Naipes--Spanish playing cards (Hombres) /cartomancy...and mystical Peru!

Cerulean

I'm very excited....

The beautiful Latin-suited, tarot-like Naipes card that came over to the New World has an actual English language book with some mystical and curious history...and it has the most beautiful cover...

http://store.innertraditions.com/is...787&displayZoom=1&selectedTextTypeKeynames=04

I just got a postcard from Inner Traditions saying the book is ready now!

My favorite Spanish suited deck has about 40 cards, as I have a historic 'romantica' set in beautiful blue-green tones and the unusual female-looking pages/queens...I have to dig it out when the book comes!

This may be all a sweet fantastical storyline, but the fact it uses these gorgeous cards...might even include the Hombre or other Latin-suited cartomancy cards?


Eagerly putting in my order and tapping my foot...

Cerulean
 

Cerulean

By the way you can load an excerpt from the Inner Traditions site

Look on the left hand side and there's a pdf available. There's color inserts and yes...there's a sample spread in color and other color pages of card samples...

I will try to load it myself...just starting to look at these things...did I say before that I was excited? Oh-by-golly-gee, am super-excited

http://store.innertraditions.com/is...787&displayZoom=1&selectedTextTypeKeynames=04

I love cartomancy....

Cerulean
 

Cerulean

Here's the free excerpt...

Chapter 1
The History and the Structure of the Naipes

The naipes are used often by folk healers who cure with herbs or psychedelic plants in a society in which witchcraft beliefs exist and people often expect that illness is caused by the evil will of others. The cards become a psychological adjunct to a healer’s therapy, a sort of intake procedure to learn more about their clients so that the healer can appear to be omnipotent and replete with knowledge and power. We cannot talk about the naipes as a divination technique without understanding the context in which these cards are used, particularly among the urban poor of Belen, who live in abject poverty in their shantytown. Healers are able to manipulate situations of misfortune that dog the steps of the urban poor as the healers diagnose illness and misfortune, appearing all-powerful and worthy of their fees.

I first ran into the naipes in Peru when, as a graduate student, I was sent by the Institute of Social Psychiatry at San Marcos University on the north coast of Peru to a special village, Salas, an hour and a half outside of Chiclayo. It was said that there more than a hundred folk healers used, in healing rituals, the San Pedro cactus laden with mescaline. Attending a healing ceremony one night in Salas, I heard a folk healer tell his wife to bring the naipes down to the area where the patients were seated. Having a long-term interest in fortune-telling, I asked the healer to tell me more about the naipes. He brushed me off, but this sparked my interest, which had been dormant for a number of years. When I arrived in Peru, I was game for divination techniques. In the marketplace in the nearby city of Chiclayo I purchased a pamphlet said to be written by Napoleon’s spiritual adviser, Madame LeNormand.

Madame LeNormand was born in a small village in France in 1773 and arrived in Paris when she was twenty-one years old. She opened a salon and read the fortunes of a number of highly placed individuals who were politically active in the French Revolution, including Robespierre. Apparently, Josephine de Beauharnais, later married to Napoleon Bonaparte, was one of her clients, and Madame Marie was reputed to have regularly read the naipes for Napoleon.

Most of the booklets based on her system agree on basic principles. Certain days of the week are most propitious for a reading--Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, for example. The client must cut the cards only with the left hand, which is nearest to the heart, or else the fortune obtained is thought not to be accurate. The person who takes it upon himself to read the cards must be sincere and strong and not frivolous. This card reader should also be observant and wash his hands and face before using the cards. Dropping a card while reading a fortune is said to bring bad luck. If we can get to the heart of the divining cards by using a rational mathematical probability statistic and examine the technique in light of what I have called an “ethno-projective device,” we can learn a good deal about traditional folk psychotherapy.

The naipes help healers to tap in to the causality of illness while, at the same time, allowing them to present themselves as all-powerful. This cannot help but dispel fear, anxiety, and self-doubts in their patients and provide a high expectation of cure. This personal influence of healers increases their manipulation of the patient’s anxieties and provides a path toward eventual cure.

The naipes are not simple amusement for the clients, but rather are used by them and healers as a diagnostic technique, especially when most clients believe that illness is caused by evil willing or witchcraft machinations on the part of “others.” The healers manipulate a category that I call misfortune cards to plumb the depths of interpersonal conflicts, material loss, and sickness or death of loved ones to make their diagnosis.

Reading the Naipes

To read the naipes, the cards are laid out on a flat surface in the form of a cross, called St. Andres. A picture card representing the client--called the interested party--is placed in the center of the cross, and a frame is made of cards, which encloses the picture card representing the interested party. The frame consists of three additional cards, which are placed on the left side of the client’s picture card, three below this picture card, three on the right side, and three above the client’s central picture card. Beneath the card representing the interested party is an extra card, which the client doesn’t see until the very end of the reading. This card is deemed to shed light on some aspect of the reading.

The total number of cards read is eighteen. Effectively, this type of reading permits a large number of possibilities for each reading and four major story lines for each part of the reading.

