The Bohemian Fortune Telling Cards & Mercury's Fortune Telling Cards

 

Greetings from the Dome of Doom. Maybe you've heard about the heat dome? Triple digit temps with no end in sight. Not just "Wow, I'm really sticky and uncomfortable" hot, but "This shit will literally kill you" hot. It's an issue in much of the US, and I read that Italy is currently experiencing a heat dome too. Global warming is real, kids. Now is a good time to stick close to the AC and knock wood our raggedy power grid holds.

So pardon my not-great rumpled sheet photos. This is where the air conditioner blows best!
Go here and here for better images and a bit of historical background. These decks are gorgeous, my photos don't begin to do them justice. 

The Bohemian Fortune Telling Cards is a deck I've been anticipating for years. Karen and Alex have been working on it in between other projects, so it took awhile. It was announced in 2017 or thereabouts, and at that time it had already been in the works for four years. Along with that, they've cleaned up and recolored a 19th century deck originally published in what is now Lviv, Ukraine but was called Lemberg then, during the Habsburg Era. Borders in that part of the world seem to be in constant flux, even now. They named it for the Mercury image on the Message card: Mercury's Fortune Telling Cards.

These decks follow the same system as the Zigeuner Wahrsagekarten, Biedermeier Aufschlagkarten, the Konrad Jegel cards, and many others, too numerous to name here. I like that they've changed the G word - it's both an ethnic slur for Roma people and inaccurate - to "Bohemian."  The companion book covers both decks. It's substantial, well-researched, and gives you everything you need to read these cards, plus a fascinating history section with lots of images from old decks.

And as with all of Karen and Alex's decks, the cards are sumptuous, with lovely cold stamping, quality stock and printing, wooden boxes, and bags that appear to be some type of sturdy duck fabric, humble yet elegant in their simplicity.

But enough fangirling, lets lay some cards.

"Will the heat ease up this month?"

Thinking about going on a journey or visiting the cemetery isn't the same as going. And Widower is an older man, he doesn't get around like he used to. So there will be lots of staying in the rest of this month, with no unnecessary outings. The Dome of Doom stays put.

These cards are easy, just put them in context. You can adapt them to literally anything.

OK, July is hopeless. What about August?

Much better! It'll still be hot, of course, but not lethally hot. Happy kids, happy newlyweds, life resumes, people feel prosperous. (The bills do get lower when you're not running the AC full bore 24/7!) August will be better - not even cooler temps can hide from the cards. ;)

Bohemian Fortune Telling Cards and Mercury's Fortune Telling Cards by Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov, BabaBarock Ltd. https://baba-store.com/ All rights reserved, used by permission.

Purchase at these links:
https://baba-store.com/products/the-bohemian-fortune-telling-cards-with-wooden-box

https://baba-store.com/products/mercurys-fortune-telling-cards 

Companion book:
https://baba-store.com/products/the-bohemian-fortune-telling-cards-companion-book

 

Gatekeeping

 

There's something about the word "gatekeeping" that makes people kneejerk. People talk like it's Always A Bad Thing, they accuse people of doing it when they don't get something they want. Be a doormat lest someone accuse you of "gatekeeping!"

This is why we have idiot readers all over youtube. It's why we have so many cringy bad books and decks. People have been throwing the gates wide open for decades now, letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry in. "Anybody can do this!" And your listing gets buried under a flood of dilettantes practicing unlicensed psychology with a cheesy deck. You see magazine articles saying "Tarot doesn't predict the future." Etc.

Would you throw your front door open and let in every random person on the street?

In myth, everything worthwhile has some kind of threshold guardian. If you want in, you have to face the guardian first.

"With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the "threshold guardian" at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions—also up and down—standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown, and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is a danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored"

- Joseph Campbell

The guardians are depicted as fearsome, like Cerberus above with his three toothy heads and his viper tail, or the Nio temple guardians of Japan:

And like all mythic things, they can be interpreted on various levels: Psychological, spiritual, or mundane. They serve an important purpose.

The most dangerous labor of Hercules was the 12th and final one: he had to kidnap Cerberus and present him to Eurystheus. It's telling that Hercules did not slay Cerberus as he had the other monsters he'd battled. He simply subdued him, brought him to Eurystheus, and then returned him safely to Hades, where Cerberus resumed guarding the gateway to the Underworld!

There was a time when morons were terrified of things like Tarot. Now, only the talibaptist types are scared off. It's been entirely too welcoming for years now. "Anybody can do this!" "Death means transformation!" Etc. And we're seeing the results of that, Tarot's been going to hell in a handbasket. Pirate decks, AI, plagiarism, useless books and websites, etc. That's what happens when you throw the doors wide open and invite everybody.

A friend once told me that "the key to a successful esoteric subject forum is making sure that the idiots are too scared to join it." I agree, but I'd like to add that many are not so easily intimidated, and those have to be screened out.

We need a lot more gatekeeping if we're ever going to turn this around.

Lenormand & Logic

 

 

For many years now, I've been explaining that the bundle of sticks in the image above, and in a lot of other old Lenormand decks, is not a broom. It's a birchrod bundle and it's used for punishment, not cleaning. But at some point, someone misidentified it as a broom and the idea has infected many a book, deck, and website ever since. There are broom meanings added on to what's essentially a card of strife. I've also seen "sex" for this one, but a specific kink does not encompass sex. That's like saying the Park is a "sex card" because some people are into sex in public places. Or people read it as "repetition", which throws the deck out of balance. The Ring already covers things that happen over and over. With Whips/Birchrods, something might happen twice (there's two implements) but no more than that.

I'm not saying that the cards have to be frozen in some particular moment in time. The interpretation of the cards has certainly been expanded to accommodate changing times. With the advent of the automobile, the Rider took on vehicles in a more general sense. The Letter can be email, DMs, etc. And sometimes you have to wing it - the books just don't cover every possible thing that could come up in the cards. But be sensible about it.

From the 1840's until the 1980's, people had only the Philippe Lenormand sheet (unless by some miracle they still had Das Spiel der Hoffnung instructions lying around, something I find quite doubtful in most cases.)

I think having nothing but the PL sheet for 140 years must have been a bit like the string that keeps a balloon from floating off who-knows-where. When Mary Marco, Erna Droesbeke and Colette Silvestre started publishing their works, Whips was still a strife card. It's only in recent times that people have tried to make it a fun roll in the hay.

You can adapt the cards to literally anything, but it has to be logical. Look at the Clouds:

They're storm clouds. Think of a hurricane: damage to homes, ships lost at sea, flooding, lightning strikes. It's bad. But a common interpretation I've been seeing in recent years is "confusion." Clouds don't confuse anyone. A person could lose their way in heavy fog, but the card is not called "Fog." When you see ominous storm clouds, you know exactly what to do: roll up the car windows, take shelter, etc. There is no confusion. Andy always said the same. But look at the previews for recent books on amazon and you'll see the Clouds misinterpreted as "confusion" over and over.

I blame the internet for a lot of this. Someone could say that the Sun is "basketball" because it's round, and six months later it would be in a book. A lot of people just mindlessly parrot things. Never mind that the Moon and Ring are also round. They've forgotten that the Rider is sporty and active, and athletics are usually Rider combinations.

Don't just incorporate things that you see in books or on the internet without examining them. Is the Fox really just "cleverness" and "work" if your chickens are going missing? That's one of the red flag cards. Its telling you that something is wrong. (And I do like foxes, I just wouldn't want them around if I kept chickens.) Logic and critical thinking are key.