History of Cartomancy

Playing cards first appeared in Europe in the 1360s, showing up as far

apart as central Italy and eastern Germany by 1377, but they were
already in Spain by 1371, where they were called naïpes (as they still
are to this day). Writing from the Spanish court around the year
1450, Fernando de la Torre described how, with a special form of the
common naïpes that he had designed, players could “tell fortunes
with them to know who each one loves most and who is most
desired and by many other and diverse ways” (puédense echar
suertes en ellos á quién más ama cada uno, e á quién quiere más et
por otras muchas et diversas maneras). Echar suertes means “to cast
lots”, and is the common Spanish term for “telling fortunes”; this is
the earliest time in history the term is used in connection with
playing cards.1

There are no clear accounts of how fortune-telling with cards was

done until about a century and a half later, but in the meantime cards
were sometimes listed with dice and other methods as kinds of
“sortilege”, a term sometimes meaning “witchcraft” in general, but
specifically meaning “divination”. In 1506, an Italian, Giovanni
Francesco Pico della Mirandola, in a chapter against divination,
included “images depicted in a card game” as being among the
different kinds of sortilege.2 Later, in 1554, the Spanish priest Martin
de Azpilcueta listed cards (cartas) as one of the means of divination,
all of them sinful.3 In his 1632 encyclopedic miscellany Para todos
exemplos morales, humanos, y divinos, Juan Perez de Montalvàn
(sometimes spelled Montalbàn), like Mirandola and Azpilicueta, lists
naipes as one of the methods of sortilege, or fortune-telling:
“Sortilege, which is done with dice, playing cards, and lots.”4

Since the references in Mirandola, Azpilcueta, and Montalvàn do not

describe how the cards were used, it is unclear if they mean
cartomancy or something else. This is because in the 16 th century
there also appeared fortune-telling books which could be consulted
by means of cards (and often other methods such as dice, or a
spinner). In these, the symbolism or pictures on the cards played little
or no role in the divination, and their use in this context is not
considered true cartomancy. The simplest and earliest card-fortune
book, the Mainzer Kartenlosbuch, printed in Mainz around 1505,
directly associates each card of a 48-card German-suited pack with an
eight-line fortune (each fortune itself adapted from an earlier
fortune-book that did not use cards). The book could be consulted by
drawing a card and looking up the fortune, or, alternately, by using a
spinner attached to the book, which was divided into 48
compartments, each with the name of a card. With or without cards,
several of these books appeared from the late 15 th through the 16th
century, and were very popular throughout Europe in all the common
languages.

Meanwhile, early in the same century there appeared what many

consider the first account of a Tarot divination. Teofilo Folengo
(whose pen name was Merlin Coccai), in his strange allegory Chaos
del Triperuno, 1527), describes the scene:

(Limerno speaks) "...yesterday Giuberto, Focilla, Falcone and Mirtella

secretly led me into a room where, since they’d found playing cards of
trumps [Tarot], they dealt these according to chance among
themselves, and having turned toward me, each one of them
explained to me the specific destiny of the trumps received,
entreating me to write a sonnet about them for each person. (…)
“So then now let us come first to the future or rather the destiny of
Giuberto, after which, I want to recite no more or less, the sonnet of
that [destiny] to you, where you will be able to diligently consider all
the trump cards mentioned, sorted one by one to each sonnet, to be
named four times so that with the help of the major figures [trumps]
it is understood.”5

Folengo’s character Limerno proceeds to compose four sonnets on 4

different groups of trumps, one group for each character, and a final
sonnet at the end which includes all of the trumps. Although in a
fictional form, the author clearly envisages the use of Tarot trumps to
learn something about each person’s destiny.

Seeing destiny in the cards is the essence of cartomancy. Juan-Luis

Vives, writing in 1538, gives us a hint as to how a person might take
an impression from a card image as a portent of the future. In a
scene from a series of entertaining dialogues intended to make
learning Latin easier, he has two of his characters playing cards:

Castellus: Have you all nine cards? Hearts are trumps, and this queen
is mine.
Valdaura: What a happy omen that is! Certainly it is most true that
the hearts of women ordinarily rule.
Castellus: Leave off your reflections. Answer to this: I increase the
stake!6

In this brief discussion, Vives indirectly shows us how seeing a card,

even in the context of a game, might give rise to divinatory
speculations. This kind of casual reflection must have happened
countless times, unrecorded in history, and also led sometimes to
consulting the cards deliberately to seek an omen, or indication of
the future, just a Fernando de la Torre suggested a century earlier.

