Early divination techniques?

Ross G Caldwell

I wrote a "Brief history of cartomancy" a few years ago, that might give you some ideas.

You can read it in two places -

https://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_history_of_cartomancy
https://fr.scribd.com/doc/249326692/Brief-History-of-Cartomancy


Fortune-telling is generally "under the radar" historically, and in moralists' condemnations, divination with cards seems to be first mentioned, obscurely, in about 1505 (his Latin phrasing convinces me he is referring to what we call cartomancy). In 1450, Fernando de la Torre in Spain says his specially designed pack can be used to tell fortunes. In the early 17th century, it begins to appear with more frequency, and records of the Spanish Inquisition begin to record instances of it. There is also a mention of it in an English source.

Depending on how you define divination, Teofilo Folengo in 1527 is the first person to write of using Trionfi for divination, albeit in a fictional setting. It is an outgrowth of making poems with the cards in a game called "Tarocchi appropriati".

The first actual method for using Tarot explicitly comes from Bologna, about 1750. Huson calls this "Pratesi's cartomancer". There is apparently a strong oral tradition in Bologna.
 

Zephyros

Thank you for all your responses, I have a day off today and want to thoroughly read the sources supplied. It is interesting that the Majors' significance was more stable through the years than the Minors, who seem to have gone through the more revolutionary of permutations. It would have been cool if decks today still had "country loaves!"

I wonder, is there any similarity between today's writers on TdM methods and what was thought to have originally been, especially in the case with the Minors?