Magic and Illusion From the Tarot to the Playing Card

This chapter discusses particular qualities commonly associated with Tarot cards and compares them with those commonly linked with playing cards. The overarching endeavour is to understand why playing cards are associated with gaming, magic tricks and illusion in Western cultures, while we connect Tarot cards with deep ceremony, divination, fortune telling, voodoo, augury and the like, rather than with sleight of hand and magic. In order to do so, this chapter analyses the nature of magic itself according to selected anthropologists (Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Agamben) and historians; cards and their relation to language and storytelling; the history of playing and Tarot cards; and, finally, the physical properties of cards and their relation to technologies of illusion.