Local Cartomancy Traditions

[akiva]

On 2/22/2025 at 10:04 PM, katrinka said:

It's apparently not the only one available:

https://www.amazon.it/carte-siciliane-Maria-Rita-Insolera/dp/B09NGVLR1C/262-0927296-7746517

https://www.amazon.it/I-tarocchi-siciliani-Simone-Cardullo/dp/889831129X/262-0927296-7746517

The top link is for the Siciliane regional cards not the tarot, and the second book I own and is more based on the game than divination. I got it because it has a list of all the cards and what looks like meanings, but they're just card descriptions (why? I have eyes 😅).

 

The majors do have a short sentence given to them, but they're hardly enlightening. They say the Temperance card means temeprance, for example. 

 

On 2/22/2025 at 10:04 PM, katrinka said:

The people on the Moon card are meeting in a clandestine manner. Falsehoods, secrets, etc.

That's Selene and Endymion iirc. It definitely creates some weird undertones for this card 😆

[akiva]

3 minutes ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

A little booklet named Nytt sätt att spå i kort (A new manner of telling fortune by cards)

Thanks for sharing, it seems more Russian than Arab due to the 6's. It's also a bit similar to a Polish 24 card method, but they use A, K, Q, J, 10, 9. 

[Scandinavianhermit]

Just now, akiva said:

Thanks for sharing, it seems more Russian than Arab due to the 6's. It's also a bit similar to a Polish 24 card method, but they use A, K, Q, J, 10, 9. 

I'm not surprised. @Raggydoll and I have discussed the hypothetical existence of an 18th century Pan-Baltic cartomancy method from which old Swedish, Polish, Baltic and Russian fortune telling methods are derived. 

[Scandinavianhermit]

4 minutes ago, akiva said:

it seems more Russian than Arab due to the 6's.

The stuff about "oriental method" and "an Arab" are typical salesman fluff for the time and age. If it's not "ancient Egypt" or the Roma people, it's a vaguely defined "Orient", like in this case.

 

Times have changed. Today, "witches", "mother goddesses", cats and, occasionally, the ancient lost continent of "Lemuria" are used for similar marketing purposes. 

[Scandinavianhermit]

Imagine how well a Lemurian Cat-Goddess Celtic-Egyptian Oracle G***y Witch Tarot would sell! 

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

Imagine how well a Lemurian Cat-Goddess Celtic-Egyptian Oracle G***y Witch Tarot would sell! 

 

With a ringing endorsement from Gwyneth Paltrow. 😑
Don't give them any ideas.
 

4 hours ago, akiva said:

The top link is for the Siciliane regional cards not the tarot, and the second book I own and is more based on the game than divination. I got it because it has a list of all the cards and what looks like meanings,

Thanks, good thing I didn't purchase. I do have the non-Tarot regional cards. Is the book any good, do you know?

 

4 hours ago, akiva said:

and what looks like meanings, but they're just card descriptions (why? I have eyes 😅).

Ack. Between filler, white space, and illustrations, people get out of having to actually write.
 

3 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

I'm not surprised. @Raggydoll and I have discussed the hypothetical existence of an 18th century Pan-Baltic cartomancy method from which old Swedish, Polish, Baltic and Russian fortune telling methods are derived

Raggy is one of the most informed people I know, as far as divination, magic, and all things Norse go. And you're pretty good yourself. You guys may well be onto something.
 

 

3 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

The stuff about "oriental method" and "an Arab" are typical salesman fluff for the time and age. If it's not "ancient Egypt" or the Roma people, it's a vaguely defined "Orient", like in this case.

Yes, and "Mlle. Lenormand." But at least Lenormand actually existed. I can't find any evidence that Frau Kipper did. Meanwhile, they seem completely unaware of Madame de Thebes.

 

3 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

Times have changed. Today, "witches", "mother goddesses", cats and, occasionally, the ancient lost continent of "Lemuria" are used for similar marketing purposes. 

Yes. And Mt. Shasta in California, where Thomas Jefferson hangs out with Jesus.



 

[Scandinavianhermit]

31 minutes ago, katrinka said:

Yes, and "Mlle. Lenormand." But at least Lenormand actually existed. I can't find any evidence that Frau Kipper did. Meanwhile, they seem completely unaware of Madame de Thebes.

