Re: German Lenormand 1846 / Spiel der Hoffnung 1799

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FYI the Tarot Professionals reproduction of Das Spiel der Hoffnung is now available from The Game Crafter here: The Original Lenormand.

It is a limited edition of 250 decks per the British Museum reproduction licence purchased by Tarot Professionals and is expected to sell out quickly. Ciro Marchetti is credited for graphic work on the deck. He recast the cards as the original cards were not uniform in shape (see explanation from Tarot Professionals below) and designed the card backs (the originals are plain).
We will look to produce these as reproduction versions without borders, with artistic extension of the existing background colour for each image providing a bleed to the edge of the physical card. The cards will be centred, and re-aligned as if they had been cut properly in the first place, with a suitable thin black borderline (not a thick border, a line) around the main image as they were originally produced.
I have written a new blog post about the cartomantic meanings of the German playing cards: Vier Farben: Lenormand suits (revisited). Below is an extract (translated by me from a German text written by historian Johann Gräße):
"... bells, formerly the ornaments of princes and courtiers, which they donned on their clothes in the 13th century, represent the nobility, hearts (or red) the clergy, leaves (or green) peasants or agriculture, and acorns servants (in the Middle Ages the oak is always the emblem of the unfree and serfs, the linden however of the free and nobles) ...
German fortune-tellers regard red as the main suit, so that the gentleman or the lady, for whom the cards are being read, is represented by the king or upper knave of this suit, if they do not explicitly choose another suit. In general however red means love and happiness, especially if several red cards are lying near the main person; green really has no specific meaning on the whole, but it mostly promises a joyful, pleasant event, just as bells does, which however almost always announces money or lottery winnings, while acorns or nuts invariably indicates evil of any kind, so that, if several acorn cards are lying near the main person, it suggests the same illness, and if furthermore some lower knaves are found under them, it even predicts death ..."

Re: German Lenormand 1846 / Spiel der Hoffnung 1799

26
Helen wrote:
Huck wrote:You get merits for your translation works ... :-)
Thanks for the compliment Huck! #:-s
Huck wrote:Nice work ... :-) ... and good luck with the production.
I am not associated with Tarot Professionals (it is not my production).
Thanks ... I thought so.

Recently I wrote ... I don't know how far you got this development:
1. Minchiate had 35 numbered trumps (at least around 1550) plus 5 unnumbered cards.

2. The first reader of the rest of the coffee is given as a man of Florence in late 17th century. In Florence Minchiate had a certain influence, so it wouldn't be a revolutionary conclusion, that the man of Florence might have been influenced by Minchiate.

3. Franco Pratesi found once a cartomancy list in Bologna with 35 symbols (maybe from 1750, but no precise date).

4. I found a German text of 1763, which for the moment is the oldest German cartomancy note (as far I know it)
It reports also about coffee reading, and presents a list with 35 symbols.

5. We found the author of the Spiel der Hoffnung (1799), which was a running game, in which the game table was made by 36 cards. But the 36th card has a special function and it isn't really part of the game. Card 35 is the Hoffnung (hope) and the place, where you can finish the game as the lucky winner.

6. In 1846 appears the "Le Petit Lenormand" as a German divination deck and uses rather precisely the 36 figures of the Spiel der Hoffnung. It becomes very successful in Germany - and still it is in a strong competition to Tarot divination.
posting.php?mode=edit&f=11&p=12281

So I see some "divination" attention to a system which somehow was based on the number "35", which possibly started with the Minchiate.

To 1: The earliest knowledge about content of the Minchiate goes somehow to 1552:
some material is collected here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=420&hilit=1552+minchiate

to 2: I wrote about Coffee reading here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=847

To 3: Franco Pratesi's older Cartomancy article is here:
http://trionfi.com/pratesi-cartomancer

To 4: I made a list with early appearances of Cartomancy in Germany here (the article of 1763 is partly inside)
http://trionfi.eu/village/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1390
I wrote about the article of 11763 [later corrected, originally I had the typo 1773] in the coffee reading article (mentioned above)

To 5 and 6: In this thread

*************

A general Cartomancy text in Germany (1769):

Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposcopie und Chiromantie
Christian A. Peuschel
1769 - 401 pages
http://books.google.de/books?id=i8g6AAA ... &q&f=false

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additional to this text:

1770 book critique to Peuschel
Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, Volume 13 (Google eBook)
F. Nicolai, 1770
http://books.google.de/books?id=6tsEAAA ... en&f=false

Modern to Peuschel
http://books.google.de/books?id=OLfWS3k ... 69&f=false

Author: Christian Adam Peuschel (1712-1770)
evangelisch-lutherischer Pfarrer in Sachsen

****************

A further nearly ote with some details to card meaning (1781)
http://books.google.de/books?id=iNJGAAA ... en&f=false
Last edited by Huck on 17 Aug 2012, 17:28, edited 2 times in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: German Lenormand 1846 / Spiel der Hoffnung 1799

27
Huck wrote:Recently I wrote ... I don't know how far you got this development:
1. Minchiate had 35 numbered trumps (at least around 1550) plus 5 unnumbered cards.

