Divination has become a popular pastime in recent years. Runes, cards, and dowsing are all options you might see over on Instagram. Brigit Esselmont at Biddy Tarot even brought out a handbag-sized tarot deck for readings on the go. If you visit your local metaphysical shop or bookstore for tarot cards, you might see oracle […]
fortune telling
A Joker in the Pack: The Folklore of Playing Cards
You probably own at least one deck of playing cards. And if you’re anything like me, you literally only know how to play one card game. Solitaire. Have you ever considered using them to tell fortunes? Cartomancy doesn’t just rely on fancy decks of special cards. True, Madame Lenormand became famous for her divinatory cards […]
Fortune-Telling Made Easy: 4 Strange Forms of Divination
In dark and uncertain times such as these, it’s easy to wish you could see into the future. You might easily turn to fortune-telling practices to try and navigate the potentially choppy waters ahead. The idea of divination as a whole lies beyond the scope of this post. It’s not just fortune-telling, it’s more a […]
Folklore of Fortune Telling, Superstitions, and Avoiding Danger
In the 1990s, paper fortune tellers were all the rage at my school. They were like the low-tech version of a Magic 8 ball, another fortune telling ‘toy’. Ours never looked as fancy as this one, but this is what I mean. Their use in England dates to the 1950s (Opie 2001 [1959], pp. 341–342). […]
