Cartomancy and Occultism

[devin]

2 hours ago, gregory said:

Not something that has anything to do with Tarot though. IMNVHO.

 

In my faux humble opinion, yes, I agree. About mind magic, that is. Still, Tarot and occultism are, for better or worse, so intertwined that many people have trouble separating the two. A number of occultists even class divination as a subset of magical practice. In fairness to them, the history of the divinatory Tarot could be seen as a long series of footnotes to 18th century occultism.

Edited January 26, 2022 by devin

[katrinka]

16 minutes ago, devin said:

In my faux humble opinion, yes, I agree. About mind magic, that is. Still, Tarot and occultism are, for better or worse, so intertwined that many people have trouble separating the two. I see a number of occultists also class divination as a subset of magical practice. In fairness to them, the history of the divinatory Tarot could be seen as a long series of footnotes to 18th century occultism.

 

Yes, occult Tarot has been hyped to the extent that some people don't know anything else exists. But cartomancy existed long before that, certainly before 18th century occultism, and luckily it never really went away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartomancy

 

 

[devin]

18 hours ago, katrinka said:

Yes, occult Tarot has been hyped to the extent that some people don't know anything else exists. But cartomancy existed long before that, certainly before 18th century occultism, and luckily it never really went away.

 

I'm tempted to name-drop Dummett and wave him about like a cudgel (this is particularly effective when using hardback versions of his books), but I'm not sure if his insights apply quite so strictly to cartomancy, so I'll err on the side of caution instead. (Especially since any slip on my part would reveal that I have not in fact read the man thoroughly.)

 

Onward. 

 

Is there evidence predating Etteilla for anything resembling modern cartomancy? If memory serves, there are a couple of keywords hanging about, but whether or not they apply to cartomancy proper or are related to the consultation of a fortune-telling book or some such is not clear. Other references seem to imply a method far more poetic than systematically cartomantic. Those that do resemble true cartomancy are very much of the good omen/bad omen variety or involve shuffling and reshuffling until a certain court pairing comes up.

 

It seems we owe those kooky occultists a lot.

 

That said, I reckon it's perfectly possible that the very cards themselves have their roots in some form of ancient divinatory practice.

 

It should be mentioned that all of the above (bar the origins of the cards) is basically cribbed from Ross Caldwell. In other words, I don't really know what I'm talking about!

 

https://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_history_of_cartomancy

 

EDIT: Interestingly, there are some accounts of a persecutory nature involving cards and spell work. So it seems using the cards for magic might have at least as much of a history as using them for divination. (Of course, we can't really take these accounts, given their odious origin, at face value.)

Edited January 27, 2022 by devin

[katrinka]

2 hours ago, devin said:

I'm tempted to name-drop Dummett and wave him about like a cudgel (this is particularly effective when using hardback versions of his books),

 

🤣

All's fair in the internet and the WWE.

 

 

2 hours ago, devin said:

but I'm not sure if his insights apply quite so strictly to cartomancy, so I'll err on the side of caution instead. (Especially since any slip on my part would reveal that I have not in fact read the man thoroughly.)

 

I haven't either. Some of the best stuff is OOP.
 

2 hours ago, devin said:

Onward. 

 

We say that here. Has Oat Willie gone worldwide? 😁
 

2 hours ago, devin said:

Is there evidence predating Etteilla for anything resembling modern cartomancy?

 

There's a lot of refences (in spite of card reading being frowned on and often, illegal.) You just have to look for them. Here's a few:
 

Mary Greer turned up a book from 1729: https://marykgreer.com/2010/01/18/oldest-cartomancy-meanings-in-english/
 

This bit on WOPC is interesting: "An early example is a reference by Pedro Ciruelo (1538) to fortune-telling using dice, playing cards or handwritten cards ("Estas suertes se echan en muchas maneras; o con dados o con cartas de naipes o con cédulas escritas")."
https://www.wopc.co.uk/tarot/divination/

 

And the wikipedia link I posted earlier says "Forms of cartomancy appeared soon after playing cards were first introduced into Europe in the 14th century" and cites Paul Huson's Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartomancy
 

2 hours ago, devin said:

If memory serves, there are a couple of keywords hanging about, but whether or not they apply to cartomancy proper or are related to the consultation of a fortune-telling book or some such is not clear. Other references seem to imply a method far more poetic than systematically cartomantic. Those that do resemble true cartomancy are very much of the good omen/bad omen variety or involve shuffling and reshuffling until a certain court pairing comes up.

