talkmagic.co.uk

abraxus wrote:the tax on playing cards wasnt abolished over here until 1961 i think...it was done to pay for many a medievil type war originally...

if you owned a deck of cards, it was seen that you could make money from them...

Speaking of tax and of topic the income tax we pay now was to pay for the 1St world war. Someone forgot to void the law after the war. I perfer the explination that playing cards came from the tarot

i thought Income Tax stemmed all the way back to Napoleon?

Ah could be I know it was some war in the back pages of history.

jacko wrote:Don't forget GB has been unbeaten since 1066!!!

Not sure what you Brits call it, but we call it the War of 1812.

OOH! Move to my left, move to my right! Now sliiiiiiiiiide!

Monker that discussion was over. Leave it will you?

monker59 wrote:

jacko wrote:Don't forget GB has been unbeaten since 1066!!!

Not sure what you Brits call it, but we call it the War of 1812.

Presume you mean the "American War of 1812" - there was that other incident in Europe involving Napoleon at around the same time...

Anyway from what I remember from school the American War didn't really have a winner did it? Agreed peace. Pre-war boundaries unchanged...

Richard

Ah yes, back on topic (after all the whole US War of Independence and 1812 was as stated really UK settlers - or descendents of - fighting UK soldiers. More of an internal squable than a real us vs them war).

I prefer the playing cards originating from tarot cards theory. That's the line I always use.
Hearts = Cups.
Diamonds = Pentacles.
Spades = Swords.
Clubs = Wands.
Following the tarot meanings of the cards, you can even do genuine fortune telling with standard playing cards, although obviously you don't have any nice pictures helping you out when you're using playing cards.

To be honest I always thought that playing cards were derived from tarot. Are they not? Any ideas?

There are 52 cards in a standard deck, which is exactly how many weeks their are in a year.

i much prefer the tarot explanation too...gives the whole thing that special air of mystery...

plus, once you show someone some cartomancy they're usually hooked..

QS= Greek goddess Athena, only queen with a sceptre, rest have flowers.
JH= Ettiene de vingolles (possibly), soldier companion of Joan of Arc, has an axe on his back and carries a leaf. Profile picture.
JD= Lacelot's brother, Hector. Holds a sword.
JC= Lancelot, Holds a spear/arrow and has a feather in his cap.

for anyone who uses jokers there is surely some usable patter on this page VVVVV
http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cardjokr.htm

chryles wrote:QS= Greek goddess Athena, only queen with a sceptre, rest have flowers.
JH= Ettiene de vingolles (possibly), soldier companion of Joan of Arc, has an axe on his back and carries a leaf. Profile picture.
JD= Lacelot's brother, Hector. Holds a sword.
JC= Lancelot, Holds a spear/arrow and has a feather in his cap.

for anyone who uses jokers there is surely some usable patter on this page VVVVV
http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cardjokr.htm

Inspired by this thread I decided to do a little research and compared the royal cards of the tarot with the royal cards of a standard pack of playing cards (can't believe I haven't done this before). I initially used a pack of Rider Waite tarot and the comparisons between them and the standard royal cards were sadly disappointing. There appeared to be little or no similarities.

Then I dug out an old pack of Spanish tarot cards, and immediately the origins of our playing cards was obvious. The Spanish word for "Swords" (one of the 4 tarot suits) is "Espadas". Swords therefore were obviously the forerunners of our Spades which is simply a bastardisation of the Spanish (Latin?) for Swords, rather than anything to do with gardening!

The two royal cards that bear the most resemblance are Jack of Clubs and the tarot equivelant Knight of Wands. From the Spanish tarot one can see where the facial styles of all the standard royal cards came from, but this is most especially pronounced with the Jack of Clubs.

I am most interested in the theories put forward by some posters as to who the royal cards are meant to represent. I will endevour to find out who the historical figures depicted in the Spanish tarot are meant to be, if this is possible. Then we can compare those with the reported historical figures in the standard royal cards.

Much is made of the fact that a pack of cards consists of 52 cards (weeks/year), 4 suits (seasons), 13 cards per suit (lunar cycles/year). However if as I believe our standard cards are direct descendents of the tarot, then much of those are merely conincidences.

For instance there are 14 cards per suit in the tarot (an extra royal card, the "Page"). I assume that over time the Page card and the Knight card were combined to create the Jack. Therefore the fact that each suit has 13 cards is merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with lunar cycles.

The Minor Arcana of the tarot therefore consists of 56 cards (14 cards per suit). When the Jack was created from the Page and the Knight this reduced the number of cards to 52. Again, nothing to do with weeks in the year. More likely just a coincidence brought about by the loss of one card per suit.

However the folk lore behind the cards is great and I do suggest that we keep gazing mystically into the eyes of our specs and explain how the 52 cards represent the weeks of the year etc!

And finally, just to state the obvious, the Joker card in a pack of playing cards is quite clearly the Fool from the Tarot.

I use the tarot a lot at my gigs, but have made a solemn vow to know my suits and numbers so well that I can do readings from playing cards. Having said that though, specs do like to see genuine tarot cards and I suspect that the spec would have a tendency to believe the magi was simply coming out with "spiel" if one did readings with playing cards. The tarot I'm sure are viewed as being more "genuine". So perhaps in hindsight I'll actually drop the idea of doing readings from playing cards.

Anyway, sorry for the terribly long post, but it is a very interesting subject. And if you've read every word of this post - well done!

An interesting post Paul. I had a feeling that the 52 cards = weeks of the year thing was a coincidence. However, just offering this up as a "strange" phenomenon to the spectators is enough mystery to add a certain air to whatever trick you are about to perform.

What a cool post! Thanks for sharing...I'm sure this will come in handy

yes this helps alot, Thanks guys.

It naturally falls to MARK LEWIS to indicate the most interesting fact of all. When you next count a deck to see if all 52 are there here is an amusing way to do it. Spelling.

Try this:

Spell A-C-E then T-W-O-then T-H-R-E-E dealing one card for each letter. Keep going until you get to J-A-C-K, Q-U-E-E-N and K-I-N-G. You will be amazed to find that it works out exactly.

But there is more. Here is the amazing bit. It works in many languages. Try it in French, Swedish, Dutch and German if you remember that in German "ch" counts as a letter. Try this and you will be suitably amazed.