Livre du Destin (Book of Fate)

 

This deck contains only 32 cards. 33 if you count the significator card. It should be a cakewalk, right?

It isn't, at least not at first. It's one of those decks with a lot of people cards, so you need to work out their meanings for when they come up in a spread and are not people.

The LWB isn't much help. No. 11 Jack of Spades/Man From the Country, for instance, is said to mean "deceit in business, rivalry, enemy." That doesn't work with the image. It's a better fit for the Vera Sibilla Enemy card, for instance  - that one looks over-the-top sinister! He's sneaking hurriedly by, looking back over his shoulder, and carrying a viper. 

Here's the Livre du Destin card. He's doffed his hat, and he holds a bouquet. He looks like a nice guy. Sure, people can be two faced. But cards are a visual language. If he was up to no good, it would show.

Some time ago, Benebell Wen posted Etteilla meanings for this deck. Those aren't correct either, but some of them do fit. I like the idea of Man From The Country being a naive farm boy type: "Traditional values, but one who does not have the cunning, experience, or sharpness of insight to get ahead; honest but indolent; benign effect." 

On the other hand, she lists "admonish" for No. 30 Gossip. There is no one being admonished on this card, it's simply gossip.

And that's the key to the deck: you have to apply logic and find what works. If you've used other Parlor Oracles (Parlor Sibyl, Vera Sibilla, Kippers, Bohemian cards, etc.) that's half the battle. All of these decks have some cards in common.

The Grimaud/France Cartes version, sadly, is out of print. But it's public domain, so it won't be going away any time soon. I got a lovely mini version from the Shamankae Etsy shop here. The stock she uses is wonderful - it looks like old matte paper stock, but it can flex without creasing. Give the deck a tiny pinch of zinc stearate fanning powder and it will riffle and bridge beautifully.

Or you can download the scans and have them printed at PrinterStudio or the Make Playing Cards site.

The LWB that comes with the Grimaud deck includes reversed meanings. The sheet that comes with the little Shamankae deck (It's identical to the Etteilla meanings mentioned earlier) does not. Using reversals is definitely an option, but it isn't needed since the cards can and do modify each other. A good card can be spoiled and a bad one rendered neutral sans reversals.

Nobody likes to assign significators by hair color and complexion these days, and rightly so. But it's impossible to avoid in this deck. You can make it work by putting the Courts in context. Every race has a spectrum of skin tones, so read accordingly. If you don't do this, your deck becomes near-useless since it would only talk about white people.

The following are the interpretations I'm currently using. I might edit them as time goes by and I find more incisive ones. I offer them as suggestions only, I don't have any One True Parisian Method, if such a thing even exists. The good news is that common cartomancy meanings will often fit. With the courts especially, I  was able to source bits from Minetta, Martello and others.

Everyone is welcome to use these as they see fit. I only ask that you give proper attribution and link back to this blog if you decide to share this.
 

1. A Man of Law (KH) - Judge, authority, family man, rules, laws, protective, kind, may be unreliable
2. A Chamberlain (JH) - Privileged man, authority figure, achievement, honors, Cupid, delays in love

3. A Widower (KS) - Loss that still impacts, divorced or widowed older man, solitary life, maybe enemy

4. A Man with Brown Hair (KC) - Socially active man, generally married, power granted by hard work
5. A Fair Lady (QH) - Family orientated, mother, wife, sister, aunt. Trustworthy, introverted, creative.
6. Hope (QD) - Success, opportunity, you will prevail.

7. Widow (QS) - Widow or divorced woman. Can be spiteful, catty, gossipy, delights in scandal
8. A Dark Lady (QC) - May be a professional, business, or career woman. Flirtatious, good humor.
9. A Fair Haired Young Man (JH) - Extrovert, cultivates a good reputation,

10. A Soldier (JD) - Strategize, apply Sun Tzu, formulate a decisive plan and you will prevail
11. A Man From the Country (JS) - "Farm boy", naive, honest. Good work ethic, simple life.*
12. A Dark Haired Young Man (JC) - Ambitious, status seeking, social climbing
13. The House (AH) - Home, stability, security

14. The Business Letter (AD) - Bank note, important letter, official document. 
15. Love (AS) - Affairs of the heart, mind card, what affects the mind

16. Money (AC) - Money, productivity, gains
17. Marriage (10H) - Alliance, union, good omen for love
18. Trap or Treachery (10D) - Treachery afoot! Being lured into a compromising position.
19. Prudence or Night (10S) - Warning against dangers and ill intentioned people in your inner circle.
20. Merchant (10C) - Business negotiations. Good for the upcoming fiscal quarter.
21. Success (9H) - good omen, all will be well. Wish card. "Everything's coming up roses!"
22. A Journey (9D) - Trip, journey.
23. Illness (9S) - Bad omen, difficulties, obstacles, can be literal illness
24. A Gift or Surprise (9C) - Sudden and unexpected gift, stroke of luck, endowment or favor

25. A Fair Haired Girl (8H) - Naive and idealistic
26. News (8D) - Positive omen, good news
27. Trouble (8S) - Yearning, depression
28. A Dark Maiden (8C) - Pragmatic, social climbing, covets higher status
29. With Child (7H) - Fertility, potential, abundance
30. Gossip (7D) - Literal gossip, libel, slander
31. Faithlessness (7S) - Fickle, unreliable. Future is uncertain, cannot determine outcome at this time
32. Love Letter (7C) - Happiness from interpersonal relationships. Affectionate communications.