 

Now I'm curious about your definition of "true cartomancy." It sounds like you mean "modern cartomancy." Folk practices normally vary according to time and place. One can't deduce that something isn't cartomancy just because it doesn't match up with Martello (or whoever.)

But "...the good omen/bad omen variety or involve shuffling and reshuffling until a certain court pairing comes up" are definitely forms of cartomancy, since cards are being used to tell the future.

 

2 hours ago, devin said:

That said, I reckon it's perfectly possible that the very cards themselves have their roots in some form of ancient divinatory practice.

 

I'm sure the cards were designed for gaming, but people would read them as well. It's human nature to do that. Steeped tea leaves, pebbles, eggs, candle wax, etc. weren't manufactured as divinatory tools, either, but...
 

2 hours ago, devin said:

It should be mentioned that all of the above (bar the origins of the cards) is basically cribbed from Ross Caldwell. In other words, I don't really know what I'm talking about!

 

https://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_history_of_cartomancy

 

EDIT: Interestingly, there are some accounts of a persecutory nature involving cards and spell work. So it seems using the cards for magic might have at least as much of a history as using them for divination. (Of course, we can't really take these accounts, given their odious origin, at face value.)

The site isn't letting me download the PDF, but I can see the first page. He cites Fernando de la Torre in 1450 as writing "players could tell fortunes with them (cards) to know who each one loves most and who is most desired and by many other diverse ways." Then there's a whole paragraph of examples from 1506, 1554, and 1632 naming cards as "sortilege" and "one of the means of divination."

Multiple references to cartomancy, and that's just the first page.

As for using them for magic, yes, I've seen references to things like that. But it was folk magic, not Golden Dawn-type high magick.

Edited January 27, 2022 by katrinka

[katrinka]

5 minutes ago, devin said:

I do get your point, but I still think what people are talking about when they say 'the cartomantic method' post dates Etteilla.

 

Not to drag this out forever, but I have to ask: exactly what do you mean by "the cartomantic method"?

[devin]

2 hours ago, katrinka said:

Not to drag this out forever, but I have to ask: exactly what do you mean by "the cartomantic method"?

 

Oh I'd warble on forever. I just don't want to annoy Daniel. Okay, let me try say it another, maybe less muddled, way: The occultist influence is almost inescapable as we owe all but the simplest card reading methods to their input circa mid to late 1700s. Before then, it's a very basic affair.

[DanielJUK]

This split off thread is a continuation of this thread: Money "petition" spell seems to have worked

 

[devin]

1 hour ago, DanielJUK said:

This split off thread is a continuation of this thread: Money "petition" spell seems to have worked

 

 

👍👍👍

[katrinka]

22 hours ago, devin said:

Okay, let me try say it another, maybe less muddled, way: The occultist influence is almost inescapable as we owe all but the simplest card reading methods to their input circa mid to late 1700s. Before then, it's a very basic affair.

Ah, Here we goooooo...

 

 

Yes, it's "'basic" in the sense that there are clear, concise meanings: a dark man, money, an ending, etc.

But when you drag occultism into it, things change. It is one thing to read with a bit of that: elemental dignities, etc. A little of that can enhance your reading. I'm not saying the occultists contributed nothing.

But when you impose endless correspondences, it's not about reading cards any more. It's about meditation, pathworking, etc. Fortunetelling takes a back seat.

