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 napes (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 napes 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 (pudense echar
suertes en ellos quin ms ama cada uno, e quin
quiere ms 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 Montalvn (sometimes spelled Montalbn), 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

Montalvn 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 Germansuited 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 the scene:
(Limerno speaks) "...yesterday Giuberto, Focilla,
Falcone and Mirtella secretly led me into a room where,
since theyd 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
Folengos 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 persons 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
Sebastin Cirac Estopan 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 (16151617), 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
Mara 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 Meja 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 Mara de Acevedo, tried in Madrid in 16481649. 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 Mara. Getting both cards together
would signify that the young man only loved Lady
Mara; 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-bearers 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 (16181669), 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 Ins 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.
Ins: You believe in those things?
Cant you see its 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 Russite (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 Follys 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 cant
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 Zare:
Without

her desperate jealousy, without her blind trust

in the infallibility of the cards, which she consulted ten
times a day, this Zare 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 didnt 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, JeanBaptiste 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).
Etteillas 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 Zares 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 Gbelin 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
Etteillas relentless self-promotion, along with the fame
of De Gbelins essays, ensured that the identification
of Tarot with esoteric doctrines, as well as cartomancy,
reached across Europe, where French was the lingua
franca. Etteillas 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 MarieAnne Adlade Le Normand (1772-1843), she was
known as Mademoiselle (Mlle) Le Normand throughout
her life, since she never married. Mlle Le Normands
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 Napoleons reign. But her image in the modern
mind remains as Josephine and Napoleons 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 Tarots occult mystique had
been cultivated for nearly a century. In the Englishspeaking 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 Smiths 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 cardmaking 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

Fernando de la Torre, (1416-c. 1475), Juego de naypes, in Cancionero de Lope de

Stiga, cdice del siglo XV (Madrid, 1872), pp. 273-293. This text has been critically
edited by Mara Jess Dez 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 Torres Juego de naipes, A Game of
Love (La Cornica 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 Prez de Montalvn (1602-1638). First published in 1632, this text went through
twenty editions, the last being in 1736. See the doctoral dissertation of Valerie YIllise
Job, A Modernized edition of Juan Prez de Montalvns 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. Mullaneys 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 chebbeno le Carte lusorie de trionfi, quelli a sorte fra loro si
divisero, e vlto 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, n pi n 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. Sebastin Cirac Estopan, Los procesos de hechiceras en la Inquisicin de
Castilla la Nueva (Tribunales de Toledo y Cuenca), Madrid, 1942.
9
Estopan, pp. 40, 53.
10
Estopan, pp. 53-54.
11
Estopan, pp. 137-138.
12
Estopan, p. 53.
13
Estopan, p. 53.
14
See Juan Blquez Miguel, Eros y tanatos : brujeria, hechiceria y supersticion en
Espaa (1989), p. 305; cf. Maria-Helena Snchez 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, segn las cartas salen,
o mentir el rey de bastos
o no ha de querer casarse.
INS:
Crdito 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: larte
della cartomanzia dallantica 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 Arla edition,
Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. Mmoires. Histoire de ma vie (1993), pp. 1601, 1604
(in chap. CXVII). The French reads:
Sans sa jalousie dsesprante, sans son aveugle confiance dans linfaillibilit des
cartes, quelle consultait dix fois par jour, cette Zare aurait t une merveille et je ne
laurais jamais quitte.()
Pour me convaincre de mon crime, elle me montre un carr de vingt-cinq cartes o
elle me fait lire toutes les dbauches qui mavaient tenu dehors toute la nuit. Elle me
montre la garce, le lit, les combats et jusqu mes garements contre nature. Je ne
voyais rien du tout mais elle simaginait de voir tout.
Aprs lui avoir laiss dire, sans linterrompre, tout ce qui pouvait servir soulager sa
jalousie et sa rage, je pris son grimoire que je jetai au feu
25
Noted in Murielle Brul, Le jeu Metz sous l'Ancien Rgime (Editions Serpenoise, 2005). This
passage communicated to me by Thierry Depaulis from Murielle Brul (10 April
2006):Un jugement de police du 17 mars 1759 condamne deux femmes 8 jours de
prison parce qu'elles "abusoient de la simplicit de quelques personnes [et] leurs
tiroient de l'argent sous prtexte de leurs faire retrouver des vols ou choses perdues
par le moyen de quelques jeux de cartes".
26
Brul, Le jeu Metz sous l'Ancien Rgime, p. 168. The French text and notes: "Pour
avoir tir les cartes, la veuve Anne Cauvin est condamne tre expose au carcan
sur le march. Pour que nul n'en ignore la raison, un bonnet entour de tarots devait
couvrir la tte de la cartomancienne, en plus d'un tamis pass son cou. La peine
expie, les tarots finirent dchirs et le tamis bris." (Affiches, annonces et avis divers
pour les Trois-Evchs et la Lorraine, n 31, 1-08-1772). Original text, provided by
Thierry Depaulis: Anne Cauvin tre expose au carcan pendant trois jours de
marchs conscutifs, ayant la tte couverte d'un bonnet entour de tarots, & d'un
tamis pass au col, & y rester en cet tat pendant une heure chaque fois, aprs quoi
les tarots seront dchirs et le tamis bris par l'Excuteur ; accuse () d'avoir mis en
usage des pratiques superstitieuses de faits & par paroles, pour se procurer des
profits illgitimes 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 ges, dont un homme & deux femmes, se donnerent pour les
tirer.
Ils avoient raison, puisqu'aprs avoir ml & fait couper un jeu de 32 cartes, ils les
faisoient tirer une une du jeu, & lorsque le questionnant avoit sorti un pic, cela
(prtendoient ces vieilles gens) annonoit 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 manire de se rcrer 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 Gbelin) (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-Raphal-Lucrce 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 18th, 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.