PKT Manual of Cartomancy Reference

Abrac

I've been trudging through the PDF and turning it into a Word document. Got to the end of page 150 and sure enough pages 151-154 are missing. I thought I checked before and found them but I must be mistaken. Now I don't know whether to go on. Very disappointing. :(

This seems like a great book for getting insight into how Waite thought.
 

Teheuti

Waite's Grand Orient writings have to be seen in light of the tradition of fortune-telling manuals. I have a significant collection of them and Waite probably did, too. Most publishers found that they provided a nice little stream of money and many such manuals went into numerous editions. All of them basically steal from all of the others because the idea is to present a new edition for a new readership of traditional, tried-and-true methods - those with a venerable lineage. These books by Waite were just his contribution to this tradition - which is why he used the pseudonym (another venerable tradition when writing such books). The academic book, _Reading Russian Fortunes_, details a great many of such manuals, most of which were Russian translations of European books.

Most of these manuals are put together by hack-writers in a publisher's stable and, to some extent, Waite worked in that capacity (remember he also earned a living writing advertising copy). For instance, we can find that coffee-ground readings are basically unchanged through many books going back to 1796 or before. Occasionally something new gets thrown into the mix. Waite's material on the Tarot owes quite a bit to Paul Christian and Etteilla for inspiration. In fact, it becomes interesting to see how his ideas evolved into what appears in PKT. Similarly, Mathers' published Tarot book was just a brief English-language synopsis of Etteilla and his followers - not a book on Golden Dawn Tarot.

Many of these manuals, some going back to the 17th century are available online (as ebooks, pdfs, etc.) through Google books or universities. You can trace almost everything in Grand Orient as coming through them. See:
Every Lady's Own Fortune Teller
Mother Shipton's Fortune Teller
Scottish Chapbooks
Witches Dream Book
New Complete Fortune Telling . . . by Ibraham Hafez
Madame Zadkiel's . . .
The Modern Sybil
Moll Pitcher's Prophecies
The Gypsy Fortune Teller
The Poetical Book of Fate
L'Oracle Parfait
The Oraculum or Napoleon's Book of Fate
The Complete Fortune Teller
Le Marchand's Fortune Teller
and on and on . . .

to say nothing of similar books on magical rituals and ceremonies, talismans, and more that Waite also wrote about as Grand Orient - basically passing on the same ole stuff.
 

Barleywine

Thank you kindly, Mary. I feel like Horatio getting schooled by Hamlet: "There are more things in hocus and pocus than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . ."
 

rwcarter

A friend has a hardback copy of Grand Orient's Manual of Cartomancy from the late 1800s or early 1900s. (I wasn't all that interested the first time she showed it to me.) If it's not a first printing, it's an early printing. She's going to loan it to me so I can confirm what is/isn't missing between it and the copy I have.

Rodney
 

Abrac

Sounds great Rodney.

I sampled the Kindle version and it's a train wreck. I don't recommend it.

A reputable company like Amazon should be ashamed for charging money for something that worse than what's already available elsewhere for free.
 

rwcarter

My friend loaned me one of her versions. It's a red hardback dated 1909 and says it's the fourth edition, revised and enlarged with plates. There are 249 numbered pages plus advertisements in the back. (I remembered her showing me a green hardback, which she remembers but she thinks she gave it to me. If she did, I couldn't find it on a quick perusal, which is unusual. I'll have to do a more thorough search later.)

My Health Research copy that I mentioned earlier is 278 numbered pages. Looking a little closer, it's a reprint of the 5th edition, including two additional sections, with plates. That would explain why I have 29 more pages than the 4th edition.

The missing pages 150-154 referenced in the Kindle version correspond to pages 165-168 in my version. And taking a look at the archive.org version Abrac linked to, I guess it's better than nothing. But just barely. :p

Rodney
 

Teheuti

University Books (1972) re-published the Grand Orient materials as:

The Complete Manual of Occult Divination: Manual of Cartomancy (1889) and Occult Divination (1909), Vol. 1.

The Complete Manual of Occult Divination: The Book of Destiny, Vol. II.
 

Abrac

Well, with Rodney's help I was able to complete the PDF (thank you for supplying the missing text).

It sounds like there are a lot of versions of this out there. This is the Fourth Edition, 1909. I've included internal links for easier navigation.

A lot of it reads like a magic 8 ball, but there are a few items of interest. I found his descriptions of the tarot trumps in the three worlds particularly interesting, as well as the chapter on The Art of Ruling by the Law of Grace.

Manual of Cartomancy.pdf 9.8MB
 

Barleywine

Well, with Rodney's help I was able to complete the PDF (thank you for supplying the missing text).

It sounds like there are a lot of versions of this out there. This is the Fourth Edition, 1909. I've included internal links for easier navigation.

A lot of it reads like a magic 8 ball, but there are a few items of interest. I found his descriptions of the tarot trumps in the three worlds particularly interesting, as well as the chapter on The Art of Ruling by the Law of Grace.

Manual of Cartomancy.pdf 2.4MB

I uploaded the Word document also if anyone wants it. It's a little bigger but the quality's a lot better.

Manual of Cartomancy.doc 9.85MB

Wow! Thanks so much for this. I got an error when I tried to open the pdf, but I can get the Word version as soon as I create a Dropbox account.