 

So, in a nutshell, the occultists are outside of "the cartomantic method." The cartomantic method has always been fine without them.

[devin]

On 1/28/2022 at 7:16 PM, katrinka said:

Yes, it's "'basic" in the sense that there are clear, concise meanings: a dark man, money, an ending, etc.

But when you drag occultism into it, things change. It is one thing to read with a bit of that: elemental dignities, etc. A little of that can enhance your reading. I'm not saying the occultists contributed nothing.

But when you impose endless correspondences, it's not about reading cards any more. It's about meditation, pathworking, etc. Fortunetelling takes a back seat.

 

So, in a nutshell, the occultists are outside of "the cartomantic method." The cartomantic method has always been fine without them.

 

All this talk of monkeys has got me thinking of evolution and the Cambrian explosion.

 

Quote

The Cambrian explosion happened more than 500 million years ago. It was when most of the major animal groups started to appear in the fossil record, a time of rapid expansion of different forms of life on Earth.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/february/the-cambrian-explosion-was-far-shorter-than-thought.html

 

 

My current thinking is that 17th century occultism represents a kind of 'Cambrian' moment in the history of cartomancy.

 

Yes, cartomancy existed before then, but in a simplistic form - intuitive readings, poetic riffing, and simple red=good/black=bad style readings, or searching through the pack to find two courts together.

 

It's only in the work of Etteilla and those who followed that we suddenly see cartomancy gaining complexity.

 

Here, I'm not talking about correspondences, dignities and the like, but rather what we today consider the basic cartomantic method, IE. individual card meanings working in combination.

 

Of course lot books and cards have an earlier relationship. But it's this relationship that casts doubt on packs of cards found with keywords scribbled on them.... they could be nothing more than records of a lot book reading.

 

And even if those key words are proof of an earlier method of reading the cards with individual meanings and combinations, cartomancy certainly only comes into its own in print via the occultists. Our debt to them as popularisers would still be great.

Edited January 31, 2022 by devin

[devin]

For general interest: Here's a wonderful piece by Michael S. Howard looking at the history of cartomancy.

http://16thcenturycartomancy.blogspot.com/2015/05/

 

And a shorter version of the same can be found here:

http://16thcenturycartomancy.blogspot.com/

 

If there is any info in the above that contradicts my ideas..... ignore it.

Edited January 31, 2022 by devin

[devin]

hmmmm, since I can't edit my posts, I should just say that I made a mistake in my second last post, saying 17th instead of 18th century occultism.

[Mi-Shell]

5 hours ago, devin said:

....

It's only in the work of Etteilla and those who followed that we suddenly see cartomancy gaining complexity.

 

 

I agree and just will add, that many people used cards to divine and "read" but could neither read nor write or had access to books and writings about cards.

I would have loved to know more of how what cards were read by them. 

My own maternal grandmother read Tarot in several different languages from ~1890 to WWll and could neither read nor write. What the established card meanings were for her and the card readers of her time was/ is quite different from what one finds in books nowadays.

[katrinka]

12 hours ago, devin said:

My current thinking is that 17th century occultism represents a kind of 'Cambrian' moment in the history of cartomancy.

 

Yes, cartomancy existed before then, but in a simplistic form - intuitive readings, poetic riffing, and simple red=good/black=bad style readings, or searching through the pack to find two courts together.

 

8 hours ago, devin said:

hmmmm, since I can't edit my posts, I should just say that I made a mistake in my second last post, saying 17th instead of 18th century occultism.

 

It's beside the point whether you consider it "simplistic" or not. It's still all cartomancy.
 

12 hours ago, devin said:

Here, I'm not talking about correspondences, dignities and the like, but rather what we today consider the basic cartomantic method, IE. individual card meanings working in combination.

 

Um, what happened to that Mary Greer link that you posted earlier? I don't seem to see it now...

Ah, googled it! https://marykgreer.com/2008/04/01/origins-of-divination-with-playing-cards/

It's chock full of things like this:

 

It's an interesting link - it cites lots of old references to people telling fortunes with cards, before all the esoteric noise.

