nigromancer700 said:
Ross hi,
That's just fantastic stuff on mantic use of cards in Spain which I've only just read, all of it of exceptional interest: I love the Spanish witch incantation you cite:
‘I am fearful and I conjure you,
By Barabbas, by Satan
And by Maria Padilla and all her band,
And by the Lame Devil,
So that it be quicker;
I command and ordain,
So that it tells me the truth.’”
Maria Padilla was a semi-historical figure, powerful sorceress and infamous leader of the witches of Evora - her cult was carried into the New World where she is still supplicated in Brazilian Kimbanda.
All the Best,
Nigel
Thanks Nigel. I don't know anything about Maria Padilla, but she appears in studies of Spanish (incl. New World) witchcraft sufficiently that I knew there is a lot to the story.
I've since gotten the relevant parts of Estopañán.
The spell translated above comes from Valérie Molero and Jacques Soubeyroux, “Magie et sorcellerie en Espagne au siècle des lumières”, pp. 225-226.) This is from the testimony of Francisca Romero in 1741:
"J'ai peur et je te conjure
par Barrabas, par Satan
et Maria Padilla et toute sa bande,
et par le Diable Boiteux, pour être plus rapide,
je commande et ordonne
qu'on me dise la vérité."
The same spell in Spanish, as given by María-Helena Sánchez Ortega (“La mujer como fuente del mal; el maleficio” (
Manuscrits no. 9, Enero 1991, pp. 41-81), is slightly different:
"Yo tengo miedo y to conjuro
con Barrabás, con Satanás,
y María de Padilla y toda su cuadrilla
y el Diablo Cojuelo,
por ser más ligero,
le mando un pelo
porque se me diga la verdad."
This was translated for me by Enrique Enriquez:
"I am afraid and I conjure you
with Barrabás and Satan,
and with Maria de Padilla and her whole crew
and en Diablo Cojuelo
since he is the swiftest,
I send him a hair
for the truth be told to me.”
Particularly the difference between "je commande et ordonne" and "le mando un pelo" - I have to assume the French text is either a poor translation or a different text entirely.
These texts have made me reconsider how I view the history of cartomancy, and its definition (at least for scientific/historical purposes).
The earliest kind of cartomancy is also the most intuitive and natural - pulling a card out like a lot or sort and taking the message from there. This is as simple as tossing a coin to make a decision or pulling daisy-leaves saying "he loves me, he loves me not." The games played this way are countless and can't be considered to have "begun" at any time - they are timeless. The earliest evidence of this kind of "play-divination" is in the 1450s, with cards with stanzas written on them. They fall into the category of fortune cookies, pulling names out of a hat, letters of the alphabet, charades, whatever (you can see I view divination as a form of play, whether light-hearted or serious) - in my definition, to be "active divination", there has to be a question asked and the answer is expected to reveal the truth. "Passive divination" is like the fortune-cookie - no question asked, but a fortune is given.
This leads to my second historical "requirement" to be true "cartomancy" - there has to be the belief that the supernatural is somehow involved, that God, spirits or destiny somehow guides the answer, and if it is a client-reader relationship, that the reader has prophetic ("mantic") insight somehow that is invisible to the client. Either appeal to spiritual forces or mantic power is sufficient for me to consider it, for historical purposes, cartomancy. Thus in its attenuated form nowadays, even without a prayer or incantation before the reading (which I have never seen done), if the client believes that the reader has mantic power, then it is still cartomancy.
This is what I think is so impressive about the Spanish accounts, which are careful to say a spell or incantation beforehand - there is a direct appeal to the hidden world of the spirits. This kind of thing is explicit even in the Golden Dawn's long method - "serious" occultists taking divination as seriously as the "superstitious" witchcraft methods.
But such methods, and even the belief system of modern sophisticated card-readers has neither appeal to the spirits nor belief in the superior insight of the reader - it is something completely different nowadays, informed by psychology and narratology, where the participants, client and reader, together interpret the art on the cards in a process of making a story that brings insight to the client and perhaps a new perspective. It is therapeutic in other words, but completely divested of the supernatural aspects of traditional cartomancy.
Perhaps the loss of direct appeal to spiritual forces - and/or trust in the mantic powers of the reader - is answered in occultism by appeal to the authority of a fictitious antiquity. This endows the object itself - in this case, Tarot cards - with a numinous aura. Maybe this acquired "numinosity" is a substitute for the direct power of invoked magic.
Ross