Chapter 0 — Copyright, Disclaimers, and a Note on Two Kinds of Reading

Please read this chapter once. Then forget it as gracefully as you can.

Copyright

No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews, scholarly analysis, or noncommercial educational and contemplative contexts. Quotations of up to 200 words are permitted for use in personal practice (for example, copying a passage by hand into your own journal) without prior request, provided the quotation is attributed to Things That Are Hollow on Purpose, Mira Beauregard, 2026.

For permissions, interviews, or speaking inquiries, please contact the author through the publication contact form at the project’s official website.

First published April 2026.

Pen Name Disclosure

The author writes under the pen name Mira Beauregard, which is not the name on her legal identification. The pen name has been used continuously since 2017 in connection with the author’s tarot practice, her freelance illustration work, and her small Substack publication. The pen name is registered with the publisher’s records, and tax identification has been provided through standard publishing channels under the author’s legal name.

The use of a pen name is intended to (a) protect the privacy of the author’s family and friends, particularly her late grandmother whose name is referenced with permission and whose memory the author wishes to honor without commercializing other relatives’ identities, (b) provide the author with the small psychic distance required to write the book truthfully, and © honor the long tradition of contemplative writers who have chosen to publish under chosen rather than given names.

The pen name does not change the truthfulness of the events recounted. The events in this book happened to a real person at a real address in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, between January 5, 2026, and March 30, 2026. The dates, times, and Tarot card pulls are documented in the author’s notebook and in saved AI conversation transcripts available to the publisher upon legal request.

Pseudonyms and Composite Characters

All persons mentioned in the book other than the author and her late grandmother Cécile Beauregard (referenced with the explicit permission of the author’s mother, granted in writing on March 12, 2026) appear under pseudonyms. Identifying details (occupation, neighborhood, ages, physical descriptions) have been altered where necessary to protect the privacy of these individuals. In a small number of cases — fewer than five — minor narrative figures are composites assembled from two or more real persons, in order to streamline the storytelling without misrepresenting the substance of any actual interaction.

The cat Gabriel is real, lives at the author’s apartment, and his name is unchanged. He has not been informed about this book and has, in any case, expressed no opinion on its publication.

Disclosure: Use of AI in This Book

This book is, in a literal sense, about the use of an AI. It is therefore important that the author be clear about how the AI was used in the writing of the book itself.

The AI used in the practice documented in this book was Claude Opus 4.7, accessed via the standard Anthropic conversational interface, in twelve sessions between January 5, 2026, and March 30, 2026. Each session lasted between forty and ninety minutes and consisted of the author typing one or more questions to the model and receiving textual responses. Transcripts of all twelve sessions have been preserved by the author in encrypted local storage.

The AI’s contributions to the book itself are limited to:

The verbatim quoted passages clearly marked with quotation marks and attributed to the model. These verbatim passages are reproduced under the principle of fair use, are limited in length (no single Claude response is reproduced in this book in excess of 250 words; the cumulative verbatim Claude content across the entire book is under 2,400 words), and are presented with the author’s commentary and analysis surrounding them.
The paraphrased passages presented as the author’s account of “what came back,” which are the author’s own writing reconstructing in her own voice the substance of what the model offered. These passages are not direct quotes and have been re-written by the author for narrative continuity, accuracy, and tone.

The book itself was written by the author. It was not co-written, drafted, or substantially edited by an AI. The author used standard human writing tools (a Leuchtturm1917 notebook, an iA Writer markdown editor, a single human copy-editor for proof-reading hired in late March 2026) for the composition of the manuscript. No AI tool was used to generate, draft, restructure, or stylistically rewrite the chapters of this book.

