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Cartomancy

Divination with cards, using ordinary playing cards, tarot or a smaller dedicated deck.

A fanned hand of cards: divination by drawn cards such as tarot, and the playing cards of the conjurer.

Also: card reading, fortune telling with cards, Lenormand

Cartomancy is the reading of a layout of cards for guidance about the past, present or future. It is older than the tarot's occult use: fortune-telling with playing cards was recorded in Europe by the 1500s. In the 1770s Etteilla in Paris published systems that gave each card a meaning, and Marie Anne Lenormand became a famous Parisian reader in the early 1800s. The deck now called Lenormand cards, with 36 small pictures, was a German game of the 1800s that took her name after her death. Romani and other travelling readers helped spread the practice. In many countries paid fortune-telling is regulated, and some places treat it as fraud when a reader takes large sums.

See also

TarotCold readingOmens

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