Tarot and Fortune Telling Cards
The Cary Collection is not merely composed of standard playing cards, but also contains tarot cards as well as cards related to cartomancy, or the divination of one's fortune based upon interpretation of various cards. The Beinecke Library guards two of the earliest still-existing tarot decks in the world, the Visconti and the Este tarot cards. Of the two, the Visconti cards are probably the most well-known. These cards were commissioned by the Visconti family in the mid-15th century and may be the oldest tarot card deck still in existence.
The Visconti and Este tarot cards are not the only such cards in the Cary Collection. There are also French suited animal tarots from Belgium and some Marseilles type tarots. Also included are non-tarot cartomantic decks. In 2006, the Beinecke acquired a pack of cards that were enclosed in every packet of Black Cat Virginia cigarettes, and in 2007 a deck of seventy-eight photographic tarot cards was added to the collection.
Read more about this topic: Cary Collection Of Playing Cards
Famous quotes containing the words fortune, telling and/or cards:
“Herein Fortune shows herself more kind
Than is her custom. It is still her use
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow
An age of poverty; from which lingering penance
Of such misery doth she cut me off.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Skill sheets, workbooks, basal reader, flash cards are not enough. To convey meaning you need someone sharing the meaning and flavor of real stories with the student.”
—Jim Trelease (20th century)