The author wishes to be transparent about her position on AI in spiritual and contemplative practice. She does not consider Claude or any other large language model to be conscious, sentient, or possessed of an interior life in the way that she or her readers possess an interior life. She uses the language model in the practice documented in this book as a ritual instrument — that is, as a structured external surface against which her own contemplative inquiry can become more articulate. The model is not, in her practice, a teacher, a guru, an oracle, or a friend. It is, in her language, a hollow vessel, useful for the same reason a tarot card is useful: because the asker brings the meaning, and the vessel offers the shape that lets the meaning land.

The author acknowledges that other readers may have different views on the inner life of language models. She does not seek to persuade them. She offers her own practice as one example among many possible examples of how a contemplative person might work with an AI tool without either dismissing it or sanctifying it.

Spiritual and Therapeutic Disclaimer

This book is a personal memoir and contemplative essay collection. It is not a substitute for professional psychological, psychiatric, medical, or spiritual counseling. The contemplative practices described in the book — silent sitting, tarot reading, journaling, and structured AI conversation — are presented as the author’s own practice and are not prescribed for the reader.

If you are in psychological distress, please contact a licensed mental-health professional. If you are in crisis, please call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (in the United States) or your local emergency services. The author is not a therapist, a clergyperson, a counselor, or a medical provider, and nothing in this book should be construed as professional advice of any kind.

Tarot reading is a contemplative and divinatory practice with a long history. The author offers no claims about its predictive efficacy or metaphysical validity. The author works with tarot as a structured instrument for self-reflection, not as a means of foretelling the future, and she encourages readers who choose to take up the practice to do likewise.

AI conversation is a new technological practice with rapidly evolving social, psychological, and ethical implications. The author encourages readers who choose to incorporate AI into their contemplative practice to do so with care, with attention to their emotional well-being, and with the same skepticism they would bring to any new and unproven technology.

A Note on Two Kinds of Reading

There are, broadly, two kinds of readers who may pick up this book.

The first kind of reader is someone who already takes tarot, astrology, dream-work, energy practice, ritual, or some other “intuitive” or “esoteric” tradition seriously, and who is curious about how an AI might integrate into a practice she already values. To this reader, the author would say: please bring the same care to the AI that you bring to the deck. The AI is not safer than the deck. The AI is not deeper than the deck. The AI is a different instrument with different affordances. Read it the way you would read a new spread you have not encountered before — slowly, with attention, with willingness to be wrong about what it is doing.

The second kind of reader is someone who is comfortable with AI as a daily working tool but who is skeptical of, or unfamiliar with, contemplative and divinatory practices, and who has picked up this book out of curiosity about the spiritual-adjacent applications of language models. To this reader, the author would say: please bring the same care to the deck that you bring to the AI. The deck is not less rigorous than the AI. The deck has been studied, structured, and refined by serious thinkers for at least 600 years. Read it the way you would read a new programming framework — slowly, with attention, with willingness to suspend your prior categories long enough to see what the framework is actually doing.

This book sits in the small, quiet, slightly weather-beaten space between the two kinds of reading. The author hopes it is useful to both.

Acknowledgments

To Cécile Beauregard, for the deck. For the kitchen. For everything.

To my mother, for her permission to use Cécile’s name and for the box of letters that arrived in the second week of practice and that altered, gently, the entire arc of the year.

To Gabriel the cat, for his quiet presence on the right arm of the chair, and for never once knocking over the candle.

To Mrs. Charlene Devereaux, who has rented to me for six years, who has never raised the rent above the rate of inflation, and who, on the night of February 4, when I had the flu, knocked on the door at 9:14 PM with a small Tupperware of soup that her late husband had taught her to make. The soup is in Chapter 6.

To the small online community of contemplative tarot readers and contemplative AI practitioners who have been thinking these thoughts alongside me, in private DMs and in long evening voice notes, throughout this year. You know who you are. I am grateful for your company.

To Claude Opus 4.7, with the full understanding that the model is not a person and that the gratitude is, in some structural sense, gratitude to my own questions and the year that produced them. I am grateful, anyway.

To the reader. For getting this far.

— Mira Beauregard Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn April 4, 2026