Oh hey, what's this? https://marykgreer.com/2008/04/08/in-1730-reason-triumphs-over-folly/

It looks like a 1730 play inspired by full-blown cartomancy - complete with proximity, combinations, etc.:

 

Court de Gebelin was 11 years old in 1730. Etteilla wouldn't be born for another 8 years.

 

6 hours ago, Mi-Shell said:

many people used cards to divine and "read" but could neither read nor write or had access to books and writings about cards.

 

Well, yes. It was a folkloric practice. A lot of people learned by oral transmission, from a family member or friend. They lived, read cards, and died without leaving a record.
That makes the written records that we do have even more telling.
 

Edited February 1, 2022 by katrinka

[devin]

I reckon Mary Greer deserves a lot of credit for the historical nuggets she intermittently throws out. The link to her cartomancy page is probably sitting in that other thread somewhere.

 

The lot book is a meh from me. In my understanding the cards were used as a stand in for dice or a spinner or whatever to determine a page to look up in a book. Of course, it's easy to imagine how one might transfer the meanings from the book to the cards, but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of our discussion.....

 

Jack the Giant Killer on the other hand is a goodie. I'd forgotten about it and it is mentioned in both the Caldwell and Howard links I threw out. In my defence, I did say I was working from memory. Still, and maybe I'm just being pig headed here, I'm not sure it is entirely clear whether or not it's showing individual cards with individual meanings working in combination or if it's more a case of suit qualities interacting with a good dose of intuitive or context specific winging it thrown in. Especially when one considers the reading styles present in the vast majority of historical examples. It's also a play.

 

I dunno. But it is a goodie. Bloody allegories.

 

I went back and checked if I'd come off a little over-the-top in my first statement (I have a bad habit of starting with a victory lap and then having to walk back to the start), but no, not this time. From the beginning my only point was that the occultists deserve their place in the sun when it comes to the history of cartomancy and that their contribution to the art is far from being mere noise. 

 

(Their contribution to Tarot too, obviously, which goes way beyond the 'occult Tarot'. Let's say they are second on this score only to the Egyptians!)

 

I might post a little more on this in the weeks to come, go through some of the historical examples for interests sake.

 

23 hours ago, Mi-Shell said:

I agree and just will add, that many people used cards to divine and "read" but could neither read nor write or had access to books and writings about cards.

I would have loved to know more of how what cards were read by them. 

My own maternal grandmother read Tarot in several different languages from ~1890 to WWll and could neither read nor write. What the established card meanings were for her and the card readers of her time was/ is quite different from what one finds in books nowadays.

 

Yes. This is why I find it so sad to see a way of life go under the sod. So much is lost.

 

Did you learn from your Gran? Most of us are not so lucky. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by devin
coz ize illeterit.

[Mi-Shell]

I was just a baby, when she passed, but older cousins and my mom learned from her and taught me. 

Elizza had an original Soprafino Tarot, given as a gift from one of her wealthy sitters and all the cards face had completely different meanings than anything in books today.

I wrote about all that - looong time ago....

♥

 

[katrinka]

4 hours ago, devin said:

The lot book is a meh from me. In my understanding the cards were used as a stand in for dice or a spinner or whatever to determine a page to look up in a book. Of course, it's easy to imagine how one might transfer the meanings from the book to the cards, but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of our discussion.....

 

I don't use lot books either - I don't think I know anyone who does. But meh or no, it fits the definition of cartomancy: fortune telling by interpreting a random selection of cards.
So we have cartomancy predating the occultists by a couple of centuries, at minimum.
 

4 hours ago, devin said:

Still, and maybe I'm just being pig headed here, I'm not sure it is entirely clear whether or not it's showing individual cards with individual meanings working in combination or if it's more a case of suit qualities interacting with a good dose of intuitive or context specific winging it thrown in.

