An Analysis of the Role of Cartomancers through Western Art
Those of us who read cards belong to a profession with a long but hidden history. We may feel marginal, even invisible, yet for over four centuries, artists have been watching us, painting us, and telling our stories on canvas and paper. In this two-part visual lecture, Mary K. Greer traces that hidden lineage through dozens of genre paintings, prints, and postcards spanning the 16th through early 20th century, revealing cartomancy as a largely female, domestic tradition woven into the fabric of everyday life.
In Class One, Greer begins at Delphi, placing modern card readers within a tradition stretching back to the Oracle herself, then follows the trail forward through Lucas van Leiden’s 1508 genre painting, through witchcraft trials and Enlightenment satire, through Mademoiselle Lenormand and the Napoleonic Wars. Along the way, she identifies a rich visual vocabulary that repeats across centuries of art: cats and owls, spinning wheels and hourglasses, hearth fires and oriental carpets. Each symbol tells us something about how society understood the women (and they were almost always women) who sat with cards spread before them. Less than five percent of all images Greer found depict a man reading cards; the men, she observes, tended to write the books while the women tended to be doing the actual work.
Class Two shifts from the crone archetype to younger, more cultured readers. The storytelling quality of card reading takes center stage: bedtime-story intimacy, peers sharing experiences, solitary women in private contemplation with hand raised to mouth. Greer lingers on Suzanne Valadon’s “The Future Unveiled,” one of the few paintings definitively by a woman, noting the absence of the voyeuristic male gaze that characterizes so many late 19th-century depictions. The class moves through Russian cartomancy, courtship postcards, the figure of the dapper male mystic, children’s fortune-telling games, and early cinema, closing with a powerful image of the Tarousta, a female card-thrower with fabulous wing-like sleeves, opening her magical box before a stunned cardinal.
This is not a technique course. There are no spreads to memorize or exercises to practice. What Greer offers instead is something rarer: a mirror. She shows you the lineage you belong to, the tradition that carries you, and the centuries of women who did this work before you. By the final image, the question is no longer whether card reading is legitimate. It is how we could ever have doubted it.
What makes this course particularly special is its format. Greer presents as art historian and storyteller, inviting participants to notice details in each painting and offer their own interpretations. The result is a communal discovery experience that mirrors the very tradition being documented: women gathering to share knowledge, observation, and insight.
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Step Inside Four Centuries of Hidden History
- Full Payment $89
- Scholarships available
WHAT'S INCLUDED
What you get
- 2 recorded video classes (49 min + 46 min)
- Visual lecture and discussion with Mary K. Greer
- Multilingual subtitles (11 languages)
- Downloadable class syllabus
- Full PDF transcript
- Community forum access
- Lifetime access to all class materials
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
