Spirituality at Scale: A Large-Sample Study of Tarot Readings

• In Event: 50668 - Religion and the Therapeutic

Abstract

Research on religious disaffiliation and spirituality in the United States raises questions about the meaningful practices people substitute for conventional engagement with religious institutions. One such practice is Tarot. While previous research on Tarot has relied on participant observation methods, Tarot exhibits rising popularity among younger cohorts and widespread social media engagement – raising the challenge of studying “spirituality at scale” in digital spaces. How are people engaging with Tarot practice via social media, and what can the sociology of culture and religion learn from emergent patterns in digital spirituality? We conducted an inductive study of a large, random sample of Tarot readings (n=500) publicly available on YouTube to offer two contributions. Substantively, we show that popular contemporary Tarot readings share specific, generalizable patterns in discourse focused on therapeutic self-reflection – extending research on late modern religion and spirituality. Methodologically, we validate and provide a novel roadmap for researchers to effectively use locally hosted Large Language Models (LLMs) to accelerate open coding processes with researcher oversight in line with the expectations of grounded and abductive theory.

Authors

• Evan Stewart, University of Massachusetts-Boston

• Cam Marsinelli, University of Massachusetts-Boston