In the early 1600s we begin to get descriptions of card readings, and

of various methods used to read the cards. One of the earliest is
described by the English gentleman Sir John Melton, in 1620. In his
Astrologaster, or, The Figure Caster, he relates how Henry Cuffe,
(1563-1601), executed for treason in 1601, had his death foretold
twenty years before the event by a “Wizard” with some playing
cards. The wizard instructed Cuffe to select three cards at random
from a pack, which were seen to be three knaves (Jacks); then he was
told to place them face down on the table, and then to take them up
one by one and "looke on the inside of them". When Cuffe looked, he
saw not three knaves, but instead himself, his judge, and the place of
his execution, Tyburn.7

Records of the Inquisition in Spain, collected by Sebastián Cirac

Estopañán in 1942,8 provide other early indications (although not
complete descriptions) of how some women read cards in the 16th
century. During the witchcraft trial of Margarita de Borja in Madrid
(1615-1617), it emerged that she read cards for clients. She would
shuffle the cards while reciting an incantation:

Lady, Saint Martha

You are in the church,
You listen to the dead
And inspire the living,
So tell me through these cards what I am asking you about.

Then she laid five rows of cards on the table, each row containing
four cards face up. Cards coming up in pairs, such as King with a King,
a Page with a Page, etc., were a good omen, but any other
arrangement was a bad omen.9

María Castellanos, tried in Toledo in 1631-1632, also recited a spell

and then laid down twelve cards, looking for the Knight and Jack of
Clubs to come up together.10 The Lady Antonia Mejía de Acosta, in
her trial in Madrid in 1633, explained that she took the Knight of
Clubs out of a pack of 40 cards, and shuffled the remaining 39 while
saying a prayer. Then she laid out nine cards – if the number of Coins
and Cups were higher than the number of Swords and Clubs, it was
good luck. Otherwise, it was bad luck.11

Another method using court card relationships was told by Lady

María de Acevedo, tried in Madrid in 1648-1649. She had a deck of
41 cards that she used to learn what her lover was doing when he
was in the palace, what he was thinking about, and to make sure he
would return to her after having an argument. Once, she had the
cards read by the wife of a poor water-bearer. She wanted to know if
her man loved another woman: the King of Cups represented the
man and the Jack of Coins represented Lady María. Getting both
cards together would signify that the young man only loved Lady
María; but getting any other Jack with the Knight or the King of Cups
would be a signal of the young man having another lady. On that
occasion, the water-bearer’s wife took the deck, shuffled it, and laid
the cards down face up, arranged in five rows... but no such pairing
came up. She shuffled and laid the cards again with similar results,
and she did this three more times, without seeing the Knight of Cups
turning up with any Jack.12

These kinds of readings are recorded by the Spanish Inquisition until

the early 19th century.13 By this time, some accused witches were
using a layout which consisted of shuffling while saying an
incantation, laying out thirteen cards in a circle, and placing a card at
the center of the circle. The reading was done from “the
characteristics of the first five cards shown”.14 Unfortunately the
exact details are not given in the records, but we can see that there
was a continuously evolving underground tradition among Spanish
cartomancers for at least two centuries.

Spanish cartomancy is also found in literature from the 17th century.

The playwright Agustin Moreto (1618-1669), among his works from
this “Golden Age” of Spanish theatre, shows a cartomantic scene in
the play El Lindo Don Diego (“Don Diego the Dandy”, 1662). In this
scene the lady Inés asks her maid Beatriz what she was doing during
the afternoon:

Beatriz: I went to read the cards

Because Don Diego would leave you,
And, as the cards go out,
Either the King of Clubs was lying,
Or he did not want to marry.
Inés: You believe in those things?
Can’t you see it’s nonsense?15
This kind of reading, done by a lower-class woman, using a fixed
significator, and the subject being romance, is consistent with the
Inquisition records of the style and purposes of cartomancy in the
Spanish 17th century.

