History of Sporalogy
Originally devised as a joke showing criticism of Astrology, the entire concept was only ever written about in the very last section of a single essay by Nils Mustelin; the entire passage is about the length of an average blog post. While earning my college degree, one of the primary requirements was completing the course Fundamentals of Speech (SPEECH 100). At my community college my professor happened to remind me a bit of Sikowitz from the show Victorious; I’m quite glad it worked out that way as he was more than happy to let us talk about anything we wanted. For one of my speeches, I gave a presentation on Sporalogy, a method of predicting people’s future based on the public transportation system of Helsinki Finland.
It turns out the trams in Helsinki are quite a major form of transportation; In 2019 alone the system recorded over 56 million trips in a country of less then 6 million as it’s total population. I first stumbled upon the theory on a list of unusual Wikipedia articles, and while you can still access the article today it is archived as the creator did not provide any sources for the Wiki Page. Props to Wikipedia for verifying their information I suppose.
Quotes From The Author's Original Article
“green wagons represent, for example, soft, green values, and grey wagons represent hard, technological and materialistic effects. Not to mention the route numbers: the number one and the ten would of course be very positive, the numbers of victory and success, while the four would be associated with weak performances and the six would be related to, say, love life (after all, six is in Swedish sex – that is, sex).”
“For my part, I see only one essential difference between Sporalogy and astrology. Sporalogy would be a deliberate scam from the beginning, while astrology probably began as a sincere but fruitless attempt to penetrate the secrets of the enigmatic universe. I am even prepared to believe that most astrologers are still convinced today of the truthfulness of astrology.”
“Instead of astronomical track calculations, I would, of course, use the timetables published by the transport company and make a computer program that would provide accurate information on the location of each tram at arbitrary times.”
Sporascopes
These are a few samples I whipped up as a demonstration. Please feel free to make your own and share with your friends. The more the merrier!
Green Tram 10 is running seven minutes late, if this is you, you’re going to have a very rough day at work today. Your boss will ask if you can work overtime this weekend and you’ll say “of course sir, I’ll be working out at the gym, all weekend long. Got put in those extra hours on leg day.” Of course since you ride the green tram you’re naturally very lucky, and even though you’ll be less lucky than usual, it is highly recommended to eat a fortune cookie. As usual, any regular rider of Tram 10 should eat lot’s of spinach, run through a field of wildflowers, and adopt a wild bunny rabbit.
Yellow Tram 6 is supercharged and ahead of schedule. If this is the tram you normally ride your day is going to go swell. If you’ve been thinking about doing some writing or working on your website (yes, I know you have one.), you will work faster, harder and stronger. If you decide to read a book or watch a documentary you will retain more information today, then you otherwise would. If you have an appointment for an Escape Room today, you’re in luck, you are more likely than usual to escape on time today.
References
- The original article from Nils Mustelin. The part about Sporalogy is all the way at the very end. The article is in Finnish, but can be auto translated using tools built into Firefox and Chrome.
- Sporalogy on the Everybody Wiki.
- The original website of Nils Mustelin, he passed away in 2004.
- The Finnish Tramway Society.
- The Original Wikipedia Article.
- A very brief article on Finnish Trams.
- An short comment on Sporalogy
One of the green and yellow trams running through downtown Helsinki, Finland.