Cards Used In Fortune Telling

Fortune telling using different kinds of cards has been very popular since ancient times. Tarot is the most popular in card divination. Fortune Tellers also use playing cards, Spanish La Baraja cards, Mdme Lenormand deck and the Gong Hee Fot Choy form of divination to predict fortunes.

Cards are always used for variety of purposes. Not the Credit Card or the Business Cards. They always and almost serve to be a big boon to mankind. But there are cards that are for recreational purposes. You might have seen men or women or both enjoying their noon with a pack of playing cards. Though you see them for playing, cards were also used for some serious purposes. Playing cards were also used for telling the future of a person. Let us look at the different types of cards used in Fortune telling:

Playing Cards: Yes, the one that you play in ships or trains or in your home. But they can also be used to foretell your future. You should never forget to shuffle the cards before laying it down. All you have to do is spread the cards and take them out one by one in random.

The four cards of King, Queen, Ace and Jack brief about your character and the rest about your past, present and future. The first card that you pick up would be about your past. Say, you had picked 4 of Hearts. Then, it might mean you had travelled or you will be faced with a change in business location.

The next card could be your present, which you had picked up as King of Spades. Well, as you know, this signifies your character and that you are an ambitious person. So proceed to the next card which should be about your present. And you may end up with 6 of Spades. This means small changes and movements. The final card should be your future card, unless you end up with King or Queen. If in such a case, you can choose another till you end up with number cards.

Tarot Cards: Tarot cards are a set of 78 cards, which were primarily used for playing. Later on, people with divination skills took it up to foretell the fortunes of the people who approached them. The 22 cards which have Magician or High Priestess or Hanged man constitute the Major Arcana and if they show up, they stand for some major incident in the person’s life.

The rest 56 constitute the Minor Arcana and have fourteen sets of cards each belonging to Wands, Pentacles, Cups and Swords. The tarot reader shuffles and places the tarot cards in some pattern or tarot spread and the person who had asked for their predictions would wait for the reader to read those cards. Based on what cards they choose, the reader would predict the future of the person and also guess his past and present.

Lenormand Cards: This form of divination was developed by a French lady called Mdme Lenormand. What she did was arrange 36 cards specially designed by her in four rows, with the four remaining cards in the fifth row. There will be two special cards called the Man and the Woman. These two cards are called the Significator, based on the gender of the person who wants his future to be read.

Now based on the proximity of card from this Significator, the person’s future will be read. Suppose you want your fortune to be read and after placing the card, you locate the Significator, which is the Man if you are male and the Woman, if you are female. If you see a Bear card close to your Significator, it means you will have good rapport with people in politics, while a Bear card distant from your Significator shows that you will face problems from politics. This method was so successful that they came to be known as Lenormand cards and began to be used as a method of fortune telling in France.

Spanish La Baraja: This is the Spanish equivalent of the playing cards. You usually have forty cards, which you can spread in a single line with three cards, or three lines of three cards or in horseshoe fashion. Add to this, the gypsy style, in which twenty one cards are arranged in three rows of seven each. As always, one row or card stands for past, one for present and one for future of the person who wants to read those cards.

It can either be 48 cards with twelve cards in each of the four suites – Copas, Oros, Bastos and Espadas. Sometimes, it is cut short to forty cards, by removing the eight and nine numbered cards. Based on the cards you choose, your past, present and future are told.

Gong Hee Fot Choy: This is a thirty two card spread game invented by Margaret Ward. There are 32 different houses in this card spread. You have to put each card into each house. Based on the match between the card and the house in which it is placed, the future of a person is foretold. This is mostly used as a Chinese fortune telling.