travel around, solve simple puzzles, follow along with guided meditations and thought experiments, listen to short lectures, and get past obstacles where you use the included biofeedback hardware as the controller. Overall, it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the software refuses to install on Windows XP or 7, even in Compatibility Mode (Windows’s built-in emulator of earlier Windows operating systems).
  • Astrolog. I can’t make heads or tails of this program, since I don’t know astrology, but apparently it’s good.
  • A different software simulation of the Alethiometer than the one for the iPad. This one was freeware that was available on the official site for a while. I had to dig through Archive.org for ages before I finally found a copy of the program that works.

I’ve also uninstalled nearly everything from this PC to try to troubleshoot it recently, so… I don’t get to list some of the other programs. I don’t even remember what they were. I think I had some very limited divination programs for DOSbox.

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Arethinn
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Wednesday, 3rd October, 2012 - 1:22 pm
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(wow, this board has been around for more than two years already? O.o)

The planetarium app I mentioned above is GoSkyWatch. It’s also proved itself useful just as a compass.

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
Arlington, VA

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Thursday, 4th October, 2012 - 1:35 pm
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No problem whatsoever resurrecting old threads, if you have something to add to them. :) With the exception of introductions, which can get unwieldy clumped into one thread, keeping all discussion of a particular subject in a single thread will help future visitors find it all. :)

Nice suggestions, btw. I’ll have to check them out, and write up a list of the aps I’m currently using later tonight.

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
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Friday, 5th October, 2012 - 11:58 am
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Ok, magical aps –

I still use a lot of drawing apps for magical work, moreso of late since I’ve been doing some work with sacred geometry in connection with the Orgone Crystal Matrix, and also with sigilization in various forms.  It’s convenient to be able to set up an image of an appropriate magic square or of the rose cross grid design as a background and then draw the sigil over that based on the letters of its name, then simply remove the background layer and be left with your final sigil.  And then to be able to add a different image – say a photograph – as a background to begin affecting a chosen target with that sigil.

Divination: Runes: A Human Journey.  Can’t recommend this one highly enough, it is the best rune app I’ve seen.  Also Fairy Tale Tarot is quite good.  I have a large set of other free rune and tarot programs, but those two are my favorites (and the only two I spent money on).  Fairy Tale doesn’t give you different meanings for the cards based on position, but if you click on the info button while viewing the entire spread it lists what each position means and then gives you the meaning of the card next to a short description of each position.  Honestly I wouldn’t want a tarot program to give an entirely different meaning based on the card’s position, that’s a level of interpretation that I think requires human intelligence and sensitivity.

I’ve got Psycards too.  Not especially impressed, honestly.  Cards like the fool are taken blatantly from Tarot, and it seems in many respects a dumbed down tarot with much of the occult symbolism that makes tarot meaningful stripped away.

Transform Your Life: A Year of Awareness Practice.  Honestly not sure about this one yet, picked it up on a whim and haven’t done much with it yet.

iBooks and Bookman – so useful to be able to carry your occult library with you, I can’t even begin to recommend these apps highly enough.  Which you pick is, at this point, mainly dependent on personal preference.  I think iBooks is a more solid program overall, but Bookman’s ability to add new books wirelessly via ftp is handy.

Those are the big ones in my collection at the moment.  Though it’s been a while since I trawled the app store for new metaphysical apps…

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
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Sunday, 7th October, 2012 - 11:11 pm
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Not explicitly a metaphysical app, but I’ve found one drawing/geometry app extremely useful for metaphysical purposes in the past few days.  The interface takes a bit of getting used to, and some aspects of it are clunky, but for at least roughing out ideas on the iPad rather than on paper it’s awesome.  It’s called Geometry Pad, and is free.  There’s also a paid version but I haven’t tried that out.  Here’s a sample of what you can create with it:

Image Enlarger

I could have removed the small hatchmarks from the sides of the inner triangles but was lazy.  So far I haven’t found a way to keep the points on the circles from showing up.  So not perfect.  But as a tool for rapid prototyping of a new esoteric design based in sacred geometry it’s the best I’ve found for the iPad so far – at least, among the free apps.

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