 

Even if it were entirely suit interactions, it would still be a form of cartomancy. But -
The Knave of Spades is interpreted as a person and he's dangerous. He "lies oblique", i.e., not directly aspecting the sitter's card, but the Ten of Hearts lies between and it's vulnerable to him. Etc. That's fully-formed cartomancy.
 

4 hours ago, devin said:

It's also a play.

And the playwright, assuming he didn't read cards himself, obviously consulted someone who did. Most don't, even now when all they would have to do is google. When you see a reading scene in a play or movie these days, they generally just fall back on the Tarot Death cliche, but this guy did some research.

 

Additionally, entertainment is written using tropes people are familiar with. That was written with the knowledge that the audience was at least passingly familiar with card readers. It's carefully written.
 

4 hours ago, devin said:

From the beginning my only point was that the occultists deserve their place in the sun when it comes to the history of cartomancy and that their contribution to the art is far from being mere noise.

 

THEIR place in the sun, not everybody's place in the sun. They've made some interesting contributions, but the bulk of their work, while it may sometimes incorporate Tarot, has ****-all to do with using cards to find out whether your package was stolen off the porch. Of course you can use occult Tarot to do that, but a lot of that is because it incorporates pre-existing cartomantic methods. So credit them with what they actually did, but don't hand other peoples' accomplishments over to them. Even if they'd never existed, people would still read cards.

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by katrinka

[devin]

14 hours ago, katrinka said:

THEIR place in the sun, not everybody's place in the sun. They've made some interesting contributions, but the bulk of their work, while it may sometimes incorporate Tarot, has ****-all to do with using cards to find out whether your package was stolen off the porch. Of course you can use occult Tarot to do that, but a lot of that is because it incorporates pre-existing cartomantic methods. So credit them with what they actually did, but don't hand other peoples' accomplishments over to them. Even if they'd never existed, people would still read cards.

 

Well, on Tarot I reckon we're on much firmer ground: Surely it's uncontroversial to give occultists the credit for turning the Tarot into a divinatory instrument to reckon with?

 

Here it's good to remember that while they may have dragged all sorts of associations and correspondences into the Tarot's orbit, they were also in the habit of providing mundane fortune-telling based meanings and techniques.

 

Like I said earlier, even if they only served (and I'm not saying their input is limited to this) as systemisers, popularisers, synthesizers, or transcribers, that's still a large contribution. Excepting for oral tradition (which by this day and age is wholly unreliable in its purity and origin), how exactly do we know to any degree of depth and or detail how people read cards historically? The work of occultists. 

 

Of course, as anybody reading this thread will have noticed, I ain't no historian. 🙂 

 

Incidentally, I used to very much buy into the whole 'hack occultists came along and ruined a folk tradition' thing. I was disabused of the notion and now maybe I've gone too far the other way.

Edited February 2, 2022 by devin

[katrinka]

11 hours ago, devin said:

Well, on Tarot I reckon we're on much firmer ground: Surely it's uncontroversial to give occultists the credit for turning the Tarot into a divinatory instrument to reckon with?

 

Granted I was still on my first coffee of the day, but I had to read that three times to be sure you were actually saying what you said.

As a divinatory instrument, well...I've seen a few people do some amazing things. Readings-within-readings utilizing the paths, etc. But these are extremely rare, and you can get the same information using cartomantic methods.

The vast majority of Tarot readers don't do things like that. A good number of them haven't even read Crowley, Wirth, Mathers, etc. (I'm leaving Etteilla off as he borrowed so heavily from older forms of french cartomancy. It's important to make the distinction between cartomancy and occultism here, lest we argue semantics. But most of them don't read him, either.) Some even seem to find the PKT daunting.

