History of Cartomancy
the scene:
Ross Caldwell
Playing cards first apapeared 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 16th 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 15th 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
(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
th th th
codevelopment with esoteric thought in the 18 , 19 and 20
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.