[Gutenberg 42950] • Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards

FOREWORD

If an apology is needed for writing again on the subject of playing cards, the excuse may be offered that new lights have been turned on the subject, so that there is fresh information to lay before the public, derived from a close and exhaustive study of the European libraries and museums, as well as of the pictures on the Playing Cards themselves or prints found in those repositories, and also in the collection owned by the writer; for these speak their histories to those who regard their symbols with appreciative knowledge, since they had an immense significance when originally adopted.

It is twenty years since The Devil’s Picture Book was published and it is now out of print. The writer has been frequently called upon to furnish papers on the subject, so that it has been kept fresh in mind. At the time that the first book was issued it was the only one that had been printed in the United States devoted entirely to the history of cards not necessarily connected with games. Since then little has been published on the subject, and the information given in the present volume has been largely derived from the writer’s own observations and studies.

A collection of Playing Cards, begun at that time with a solitary pack brought as a curiosity by a traveler from Algiers, that bore the ancient pips of Swords, Staves, Money and Cups, has now grown to hundreds of specimens culled from many different countries. Comparing these with each other, and studying all obtainable histories on the subject, leads to the conclusion that the writers of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were correct when they stated that no historical record existed before the middle of the fourteenth century of games played with cards. But each and all of the writers on Playing Cards agree that there were cards and that they seem to have been used for fortune-telling before 1350, and also that there was a baffling resemblance between the traditions of the cards and what was recorded of the Egyptian mysteries connected with the worship of Thoth Hermes.

It therefore followed that the history and traditions peculiar to the ceremonies connected with that personage should be studied in order to trace Playing Cards to their birthplace and find for them an origin, without weakly stopping at the fourteenth century, and declaring that cards came out of space, as many authors have done.

CONTENTS

Prophetical and Other Cards

The Book of Thoth, Hermes, and Nebo

Mercurius

Thoth

Nebo or Nabu

The Atouts of the Tarots

Pips of the Tarot Pack

Some Old Italian Tarots

Hearts and Diamonds. Spades and Clubs

Court Cards with French Pips

Point Cards with French Pips

“According to Hoyle”

Engraved Cards

Playing Cards for Educational and other Purposes

European Playing Cards

Asiatic Playing Cards

Chess and Other Games

Fortune-Telling Through the Cards

Reading the Book of Thoth

ILLUSTRATIONS

Atouts of an Early Italian Pack of Tarots, 1 to 6

Atouts of an Early Italian Pack of Tarots, 7 to 12

Atouts of an Early Italian Pack of Tarots, 13 to 18

Atouts of an Early Italian Pack of Tarots, 19 to 22, with Two Court Cards

Early Italian Tarots, Court Cards

Early Italian Tarots, Pip Cards of the Cup Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip and Court Cards of the Cup Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip Cards of the Rod Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip and Court Cards of the Rod Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip Cards of the Sword Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip and Court Cards of the Sword Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip Cards of the Money Suit

Early Italian Tarots, Pip and Court Cards of the Money Suit

Swedish, Korean and Japanes