Sunday, June 25, 2023

Blicke in die Zukunft, dirty style

Look to the future with humouristic warnings and jokes, dedicated to all the beautiful ones.
The cards can never be deceived! Choose, fair ones, for pleasure, of these for you to contemplate. They form a meaningful bouquet.

 The Blicke in die Zukunft ("Look Into The Future") is one of those humorous 19th century decks. You may have seen a few. I have a couple of British ones: one card is captioned "Sudden losses will cause you some anxiety" with a scene of people getting their clothes stolen while skinny dipping. Another shows a strong wind blowing the wigs off a couple, and it's captioned "You will experience sudden losses." So I set about translating the text on this deck expecting something similar. 

Translating a deck that's over 200 years old (plus it's in Fraktur german) can yield ambiguous results. The translation can seem nonsensical, and online translators are far from perfect. So when in doubt, it's best to check with an actual human who speaks the language. I was very much in doubt, because some of what I was getting sounded kind of...ribald. 😜

As it turns out, that's because it IS ribald. A couple of examples:

King of Diamonds

Take this gentleman without shyness,
he'll love you without feints,
he'll never grab your chests,
he's wearing the key on his backside 

 

 
7 of Hearts
 
My child, your man will never
dance after your whistle.
If you pout, he'll just think 
"Keep nagging!
I can play my own fiddle"
 
It puts the lie to the idea that people have that old decks can't refer to any of these things. You don't need extra cards, everything is already there.

You can see the cards here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1896-0501-465

Play around with them here, just click on the old lady to draw a card: https://www.lilith-kartenlegen.de/zukunftsblick/index.htm

Or if you'd like to order, they're available here. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1444461407/fortune-telling-cards-32-cards-germany

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 fir...