On Tarot and divination decks: Part 2

 As long-term readers of my blog may know, I used to take a rather dim view about the use of playing cards as instruments of divination. Recently, my attitude towards this has softened.

The fact that tarot was invented as a means of amusement,  this does not mean it is an an illegitimate method of divination. People have been divining using all sorts of things- thunder, stars, animal entrails, coins, the output of random number generators, etc. One can hardly say the stars were invented for the purposes of divination, but yet many people use them as such, and indeed, if we believe them, gain great meaning from doing so. 

In turn, the divinatory use of playing cards - tarot or piquet decks- is one use amongst the many uses of playing cards. Collectors of playing cards would impovrish their collections, and indeed, their knowledge of playing cards if they ignore these divinatory uses. 

Further, these divinatory meanings traced in their instruments. Consider tarot. Cards are interpreted differently, depending if they are upright or reversed. As such, this means all modern divinatory tarot decks are produced in such a manner that they are single-faced. In turn, many of the tarot pips are made in what are other contexts called 'transformation' cards; the particular figures on each card corresponding to the card's divinatory meaning 

Thus, just as much as collectors of playing cards should be aware of the games that these cards are used to play, they also ought to pay attention to the manner in which the cards are used for divination. 

Update 2: Hiatus, regular posting is to be ceased indefinitely

 Dear readers: 

This blog has been around for nearly a decade, but alas, For various personal reasons, I doubt if I am able to maintain this blog for much longer; the monthly posting schedule is unlikely to be resumed. 

Posts will still come, however they are unlikely to be on any regular schedule

 

Update:

 Dear readers:

 This account has been running for a decade now. Unfortunately for personal reasons, I had to suspend my monthly posts, and  must suspend my posting schedule from now until about July- August 

I am yours, &c. 

Anthony Lee 

A divinatory form of "Roll call patience"

Some years ago I made assertion that there is only one form patience that has a use as a fortune telling method. https://anthonylesq.blogspot.com/2013/08/oracle-patience-two-descriptions.html 

I am evidently wrong. 

This unusual form of card divination that I feature here can be found on p 30 of Muhammed Ali's "Telling fortunes by cards" [Cartlon B Case] as method D. It is a curious cross between a game of patience and a divination method, specifically, the very simple form of patience  sometimes called "Roll call" or "Hit or miss". Here is a video showing how you play it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTJtLrH6WE (I recall reading a book saying that this form of patience, without the divinatory function, is the most efficient waster of time after television--)

***

Below is shown the original text of the work, taken from https://archive.org/details/tellingfortunesb00case/page/30/mode/2up . Another version can be found here https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42008/42008-h/42008-h.htm#Page_30

***

The instructions, are in summary: 

1. - Shuffle the 52-card pack
   
   
2. - Turn out cards, saying  " Ace , 2 [...] 10, jack, queen, king" and back to Ace. 
   
   
3. - Whenever the value of the card turned up matches that of the count, it is set aside as a "hit". 
   
   
4. - if 2 or 3 cards of the same value are also turned out, they too are set aside, even if they do not match the count.
   
   
5. - "Runs"  [e.g. 2, 3, 4] are also set aside as hits , even if they do not match the count, 
   
   
6. - the misses are reformed into a pack, and steps 1-5 are repeated with them twice more.
   
   
7. - The hits are collected (presumably without shuffling), and dealt out in 4 piles, two cards at a time. 
   
   
8. - The book shows the piles as arranged in the form of a cross, each pile named after a cardinal direction, like this: 

North
West    East
South. 

Interpretation: 

- each  pile is read is an indication of the future. North represents the most immediate future, followed by South, then East, then west,

- Carter provides two sets of meanings, one "ancient' and another  "modern" for each card of the 52 card pack. 

- Of the two the modern seems to be suited to this method; most of the ancient meanings are directly related to marriage. 

**

Astute readers would note that this method does not answer specific questions (eg "will i get a job"?) , but rather general open ended readings about what would happen in the future, probably about a week or so. 

Regarding the ancient and modern meanings of the cards,  (pp 12 and 20, respectively) they too are worth commenting upon. Consider the auspiciousness of the suits: In the ancient system, the suits are ranked thus: 

Clubs: Most Auspicious suit signify happiness
Hearts: "lovemaking, invitations and good friends"
Diamonds: Money,
Spades : Least auspicious suit, annoyance, loss. 

But, in the modern system, Case reverses the auspiciousness of clubs and diamonds,  so diamonds (representing wealth) are more auspicious than clubs, which are reinterpreted as "business matters". Those with a marxist bent would clearly see the stamp of capitalism on this matter-- wealth literally trumping relatonships... 

"Lad" pattern 童子

"Lad" pattern, 童子, anon 128 cards, namely 

3 suits

9 cards each suit + 3 extra

4 copies of each of the above;

to which are added 

additional 8 cards   

. 

A deck of money-suited cards purchased in China. They are made of plastic, and have square corners. 

