Cartomancy
Cartomancy is the art of divination by cards. It includes the divinatory use of tarot, Lenormand, ordinary playing cards and any oracle deck designed for symbolic drawing.
Origin and etymology
The word comes from the French carte and the Greek manteia (divination). Playing cards appeared in Europe at the end of the 14th century, imported from the Mamluk cards of Egypt by Venetian and Catalan trade routes. The systematic divinatory use of cards emerged later, at the end of the 18th century. Jean-Baptiste Alliette, known as Etteilla (1738-1791), is considered the founder of modern Western cartomancy: he published in 1770 Etteilla, or how to amuse yourself with a deck of cards, and then developed from 1788 onward a structured divinatory use of the tarot. Court de Gebelin, in 1781 in Le Monde primitif, launched in parallel the esoteric interpretation of the tarot.
Evolution and tradition
The 19th century saw the golden age of French cartomancy with Mademoiselle Lenormand (1772-1843), cartomancer to Josephine de Beauharnais. The Petit Lenormand and the Belline Oracle consolidated the offering of French-speaking divinatory decks. The Anglo-Saxon tradition developed in parallel with Arthur Edward Waite and the Rider-Waite deck (1909) illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, and then with Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck (1944). The 20th century saw the mass diffusion of cartomancy into popular culture, and the 21st century the multiplication of thematic oracles. Cartomancy remains one of the most widely practiced forms of contemporary divination.
Practical use
Practical cartomancy requires a deck, a calm setting and a drawing protocol. The querent asks a question, shuffles the cards, draws a set number depending on the protocol (one, three, five, ten...), then interprets each card according to its position in the spread and its traditional meaning. On Tarotoui, several cartomancy decks are available: Tarot de Marseille, Rider-Waite, Lenormand, Belline, thematic oracles. The choice of deck depends on the practitioner's sensibility and the type of question. Many contemporary cartomancers claim a reflective rather than predictive approach.
Going further
Confusing cartomancy and tarot is a frequent mistake: the tarot is one type of deck among others, cartomancy is the more general art. Note also that cartomancy is regulated in France by the offense of fraud: a cartomancer who abuses a querent's credulity can be prosecuted. Professional practice therefore requires ethical rigor and honest information about the symbolic nature of the exercise.