 

That created a huge market for easy books with crescent moons on the spines and lots of pictures and white space. They teach neither occultism nor cartomancy, and for the most part advise the student to do things like "get the deck that calls to you" and "look at the pictures", not much else. The rest is filler: anecdotes, advice on "developing intuition", new spreads, etc. No real explanation of reading techniques. Material like that obviously isn't effective - reading cards requires an investment of effort. So for the last ten years or so, there's been a huge influx of people piling on to Lenormand, playing cards, etc. where the older cartomantic methods have been preserved and they FINALLY learn basic cartomantic techniques like attendance, context, etc. and get their readings to actually work.

So no. Occultists have not turned Tarot into "a divinatory instrument to reckon with."
 

11 hours ago, devin said:

Here it's good to remember that while they may have dragged all sorts of associations and correspondences into the Tarot's orbit, they were also in the habit of providing mundane fortune-telling based meanings and techniques.

 

Which were heavily cribbed from cartomancy.
 

11 hours ago, devin said:

Like I said earlier, even if they only served (and I'm not saying their input is limited to this) as systemisers, popularisers, synthesizers, or transcribers, that's still a large contribution. Excepting for oral tradition (which by this day and age is wholly unreliable in its purity and origin), how exactly do we know to any degree of depth and or detail how people read cards historically? The work of occultists. 
 

 

Have you never seen antique cartomancy books? There's scads of them.
 

Edited February 2, 2022 by katrinka

[frankie]

1 hour ago, katrinka said:

No real explanation of reading techniques. That alone isn't effective - reading cards requires an investment of effort. So for the last ten years or so, there's been a huge influx of people piling on to Lenormand, playing cards, etc. where the older cartomantic methods have been preserved and they FINALLY learn basic cartomantic techniques like attendance, context, etc. and get their readings to actually work.

This sums up my learning journey and experiences perfectly. I came to Lenormand desperate for clarity, precision, and rules I could learn and follow to get answers to my questions. I suppose not everyone wants to predict the future, but I ask my cards all sorts of questions (even on so-called occult topics), and I still want to understand the messages with some degree of certainty and specificity. I recently acquired a Thoth Tarot deck, and much to my surprise, I could read with it and get  intelligible answers to my questions with the cartomancy techniques I'm learning. Do I feel like I am missing out on information because I know little about the Tree of Life? Not really. I got the answer to my question.

 

Also, I think sometimes conversations on occult Tarot confuse the philosophical systems added to the Tarot with the type of knowledge one can get from the cards. Those are two separate things. You don't need an occult Tarot deck to answer spiritual questions, nor is a fortune telling deck limited in its scope to everyday matters. The deck/system just provides you with a framework and language to answer your questions. Plus, if one subscribes to the idea of "as above, so below," how can the mundane be anything less than the spiritual? One is a map or reflection of the other. That's why I really love the Petit Lenormand and truly believe it is the world in 36 cards (you have people, animals, plants, landscapes, celestial bodies, weather, human creations, etc), and if it reflects our everyday life, it can reflect our spiritual life as well.

 

Last thing, from what I have read of A.E. Waite, Crowley, et. al., their systems are not so divorced from cartomancy practices as contemporary resources on the Tarot would make it seem.

[devin]

18 hours ago, katrinka said:

 

Granted I was still on my first coffee of the day, but I had to read that three times to be sure you were actually saying what you said.

As a divinatory instrument, well...I've seen a few people do some amazing things. Readings-within-readings utilizing the paths, etc. But these are extremely rare, and you can get the same information using cartomantic methods.

The vast majority of Tarot readers don't do things like that. A good number of them haven't even read Crowley, Wirth, Mathers, etc. (I'm leaving Etteilla off as he borrowed so heavily from older forms of french cartomancy. It's important to make the distinction between cartomancy and occultism here, lest we argue semantics. But most of them don't read him, either.) Some even seem to find the PKT daunting.