In England in 1690, Dorman Newman issued a specially designed pack

of cards intended for fortune-telling, with the fortunes written
directly on the cards. This was later reissued by John Lenthall in 1711,
and went through several editions.16

As the hint in Vives’ dialogue of 1538 suggests, a card game could

also double as a card reading. The game of Solitaire, known as
Réussite (“Success”) in France, may originally have been
cartomancy.17 But two-person card games could also be used in this
way. In the book Whartoniana, Miscellanies, in verse and prose
(1727),18 there is a chapter describing a game of Piquet whose
purpose was really a divination on a romantic question. The author
says:

A few days ago, I took it into my head to make a visit to the

celebrated Theresius, in order to be informed of my Destiny.

Theresius reads his palm, and casts an astrological figure, but he says
nothing except “Come back tomorrow.” The author returns the next
day, only to be invited to play a round of Piquet. They play, and the
strategic events of the game are described. Finally, Theresius wins
with the Queen of Hearts, and says perceptively:

I have won the Game, said he.— From hence learn thy Destiny. If you
must love, pitch upon some Object that is more your Match: For if
ever you attack the divine Pallas, you will infallibly be Lurched.—

A few years later, in 1730, cartomancy with regular cards appears in

English theatre for the first time in the anonymous play Jack the
Gyant-Killer.19 The method described by the author of the play uses
the whole pack of 52 cards, and follows these steps:
1) pick a significator (Folly picks the Queen of Hearts for herself in
this case, and the reader assigns the four Kings to Folly’s four
companions, the “Gyants” Gormillan, Thunderdale, Blunderboar, and
Galligantus),
2) cut the pack (it must have been preshuffled),
3) lay out the entire pack in rows (how many is not said, but there are
at least three in this instance),
4) find the significator(s),
5) interpret the cards around it (them).
The reading goes like this:

“The Knave of Spades, Madam [Folly], seems to threaten Danger, but

he lies oblique, and the Ten of Hearts between them shews he wants
Power to hurt you — ‘the Eight of Clubs and Ace over your Head
denote A chearful Bowl and Mirth will crown Night — all will be well
— these Princes are surrounded with Diamonds; the Eight lies at the
Feet of Lord Gormillan; the Deuce, the Four and Five are in a direct
Line with Valiant Thunderdale; the Tray and Nine are at the Elbow of
great Blunderboar, and the Six and Seven are just over the Head of
noble Galligantus. Some Spades of ill aspect mingled with them, but
the Hearts and Clubs take off their malevolent Quality.”20

Spades is the only ill-omened suit. In this instance, the Knave of

Spades "lies oblique" to the Queen of Hearts. In the context of the
reading, “oblique” may mean diagonal, with the 10 of Hearts
between Knave and the Queen, which implies that there were at
least three rows, and which the reader interprets as meaning that the
Knave has no power to hurt the Queen. The rest of the reading is
similar, and reads by general association of the suits and the position
of the significators relative to the other cards, both by geometrical
relationship and by proximity.

Sometime before 1750 in Bologna, a method of reading Tarot cards

with the kind of Tarot known there was described in a manuscript
document.21 It used 35 cards, divided into five piles of seven cards
each. The interpretations of each of the 35 cards are listed, but they
are not made into a narrative, making it difficult to know if this
method was simply a record of a specific reading, with notes jotted
down for later reflection, or if it is generally indicative of the methods
used in Bologna in the early 18th century. Later Bolognese Tarot
divination uses 45 cards of the 62-card pack, although not all the
cards are used in every spread. It is possible that this earliest account
is simply one method among several that existed, one that used five
piles of seven cards, and that meanings were already assigned to 45
cards, as attested later.22

Cartomancy is noted again in England in the early 1760s. In 1762-3

Oliver Goldsmith wrote in his novel The Vicar of Wakefield that
reading cards can be an praiseworthy accomplishment in a young
woman:
“And I will be bold to say my two girls have had a pretty good
education, and capacity, at least the country can’t shew better. They
can read, write, and cast accompts; they understand their needle,
breadstitch, cross and change, and all manner of plain-work; they can
pink, point, and frill; and know something of music; they can do up
small cloaths, work upon catgut; my eldest can cut paper, and my
youngest has a very pretty manner of telling fortunes upon the
cards.”23

