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

A Little Help?

Hello, all. I'm sending out an SOS of sorts, though I'm not optimistic I'll get results.

I recently acquired the deck above. It's thought to be the first fortunetelling deck published in the US, ca. 1830. https://www.rubylane.com/item/404269-T00004075/Turner-Fisher-x93American-Fortune-Telling-Cards

Quite a discovery, wouldn't you say? But it appeared quietly on the Gamecrafter site, with not a peep from any of our deck historians. Of course I ordered.

In about a month, it shipped. In the meantime I noticed it was no longer being offered for sale, and the listing had been marked private. That worried me a little, but arrive it did.

The issue is that two cards are missing: the 9 of Spades and the King of Spades. Very IMPORTANT cards.

I understand that when one acquires an antique deck, it may not be complete. But if one is going to reproduce it and offer it for sale, the fact that there are missing cards needs to be disclosed, at the very least.
 

This is the response I got from Gamecrafter:

The person offering the deck has not responded to emails, of course.
As you can see, they've emblazoned their website on the card backs. Not only that, but they actually put their name on every card of the incomplete deck:

Short version: do not purchase from Shellay Maughan, her site Blazing Hearts Cards, or her Gamecrafter shop.

Anyway, this is my SOS: if anyone knows where there are scans of the complete deck. or even just the King and 9 of Spades, could you point me to them? Thanks in advance.

ETA 5/20/2023: After another email, I received the following from TGC:

I now have the complete deck.

Yes, the seller made it right. But it was a lot more trouble than it ought to have been.
I'm not sure what happened. The deck is still designated "not for sale" on TGC site. If it's offered again, you can probably order safely since she appears to possess scans of the complete deck.
But why not sell the complete deck to begin with? Why ignore emails?

A brief postscript re: AI

 

There's been some discussion where someone creating an AI deck defends it by saying what matters is "the intent of the creator." The problem with that is that AI ignores intent.

Last night I went to DALL E and made a simple request: Theda Bara reading playing cards. The image exists on the net, both the image above and this movie poster version:

What I got was this:

 

 

Besides the usual horrifically blinded eyes and deformed hands (something nobody intends), none of them are Theda Bara.

The first one looks liked Shirley Feeny from Laverne and Shirley.

 

All of this stuff is in its infancy, and in spite of what some folks think, it isn't putting jobs on the chopping block. Manufacturing plants need people to monitor and run the robots, otherwise they damage product in all kinds of hilarious ways, or just stop working. I don't see automated vehicles being used for trucking, either. There's enough horror stories about the cars. Imagine an interstate full of automated 18 wheelers.

Its one thing to enjoy playing with it. But it makes lousy deck images.

There's a (zombie) elephant in the room (and it's walleyed and the trunk is fused with...something.)

 

I made the above with DALL-E. I told it to give me Jean Harlow under the moon with spanish moss and a dog. It gave me this.

Admittedly, I don't spend much time with AI at all. So I haven't found the right words to make it give me anything sane looking. But the thing is, a lot of people DO spend a great deal of time with it, they're making decks, and none of those are sane looking either. I won't be so mean as to publish anyones' images here. But suffice to say that I'm seeing misaligned eyes, clothes growing out of peoples' skin, fused and deformed body parts, motors and mechanical parts in nonsensical places, tons of destroyed mattress stuffing...well, you get the idea.

I was talking with someone about this, saying how the people and animals resembled zombies and road kill. And they said that was the darkness and monstrosity they felt from it. They called it Frankentarot.

I've used the term Frankendeck before, to refer to those decks people put together from scavenged Public Domain images. While some of them are nice, many are jarring - the art styles can be incompatible. 

But this takes it more than a few steps further. You can think of the AI as Dr. Frankenstein and Igor. They go forth collecting parts from graves and gallows, bring them back, and stitch something together for you. Interesting, but not what I want in a reading deck.

Tradition

 

We all know how a lot of people will dig their heels in and refuse to learn cartomantic traditions, instead choosing to rely on "intuition." That would be fine, but for the fact that they push their views on the public, thus polluting the waters. Or they might make a deck, but choose to "innovate" rather than design the cards according to the reading tradition. There's a metric fucktonne of unreadable schlock out there.

I've been hanging out at cast iron discussion groups and found quite the opposite, in many cases. Let me explain first that a long time ago, people washed dishes with lye soap. Lye is used to this day to strip the seasoning from cast iron cookware. (Sometimes seasoning gets really crusty and needs to be stripped and done over.) The lye turns it to sludge and it washes right off. So you didn't want to wash your pans with soap then. People wiped their skillets with a rag, or scrubbed them with salt. But our modern dish detergent like Dawn is safe for washing pans. Still, some people still try to say you "should never use soap." I call bullshit. Wash your damn pan.

A lady at one of my cast iron groups said she knows this, she just doesn't use soap because her grandmother didn't, or told her not to. It's a way of keeping her grandma with her, I get that. Others will strip their pans by throwing them into a fire, risking cracks, warping, red scale and general heat damage. There are safe, inexpensive methods available but they choose to risk ruining their pan. They do it because a family member used to.

So people will follow a tradition for sentimental reasons, even if it's fatally flawed. But if there is no sentimental attachment, they want to tear it apart in spite of the value it has.

