bat yin yang symbol bat
THE END
of
 TAOISM
AS WE KNOW IT

 The End of Taoism as We Know It
 By Sifu Jai

It is a well known and common practice in religious Taoism to perform divination or fortune telling rituals.
There are several methods but probably the most common practice is to go to a particular temple enshrining a partucular deity.
Proper procedure would ensue such as the lighting of candles and incense, the offering of fruit and vegetarian food, etc.
In some cases an incantation will be recited to invoke the god along with bowing and kneeling.
On the alter there will be a bamboo jar-like vessel typically containing 60,64, 96, 100 or 108 divination sticks。

 (fig. 1)
求籤筒
 Then, while on thier knees they will begin to shake the vessel.
Slowly one of the sticks will start rise up until it comes out of the vessel and lands on the ground.
Then, the worshiper will grab the wooden double crescent moons.

聖杯
 (fig. 2)
 聖杯
 They will be used to check that the stick that came out of the vessel contains the correct answer.
While kneeling, the worshiper will hold the crescent moons in between
her prayer hands and then toss them on to the ground.
There are three possible results.
Yin/Yin which means no,
Yang/Yang which also means no
and Yin/Yang which means yes.
Yes in this case meaning that the stick that came out is the right one with the correct divination.
This is a simple process and can be done be any of the faithful.

I'm reading the (daily) Sun out of Malayasia and I come across and article about the
Tian Hou Gong Taoist temple in Johor with the headline:

 JOHOR TEMPLE UNVIELS WORLD’S FIRST EVER FORTUNE-TELLING
‘A.I. MAZU’
FOR WORSHIPPERS TO SEEK GUIDANCE

 It's literally an AI-powered Mazu on a screen helping you interpret your divination sticks in real time.
consulting A.I. Majou
(fig. 3)
Here a worshiper is seen viewing the A.I. powered digital Mazu on the right
and then using the touch screen to request a divination on the left.

Most of us already know the serious implications of AI on society as a whole,
but now to enter the spiritual is not only wreckless,
it's also blasphemous because there can be nothing spiritual that is generated by a computer.
Any interpretation of divination sticks can only be purely random and
if not random it still cannot be anything that has any connection with Mazu or any other spiritual entity.
This concept of spiritual connection between us earth bound humans and
the above has everything to do with the notion of consecration.
For example, you will note that in figure 1 the tips of the divination sticks are red.
That's because the sticks are no longer ordinary sticks.
They have been consecrated and they are now divine sticks.
For another example, an exquisit statue of Mazu can be made out of iron, bronze or gold,
but ulitmately, until and unless it is consecrated, it just as well be lump of unsculpted metal.
In the case of doing rituals without a statue but just with an urn, the urn must be consecrated.
If not, when incense is lit, any spirit or ghost may be be unintentionally invoked.
Programs, apps and/or A.I. can never be connected to the above and
those hunks of metal known as computers and the images they produce on screen cannot be consecrated.
The accuracy of the divinations produced by the
A.I. Mazu are just as good as ones you would get from Zoltar, the fortune-telling machine (in the movie "Big").
Save yourself a trip to Johor, Malaysia and just go to Playland in Rye New York.

The final word is:
No one should use any A.I. generated answers for divination purposes
no one should us any A.I. programs for anything spiritual whatsoever
as it doesn't apply just like an EEG machine doesn't apply to computers.