A tool for designing secular divination systems. The oracle output is a mirror, not a window: it doesn't reveal the unknown — it surfaces what you already know.
Every oracle system — from I Ching to Magic 8-Ball — works the same way psychologically: it gives your existing knowledge a surface to land on. Your reaction to the result — relief, disappointment, resistance — is the decision you've already made.
Two moments of truth
Click a context to highlight matching systems in the landscape below.
Goal: Break decision paralysis. Get a "push" toward what you already intuit but haven't committed to.
Mechanism: Your emotional reaction to the result is your answer. Disappointment = you wanted the other option. Relief = you've decided.
Success: "I already knew that."
Goal: Surface collective tacit knowledge. Force a team to name their assumptions by populating the oracle's symbol pool.
Mechanism: Building the deck is the strategy exercise. What categories exist? What outcomes matter? The card said it, not a person.
Success: "We didn't realize we all thought that."
Goal: Practice decision-making, creative writing, and systems thinking through play. "What would you want to hear?" is a powerful question for a child.
Mechanism: The child designs the fortune pool. Choosing what to include teaches values and consequence-thinking.
Success: "I made something that works."
Goal: Defamiliarize the present. Use combinatorial randomness to force encounter with scenarios you wouldn't construct deliberately.
Mechanism: STEEP categories, Three Horizons, or domain drivers populate the pool. Random combinations produce "futures" that must be narrativized.
Success: "I would never have considered that combination."
Goal: Break out of habitual patterns. Introduce productive constraints that force lateral thinking.
Mechanism: The oracle proposes a direction you wouldn't have chosen. You follow it long enough to discover something. Eno's Oblique Strategies works exactly this way.
Success: "I would never have tried that on my own."
Goal: Create a structured moment of self-examination. The ritual aspect — shuffling, drawing, pausing — slows thinking down.
Mechanism: The symbol pool contains archetypes, emotional states, or life domains. The random draw says "consider this today."
Success: "I needed to sit with that."
Select a goal context above to highlight matching systems and attributes.
| System ↑ | Entropy | Bandwidth | Social | Temporal | Weight | Complexity | Material |
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Select a position on each axis. Your profile updates live. You don't need to configure all 7.
Where does the "unknown" come from?
How much does the tool constrain meaning vs. the reader generates it?
Who operates it, and who receives the reading?
What kind of thinking does it trigger?
How seriously does the system take itself?
How much learning does the system require?
What is the thing?
Each axis choice comes with a guiding question. Use the space below to capture your thinking. These notes are saved with your design when you export.
Configure axes in the Constructor step first. Your choices will appear here with guiding questions.
Configure your oracle in the Constructor step first.
Generates a paper-ready working sheet: your axis profile, spider chart, one block per axis with its guiding question and writing space, and a symbol pool section. Configure as much or as little as you want first — unconfigured axes appear as blank decision points on the sheet.
Export your complete design — axis selections, notes, everything — as a JSON file. Import it later to continue.
Save your design to a server and get a shareable URL. No login required — the URL is the key. Anyone with the link can view and continue the design.