*"Good work ethic, simple life" suggested by Hugh. Thank you! https://thefortunetellerssociety.com/blog/

Who Was Minetta?

 

Minetta is a mystery.

Unlike Sepharial, who we know was Walter Gorn Old and who has a wikipedia page and various other biographical information online, I can't even find her real name.

This blog post from Mary Greer and the comments on it are interesting. There's been much speculation - was she Arthur Edward Waite? Cicely Kent? I don't believe she was either of those.

https://marykgreer.com/2011/07/11/minettas-star-of-fortune/

Did she have a hand in the creation of the Tarot Fortune Cards? Quite possibly.

I first became interested in Minetta because Andy Boroveshengra often referred to her and thought highly of her reading skills. But he never found any solid information on Minetta herself, either. It wasn't for lack of trying!

At this point, I'm convinced that it's easier to trace Frankie Albano! Since we have his legal name, we can find bits of information. We can't do that with someone we know only as "Minetta."

And yes, her book is indispensable. It's OOP, but you can find a copy of Card Reading on sites like https://www.abebooks.com/ 

Or the earlier edition, What The Cards Tell, can be downloaded here:
https://archive.org/details/1899minettawhatthecardstell

 

If you read playing cards, you probably use the full 52 card pack. Minetta's method uses a stripped 32 card bésigue pack, but it also utilizes reversed meanings. To avoid confusion, I made a "Minetta pack" - just a regular pack of Bees with the 2-6 removed, and her meanings written on the cards. When writing on cards, don't use regular ink or Sharpie - those smear. Get ultra fine tipped paint pens like these:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R64NE42

 

I guess that's all for now. Feel free to comment if you find anything! 

A new/(OLD) deck. Austin Osman Spare

Some of the images that join on the card edges. Excerpted from Lost Envoy.

"The deck design is highly unusual for combining cartomancy and taromancy, and for the complex system of interconnecting visual motifs that link many of the cards across their borders."

Unfortunately, yes. This was the way people read cards. It was pretty standard: Majors meanings, pip meanings, combined meanings. No pulling a Daily card (hoping you see That Guy) and calling it "spiritual." The Tarot, after all, is a deck of playing cards. And even Waite borrowed heavily from "A Book of Days." Spare, at a glance, appears to be following PRS Foli's Fortune-telling by cards.

Victorian cartomancy is vital to reading pip decks.So the Spare deck appeared not a moment too soon.)

This deck was only rediscovered in 2013. It stayed hidden throughout the 20th century, and seemed to reappear when it was truly needed, almost like Tibetan terma.

Some information on Spare: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/may/06/austin-osman-spare-phil-baker

https://flashbak.com/austin-osman-spare-occult-art-439290/

Southern Gothic

 

 

Today's mail was exceptionally good

 

Today I received The Southern Gothic Oracle and The HAUNTS Expansion Pack. I ordered at Etsy and it took all of three days to arrive - it was mailed the same day I ordered. It came from Tennessee. I've noticed that mail from southern states seems to arrive a lot faster than mail from other parts of the country. I call it the "Hillbilly Express" - they have a long history of fast driving. The moonshiners and bootleggers had to outrun the law. Appalachia is the birthplace of NASCAR.

But before I talk about the deck, I want to talk about Southern Gothic itself, what it is, or at least my understanding of it. It's a veneer of gentility over brutality and evil, there's often a supernatural element or at least something people experience as supernatural, there might be decaying houses, family secrets, mental illness...you get the picture.

You can feel it, especially if you get away from the city. It was strong in my hometown, the history there is extremely bloody. I had one no-bones-about-it paranormal experience at a friend's house. A big glass ashtray broke. Nothing knocked it down, there was no fire in it, it just broke. My friend said "I told you there was somethin' in this house." He decided it was prudent to lock up the house and leave for awhile, and asked me where I wanted to be dropped off. About a block from his house, there's a historical marker saying it was once the site of Robson's Castle. Some crazy Scotsman moved there in the 1800's and built an actual castle by the river. I found out later that he had a huge plantation, that was how he could afford to have a castle built and host huge parties. My friend's house sat on the site of Robson's cotton plantation. I don't even want to imagine what went on there.

