A Primary Product for Today’s Mind-Body-Spirit Market
Divination cards are one of the most well-selling products in Mind Body Spirit. In the past 20 years, divination card decks and systems have exploded in new market entries, sometimes leaving retailers confused about which decks and how many decks to offer in their stores. Divination decks have grown in popularity in a way that should have been difficult to imagine 20 or even 10 years ago and adapted in use nearly everywhere on the planet. For example, #Tarot has over 8 billion views on TikTok, a platform where digital divination readings have become wildly popular.
Card decks now come in packaging of all sizes and shapes, and many decks are expanded and themed, offering more cards than ever before. Some retailers opt for the “tried and true” titles that have a proven track record, while others embrace the wide variety of new decks available to their customers. Often, their decisions come down to a foundational issue of shelf space.
While many buyers of divination decks purchase them as a fun game to play with friends, for others they represent a serious purchase as a step in their spiritual evolution and a way to access their information and the information available from the Divine.
Divination decks generally fall into three categories: tarot, wisdom, oracle and Lenormand decks. Although tarot is a highly popular style of divination deck in today’s world, users and cartomancers (a type of clairvoyant who uses cards, usually tarot cards, to connect with their Divine Source in order to tell the future.) also use oracle or wisdom decks, which are not generally ordered according to a particular system and require no special training. Still others prefer Lenormand card decks, a set of 36 cards in no particular order. Lenormand card sets also require no particular experience or training. In this system, there is no significance of a particular symbol or a particular number as in tarot.
What are the benefits of using divination decks?
For many persons, divination decks overall can provide an accurate personal growth vehicle for storytelling and the development of the Higher Self. Carl Jung called this process “individuation.” As a tool for divination, they can help the user or person obtaining a reading through another as a way to gather information from their subconscious mind as they choose cards that form the foundation of the card spread that unlocks intuitive information. The cards and the card spread, such as a Celtic Cross, each bring further information through their meaning and position. While card spreads are more often applied to tarot, spreads can also be applied to oracle decks as well. Inexperienced and untrained users might have more difficulty using tarot without consulting an experienced reader, but by using a tarot system many learn their way around and become proficient simply by using a deck and reading the accompanying booklet over time. There are also many books and courses available to help obtain more training.
Persons receiving a divination reading or conducting their own can discover their own motives, find a fruitful path of process, or obtain clarity regarding their own internal struggles or conflicts. In this way, divination decks can be a tool for developing or honing life skills. As Lara Tupper has written, “It’s for anyone who desires to heal, evolve, and live fully, because it can provide context for both of these channels, empowering us with the element of choice. It can help us to understand what the brain believes, what the soul is asking for, and how to weave them together.”
Origins of Tarot
With their mystical allure and gorgeous, colorful and detailed designs, tarot cards have captivated the world’s imagination for centuries. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the earliest references to tarot all date to the 1440s and 1450s in Italy, where it began as a social card game. Not until 1780 in France did the use of occult and fortune-telling purposes begin to gain purchase. Today’s association of tarot with fortune-telling and the occult gained momentum only in the 19th century and has nothing to do with the medieval tarot cards, although the use of the four suits of cups, staves (or wands), pentacles, and swords were retained. Sometimes in modern tarot, these suits are renamed or replaced with other suits that follow the theme of the deck.
For fortune-telling, each tarot card is ascribed a meaning. The cards of the major arcana refer to spiritual matters and important trends in the questioner’s life. Some mind body spirit devotees believe a reading using a classical tarot system can give them the truest and most accurate information. The illustration of classical tarot decks often provides multiple and highly symbolic images, numbers, and even colors that carry intentional meaning and significance. Perhaps the best-known tarot deck is the Rider-Waite tarot. A traditional tarot deck has 78 cards, and many themed tarot decks are now available.
History of Lenormand
According to Labrinthos, Lenormand cards are an alternative system of cartomancy, similar to Tarot but also different in purpose, feeling and structure. Unlike tarot, Lenormand is a much more practical deck – focusing somewhat less on psychological feelings and instead on everyday happenings. You’ll notice when reading with Lenormand decks, that these cards tend to focus on practical matters – Tarot focuses on the “why”, while Lenormand tends to focus on the “how.”
As interest in and use of cartomancy and divination grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, Marie-Anne Adelaide Lenormand emerged as well-known fortune-teller. Born in France in 1772, she later began as a fortune teller in Paris using a card deck she developed which later bore her name. Lenormand has controversially claimed to have created the cards herself, using her knowledge of arcane systems that include numerology and astrology and other mystical systems to craft a deck uniquely suited to divination. Lenormand was reputed for her accurate predictions and intuitive insights. Her fortune-telling clients are said to have included Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress Josephine.
Although less well-known than the tarot system, Lenormand cards, which most often contain 36 cards, are employed today for divination and fortune-telling. Many Lenormand decks are available, included themed decks, each with their own signature system and interpretations. Some cartomancers prefer Lenormand decks to tarot for the greater simplicity of their systems.
The Accessibility of Oracle and Wisdom Cards
Oracle decks are in wide use today for their ease of use without the need for any special training or experience. They are most often intended for divination and offer the same personal development opportunities as tarot or Lenormand decks. If the decks offer an accompanying guidebook, that author’s interpretation of each card can be all that a user needs to obtain the information they seek.
Oracle decks come in all sizes. Many are often smaller in number of cards than tarot, and themed in thousands of different ways, while others are very large, some offering up to 128 cards in a large box. They often are more light-hearted, which attracts many to them, and the illustrations often do not intend subliminal cues. Their free-form style and whimsical themes make them an excellent choice as a “first deck” for someone looking to experiment with the use of a divination deck. Oracle cards can be applied to traditional card spreads. Many who are new to divination decks begin with an oracle or wisdom deck and some later migrate to the tarot or Lenormand system.
Divination decks can be a core tool for spiritual and personal development, as a method to reduce anxiety or depression by accessing knowledge from our inner or Higher Self, and as a conduit to the Divine. Universal in appeal, the aggressive explosion of divination decks today is also a possible response to what many see as a growing level of uncertainty in a rather volatile world. While some consumers buy them as a ‘parlor game,’ the information they likely receive is certain to impact them in important and sometimes subliminal ways.
And that’s a good thing!
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