If anyone has watched Verdi's Un ballo in maschera (1859), you might have noticed a fortune teller. She's based on a real person, Ulrika Arvidsson (1734-1801), who may have warned king Gustavus III against attending the fancy dress ball at which he was assassinated in 1792. After her death in 1801, a few Swedish cartomancy handbooks claimed to present her method of reading the cards:

 

• (anon.): Ny dröm- och spåbok (1849 and many later editions)
• (anon.): Stjärnan eller den trefligaste, nyaste och tillförlitligaste drömboken samt Mamsell Arvidssons sätt att spå i kort (1898)

It was probably a marketing stunt resembling those posthumously surrounding Mdme Lenormand. 

Edited February 25, 2025 by Scandinavianhermit
linked wiki

[katrinka]

4 hours ago, akiva said:

That's Selene and Endymion iirc. It definitely creates some weird undertones for this card 😆

 

She went to the gods and had him roofied, didn't she? And still managed to conceive about fifty babies?
Oh dear. I think I'll keep that interpretation on a back burner for when nothing else fits. 🤣
 

3 minutes ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

It was probably a marketing stunt resembling those posthumously surrounding Mdme Lenormand. 

It's funny how these famous fortunetellers never seem to have any protégés until they're deceased.
Posthumous material from "Ulrika Arvidsson" was most likely written by two guys named Alf and Elof in a publisher's office.

[Scandinavianhermit]

53 minutes ago, katrinka said:

It's funny how these famous fortunetellers never seem to have any protégés until they're deceased.
Posthumous material from "Ulrika Arvidsson" was most likely written by two guys named Alf and Elof in a publisher's office.

Well, the law clerk Adil Bergström (1865-1959) had a side work as a translator of cheap novels and an editor of amusement literature, and, in order to keep his reputation as a law clerk, his publishing activity occurred under several pseudonyms. In 1915 he wrote a book about cartomancy claiming to render the content of a manuscript found in an elderly Sami or Finnish woman's home after her death. Until the outbreak of WWII, Sami and Finnish persons were held to be better fortune tellers than south Scandinavians. Bergström also wrote several cookery-books under the pseudonym Johanna Holmqvist!

Edited February 25, 2025 by Scandinavianhermit

[Scandinavianhermit]

1 hour ago, katrinka said:

Yes. And Mt. Shasta in California, where Thomas Jefferson hangs out with Jesus.

Isn't count de Saint-Germain somehow involved, too? The Theosophists call him "the Master R.".

[Scandinavianhermit]

2 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

After her death in 1801, a few Swedish cartomancy handbooks claimed to present her method of reading the cards:

 

• (anon.): Ny dröm- och spåbok (1849 and many later editions)
• (anon.): Stjärnan eller den trefligaste, nyaste och tillförlitligaste drömboken samt Mamsell Arvidssons sätt att spå i kort (1898)

My bad. There's also these two:

• (anon.): Mamsell Arvidssons sätt att begagna kortleken till utrönandet af en persons karakter, framtida öden, osv (1843)
• (anon.): Mamsell Arfvidssons spåbok (1916)

[akiva]

On 2/25/2025 at 6:23 PM, katrinka said:

She went to the gods and had him roofied, didn't she? And still managed to conceive about fifty babies?
Oh dear. I think I'll keep that interpretation on a back burner for when nothing else fits. 🤣

Yes she did, iirc it was Hypno who put him to sleep, but the story varies and some say it was Zeus. It's definitely a back burner meaning. Most people would of formed their meanings off of what's on the cards, and in this case clandestine activities certainly fit. 

[katrinka]

10 hours ago, akiva said:

Most people would of formed their meanings off of what's on the cards, and in this case clandestine activities certainly fit. 

Yes. One of my first thoughts was that she was late because she had to wait for her husband/parents/whoever to fall asleep, and her paramour dozed off waiting for her. It's got a distinct soap opera vibe. 🤣

[Sar]

I grew up with travelers who used playing cards and coffee grounds as medium for divination. An elder friend of the travelers had used them all her years, never touched a Tarot deck, but she was able to read with it when I gifted her a deck for Christmas (the ordinary RWS) and she went and researched tarot and bought a TdM for herself, said the pictures distracted her from the message the numbers tried to tell her. She is brilliant with the TdM. 

Edited March 3, 2025 by Sar

[akiva]

On 2/28/2025 at 11:48 PM, katrinka said:

It's got a distinct soap opera vibe. 🤣

That's Italian cartomancy to a T. I mean you know how La Vera Sibilla can be with drama 🤣

 

23 hours ago, Sar said:

the pictures distracted her from the message the numbers tried to tell her. She is brilliant with the TdM. 

