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TAROT, TAROKY AND PRAGUE
It's widely known that the familiar 78-card Tarot
used for cartomancy originally evolved from packs used to play the
game of Tarot, notably in France and Italy. However, it's less well
known that in Central and Eastern Europe, a similar game called
Taroky used a 54-card pack In addition, there were some rather similar
games (in which points could be scored by using "trumps")
that used a 32-card pack. These were particularly popular in Bohemia.
Some of the complex rules for these games are explained on the "Pagat"
site, which is devoted to playing cards: http://www.pagat.com/tarot/taroky.html.
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It's probably no coincidence that the fortune-telling cards that
you find in these countries also generally use a 32-card pack.
These cards are much simpler than classic Tarot. There is no major
and minor arcane, instead each card is based on a word or phrase.
No one has traced the evolution of the Central European games
packs into fortune-telling cards, but it’s probable that there
is a connection. These old packs use some interesting symbols
and imagery, which probably did allow them to be used in some
way for cartomancy.
In our Tarot of Prague we’ve incorporated some of these graphic
symbols, ours are taken from an interesting World War II Bohemian
deck.
Click
to see some of these cards.
Perhaps the most famous deck produced in Prague is the Tarot
de Lasenic. This was conceived by Pierre de Lasenic (Czech name
Petr Kouhout) and drawn - beautifully - by Vladislav Kuzel. Both
were members of the esoteric group Universalia. The Tarot de Lasenic
was first published in 1938 and reissued twice in the 1990s.
We hope to be able to write more about the history of this
deck in the expanded "Magic Tarot" pages in planning.
Please look our for more in spring 2005.
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Tarot
de Lasenic.
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Another interesting set in our collection
is a 1967 pack, probably designed as a New Year's gift. This pack
was produced at the time of the "Prague Spring" (the movement
for liberalization and freedom in Czechoslovakia) and it contains
some veiled political and social comments.
Click
to see more of the cards.
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This is a 1967/8 pack, illustrated by
Vladimir Tesar. This is done in a variation of the Eastern European
"Lubok" style. It is quite acidly ironic.
Click
to see more of the cards.
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Not all Czechoslovakian cartomancy was based on 32-cards. This
is a rare set of the classic 22-card major arcana done by an illustrator
in the 1980s.
Click
to see more of the cards.
Decks are still being produced here.
Further information
There hasn’t been a lot written in English about Czech Taroky,
or Taroky-type games, or about the tradition of fortune-telling
cards in Central Europe, but here a couple of useful links.
http://www.tarock.net/
has general information about European Tarok and Taroky cards
http://www.tarot-decks.com/fortune-telling-cards.html
is a good account of fortune-telling cards.
http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/
Lubok/lubok.html
Good article on Russian Lubok, with many examples
Where images of cards are still copyrighted
to their respective designers, artists, and publishers, they are
shown here for example purposes only. No copyright infringement
is intended.
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