Q: What is Cartomancy?
A: Since the dawn of recorded history, every human culture has developed its own form of divinatory arts. For thousands of years, fortune telling was a respected profession practiced with the utmost seriousness. Yet, despite this ancient pedigree, the specific art of telling fortunes using playing cards was only invented less than three hundred years ago, around the middle of the 18th Century. While it is a relatively new practice, cartomancy has quickly become one of the most popular systems of divination in the world. Unlike most traditional methods, reading cards requires no psychic gifts or magical invocations. Anyone can learn the meanings of the cards and how to interpret them in order to answer questions and make predictions about what might happen in the future.
Q: How do I book a consultation?
A: When you purchase a consultation through this website you will receive an email requesting information about your question and offering choice decks. This short interview process will help ensure you get the most accurate and insightful reading possible.
Q: What do I get for my money?
A: Once you have provided essential information about your question, or the problem you seek to resolve, Doc Mannix will perform a reading and photograph the resulting spread. He will then write a complete explanation of the card spread and his interpretation of how the cards relate to your question and the potential outcomes you might expect in the future. Once you receive your reading and Doc’s interpretation, he will be happy to answer any questions you have to help clarify your understanding of the fortune.
Q: How does this work?
A: There are many theories about why cartomancy is such an effective tool. Many readers will attest belief in a metaphysical hypothesis, asserting that their spirit guides communicate through the cards or that some other supernatural intelligence is controlling which cards are dealt. For those who prefer more scientifically oriented explanations, the cognitive linguistic theory known as conceptual blending offers an explanation for how random stimuli (like a card spread) can prompt us to gain new perspectives on a given problem. The cards don’t always predict future events, but this offer insights into the potential outcomes that can help us decide how best to deal with a particular problem.
Q: How is this different from The Tarot?
A: Tarot cards are probably most famous for their use in fortune telling, but, the art of cartomancy can be practiced using common playing cards or specially crafted oracle decks. In general, the 72-card tarot decks are considered to have a more sophisticated symbolic vocabulary with the Major Arcana adding a pantheon of archetypal figures who can influence the tone of a reading. The great French fortune teller of the Napoleonic era, Marie Anne LeNormand, famously used a custom made deck of her own design based upon ordinary playing cards of the time. LeNormand spent her teenage years in post revolutionary Paris at the same time that Jean-Baptiste Alliette was publishing the first books on the use of tarot as a divination tool. The myth that tarot cards originated in Ancient Egypt was taken as common knowledge at that time making them the preferred tool of those who aspired to unlock the secrets of High Magick through cartomancy. Although historians have proven that playing cards were not invented until the Middle Ages, and the mythological origins of the tarot were fabricated by 18th Century French occultists, the popular misconception that tarot cards are innately magical persists. Decades of first hand experience have convinced us that if there is any magic involved at all, it is in the hands of the fortune teller not their tools.