Gambling has some significant roots in more spiritual and occult practices. The use of cards and dice for divination and meditation, along with their uses as gambling tools, is widely documented.

Tarot Cards

The origin of tarot cards is a bit ambiguous since any number of card decks resembling a tarot deck emerged in variations from a number of different cultures. Most tarot historians, though, attribute the tarot deck we know today with origins in fifteenth century Italy where it was employed as a deck of cards for trickery.

A tarot deck is composed of seventy eight cards. Twenty-two of them do not have suits and were traditionally used as the advantage cards, or trump cards. Many sources believe the modern deck of playing cards is just an abbreviated version of a tarot deck. The suit cards have all been retained and the true tarots removed.

Tarot cards are now available in all variations, traditional and custom decks. Their uses are generally for informal fortune telling and spiritual guidance.

Cartomancy

The use of regular playing cards to tell fortunes or decide fates is called cartomancy. Cartomancy has a long history, at least as long as decks of cards have existed. Most practitioners of cartomancy had to be especially practiced, since there were not the symbolic cards so associated with tarot decks to provide visual guidance. For this reason, the tarot cards became the most popularly used card decks for portending events.

Dice and Cleromancy

Dice have been found in cultures thousands of years old. It is generally agreed that the earliest forms of dice were made from the knucklebones of animals. “Knucklebones” remains a slang term for dice, still. Early throwing pieces were made out of shells, bone, ivory, precious metals and stones. Early dice were clearly used as tools for divination and decision making. Simultaneously, though, they were popularly being employed at gambling games. Dice even existed that were trick dice or loaded dice and the practice of dicing became popular with the Romans.

Cleromancy is the practice of throwing dice for fortune telling and divination. Shaman and medicine men used throwing pieces to learn the gods’ will. Tibetan monks use dice to find answers to spiritual questions in one of their traditional ceremonies.