"Viennese fortunetelling tarot cards?"

Huh?
Why the reference to this Austrian city? Billy Graham does say "fortunetelling" so I don't think he was talking about the "Industrie u. Glueck" Tarock cards used for games.

"Millions of Americans are caught up in a desperate attempt to know the future. The phenomenal rise in the sale of crystal balls, Ouija boards and Viennese fortunetelling tarot cards is only a part of the new 'groping' into the future."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/opinion/etc-graham.html
It appears to be from a 1970 article. I'm just amused he'd make some reference to Vienna in reference to fortune telling Tarot.

It's hard to say. I too doubt he meant Tarock. He may have been referring to decks with 32 or 36 cards. They were popular with cartomancers before the tarot renaissance in the 70s. He may have been familiar with Viennese decks and assumed if a deck had 32 or 36 cards it was Viennese, which isn't correct.

Maybe he just thought that tarot originated in Vienna? Dunno. It is kind of an odd article, is there a reference back to the full original article, I couldn't see it?

Mabuse said:

Huh?
Why the reference to this Austrian city? Billy Graham does say "fortunetelling" so I don't think he was talking about the "Industrie u. Glueck" Tarock cards used for games.

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I think he might be referring to a clone of Lenormand, the Gypsy fortune telling cards - they were printed in Vienna and were the most wide spread oracle in the former Austrian- Hungary during 20th Century (my own grandma used to read them and she got them from someone in Vienna too). Also, most of the people who are not into Divination hardly make a difference between Tarot and Oracle, like - all its all cards.
(Its a guess mind you.)

OT:The author was right though...
"Thus the future does not belong to Communism! The future does not belong to capitalism!"
Not sure to whom it belongs, but both doctrines did fail...

Vienna and Venice are similar as they both begin with the letter V.

willowfox said:

Vienna and Venice are similar as they both begin with the letter V.

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Hatred and Helsinki.
Munglinup and Munich.
Pilbara and Prague.

So many similar places <grin>.

willowfox said:

Vienna and Venice are similar as they both begin with the letter V.

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"The first known tarot cards were created between 1430 and 1450 in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in 1442.[11] The oldest surviving tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan."

This is probably what was meant but confused Venice with Vienna, as he didn't know about Milan so assumed something like a V sounding name. Many people have difficulty placing countries on a map, let alone a city.

I think he's just uninformed and uneducated about this, that's all. Quite often, fundamentalist preachers aren't totally "hip" to what they preach against. (Hope I didn't offend anyone here.)

Grizzabella, I was thinking that too.

Grizabella said:

I think he's just uninformed and uneducated about this, that's all. Quite often, fundamentalist preachers aren't totally "hip" to what they preach against. (Hope I didn't offend anyone here.)

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I think that behind most of the (negative) propaganda is some kind of disinformation or misinformation.