Occurring around the same time in Russia, Giacomo Casanova

described a card reading done one morning by his suspicious
thirteen-year old mistress, whom he had named Zaïre:

“Without her desperate jealousy, without her blind trust in the

infallibility of the cards, which she consulted ten times a day, this
Zaïre would have been a marvellous woman and I would never have
left her.
To convince me of my crime, she shows me a square of twenty-five
cards wherein she makes me read all the debaucheries that had kept
me out all night long. She shows me the floozy, the bed, the love-play
and even my unnatural acts. I didn’t see anything at all, but she
imagined that she saw everything. After letting her say, without
interruption, everything that might serve to assuage her jealousy and
rage, I took her grimoire [the pack of cards] and threw it into the
fire.”24

Cartomancy is also noted in France for the first time in the middle of
the 18th century. In Metz, a police record of March 17, 1759
condemned two women to eight days in prison because they had
“taken advantage of the simple-mindedness of several people and
took money from them under the pretext of finding for them things
stolen or lost, by the means of some packs of cards”.25

Thirteen years later in Marseille, another woman, named Anne

Cauvin, was sentenced “to be exposed in shackles during three
consecutive market days, having her head covered with a bonnet
surrounded by tarots, and a sieve around her neck, and to stay in this
condition for one hour each time, after which the tarots will be torn
up and the sieve broken by the executioner of the sentence, [since she
was convicted] of having put into use practices superstitious in both
deed and word, in order to procure for herself illegitimate profits,
abusing the false confidence of the people.”26

As the previous examples suggest, by the middle of the 18th century,

cartomancy seems to have been practiced widely, although in
localized forms and mostly casually if not secretly, for several
centuries, and had over time almost begun to resemble what we
would call cartomancy today. In this milieu arose the man who can
be justly called the “Father of Cartomancy”, Jean-Baptiste Alliette
(1738-1791), who called himself by the reverse of his surname,
“Etteilla”.

In a book published in the year of his death, 1791, Etteilla tells us that
cartomancy (or, as he coined the term, “cartonomancy”) 27 was
unknown in France until three old people, who appeared in 1751,
1752 and 1753, “offered to draw the cards.” As he described it, these
old people only had their clients draw one card at a time, and read
the omen by the suit – Spades meant sorrow, Hearts happiness,
Diamonds country, and Clubs money.28 Etteilla says that he
“renovated” the practice, by “discarding the art of reading cards one
by one, substituting the art of card reading from the whole pack laid
out on the table.”29 As we have seen from the history above, if this is
a claim to invention of the method of layouts, it is something of an
exaggeration. But it cannot be denied that he was the first to have
printed a method of cartomancy (in 1770), independent of a special
pack (like Newman-Lenthall), which proved very influential, and is the
first to have assigned every single pip a particular meaning (rather
than simply one or two cards according to the general meaning of the
suit).

Etteilla’s first book, published in 1770,30 invented a method for

reading with the 32 cards of a standard French Piquet pack (pips 2 to
6 are not present), to which he added a card for a generic significator,
which he called “the Etteilla”. He assigned each card a meaning with
a keyword, and detailed spreads such as a fan, or a square layout
(like Zaïre’s method for Casanova). Etteilla also mentioned reading
with Tarot cards in the first edition of his book,31 but he did not
describe it. This is consistent with popular reading practices, such as
that for which Anne Cauvin was convicted in 1772. It was not until
after 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin and his anonymous
second author published essays on the esoteric meaning of the
Tarot,32 the latter author including a cartomantic method,33 that
Etteilla decided to make Tarot the centerpiece of his philosophy,
which became a complex mix of astrology and his redesigned Tarot.
He published several extremely bombastic, obscure, and often
polemical works on the theory of the esoteric Tarot, and collected a
group of disciples to learn his doctrines, between 1783 and 1791.34
Etteilla’s relentless self-promotion, along with the fame of De
Gébelin’s essays, ensured that the identification of Tarot with
esoteric doctrines, as well as cartomancy, reached across Europe,
where French was the lingua franca. Etteilla’s disciples popularized
his doctrines, along with the special pack of cards he either designed
or directly inspired.35

