Random Reading - #90

Somewhere in my recent internet travels, I came across a mention of this book –

La Cartomancie - L'art de découvrir l'avenir par les cartes et les tarots
par Mme Zezina

"Cartomancy -  The art of discovering the future through cards and tarot
by Madame Zezina"

Originally published by Bornemann, Paris, in the 30s or 40s, this one is a 1970 edition printed in 1984. 

The book appeared to contain some interesting spreads, and while I'm not generally one for using spreads with playing cards, it was cheap enough 😏 so I thought I'd get it just to check them out and maybe give some a go. 

And so, here is L'Etoile, The Star. With the seeker's significator in the centre (I've used both my male and female significators for this reading) the positions are 1 | top: thoughts/hopes; 2 | left: immediate future; 3 | right: later future; 4 | bottom: surprise, the unexpected. 

⁛ Your thoughts revolve around dealings with a professional person – a doctor, solicitor, someone in an official capacity.

Your immediate future looks to be improving materially and/or physically, and we can relate this improvement to whatever official business is on your mind. And we see this increase from 9♦ to 10♦ going forward - definite profit or benefit for you; things really looking up. 

There will be some unexpected event involving your home or family. Seeing as this reading is quite positive, I have no reason to feel this will be a "bad" surprise. And again, it will be related in some way to the above.

The author's instructions tell us to also look for cards of the same value, of which there are none this time, and to read for the combinations formed by positions 2 and 3 with the significator (not only are there combination meanings for cards to the left or right of a particular suit or card, but also for ones before, after or between certain pairs of cards!).

9♦ to the left of a ♥ = broken engagement
10♦ to the right of a ♥ = honeymoon

Kind of an odd combo, and bear in mind that these are based on the author's core meanings, not mine, but I suggest that something which has been negatively anticipated will be cancelled, resulting in a period of contentment and happiness. ⁛

And there you go. It was fun to work within the constraints of a more structured reading for a change. It did rather stifle any intuition regarding what exactly it's all about, but whatever it is 😁 it's going to turn out well. 

And in case you're wondering, “les tarots” referred to in the book's title is specifically the Grand Etteilla (I). If you click on the book picture and zoom in, you can see some of the trump cards from that deck. This is also of interest to me because the same Etteilla meanings apply to my Book of Thoth Etteilla (III) and, just as with the playing cards, the author gives many examples of combination meanings based on whether a card lays before or after a particular other card. Probably way too complicated for me to actually try to work with in any practical way, i.e. without having to constantly refer to the book, but I'm curious to see what they're like. Maybe one or two will be worth committing to memory. 🙂

There are tarot spreads as well, but they are way too big for me. The smallest uses 24 cards, and the largest 67! And I'm willing to bet, though I haven't translated it yet, that the remaining 11 cards don't just sit there doing nothing.