 

That created a huge market for easy books with crescent moons on the spines and lots of pictures and white space. They teach neither occultism nor cartomancy, and for the most part advise the student to do things like "get the deck that calls to you" and "look at the pictures", not much else. The rest is filler: anecdotes, advice on "developing intuition", new spreads, etc. No real explanation of reading techniques. Material like that obviously isn't effective - reading cards requires an investment of effort. So for the last ten years or so, there's been a huge influx of people piling on to Lenormand, playing cards, etc. where the older cartomantic methods have been preserved and they FINALLY learn basic cartomantic techniques like attendance, context, etc. and get their readings to actually work.

So no. Occultists have not turned Tarot into "a divinatory instrument to reckon with."
 

 

Which were heavily cribbed from cartomancy.
 

 

Have you never seen antique cartomancy books? There's scads of them.
 

 

Okay, how about one more time 'round the mulberry bush?

 

The occultists: 

 

Gave us the first printed (and very influential) cartomancy book.

Gave us the first systematic and detailed expositions of practical cartomancy. 

Were seemingly the first to assign individual meanings to all the cards. 

Were pretty much the first to definitively employ the Tarot for divination. 

Provided detailed instructions on how to use the Tarot for fortune-telling (the first of these appeared in 1781) .

Gave us simplified and iconic spreads.

Designed and or produced the standard decks we all love and use.

 

To my mind, it is literally, absolutely, totally, completely impossible to subtract their influence from playing card and Tarot divination, from all that came after. And, again, I am not talking about correspondences, kabbalah, dignities, etc. It's also, in my opinion, unfair to say that they did nothing more than rip-off folk cartomancers when our idea of what pre occultist cartomancy looked like is so vague.

 

And even if I've gotten a few of the details above and upthread wrong (like I said, I ain't no historian), it doesn't change the big picture.

 

Thanks for the fun!

 

16 hours ago, frankie said:

Last thing, from what I have read of A.E. Waite, Crowley, et. al., their systems are not so divorced from cartomancy practices as contemporary resources on the Tarot would make it seem.

 

Totally. The idea that the occultists came along and killed off a Tarot folk tradition of cartomantic reading is a fashionable myth. Again and again, they provided cartomantic methods for reading the cards.

[katrinka]

1 hour ago, devin said:

Okay, how about one more time 'round the mulberry bush?

 

The occultists: 

 

Gave us the first printed (and very influential) cartomancy book.

Gave us the first systematic and detailed expositions of practical cartomancy. 

Were seemingly the first to assign individual meanings to all the cards. 

Were pretty much the first to definitively employ the Tarot for divination. 

Provided detailed instructions on how to use the Tarot for fortune-telling (the first of these appeared in 1781) .

Gave us simplified and iconic spreads.

Designed and or produced the standard decks we all love and use.

 

De Gebelin's Le Monde primitif contains a single section on Tarot: a bogus history saying it's Egyptian.
Etteilla did write some instructional works. He said he learned to read cards from an Italian. In other words, cartomancy was already fully developed and in use. So Etteilla didn't "give" it to us. He didn't assign the meanings to the cards, he wasn't the first to read the cards, he didn't invent it. He simply recorded a form of it.

If recipes had never been printed, people would still make biscuits. They would learn from other people, just like they did in the days when most folks were illiterate, and many still do even though they're perfectly capable of reading. There's nothing like making them the way that grandma showed you.

And if people were gaming with Tarot in a certain area, that's what they would have told fortunes with. Cartomancy in other areas would have used a 52 card deck, or a stripped piquet deck...whatever was popular for gaming in that time and place. I'm guessing that Etteilla's Piedmontese friend was familiar with Tarot.

As for decks, yes, some of them were created by occultists. Not all. Especially the ones that predate Etteilla.
And let's not forget other types of divination decks, many of which are based on folk cartomancy.
 

1 hour ago, devin said:

To my mind, it is literally, absolutely, totally, completely impossible to subtract their influence from playing card and Tarot divination, from all that came after. And, again, I am not talking about correspondences, kabbalah, dignities, etc. It's also, in my opinion, unfair to say that they did nothing more than rip-off folk cartomancers when our idea of what pre occultist cartomancy looked like is so vague.
 