In this context, the most famous card-reader – or rather, as she called

herself, prophetess - in history emerged during the Revolutionary
period in France. Born Marie-Anne Adélaïde Le Normand (1772-
1843), she was known as Mademoiselle (Mlle) Le Normand
throughout her life, since she never married. Mlle Le Normand’s
reputation rests on, and is mostly informed by, her own self-
promotion. As a teenager she became aware of her clairvoyant
abilities, and profited from them during the Revolution. But her fame
truly began when she was consulted by the Empress Josephine, and
thereby entered into contact with the most powerful social circles of
the Napoleonic period. Through her writings, she would portray
herself as having read the fortunes of some of the most important
people in the Revolution and Napoleon’s reign. But her image in the
modern mind remains as Josephine and Napoleon’s card reader, and
secondarily, as the supposed author of different kinds of packs of
oracle cards, called generally Le petit Lenormand and Le grand
Lenormand. They are printed and used to this day in France and
French territories, but her association with them is extremely unlikely
and seems to have been a marketing gimmick, capitalizing on her
name after her death.36

Tarot cartomancy, as opposed to Etteilla, regular playing cards, and

Mlle Le Normand style fortune-telling packs and oracle cards,
became more popular in the late 19th century, when Tarot’s occult
mystique had been cultivated for nearly a century. In the English-
speaking world, where the game of Tarot was unknown, Tarot cards
were only known as an occult object. Since real Tarots were difficult
to find for his compatriots, English mystic Arthur Edward Waite
designed a pack to be used for fortune-telling, hiring the artist
Pamela Colman Smith. Due largely to Smith’s charming designs, and
the fact that the pips were entirely illustrated, this became the most
popular kind of Tarot for cartomancy in the English-speaking world. 37

In France, cartomancers used either regular playing cards or only the

22 trumps of the Tarot of the so-called Tarot de Marseille, a
traditional French playing Tarot. By 1900, French Tarot players used a
modernized pack, where the Trumps had double-ended genre
scenes, and the pips were the standard clubs, diamonds, spades and
hearts. The occultist Oswald Wirth had issued a short printing of
redesigned Tarot de Marseille trumps in 1889, and a revised version
with an accompanying text in 1927, which many cartomancers used.
The card-making firm of Grimaud, under the direction of Paul
Marteau, gave new life to the entire Tarot de Marseille as a
cartomantic pack in 1930, followed by a complete divinatory guide to
this pack by Marteau himself in 1949, titled simply Le Tarot de
Marseille.38