2. The first reader of the rest of the coffee is given as a man of Florence in late 17th century. In Florence Minchiate had a certain influence, so it wouldn't be a revolutionary conclusion, that the man of Florence might have been influenced by Minchiate.

3. Franco Pratesi found once a cartomancy list in Bologna with 35 symbols (maybe from 1750, but no precise date).

4. I found a German text of 1763, which for the moment is the oldest German cartomancy note (as far I know it)
It reports also about coffee reading, and presents a list with 35 symbols.

5. We found the author of the Spiel der Hoffnung (1799), which was a running game, in which the game table was made by 36 cards. But the 36th card has a special function and it isn't really part of the game. Card 35 is the Hoffnung (hope) and the place, where you can finish the game as the lucky winner.

6. In 1846 appears the "Le Petit Lenormand" as a German divination deck and uses rather precisely the 36 figures of the Spiel der Hoffnung. It becomes very successful in Germany - and still it is in a strong competition to Tarot divination.
So I see some "divination" attention to a system which somehow was based on the number "35", which possibly started with the Minchiate.
I don't claim to have all the answers, for what it's worth my personal opinion given what I have seen so far is that European divination symbolism derives from ancient dream symbolism books and later Renaissance emblem books. In my opinion the number 36 derives from the 6x6 layout of Biribissi/Bilderlotto gaming boards, the 36 positions of which can be randomly obtained from the roll of two dice (first die gives the row, second die gives the column within the row or you can multiply the first score by the second to get a number from 1 to 36) or by randomly drawing a card from a deck of 36 cards which was used in southern Germany. From examples of lottery boards and fortune-telling decks in museums and even in production today, we can see that there are more than 36 possible images being used with some crossover between different boards and decks.

Re: German Lenormand 1846 / Spiel der Hoffnung 1799

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Huck wrote:
4. I found a German text of 1763, which for the moment is the oldest German cartomancy note (as far I know it)
To 4: I made a list with early appearances of Cartomancy in Germany here (the article of 1763 is partly inside)
http://trionfi.eu/village/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1390
I wrote about the article of 1473 in the coffee reading article (mentioned above)

A general Cartomancy text in Germany (1769):

Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposcopie und Chiromantie
Christian A. Peuschel
1769 - 401 pages
http://books.google.de/books?id=i8g6AAA ... &q&f=false
Thanks Huck, this is of great interest to me although I find the translation of such texts heavy going (online translation is fairly useless for such texts, it is a labour of love).

Re: German Lenormand 1846 / Spiel der Hoffnung 1799

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A general Cartomancy text in Germany (1769):

Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposcopie und Chiromantie
Christian A. Peuschel
1769 - 401 pages
http://books.google.de/books?id=i8g6AAA ... &q&f=false
FYI I noticed that this early text contains the same cartomantic meanings as the ones I found in a text by criminologist Benedict Avé-Lallemant (1809-1892) in Das deutsche Gaunerthum (FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1858), a book about the German criminal world. I have added a note about this to my blog article thanks.

These cartomantic meanings do not correspond to the card meanings in the Lenormand deck or other preserved German fortune-telling decks in Wahrsagekarten by Hoffmann and Kroppenstedt, this discrepancy could be regional or the authors could be misinformed. The historian Johann Gräße (1814-1885) gives us more useful information and it is possible that he may be more objective than a minister and a criminologist?

Edited to add link to Gräße text:
Zur Geschichte der Spielkarten, Die Wissenschaften im neunzehnten Jahrhundert,
Johann Georg Theodor Gräße (Romberg's Verlag, Leipzig 1856)

Re: German Lenormand 1846 / Spiel der Hoffnung 1799

30
Helen wrote:
A general Cartomancy text in Germany (1769):

Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposcopie und Chiromantie
Christian A. Peuschel
1769 - 401 pages
http://books.google.de/books?id=i8g6AAA ... &q&f=false
FYI I noticed that this early text contains the same cartomantic meanings as the ones I found in a text by criminologist Benedict Avé-Lallemant (1809-1892) in Das deutsche Gaunerthum (FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1858), a book about the German criminal world. I have added a note about this to my blog article thanks.

These cartomantic meanings do not correspond to the card meanings in the Lenormand deck or other preserved German fortune-telling decks in Wahrsagekarten by Hoffmann and Kroppenstedt, this discrepancy could be regional or the authors could be misinformed. The historian Johann Gräße (1814-1885) gives us more useful information and it is possible that he may be more objective than a minister and a criminologist?

Edited to add link to Gräße text:
Zur Geschichte der Spielkarten, Die Wissenschaften im neunzehnten Jahrhundert,
Johann Georg Theodor Gräße (Romberg's Verlag, Leipzig 1856)
Thanks,
I'll take a closer look, but momentary I'm occupied with some other stuff.
Huck
http://trionfi.com
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