Thanks for sharing Sar, do you remember the number system she used? It's refreshing to see someone who struggles with images for intuition, rather than pips 😆

[Sar]

On 3/4/2025 at 11:06 AM, akiva said:

That's Italian cartomancy to a T. I mean you know how La Vera Sibilla can be with drama 🤣

 

Thanks for sharing Sar, do you remember the number system she used? It's refreshing to see someone who struggles with images for intuition, rather than pips 😆

It was a little difference, because she saw the Ace (or 1) more like the end, rather the beginning. I asked why and she said it stood alone. No backing up number. The rest was more like the traditional number system I learned through Tarot. 

 

[katrinka]

On 3/3/2025 at 4:27 AM, Sar said:

An elder friend of the travelers had used them all her years, never touched a Tarot deck, but she was able to read with it when I gifted her a deck for Christmas (the ordinary RWS) and she went and researched tarot and bought a TdM for herself, said the pictures distracted her from the message the numbers tried to tell her. She is brilliant with the TdM. 

 

On 3/4/2025 at 4:06 AM, akiva said:

It's refreshing to see someone who struggles with images for intuition, rather than pips 😆

It makes perfect sense. Go through the RWS and try to match it with virtually any playing card system. You can see similarities, but there's aberrations too. It must have been a bit of a headache for her.

[Sar]

10 hours ago, katrinka said:

 

It makes perfect sense. Go through the RWS and try to match it with virtually any playing card system. You can see similarities, but there's aberrations too. It must have been a bit of a headache for her.

That is why she switched over to the TdM. And she scared me when she combined seeing in coffee ground and TdM. I wished I had half her talent. 

 

[akiva]

On 3/12/2025 at 11:11 AM, Sar said:

It was a little difference, because she saw the Ace (or 1) more like the end, rather the beginning.

That's interesting, because in a lot of games aces are, of course, 'high'. Maybe it was based off that? 

 

On 3/12/2025 at 10:28 PM, katrinka said:

It must have been a bit of a headache for her.

I share that headache 😅

[katrinka]

22 hours ago, Sar said:

That is why she switched over to the TdM. And she scared me when she combined seeing in coffee ground and TdM. I wished I had half her talent. 

While there's obviously some raw talent involved, I'm sure she worked very hard for a long time honing her skills. People may call reading cards, coffee grounds, etc. "the gift", but I don't think it just falls in anyone's lap.
 

8 hours ago, akiva said:

That's interesting, because in a lot of games aces are, of course, 'high'. Maybe it was based off that? 

 

 

I'm sure it was! People underestimate how much cartomancy is influenced by games that were popular at the time. It's how we got stripped decks, like piquet.
 

8 hours ago, akiva said:

I share that headache 😅

As do I. It's not that I can't read scenic decks, I love them. It's just that trying to read them with a pip deck mindset would have me self-medicating.
At least one of these should work...



 

[Sar]

9 hours ago, akiva said:

That's interesting, because in a lot of games aces are, of course, 'high'. Maybe it was based off that? 

 

I share that headache 😅

 

44 minutes ago, katrinka said:

 

 

I'm sure it was! People underestimate how much cartomancy is influenced by games that were popular at the time. It's how we got stripped decks, like piquet.
 

 

 

I know nothing about that, but it could be. We had a very popular card card in my childhood called "Olsen" that is based on that idea.

[akiva]

On 3/14/2025 at 8:23 AM, Sar said:

I know nothing about that, but it could be. We had a very popular card card in my childhood called "Olsen" that is based on that idea.

Quite often fortune telling methods mirror the popular gaming methods of the time. So it could well be Olsen is her inspiration. I did Google it and laughed when it said it's similar to the game Uno/crazy 8's, as that's a childhood favourite here too! 😆

[Sar]

2 hours ago, akiva said:

Quite often fortune telling methods mirror the popular gaming methods of the time. So it could well be Olsen is her inspiration. I did Google it and laughed when it said it's similar to the game Uno/crazy 8's, as that's a childhood favourite here too! 😆

I am a ferocious card player when it comes to Crazy 8/Olsen. 

[akiva]

1 hour ago, Sar said:

I am a ferocious card player when it comes to Crazy 8/Olsen. 

I can imagine, Sar! It's such a fun game, but it makes me competitive 😅

Edited March 16, 2025 by akiva