tarot
French Cartomancy
Historical French salon cartomancy oracle capturing period divination practices.
by Unknown · 1996
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The Canon's read
Tarot Canon's own assessment, written for this catalog.
The archive review corrects a whole genre of imagining: the archetypal fortune-teller, turbaned, silk-robed, turning cards for an eager seeker, is not a wandering mystic but a French salon professional, and this thirty-six card deck preserves that world's actual practice. French salon cartomancy was urban, fashionable and commercial, Mademoiselle Lenormand its celebrity example, and its thirty-six card format became the continental standard the Lenormand family still uses.
As a period instrument the deck reads with salon directness: love, money, rivals, letters, news, the practical dossier of a paying clientele, delivered in combinations rather than contemplation. That secular bluntness is historically authentic and refreshingly free of imported mysticism. It suits students of divination's social history, Lenormand readers curious about the parlor upstream of their system, Francophiles, and collectors of the salon tradition. Readers who prefer the turban legend intact may keep it, but the deck's truth, that fortune-telling's golden age was a Paris business, is the better story.
From the archive
An excerpt from a review at the Aeclectic Tarot archive, in the original reviewer's voice.
Ever seen that picture of the madam with a fancy turban, silk robes, sitting in a chair turning over cards before an eager seeker? Many believe this is a gypsy seer, but in fact this archetypal picture takes place in...
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