CARTOMANCY
• Cartomancy is the practice of using a deck of cards to predict the future or tell fortunes, and
practitioners are known as cartomancers, card readers, or simply readers. It's believed to
have originated in Europe in the 14th century, shortly after playing cards were introduced.
• Cartomancy using standard playing cards was the most popular form of providing fortune-
telling card readings in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The standard 52-card deck is often
augmented with jokers or even with the blank card found in many packaged decks.
• HISTORY
• Hints abound regarding the use of playing cards for divinatory purposes, but such uses were
informal enough that a word for it was not coined until the end of the eighteenth century
when Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738-1791) started discussing “cartonomancy” which he later
shortened to “cartomancy.”
• Cartomancy continued to find practitioners and enthusiasts into the period of the French
Revolution with revolutionary versions of Tarot cards appearing, some conveniently
containing hints for the user added as a sort of cheat-sheet.
• CARTOMANCY COMPARED TO TAROT
• Cartomancy and tarot are both forms of divination or fortune-telling that use cards, but
there are some differences between them:
• Card type
• Tarot cards are similar to standard playing cards, but tarot decks have 22 additional cards
called the Major Arcana, which are used for fortune-telling.
• Origin
• Tarot cards were invented in Italy in the 1430s, and may have been the basis for standard
playing cards.
• Purpose
• Tarot is often used as a tool for self-reflection and self-care, and can help people consider
and work through problems.
• Practitioners
• People who practice cartomancy are often called cartomancers, card readers, or simply
readers.
• KNOW YOUR CARDS
• In cartomancy we use the deck of 52 playing cards.
• In the deck there are 52 main cards & 2 joker cards. We will discuss the joker cards later.
• Main 52 cards = 4 * 13
• There are 4 suits in the card. And each suit has 13 cards. That is how the deck has 52 cards.
• The 4 suits are - heart, spade, diamond, club
• The 13 cards in each suit can be further divided as - 10 number cards ( A - 10 ) and 3 face
• cards ( J, Q, K )
• The 52 cards in the deck represent 52 weeks of the year. Where each card represents 1
week.
• 13 Heart cards represent - week no.1 to week no.13
• A of heart - week 1
• 2 of heart - week 2
• 3 of heart - week 3
• 4 of heart - week 4
• 5 of heart - week 5
• 6 of heart - week 6
• 7 of heart - week 7
• 8 of heart - week 8
• 9 of heart - week 9
• 10 of heart - week 10
• J of heart - week 11
• Q of heart - week 12
• K of heart - week 13
• A of spade - week 14
• 2 of spade - week 15
• 3 of spade - week 16
• Etc
• K of spade - week 26
• A of diamond - week 27
• 2 of diamond - week 28
• Etc
• K of diamond - week 39
• A of club - week 40
• 2 of club - week 41
• K of club - week 52
• YES OR NO RULES
• Red cards - heart & diamond cards - represent positive answer or YES
• Black cards - spade & club cards - represent negative answer or NO
• ANALYSIS OF THE FOUR SUITS
• Heart - represent emotions, feelings, relationships, family, healing, love
• Spade - represent mind, obstacles, fights, challenges, conflict, overthinking, weak decision
• making
• Diamond - represent wealth, material world, finance, luxury, career, property, attraction,
• manifestation
• Club - represent action, practical approach, growth, energy, inspiration
• THE MYSTERY OF THE CARDS
• There are 4 suits which are equivalent to four seasons:
• Clubs – Spring
• Diamonds – Summer
• Hearts – Autumn
• Spades – Winter
• There are 13 cards in each suit, not only there are 13 weeks in each season, but 13 is the
number of Lunar months in a year.
• These playing cards are the minor Arcana cards with this system of attribution, the first point
to bear in mind is the association of the suits to the four traditional elements:
• Clubs – Fire
• Hearts – Water
• Spades – Air
• Diamonds- Earth
• THE COLOUR OF THE READING
• The most obvious and inescapable feature of any reading is the colour of the cards.
• A predominance of red cards (Hearts and Diamonds) is an indicator that the reading is
generally positive and the outcome will be a happy one.
• The reverse is true if the predominant colour is black ( Clubs and Spades)
• The result is troublesome and worrying