Cartomancy in all of its forms is widely practiced today and continues

to evolve. The esoteric and divinatory Tarot is particularly rich since
the 1970s, but all modern divinatory Tarot practices, with the
exception of Bolognese tarotmancy, can be traced back to either the
English or French occult synthesis of the late 19th century, culminating
in the Waite-Smith Tarot or the divinatory Tarot de Marseille.39
1
Fernando de la Torre, (1416-c. 1475), “Juego de naypes”, in Cancionero de Lope de Stúñiga, códice del siglo XV
(Madrid, 1872), pp. 273-293. This text has been critically edited by María Jesús Díez Garretas, La obra literaria
de Fernando de la Torre (Valladolid, Universidad de Valladolid, 1983), which is the edition used by Nancy F.
Marino in her study of the poem, “Fernando de la Torre’s ‘Juego de naipes’, A Game of Love” (La Corónica 35.1
(Fall 2006): 209-47). Marino discusses the cartomantic meaning of the passage on pp. 239-240.
2
Giovanni Francesco (or Gianfrancesco) Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) De rerum praenotione (Strasbourg
(Argentoraci), 1507, not paginated) Bk VI chap. vi (page 408 of Basel , 1601, ed.). The book supports the ability
of divinely appointed prophets to know the future, while attacking all other forms of divination, including
astrology, geomancy, palmistry and all kinds of sortilege. In the section on sorts or lots, he explains: "There are
many kinds of lots, as in casting bones, in throwing dice, in the figures depicted in a pack of cards; and in the
expectation of whatever first should arrive, in picking the longer husk, or in casting the eyes on a page.”
(Sortium multa sunt genera ut in talorum iactu in tesseribus proijciendis / in figuris Chartaceo ludo pictis / &
quaecunque prior advenerit expectandis in eruendis longioribus paleis / in oculorum iactu super paginis).
The methods Gianfrancesco Pico describes appear to be astragals, dice, playing cards, drawing lots, and
bibliomancy. What strikes me about the phrase "figuris chartaceo ludo pictis" - in the figures depicted in
'chartaceo ludo' - is the emphasis on the figures. This suggests to me that Pico is not referring to Losbucher or
Lot-book divination, in which the figures on the cards were irrelevant, but a more immediate kind of
cartomancy dependent on interpreting the figures depicted on the cards.
3
Spanish jurist and priest Martin de Azpilcueta (1493-1586), better known as Doctor Navarro. Manual de
confessores y penitentes (Toledo, 1554, c. xi, para. 30 (p. 52); Salamanca, 1556, p. 76, etc.): "(He commits a
mortal sin) if he asks, or even intends to ask, diviners about a stolen object or any other secret thing: or tries to
know it by the fall of dice, cards, books, a sieve or an astrolabe..." (Si pregunto o quiso preguntar a adevinos
algun hurto, o otra cosa secreta, o tento da la saber por suertes de dados, cartas, libros, arnero, o astrolabio).
4
Juan Pérez de Montalván (1602-1638). First published in 1632, this text went through twenty editions, the last
being in 1736. See the doctoral dissertation of Valerie Y’Illise Job, “A Modernized edition of Juan Pérez de
Montalván’s Para todos ejemplos morales humanos y divinos en que se tratan diversas, ciencias, materias, y
facultades. Repartidos in los siete dias de la semana y dirigidos a differentes personas” (Texas Tech University,
2005), pp. iii and 317.
5
Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544). Adapted from Ann E. Mullaney’s complete translation of the Chaos, at her
website dedicated to Teofilo Folengo, http://www.teofilofolengo.com/index.html
Her translation in PDF is at http://www.folengo.com/Chaos_Uploads/Total%20Chaos%20Dec%2017%2009.pdf
The Italian reads:
“... heri Giuberto e Focilla, Falcone e Mirtella mi condussero in una camera secretamente, ove trovati c’hebbeno
le Carte lusorie de trionfi, quelli a sorte fra loro si divisero, e vòlto a me, ciascuno di loro la sorte propria de li
toccati trionfi mi espose, pregandomi che sopra quelli un sonetto gli componessi ... Hora vegnamo dunque
primeramente a la ventura overo sorte di Giuberto, dopoi la quale, né più né meno, voglioti lo sonetto di quella
recitare, ove potrai diligentemente considerare tutti li detti trionfi, a ciascaduno sonetto singularmente sortiti,
essere quattro fiate nominati si come con lo aiuto de le maggiori figure si comprende:”
(Mullaney PDF, pp. 137-138; first edition of 1527, p. 152).
6
Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540). Translated by Foster Watson, Tudor School-Boy Life, The Dialogues of Juan-Luis
Vives, (London, 1908) p. 192. The original Latin reads:
Castellus: Habetis singuli novena folia? Cordum est familia dominatrix, et haec Regina est mea.