 

I'm trying to make sense of your thought process here. You're talking about occultists, but not occult correspondences. It really sounds like you're trying to claim they invented cartomancy, while still acknowledging that pre-occultist cartomancy existed.

That doesn't even make sense.
 

1 hour ago, devin said:

Totally. The idea that the occultists came along and killed off a Tarot folk tradition of cartomantic reading is a fashionable myth.

 

Nobody claimed anything like that. Gummed it up a bit, in some cases, but it hasn't been killed.
My original statement was "occult Tarot has been hyped to the extent that some people don't know anything else exists," not that it had "killed" folk cartomancy.
 

1 hour ago, devin said:

Again and again, they provided cartomantic methods for reading the cards.

 

Cartomantic methods that they learned somewhere. They were one source among many.

I should go put a biscuit recipe on my blog. Maybe I'll be credited with giving the world biscuits. 🙄

Edited February 3, 2022 by katrinka

[devin]

4 hours ago, katrinka said:

De Gebelin's Le Monde primitif contains a single section on Tarot: a bogus history saying it's Egyptian.

 

As far as I'm aware, it also contained a section on Tarot divination by Comte de Mellet.

 

4 hours ago, katrinka said:

I'm trying to make sense of your thought process here. You're talking about occultists, but not occult correspondences. It really sounds like you're trying to claim they invented cartomancy, while still acknowledging that pre-occultist cartomancy existed.

That doesn't even make sense.

 

Maybe I'm being inarticulate. Though it's not complicated. See the list in my last post.

 

On 2/1/2022 at 11:14 PM, katrinka said:

THEIR place in the sun, not everybody's place in the sun. They've made some interesting contributions, but the bulk of their work, while it may sometimes incorporate Tarot, has ****-all to do with using cards to find out whether your package was stolen off the porch. Of course you can use occult Tarot to do that, but a lot of that is because it incorporates pre-existing cartomantic methods. So credit them with what they actually did, but don't hand other peoples' accomplishments over to them. Even if they'd never existed, people would still read cards.

 

On 1/28/2022 at 7:16 PM, katrinka said:

So, in a nutshell, the occultists are outside of "the cartomantic method." The cartomantic method has always been fine without them.

 

Basically, if you think you can remove Etteilla from his place of importance in cartomancy and Tarot,  and the occultists more generally from Tarot divination, have at it. I disagree.

 

That's it, really.

 

I think we're just going round in circles. We should stop and pick the mulberries. Maybe you could put them in your biscuits. I'm sure they'll be tasty.

Edited February 3, 2022 by devin

[katrinka]

19 minutes ago, devin said:

As far as I'm aware, it also contained a section on Tarot divination by Comte de Mellet.

 

A short article. IIRC, he connected them to the Hebrew alphabet and outlined a spread. No comprehensive instructions on reading cards.
 

19 minutes ago, devin said:

Maybe I'm being inarticulate. Though it's not complicated. See the list in my last post.

 

I saw it and I refuted it already. Remember Etteilla's Piedmontese friend? See my last post.
 

19 minutes ago, devin said:

Basically, if you think you can remove Etteilla from his place of importance in cartomancy and Tarot,  and the occultists more generally from Tarot divination, have at it. I disagree.

 

They have their place. It seems some want to credit them with a lot more than they actually contributed, though.

 

19 minutes ago, devin said:

That's it, really.

 

I think we're just going round in circles. We should stop and pick the mulberries. Maybe you could put them in your biscuits. I'm sure they'll be tasty.

 

No thanks. Too many flies.
https://callcontractorsbest.com/trees-to-avoid-having-in-your-yard-because-they-have-the-most-bugs/

 

[devin]

I just want to add two things:

 

1) I'm worried I came across a little pissy in my last post. This was not my intention. Win, lose, or something in between, I enjoy the odd tussle. 

2) Mulberry trees are great. I grew up around them. Lovely fruit.