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The Four Suits of the Playing Pack
The four suits of the French-suited playing-card pack (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades), are used in cartomancy in much the way the tarot's Minor suits are, and the two are historically related. The French suits are a simplification, cheap to print from stencils, of the earlier German and Italian-Spanish suit signs, which the tarot's suits also descend from.
In fortune-telling with an ordinary pack each suit carries a field of meaning and each card a specific sense, often keyed to number and court rank much as in the tarot Minors.
Cross-Tradition Connections
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