Cartomancy

Cartomancy with the ordinary fifty two card deck reads plainer and more situationally than tarot: four suits sharing the same elemental attributions as the tarot's own minor arcana, no trump cards, and thirty six numbered pip cards mapping one to one onto the thirty six decans. A reading works from suit and card value rather than from the tarot's larger symbolic imagery.

History

Standard playing cards reached Europe in the late fourteenth century, most likely through trade contact with the Mamluk world, whose own card decks already used suit systems that European decks would adapt. The French suit system now standard across most of the West, hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, was standardized in France by the fifteenth century and spread from there, distinct from the earlier Italian and Spanish suit systems (cups, coins, swords and batons) that tarot's own minor arcana still preserves.

Reading the ordinary deck for divination, as opposed to the tarot deck, is documented in eighteenth century France in the same milieu that popularized tarot cartomancy, including the figure of Jean-Baptiste Alliette, known by his working name Etteilla, who wrote on card divination broadly. The best known individual cartomancer of the following century is Marie Anne Lenormand, a Parisian fortune teller whose fame was such that a later, separate thirty six card oracle deck was published under her name after her death; that deck, treated on its own report item elsewhere in this atlas, is a later commercial creation rather than a deck she herself designed, a distinction worth keeping clear from her actual playing card readings.

The Four Suits

• Hearts, paired with the tarot's Cups, water, emotion.
• Diamonds, paired with Pentacles, earth, material concerns.
• Clubs, paired with Wands, fire, action and ambition.
• Spades, paired with Swords, air, conflict and thought.

How A Reading Is Constructed

Each suit's ace through ten, thirty six pip cards in all across the four suits, maps one to one onto the thirty six ten degree decans the Western Astrology and Tarot report items already use, the same Golden Dawn era correspondence system linking cards to degrees of the zodiac. A reading works from a chart's degree placements to find the pip card each falls under, reading suit for element and number for the decan's own character, plainer and more directly situational than the fuller symbolic scenes tarot's minor arcana carries for the same thirty six degrees.

Where To Read More

• HeartsHearts, paired with the tarot's Cups: water, emotion.
• DiamondsDiamonds, paired with Pentacles: earth, material concerns.
• ClubsClubs, paired with Wands: fire, action and ambition.
• SpadesSpades, paired with Swords: air, conflict and thought.
• Decan 1 of AriesAriesOne of the thirty-six ten degree decans a pip card maps onto under the shared Golden Dawn correspondence system.
• Decan 2 of TaurusTaurusA second decan, showing the same pip-to-degree mapping at a different band.