A probability statistical analysis of the naipes indicates that in an average reading of eighteen cards, the probability that at least one misfortune card occurs is 99.76 chances out of l00. Two misfortune cards will occur at a probability of 97.40 chances in l00. For three misfortune cards to appear, the statistic drops to 87.3 chances in 100. By the time we reach four misfortune cards, we are close to a 50 percent probability. Because each misfortune card is modified by preceding and sequential cards, an interpreter is in a position to construct a story line quite possibly focusing on interpersonal conflict, material loss, or illness. Thus, the deck is loaded not in the direction of good fortune, but rather to highlight stress and conflict that may be present in the sociocultural milieu. I have called this fortune’s malice, from a line in the poem “De Gustibus” by Robert Browning.

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The pdf version actually shows two or three pages in color, cards in a spread and one 18 card-- spread...what a curious book on 'folkloric' cartomancy!
 

Teheuti

Marlene Dobkins de Rios is an anthropologist who wrote an article in Americas Magazine back in the 1970s on cartomancy as folk-therapy. I regularly used it in the college tarot classes I taught. It was a powerful article that completely changed the way I thought about 'fortune-telling' readings. She made it very clear how different fortune-telling styles are needed to best serve a specific community—given local options and beliefs.

The "New Thought" philosophy that lies behind Paul Foster Case and Eden Gray's approach to the tarot is typically North American and serves our culture, but not necessarily those of other people.

I haven't seen this book yet, but I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks for letting us know, Cerulean.

Mary
 

Cerulean

I just received the e-book via kindle and the hard copy book to follow

I am delighted that someone knows of the author.

The information I have read so far is very interesting for cartomancy (of course I read and looked at everything about her summaries of the cards, card meanings and her card reading experience....)

The author picked up literature translated in Spanish attributing the cartomancy folklore to Madame Lenormand's methods of reading the cards and meanings. Heres cups/copas

Ace copas-marriage, passion, love, joy
Two copas-love thoughts, maternal tenderness, good intentions
Three copas- embarrassment, hindrance, delay
Four copas- amorous triumph, security, love intentions
Five copas - baptism, good life, invitation, food
Six copas - Excessive tenderness, grand passion, firmness in love
Seven copas - at the gate, preparing for good, sure effects
No eight
No nine
No ten
Sota/Page copas -woman of good color, happy
Caballo/Knight copas - wasteral, undertaking of many projects
Rey/King copas - man of good color, given to love


Ace espadas - pain, env, passion
Two espadas - letter,nnews, encounter, motive, book, augury
Three espadas - justification, justice, rectitude, pain
Four espadas - hard, difficult, jealousy, suffering, wounds by steel
Five espadas - imaginary suffering, hidden sadness, anxiety
Six espadas - without thinking, soon, pain and and disgust from news received
Seven espadas - future, time, long-suffering, terrible misfortune
No eight
No nine
No ten
Sota/Page espadas - woman firm in love, jealous
Caballo/Knight espadas -absent military person
Rey/King espadas - man of good color, military

Just a sampling...interesting cartomancy among the Peruvian population...she said the neighborhood was among a poorer population whose husbands or menfolk were mostly fishermen and the women mainly had to deal with day-to-day problems of money/food/kids... and mostly her clients were women in a small neighborhood area.

I enjoyed what I have read so far.

Cerulean
 

minotaur

Thank you for this thread! I received the book today...it is wonderful.

I actually had a set of these cards in the drawer. I was at a Mexican market and talked to a reader there about readings. She showed me the cards and I bought them. She called them the Mexican tarot. She said she would pull them out when she had a sitter who was a tarot know-it-all who argued on card meanings. They weren't familiar with this deck and so she could get control of the reading.

I had a feeling there was more to these cards than what she was letting on.
 

Cerulean

Do you have the same ones portrayed in the book?

I had a historic set to modify..., but found my novelty round set of modern generic naipes figures will do.

I will try to find my related threads to naipes or barajas espanole or hombre decks..these decks have a game legacy with some people that went with explorations. I am happy to read about the folklore and cartomancy in this book. Lovely illustrations.
 

Cerulean

Quick assignment notes

Coins/gold

Ace oros - good fate, sure money
Two-lawsut acquittal, debt collection
Three-good fate, happiness
Four-business determination,negitiation
Five-gain, good success
Six-recovery of debts,good augury
Seven-lottery, game,surprise
Sota,rich or blond woman
Caballo-absent rich man
Rey-blond, rich,resplendent


Wands, batons

Ace-firmness
Two-cradle,sickness
Three,friendship, marriage
Four-end, firmness
Five-road,collecting a debt
Six-voyage,embarking
Seven-agriculture, harvest
Sota-virtuous brunette
Caballaro-brunette masculine traveler
Rey-brunnette man, ,generous
 

merissa_88

I'm so happy I discovered this thread. I just ordered this book last week and am waiting for delivery. It sounds like people like it.

Now I just need to find a deck!
 

Cerulean

Linking to Lenormand

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