Later, the castle was destroyed when the river flooded, and they built a meat packing plant there. More blood. This is the former site of it. There's nothing there but the north bridge and a historical marker now:

If you go across that bridge, there's a big oak tree with a historical marker, something about some river colony. But the locals call it "the hangin' tree." It sounds like something out of a western movie where they hung horse thieves, but that's not what happened. It's the tree where, in 1935, a mob of up to 700 white people lynched Ernest Collins and Benny Mitchell. They were 15 and 16, and innocent.

And so on. You walk around and there's big gorgeous live oaks with spanish moss and vines, everything looks so peaceful, but something feels evil, too. It lingers. Nobody tells you about it when you're a kid, you don't know what it is. You find out later.

That's my take on it. For a more objective explanation of Southern Gothic, there's this. You've seen some of these movies, read some of these books, I'm sure.

Which brings me back to the cards. They're large, but the deck seems best suited to smaller spreads, so that's not an issue. And they're matte - matte is always preferable to glossy. It's good stock, strong, flexible. The cards aren't slippy - that's a plus for a lot of people who have cards flying everywhere when they shuffle. I don't have that issue, so I'll probably give them a little fanning powder so they slide more easily. The box is sturdy and attractive. All in all, it's beautifully done.

You get a little booklet with the deck, and the expansion pack has a QR code to a pdf you can download. The cards are grouped by elements, handy if you use elemental dignities. The interpretations given lean towards the currently trending, introspective/advice style, and you can certainly use the cards that way. But you can get classic predictive readings out of these cards, too. Most of the cards depict familiar things: a mason jar, a wasp nest, a dog. OK, I've never seen the Boo Hag (nor do I want to!) but I've heard of her. The legends in the Haunts pack are well known. 

First I did a personal reading for myself that I won't post here. Suffice to say the cards seem to be working well. 

I don't do deck interviews. Maybe it's just me, but they seem silly. Still, my next question was whether the cards would be compatible with my reading style, which is basically old fashioned fortunetelling.

The cards as they fell:

Oh, that Boo Hag. If you wake up tired or sick, she "rode" you, took your breath. People use her as a kind of boogeyman to scare kids into behaving, too. Kudzu was imported here and it kind of took over everything. And Roots is good old rootwork. The ones shown are High John - said to be powerful for money, protection, and gambling. It's one that men use, not women so much. It kind of looks like a ballsack. So what does it all mean?

There was another card clinging to the back of Roots (remember when I said they're not slippy?), and it holds the key:

In the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia, in 1966. people started seeing Mothman. 

I don't believe that there was a physical cryptid any more than I believe that there was a physical Bigfoot. Nor do I believe that there was a "rational explanation" like the theories that have been put forth about sandhill cranes and whatnot.

But I don't believe all those people were lying, either. They saw something. Call it a spirit, or a hallucination, or whatever you like, people were seeing it.

During rush hour on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed. 46 people were killed. 

Mothman has been commodified and marketed to death since then, he's kind of a joke now. But when people were seeing him, he was a warning. The sightings stopped after the bridge collapsed.

When bad circumstances (Boo Hag) threaten to take over (Kudzu), these cards will be protective (Roots) because they will give a warning (Mothman.)

I can't ask for better than that!

It's a great deck, it doesn't gloss over the horrific undercurrents we have here, it's well thought-out, and it's actual art that Stacey Williams-Ng did with her hands. Support artists, not AI! Available at her Etsy shop:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/LaPanthereStudio

or the La Panthere website: 

https://lapantherestudio.com/collections/shop-la-panthere/products/the-southern-gothic-oracle 

https://lapantherestudio.com/collections/shop-la-panthere/products/the-haunts-expansion-pack

Some Random Thoughts On Pendulums

"I know very well that many scientists consider dowsing as a type of ancient superstition. According to my conviction this is, however, unjustified. The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time."

- Albert Einstein

For years, pendulums just told me what I wanted to hear. What finally solved that issue for me was getting a heavier one that I can't subconsciously "push."

While I do have a couple of pendulum charts, I seldom if ever use them. A pendulum is a very simple, direct instrument and I find it best not to impose unnecessary complications. I like to keep it to answers like "yes," "no," "maybe," and "rephrase."

I don't buy into new age/wellness schools of thought with "programming", Ascended Masters and their ilk, elaborate cleansings, or rituals. I just ask questions and wait for it to move. I do keep a camphor tablet in the box with it, it seems to keep it honest. Andy once said that impressions of past card readings seem to (at times) cast a shadow over a later reading. He called it "shades." I've noticed that I do have to swap decks out from time to time, as do most readers I've talked to, so it makes sense. He noticed the same thing with the crystal sphere. There's no reason that the pendulum would be an exception. The camphor tablet works, the pendulum works, and that's good enough.

