Cartomancy

type of divination using cards

Cartomancy is the study of reading cards for fortune-telling or divination. There are many different types of cards used for cartomancy, some of which include standard playing cards and the tarot.

Tarot cards are similar to a standard deck of playing cards. In fact, Tarot predates regular playing cards, and might have been the basis for them. The major difference between playing cards and tarot is that tarot decks contain 22 extra cards called the Major Arcana, which are primarily used to read fortunes.

Some Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico use cards similar to bingo for fortune-telling. They call this practice Lotería. Because the game was invented in Italy, Lotería gets its name from the Italian word for lottery.