Cartomancy is fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards. Forms of cartomancy appeared soon after playing cards were first introduced into Europe in the 14th century.. Some authorities attribute the popularity of using cards to predict the future to the Gypsies.
In cartomancy, each card is not only defined by its suit , number or court identity, but also by its relationship with the planets. The chart above is a reference for each card.
” Cartomancy” Alexey Venetsianov [1842]
Portraying themselves as diviners in the magical traditions of Egypt, the Gypsies began reading fortunes with picture cards called atouts that were popular in Persia. When the deck underwent a transformation in Europe, it was called tarots. These decks were similar to modern packs, but there were 78, rather than 52, cards, and the suits were not the familiar diamonds, spades, clubs, and hearts, but swords, cups, coins, and rods. Rather than king, queen, and jack, the tarot deck had 22 picture cards, and the king, queen, knight, and knave (or page) joined the “spot” cards from 10 down to one for each suit.
http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Prophecy-and-Divination/Cartomancy-Tarot.html
The earliest cards in China were known as money cards and were made of four different suits, Strings of coins, coins, myriads of strings and tens of myriads objects. These were represented with numerals between 2 to 9 in the first three suits and for the “tens of myriads” the numbers were from 1 to 9. Scholars believed that these earliest cards might actually have been paper currency which were used as cards as well as the stakes for which the game was played
http://cardshistory.com/history.htm
http://53muses.com/reference-charts/all-cards-spread-planets/
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