It makes no sense.

A "To Go" Bag

 

I've been away for awhile. There's really not much to say here as far as explaining how to do things, since the content always gets stolen and I have better things to do than sending out takedown notices. But I guess it's fairly safe to share this idea. It's a to go bag.

The idea is to get one of those big Tarot bags and fill it with small things. This one has a mini Lenormand, Chronata's Hallowstones, a good pendulum that I can't subconsciously force to tell me what I want to hear, three bone dice, my casting stones, a scrap of shearling for casting, and some small runes. I might add the Mercury Chain and a small crystal ball at some point, but I need to make bags for those. Maybe I'll add some small Tarot Majors, too.

Everything is kept separately in smaller bags, not jumbled together.

The Lenormand is a Fromann & Bunte mini, available here: https://gameofhopelenormand.bigcartel.com/product/minis-are-here

I like mini Lenormands. They make laying a Grand Tableau much less problematic when you're short on space.

The pendulum was made by a guy named Stan who sells them at the link below. It's the first one I've owned that I couldn't force. Its snakewood and excellent quality, not like those cheaply made yet overpriced ones that are flooding the market.

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

 

The Hallowstones are similar to Crowstones. Like Crowstones, they have a deceptively naive, folk-arty look but they're actually very incisive. They're a Halloween-themed set that Robyn was offering a few years ago. They're not currently available, but she's always got something interesting there.
https://tarotgoodies.webs.com/apps/webstore/

The runes are a little opalite glass set I found on etsy.  (I found the dice there, too, as well as the red pouch.) They're small enough to fit easily into one of those little deerskin pouches.

And the rocks are just a personal collection. I'd recommend everyone to put something together. Rocks, coins, dice, bones, whatever. There's lots of ideas in this little book:

https://www.luckymojo.com/lithomancy.html

These random object casting oracles work best when you accumulate pieces naturally. The book suggests starting with just three pieces: something to represent yourself, a yes, and a no. Cast them and see what lands closest to your piece - that's your answer. As time goes on, you'll accumulate meaningful pieces without trying. They just show up. ;) I tend to take something out when I add a new piece, but you can accumulate pieces to your hearts content. They might not fit in a to go bag after awhile, though.

And it all fits in a Tarot bag. I can just grab it on my way out the door.
(From Baba, of course! https://baba-store.com/collections/drawstring-pouches )

When the thieves come a-creeping

It's been almost ten years since I blogged about plagiarism so I think it's time to say more.

A lot of people in the seedy world of cartomancy just love stealing content and taking credit for it. It attracts the sticky-fingered for some reason. You see it with all the missing books at public libraries that aren't checked out - they're just gone. You see it in published works that don't cite sources - no bibliography or chapter notes, the content could have come from anywhere (and probably did!) People who can't even read cards want to look as if they can. I don't know why. I can read cards and the vast majority of people walking this earth don't give a shit. Thieves: Either learn, or write about something you actually know.

Over the years, I've noticed that the most-stolen content tends to be introductory stuff, especially lists of card meanings. My old Kipper Primer post has always gotten ripped off pretty regularly. Not the text on the top, but the card meanings. You'll want to avoid this kind of format - it makes things too easy for them. I've left it up because the damage is already done - there's a PDF being passed around, FFS. But I don't suggest posting this kind of content. If people want card meanings, let them buy books, translate websites, or pay for tutoring. If they want to share your content, make sure they credit you and link back to the original.

Sometimes it's just crazy and random. One guy stole my Grand Jeu clickable constellations post. He copypasted Didier's list and then linked to all the pages I'd linked to. He didn't steal my writing, but he stole my concept. The DMCA still worked. He was an exception to the norm, though.

I used to want to help newcomers. But after being shit on for my troubles too many times, I developed a noob allergy and drifted away from that. Why should I spoon feed people who could just as easily do the work the rest of us had to, only for them to "go pro" before they're any good and often spam their links in all manner of places that don't welcome self promotion. Ask your group or forum mods how much of this crap they have to deal with. Google works according to algorithms, but also SEO, not quality, and they're gunking up the searches.

I'm not the only one. I have a friend, an exceptionally knowledgeable and talented reader, who takes their blog offline regularly and starts another someplace else. Others, like myself, have stopped posting material for new readers. If you see a blog with card meanings, etc. and it's been there more than six months or so, it's almost guaranteed to be garbage with precious few exceptions. Most of us got fed up a long time ago. Come here for book and deck reviews, readings on current events, observations, or just to read my bitching, lol. You won't see me posting tutorials.

And don't come here to steal. I have no problem sending DMCAs. I especially love posting them to the offending blog's comments. That way everyone can see them.

Oh, and if anyone tries to be slick and thinks they'll get away with plagiarism by rephrasing a bit of someone else's content, Copyscape catches that, too. So bite me.

This dumbass. 😂 They substituted "it can get pretty physical" for "it can get sporty", i.e., "kinky." It's never a good idea to rephrase something if your reading comprehension stinks. The offending blog is part of the ATA's site, BTW. That's the same outfit I called out years ago here for racism and running a sham certification racket. Be sure to check out the comments, they're enlightening.