Mine seems to work best for questions that directly affect me. I seldom use it for client readings.

The best bit of advice I've seen was posted by Cat Yronwode on her Lucky Mojo forum: "What a pendulum can do very well, and better than many other forms of divination, is to determine things in the present at a distance, to locate hidden or lost things and people, and to uncover hidden emotions."

It's good for cross-checking card readings. If the cards seem to be saying that grandma's ring is in a low, shadowy spot in a room on the east side of the house, and you think it may have fallen behind the dresser, the quickest, easiest way to verify that is to consult the pendulum. Much easier than moving furniture only to find out that the ring is somewhere else.

I got mine from Stan Slater in Austin, Texas. He does excellent work. He makes some lovely pens, too!

https://www.pendulumandpenink.com/shop2.htm

Miss Cat has compiled a list of publications on dowsing here. Enjoy!

https://yronwode.org/dowsing-divining-rod-water-witching-pendulum-divination-bibliography.html

 

Dogs Behaving Badly: Stopping Fights & Attacks

 

There's something I've used to break up dog fights, a guy told me about it in the 90's and it works. You really need two people though, if it's a fight between two dogs. If you just need to get a dog off of someone, you can do it yourself. You pick up their hind legs like a wheelbarrow and they'll let go - it's like magic.

And spraying an attacking dog in the face with a fire extinguisher works if you have one handy. A school bus driver got a pair of pits off a lady and her small dog she was holding doing that. That's what he had, so that's what he used and it worked.

 

https://winknews.com/2022/03/08/collier-county-school-bus-driver-saves-woman-during-dog-attack/ 

 

Everybody has pits these days and a lot of idiots let them run at large, so I have to be ready. I have Shelties. A couple of shakes and it would be over for them. I don't care what the pitmommies say about "pibble nannydog cuddlebugs" - they might be fine at home but once they start, they don't want to stop. It's the "gameness" that's bred into them, they'll keep fighting with their guts hanging out. Look at this carriage horse attack - the dog only stopped when the horse stomped it to near-death. It died soon after. One well-meaning soul tried to help by hitting the dog with a spatula. (Didn't work, lol.)

And sometimes they go after people. Statistically, it's rare (if they were as psycho as some people would have you think, we'd all be dead) and yes, other breeds can be aggressive too sometimes. In the interest of fairness, here's a non-pit and a crazy no-good owner. Dog parks are stupid - would you get on a subway and start trying to interact with everybody? Your dog isn't much different. 

 

But it's mostly the pits and the pit mixes. I don't think the breed is inherently human-aggressive (animal aggression is another story) but there's so MANY of them. No-good owners get them cheap or free and let them run at large.

People need to know what to do instead of standing around being ineffective.

 

ETA: The guy at the end of this video uses the Wheelbarrow Method. The dog doesn't redirect on him, it's safe. It worked beautifully when nothing else was working at all. 

Dystopia & Wellness

 

The image above might be a best case scenario. There's still wildlife, and the people don't look ravaged. If enough people wise up, maybe we can have that. Otherwise, things might look more like this:

Something I saw at a forum set off this whole train of thought:

"I've been reading longer than most of them have been alive."

It was in response to an article somebody linked to. Another of those "tArOt dOeSn'T pReDiCt tHe fUtUrE iT's a tOoL fOr SeLf rEfLeCtIon! " dribble pieces. (NPR, you really should know better.)

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1077397838/how-to-get-into-reading-tarot-cards-with-michelle-tea

There's a lot of garbage like that going around. I posted about it here:
https://fatekeepson.blogspot.com/2021/12/media-misrepresentation.html

And yes, that's one of the things that's maddening about these wellness readers. We had already been reading professionally for years when these little snotnoses were still shitting yellow, and they have the unmitigated gall and stupidity to tell us we're doing it all wrong.

It makes me wonder if it's a generational thing. And I loathe the whole "Gen X vs. Millennials vs. Boomers etc." thing. It's stupid. No generation is a monolith. But it might have some relevance here. I know the younger people don't have much of a future to look forward to. Of course ours was no great shakes either, but at that age we didn't KNOW. We thought the pollution was going to get cleaned up, race relations were improving, grievances would be addressed, etc. They're probably expecting a Max Max dystopia with gangs roving through the ruins killing people for potable water. And I can agree that's a very distinct possibility.

But they need to blame corporations, oligarchs, political lobbying, fascism, "replacement theory", etc. and stop attempting to use fortunetellers as punching bags to get their frustrations out. And even with what's coming down the pike, they can still ask the cards the same things people have always asked: "Will he ask me out?" "Will I get the job?" etc.

Not wanting to ponder the future is no reason to gut cartomancy or insult us.