Valdaura  : Nescio quam felix est omen hoc: certe est verissimum dominari vulgo corda feminarum.
Castellus: Desine speculationes, responde ad hoc, augeo sponsionem.
7
(Sir) John Melton (d. 1640). Astrologaster, or, The Figure-Caster (London, 1620), p. 42.
8
D. Sebastián Cirac Estopañán, Los procesos de hechicerías en la Inquisición de Castilla la Nueva (Tribunales de
Toledo y Cuenca), Madrid, 1942.
9
Estopañán, pp. 40, 53.
10
Estopañán, pp. 53-54.
11
Estopañán, pp. 137-138.
12
Estopañán, p. 53.
13
Estopañán, p. 53.
14
See Juan Bláquez Miguel, Eros y tanatos  : brujeria, hechiceria y supersticion en España (1989), p. 305; cf.
Maria-Helena Sánchez Ortega, “La mujer come fuente del mal; el maleficio”, in Manuscrits no. 9 (Enero, 1991),
pp. 41-81 (see page 80).
15
El Lindo Don Diego Act III (ll. 3850-3856). The Spanish reads:
BEATRIZ: Fui a echar los naipes
porque don Diego te deje
y, según las cartas salen,
o mentirá el rey de bastos
o no ha de querer casarse.
INÉS: ¿Crédito das a esas cosas?
¿No ves que son disparates?
16
For a discussion of this pack see Michael Dummet, The Game of Tarot, p. 96 (with references); cf. Decker et
al., A Wicked Pack of Cards (Duckworth, 1996), pp. 47-48. The cards have been reproduced in facsimile.
17
David Parlett, A History of Card Games (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 157-158.
18
This volume is titled Letters to the Lady Wharton, and Several Other Persons of Distinction (vol. II (London,
1727)); the chapter “To the Lovely Pallas” is found on pp. 53-55.
19
The title page reads: “Jack the Gyant-Killer: A Comi-Tragical Farce of One Act. As it is acted at the New-
Theatre in the Hay-Market… London: Printed for J. Roberts, near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane.
M.DCC.XXX.” The “Persons of the Drama” page includes “Three Women who tell Fortunes by Coffee, Tea,
Cards, &c.”.
20
Jack the Gyant-Killer, p. 15.
21
Discovered by Franco Pratesi in the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna, who published it as “Italian Cards:
New Discoveries, no. 9”, in The Playing Card, vol. XVII (1989), pp. 136-145. See also A Wicked Pack of Cards pp.
48-50.
22
Three publications have appeared since 2000 which give the history and practice of Bolognese Tarot
divination. The first, Maria Luigia Ingallati, Il Tarocco Bolognesi: l’arte della cartomanzia dall’antica tradizione
popolari ai giorni nostri (Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon, 2000), offers a unique and apparently syncretic system
which uses even a non-traditional card, “La Matta” (different from Il Matto), of which two (one black, the other
red) are included in the version of the pack printed by Dal Negro, but are not present in that by Modiano. They
no doubt correspond to the Joker(s) in standard Poker packs with French suits, but are not part of traditional
games played with the Bolognese pack. Michael Dummett published the results of his research on the
Bolognese divinatory tradition as “Tarot Cartomancy in Bologna”, The Playing Card, vol. 32, no. 2 (2003), pp.
79-88. In this article he managed to gather traditional meanings from a living (retired) practitioner, and
described the known history, but he did not discover any traditional layouts. Most recently has appeared the
book of Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti, il Tarocchino di Bologna (Bologna: Edizioni Martina, 2005). In this work
Zanetti, in the second part of the book, resumes the traditional meanings, gathered from oral tradition and
literary evidence, and describes five traditional layouts for divination (pp. 69-161).
The meanings of the cards from the four documentary sources are available at the TarotPedia website,
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Bolognese_Tarot_Divination
23
Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774), The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale Supposed to be Written by Himself (Salisbury: B.
Collins, 1766), pp. 107-108 (Chap. XI).
24
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798). From the Arléa edition, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt.
Mémoires. Histoire de ma vie (1993), pp. 1601, 1604 (in chap. CXVII). The French reads:
“Sans sa jalousie désespérante, sans son aveugle confiance dans l’infaillibilité des cartes, qu’elle consultait dix
fois par jour, cette Zaïre aurait été une merveille et je ne l’aurais jamais quittée.(…)
Pour me convaincre de mon crime, elle me montre un carré de vingt-cinq cartes où elle me fait lire toutes les
débauches qui m’avaient tenu dehors toute la nuit. Elle me montre la garce, le lit, les combats et jusqu’à mes
égarements contre nature. Je ne voyais rien du tout mais elle s’imaginait de voir tout.