The suit of coins, on the left, the ace, and so on till the 9; the penultimate card on the right 

Notice the delightfully careless way the 8 of coins is arranged

The leftmost card [i.e. the one with the red stripe is the 白花, White Flower] 

The suit of strings. As you may have noticed, these cards have scoops in the top, which serve as indices

the 9 of coins is also arranged in a delightfully careless manner 

The leftmost card is what appears to be a bonus; he has a red X on his chest 

The suit of myriads. The faces are rather mask-like. The 8 of myriads has a small dab of coloir on his head. 

The fouur bonus cards on the deck. 

The third card from the left, depicting a standing figure, is the 童子, or boy

The fourth card from the left, with two red squiuggles is the 千萬, thousand myriad

The back depicts the word 福, prosperity 

Yellow Fish 黄鱼

 黄鱼 = yellow Fish, 120c [30 x 4] 

This deck of money-suited cards comes from _______, China. It is structured much like most common money-suited cards, but it has several interesting features. 

The suit of coins. As you can see, the first unusual feature of this deck is its colour: It is printed in on a yellow background. Ace is on the left, and the 9 is the penultimate card on the right. The 2 of coins contains the word 成, "Complete". 

 The rightmost card is akin to the "Dragons" in Mahjong. Its name is 代宗, one of the emperors of the Tang dynasty, 

The suit of strings. On the left is the ace of strings, which has been depicted as a fish, hence the patern;s name. Notice the marks in the black portion of all the cards; these are the indices. For example, all the aces have a scoop cut on the left, the 2s have a circle, etc. Unlike other decks of money-suited cards, the markings here do not change with the suit. 

The bonus card [rightmost card] depicts Wu Song 武松, one of the heroes of the Chinese novel The water Margin  水浒传. 

The suit of myridads.Each depicts a human visage, and is named after a character of the Water Margin, The 8 of myriads is not named, and instead marked with 福 meaning Luck. The extra card  [2nd from the right] is labelled 刘唐

The back is shown as the rightmost card, The central motif is again the character Fu, meaning luck. 

"Blue Owl" lenormand

 Lenormand J.M.C. "Blue Owl"  Koningsfurt Urania (i.e. Cartamundi), 36c. 

This deck is one of a category of decks that are called "Lenormand" decks: cards specially produced for fortune telling purposes. As many of my readers are unlikely to be knowledgable in fortune-telling, but would nonetheless be interested in knowing more about these cards, I have generated a short introduction to them. 

These cards are named after the 18th century french diviner Madam Lenormand. However( and this is the consensus in the divinatory community) these cards only appeared after her death.  The earliest antecedent of these cards was a set of "coffee cards" published in 1796. https://marykgreer.com/2013/07/12/a-new-lenormand-deck-discovery/, and subsequently taken up by German publishers. 

These cards are a French-suited deck of 36 cards, [i.e. 6-10, J, Q, J, A in each suit] structured identically as those which are used to play Jass. 

The playing-card motifs are consigned to a small corner of each of the cards. The vast majority of each card is taken up by a symbol. It is this symbol that is most immediately important to divinatory purposes. Indeed, some decks omit the playing-card figure entirely.  

There are 36 symbols, one for each card of the deck. Unlike the exotic trumps of the tarot, these symbols are perfectly mundane. Examples include, the Lilly, the Scythe, The Key, the book, and the Dog. A full list of them (along with basic divinatory meanings) can be found here. https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/learn-tarot-with-labyrinthos-academy/an-introduction-to-lenormand-cards-plus-lenormand-card-meaning-list

 Each card in this deck is numbered continually from 1 to 36, although not in the manner that seems logical. Here is the layout 

There are several Lenormand decks made by playing-card companies. This is the most common, made by Koningsfurt Urania, the arm of cartamundi that produces divinatory decks.  It is typically  called the "Blue Owl" from the design of its back

As mentioned above, the pips of the cards are consigned to a small corner of the deck; Nonetheless, they are still legible; they show a french-suited deck that has no indices. The author has been unable to conclusively identify what pattern these cards are of. 

The number answering to each cards is fund in a circle on the left-hand corner. Some cards have numbers in both circles; others, like this, have only one number, the other taken up with monogram "M" 

These cards are made fairly small- much smaller than both poker and European-style decks. There is a pragmatic reason behind this. Many of the "spreads" used in  fortune-telling involve spreading the cards out on a surface. In one case, the "Grand tableau", all 36 cards are spread out. Hence, the cards must be made as small as possible, so they can take up less space. 

The aces of Hearts and spades play a special role in this fortune-telling system. They are respectively, the Man and the woman. These cards represent the person who is setting the question to the oracle, the man if the :querent is a man, and the woman if the querent is a woman. By examining the cards that immediately surround this card, predictions may be made on what would happen to the querent 

The box. The left hand side shows the back of the cards, which depicts a Blue Owl. It is this feature that gives the cards their common name