The Uncrossed Path Blog
Welcome to The Uncrossed Path Blog, where each post delves into the art and practice of cartomancy, focusing on traditional approaches to tarot, playing cards, and Lenormand, grounded in no-nonsense divination. Here, you’ll find explorations of cartomantic techniques, interpretations grounded in cultural and philosophical insight, and discussions that emphasize clarity over mystique. Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or a discerning seeker, these articles offer a rigorous approach to understanding the cards, with an eye on truth rather than trend.
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Flinging the Cards: Playing-Card Divination According to the Serbian Big Folk Dream Book
A complete English translation of the traditional playing-card meanings from The Big Folk Dream Book from Serbia—one of the rare surviving sources of old cartomantic lore. This edition includes the full 32-card system, extended meanings for the 52-card deck, and the original section on interpreting card groups.
From the Piquet Deck to Divination: Functions of the 32 Playing Cards
Drawn to the stories of my Great Aunt Marija and her playing cards, I turned to the 32-card piquet deck—the form most deeply rooted in European folk cartomancy. In this article, I explore the functions of suits, numbers, and courts, not as rigid “meanings” but as common-sense guides shaped by culture and practice.
By Suits and Rows: A General Reading With Playing Cards
How much can we truly see without a question? In this piece, I reflect on inherited methods, demonstrate a full tableau reading with the 32-card deck, and examine what general readings can—and cannot—reveal. A case in point on why clarity begins with the querent.
Grand Tableau Reading Method From The Serbian “Great Folk Dream Book”
From the vast occult knowledge circling in my mother’s family, very little was to be found in writing. There is only one incantation my grandmother has ever written down, and I still keep it, even though it is falling apart. The same went for fortunetelling. There was only one book on the subject that I can remember: The Great Folk Dream Book, or Veliki Narodni Sanovnik in Serbian.
The Ancestral Transmission
In Serbian folk religion, Saturdays are reserved for the dead. It is the day we pay our respects to the dearly departed. For the very same reason, it is believed that people born on Saturday can peer into the Otherworld. Because of this, I pay special attention to Saturdays and my bond with my ancestors and celebrate it with simple offerings: a beeswax candle, a cup of coffee, and some incense. The very same way they respected their ancestors whenever they visited their graves.
The Agony of Choice
According to one of the greatest sociologists of the 20th century, Zygmunt Bauman, we are always confronted with a choice, and that choice is almost always agonizing (2000). Why? Because the modern society has primed us with the fear of missing out. Once we make a choice, we automatically lose the possibility of ever knowing what could have been if we went for plan B. And if this was not true, I would have to be honest and say that there would be hardly any work left for the fortune tellers.
Cursed, or simply exhausted
Being a cartomancer with a South Slavic background often means that you are confronted with clients believing that they have been cursed at least 80% of the time. Folk magical practices and Western ceremonial ones are very much alive and kicking within the borders of Former Yugoslavia, and naturally, when weird and hard-to-explain events occur, some people get rather nervous.