When the playing cards were first introduced in Europe in the fourteenth century, divination or fortune telling was made using the same set of cards. The method of knowing your future through this method was termed as cartomancy consultation. The people who are practicing it are called cartomancers or card readers. Some of these practitioners claim that the practice of telling the fortune of a person by means of playing cards dates back to the ancient Egyptian times. There is also a certain mysticism that is ascribed to a set of cards used for cartomancy reading by fortune tellers. They treat it as a divination tool and care for it accordingly. Cards that are used for cartomancy are not used for any other purpose, nor any person allowed to touch them except the owner.

During the past three centuries, using standard playing cards for cartomancy was very popular for fortune telling. On countries that are English speakers, the bridge or poker set of cards which is composed of fifty two cards and four suits is used for cartomancy consultation. The joker cards which are not used in many card games are used to augment the fortune telling, as well as the blank cards which many playing card packages contain. The piquet playing card set which is composed of thirty two cards is used in France for cartomancy reading even today. If you want to turn your fifty two set poker cards into a piquet set, you can remove all the cards from two to six. This will leave the cards with number seven through ten and all of the face cards on the deck, as well as the aces. Though once very popular, cartomancy consultation has been diminished somewhat by the more popular tarot card reading in recent years. The tarot card deck is composed of twenty one trump cards and a fool card which is collectively referred to as the major arcana by occultists, as well as fifty six other conventional cards which are called the minor arcana. The term “arcana’ means hidden things and each minor suit are composed of four court cards which are the king, the queen, the knight and the page. The other ten cards in the suit are number or pip cards.

To take away the confusion associated with the various deck of cards used for cartomancy consultation, here are the equivalents for French suited cards and Latin suited tarot cards:

•Diamonds- earth element gnome, mirrors, coins, pentacles (health: material matters)

•Hearts- water element undine, cups (emotions)

•Spades-air element sylph, swords (intellect: education)

•Clubs- fire element salamander, wands or sticks (power)

•Hands- metal element dwarf, groups of people (togetherness)

•Tears- wood element fae, waves (aging, experience)

There is an argument among those who do cartomancy consultation on the suits of wands and swords. For those that follow the pagan path, each suit fit with the special element of nature. Others believe that the meanings of the swords and wands are reversed as well as the clubs and diamonds.

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