Daily Archives: April 17, 2024

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (2) Chartomancy

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Jane Seymour as Solitaire in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die” – my favorite depiction of the Tarot in film, for which they designed their own pack, the Tarot of the Witches. Also – Jane Seymour!

 

(2) CHARTOMANCY – CARTOMANCY (TAROMANCY)

 

“I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died” – Steve Wright

Special mention to the first of what I call my casino trinity of mancy – cartomancy or divination by cards, with the foremost of those being divination by Tarot cards, occasionally styled as taromancy.

That casino quip is not casual – I suspect there is a substantial overlap between methods of divination and gambling in games of chance or fortune, evolving to or from the other. However, it is not an area in which I have read (if such references exist), although Encyclopedia Britannica at least seems to endorse that gambling evolved from divination.

I have read that something of the reverse happened with Tarot cards. Tarot cards appear to have originated as the very subject of Wright’s joke – a more mundane medium for playing card games – but subsequently acquired their mystique as a means for divination, often in popular culture with dire portents Wright played on for his joke.

Less dramatically, cartomancy tends to use standard playing cards, which were introduced into Europe (from foreign origins, apparently ultimately from China) at about the same time as Tarot, albeit not necessarily in their contemporary form. I understand that the history (and historical forms) of playing cards is less than clear, as is the Tarot and any relationship between them – contrary to my former beliefs (from superficial reading) that playing cards evolved from the Tarot.

Cartomancy is itself a form of chartomancy, which is divination by…paper?! Well, not just any paper, but paper with things on it – which could potentially be as simple as paper with different colors on it (for example, drawn randomly by a querent) but more usually paper with words or visual symbols written or printed on it, hence cartomancy.

I suspect chartomancy is more a label of convenience for similar methods of divination using written or printed words or symbols on paper rather than a meaningful denomination for divination from paper of itself. Although apparently there was papyromancy for divination by folding paper – reading the creases from crumpled paper not unlike the lines in a hand in palmistry.

Writing (including writing visual symbols) probably did have an appearance of magic or at least some mystique to it with the advent of literacy which was passed on to its mediums including paper – arguably reflected in the enduring image of magic in books or scrolls.

Another example of chartomancy would be fortune cookies – used more now for casual entertainment, but apparently (or at least arguably) with a serious historical pedigree dating back to Mesopotamia and Greece, occasionally termed as aleuromancy or divination by the use of flour.

Yet another example would be stichomancy (occasionally styled as rhapsodomancy), divination by lines of verse (or poetry), or what I might call small-b bibliomancy, literally divination by books – of which the most famous is big-b Bibliomancy, or divination by the Bible, typically by lines or passages “taken at hazard” or at random.

Obviously other books can and have been used, although usually of equal significance – Homer’s Iliad and Oydssey (sometimes styled as stoichomancy or stoicheomancy), the works of Virgil and the mysterious Sybilline Books in Rome, the Koran (or Quran) and so on. I’d like to see dictiomancy – divination by words at random from the dictionary.

As a method of divination, the various forms of chartomancy have a power corresponding to what is used – standard playing cards might seem mundane but Tarot cards have the emotional resonance of their vivid, and violent, visual imagery.

And as a type of magic, there’s that enduring image of books and scrolls as the means for magic, including in Dungeons and Dragons. It would be intriguing to extend that to cards, perhaps adapted in different styles or schools of magic from card games such as poker or blackjack. Or perhaps conjuration using Tarot cards – although Dungeons and Dragons has done something of the sort with its Deck of Many Things.

Although knowing my luck, I’d mostly draw Swords, perhaps echoing Indiana Jones and snakes. “Swords – why did it have to be Swords?”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (2) Shamanism

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Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

 

(2) SHAMANISM

 

I am a shaman in the tribe of catholicism –

a voice crying for a vision,

animal powers and spirit guides,

true names and song lines,

second sight and third eye.

 

After paganism, the second of my holy trinity of mythic worlds – the mythos that I playfully refer to as my shaman catholicism.

Also like paganism, as much my ethos as mythos – “but then the awesome mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realise that your sure ways were not sure at all”.

And yes – again like paganism, I know shamanism is not so much an individual mythology or religion, but rather an amorphous agglomeration of mythologies or religions, but on on an even potentially larger scale in space and time.

Strictly speaking, shamanism refers to the indigenous religions of Siberia and neighbouring parts of Asia, with the word shaman itself orginating from the language there.

But where’s the fun in speaking strictly? And so shamanism has been used in a very broad sense, arguably the broadest sense of any mythology or religion – ranging through space to tribal religions on every (populated) continent, and even more broadly in time, through so-called deep history to prehistoric or primal religion.

Peter Watson in The Great Divide hypothesizes that the pre-Columbian Americas was essentially shamanic, having remained the most so (since crossing into the Americas from Siberia) and certainly more so than Eurasia, not least because of the high concentration of psychedelic or psychotropic plants.

While Weston La Barre in The Ghost Dance hypothesizes that all religion is essentially shamanic in nature – and all religions are ghost dances at heart.

As for shamanism itself, animism is often asserted as its defining feature – and there is certainly something appealing in an animistic view of the world. Perhaps its primary definitive feature is its focus on states of altered consciousness – archetypally through psychedelic or psychotropic substances – as thresholds to the spirit world or otherworld.

And again, like paganism, I have a soft spot for the nomenclature of paleoshamanism and neoshamanism – with paleoshamanism as the original forms of shamanism, potentially very paleo indeed back to the Paleolithic, and neoshamanism as modern reconstructions.

“When a vision comes into the world…it comes into the world with terror like a thunderstorm…if the vision was true and mighty, I know it is true and mighty yet, for such things are of the spirit and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT GREAT SPIRIT TIER?)

 

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (2) Tarot

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0 The Fool – Rider-Waite Tarot (A.E.Waite & Pamela Colman Smith as artist)

 

(2) TAROT – RIDER-WAITE & CROWLEY THOTH

 

The Tarot earns special mention in my Top 10 Mythology Books for the decks of cards, particularly the two iconic and definitive modern decks.

Of course, there are a plethora of modern Tarot decks, most of which originate from those two definitive modern decks (named for their creators) which were themselves substantial reconstructions from earlier tarot decks, pumping up their esoteric mystique – the Rider-Waite deck and the Crowley-Thoth deck, my Old Testament and New Testament of Tarot respectively. (And like Martin Prince in The Simpsons dismissively handwaving away Ray Bradbury from his ABC of science fiction with “I’m aware of his work”, I’m aware of the third most common modern Tarot deck – the Marseilles Tarot).

Interestingly, both these two definitive decks were by female artists, Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite deck and Lady Frieda Harris. My personal preference is for the artwork and themes of the Crowley-Thoth deck (even if Crowley himself was one generally weird dude and sick puppy), albeit still shaped by the influence of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)