The Square of Sevens: An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note

The Square of Sevens: An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note

[Transcriber's note: for this HTML edition I changed all the sidebars to section headings. Also in the paragraph starting "Let it be minded..." I changed "Sex in Court Cards" to "Six in Court Cards". All other spelling remains the same.] It is safe to presume that even the most inquisitive book-hunters of the present day, and few of the fellowship during two or three generations past, have encountered the scarce and curious little volume here presented, as in a friendly literary resurrectionRobert Antrobus's "The Square of Sevens, and the Parallelogram." Its mathematical title hardly hints at the amusement that the book affords. With its solemn faith in the gravity of its mysteries, with its uncertain spellings and capital-icings such as belong to even the Eighteenth Century's early part, with its quaint phrases and sly observations (all the time sticking strictly close to business), it has a literary character, as well as me occult, that is quite its own. Fortune-telling with cards and belief in fortune-telling with cardslike a hundred greater and lesser follies of the mindwere straws floating along the current of British life, intellectual and social, during the reign of George the Second. This was the case, in spite of the enlightening influences of religion, science, and philosophy. Modish society was addicted to matters over which argument was hardly worth whilein which respect we find modish society the same in all epochs. Our ancestresses particularly were often charming women, and almost as often sensible women; but, like the men of Athens, they were too superstitious. Often were they such in a fond and amusing degree. Lady Betty or Lady Selinafor that matter, even Sir Tompkin and my lord Pucemight be spirited men and women of the world. But they did not repudiate the idea of ghosts. They abhorred a mirror's breakage. They disliked a Friday's errand. They shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their dying" as part of a process of healing which excludes medicine and insists on the conviction that the invalids are not ill! ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 19687
Author: Prime-Stevenson, Edward
Release Date: Oct 31, 2006
Format: eBook
Language: English