Après lui avoir laissé dire, sans l’interrompre, tout ce qui pouvait servir à soulager sa jalousie et sa rage, je pris
son grimoire que je jetai au feu… “
25
Noted in Murielle Brulé, Le jeu à Metz sous l'Ancien Régime (Editions Serpenoise, 2005). This passage
communicated to me by Thierry Depaulis from Murielle Brulé (10 April 2006):“Un jugement de police du 17
mars 1759 condamne deux femmes à 8 jours de prison parce qu'elles "abusoient de la simplicité de quelques
personnes [et] leurs tiroient de l'argent sous prétexte de leurs faire retrouver des vols ou choses perdues par le
moyen de quelques jeux de cartes".”
26
Brulé, Le jeu à Metz sous l'Ancien Régime, p. 168. The French text and notes: "Pour avoir tiré les cartes, la
veuve Anne Cauvin est condamnée à être exposée au carcan sur le marché. Pour que nul n'en ignore la raison,
un bonnet entouré de tarots devait couvrir la tête de la cartomancienne, en plus d'un tamis passé à son cou. La
peine expiée, les tarots finirent déchirés et le tamis brisé." (Affiches, annonces et avis divers pour les Trois-
Evêchés et la Lorraine, n° 31, 1-08-1772). Original text, provided by Thierry Depaulis: “Anne Cauvin…à être
exposée au carcan pendant trois jours de marchés consécutifs, ayant la tête couverte d'un bonnet entouré de
tarots, & d'un tamis passé au col, & y rester en cet état pendant une heure chaque fois, après quoi les tarots
seront déchirés et le tamis brisé par l'Exécuteur ; accusée (…) d'avoir mis en usage des pratiques superstitieuses
de faits & par paroles, pour se procurer des profits illégitimes en abusant de la fausse confiance du peuple.”
27
As early as 1782 (see A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 83, 99).
28
Etteilla, ou l'art de lire dans les cartes, n.p. [Paris], 1791:
"En 1750, on ne connoissoit pas en France l'art de tirer les cartes ; mais en 1751, 52 & 1753, trois personnes
âgées, dont un homme & deux femmes, se donnerent pour les tirer.
Ils avoient raison, puisqu'après avoir mêlé & fait couper un jeu de 32 cartes, ils les faisoient tirer une à une du
jeu, & lorsque le questionnant avoit sorti un pic, cela (prétendoient ces vieilles gens) annonçoit du chagrin ; ainsi
les coeurs de la joie, les carreaux de la campagne, & les trefles de l'argent."
(On this booklet, see Decker et al., A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 96-7)
29
Only one copy of Etteilla, ou l'art de lire dans les cartes is known to exist in France, in a private collection in
Paris. See A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 97-98, and note 64, pp. 274-275.
30
Etteillla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes par M*** (Etteilla, or A Way to Entertain Oneself with
a Pack of Cards by Mr***) (Amsterdam and Paris, Lesclapart, 1770). For a description of the meanings and
method, see A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 74-76.
31
A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 83 and note 36, p. 273 (Etteilla 1770 pp. 73-74).
32
Antoine Court (de Gébelin) (c. 1720-1784). Volume VIII of Le Monde Primitif (Paris, 1781), essay titled Du jeu
des tarots (On the Game of Tarot) pp. 365-394 (410).
33
Recherches sur les tarots, et sur la divination par les cartes des tarots, par M. le C. de M.*** (Studies on the
Tarot, and on divination with Tarot cards, by Monsieur the C. de M.***), Le Monde Primitif vol . VIII, pp. 395-
410. “M. le C. de M.***” has been conclusively identified with Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, the Count of
Mellet (1727-1824) (see Dummett, The Game of Tarot p. 105 n. 13; see also A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 66). For
the fullest accounts of both essays in Le Monde Primitif vol. VIII, see A Wicked Pack of Cards pp. 52-73.
34
See, for a thorough discussion of Alliette/Etteilla, A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 74-99.
35
A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 100-115, and pp. 143-165.
36
A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 116-142.
37
See Decker and Dummett, A History of the Occult Tarot, pp. 129-141; and more fully in K. Frank Jensen, The
Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot (Melbourne, Association for Tarot Studies, 2006).
38
Paris, 1949 (A History of the Occult Tarot p. 303).
39
The history of cartomancy and its connection and codevelopment with esoteric thought in the 18 th, 19th and
20th centuries has been exhaustively presented in Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett, A
Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot (London: Duckworth, 1996) and in Ronald Decker,
Michael Dummett, A History of the Occult Tarot 1870-1970 (London: Duckworth, 2002). No comparable work
exists in any other language.