In a dim gaslit parlor in 1890s Berlin, a woman lays out 36 cards in a neat grid, each bearing a detailed scene: a house with a smoking chimney, a letter in a hand, a coffin draped in black. Across the North Sea, a London fortune teller employs a simple deck of 52 playing cards, assigning layered meanings to hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds drawn from folk tradition. Kipper cards and playing cards are two distinct systems of cartomancy, both used for divination but built on different symbolic foundations and historical trajectories. One came from a named creator; the other evolved anonymously over centuries.
Definition: What Are Kipper Cards and Playing Cards?
Kipper cards are a dedicated oracle deck of 36 illustrated cards, each depicting a specific person, place, or event (the House, the Letter, the Coffin, the Snake). They were designed in the late 19th century for fortune-telling, with fixed, narrative meanings that emphasize relationships, domestic life, and emotional currents. Playing cards are a general-purpose deck of 52 cards (plus jokers) used for games and, in a separate tradition, for cartomancy. Their divinatory meanings shift by suit, number, and positional context, drawn from a body of folk lore that coalesced in the 18th and 19th centuries. The two decks share a historical root in European card manufacture, but their use in readings follows radically different logic.
Where Do These Two Decks Come From?
The playing card arrived in Europe in the late 14th century, likely via Mamluk Egypt. The earliest European decks were hand-painted and expensive, used by the nobility for games like tarot. By the 15th century, cheap woodblock prints made cards accessible, and they spread through every social level. Their use for fortune-telling is recorded as early as the 16th century, but the first systematic cartomantic methods appear in the 18th century, with French practitioners like Etteilla (Jean-Baptiste Alliette, 1738–1791) who wrote detailed keys for the 32-card piquet deck and later for tarot. The standard 52-card deck was codified in France by the 16th century, with the four suits we know today: hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds.
Kipper cards arrived later, in a specific German context. The deck is attributed to Susanne Kipper (or sometimes Kippen), a fortune teller active in Berlin around 1890, though some sources suggest the name was a publisher’s pseudonym. What is certain is that the first Kipper deck was produced by the Leipzig publisher C. L. Wüst in the 1890s, based on a system that Madame Lenormand never used but that borrowed visual motifs from earlier Lenormand decks. The 36-card structure mirrors the Lenormand system, but the imagery and meanings are distinct: Kipper cards focus on domestic and social scenarios, while Lenormand cards lean toward archetype and abstraction.
That historical gap matters. Playing cards were never designed for divination; they were repurposed for it. Kipper cards were designed for divination from the start. This difference shapes every aspect of how they are read.
Symbolism and Meaning: Fixed Scenes versus Fluid Combinations
The Kipper deck contains 36 cards, each with a fixed scene and a range of meanings that shift slightly based on neighboring cards but remain anchored in the image. Take card 1, the House: it represents stability, family, home. The adjacent card, the Letter (card 27), can modify that into news from home. The Coffin (card 36) nearby throws a shadow of loss over the domestic scene. The reader interprets these cards as a narrative flow, like frames of a film.
Playing cards lack fixed scenes. A four of hearts does not depict a specific image; it carries the weight of its number (four: stability, four walls) and suit (hearts: emotions, relationships). A dance, a feast, a marriage bed—these are possibilities, not a single picture. The reader must draw on memorized keywords and the interplay of suits and numbers. This abstractness allows for greater flexibility but demands more from the reader’s intuition.
The Kipper system is often described as more “literal.” The images show a man with a cane, a woman in a bonnet, a cross, a ship. The meanings are concrete: the Snake means deception, the Tower means official authority, the Garden means social gathering. In playing card cartomancy, a six of clubs might mean a journey, a conflict, a coincidence, depending on the spread and the surrounding cards. The same card can represent different things in different traditions (the French, the English, the Gypsy method).
Those who prefer Kipper cards often say the images do half the work. Those who prefer playing cards say the abstraction leaves room for nuance. Neither is wrong; the choice depends on how you think in symbols.
Practices and Traditions: How Each Deck Is Read
Kipper readings typically use a spread of 36 cards laid out in a 4x9 grid, called the “Large Picture.” This spread represents the entirety of a situation, with positions for the past, present, and future, and for specific areas of life like work, love, and health. The reader moves through the grid, reading card pairs and trios in sequence, following the narrative flow left to right and top to bottom. The reader must track the positions of key cards: where the Man and Woman cards sit, where the Coffin falls, whether the Heart appears near the Happiness card. The layout itself tells a story.
Playing card readings use a wider variety of spreads. The three-card spread (past, present, future) is common for quick questions. The Celtic Cross (ten cards) gives a more layered answer. Some traditions use the entire deck in a table spread. Because playing cards are smaller and more numerous, they can be read in more configurations. The reader must also account for reversals (upside-down cards) which invert or darken a card’s meaning, a practice rarely used with Kipper cards.
There is also a chronological difference. Kipper readings tend to focus on the next few months to a year. Playing card readings can address both immediate and long-term questions, depending on the method. The Kipper system also emphasizes “mirroring”: if the same card appears in complementary positions, the meaning is reinforced. In playing card cartomancy, such patterns are noted but not built into the system as explicitly.
Notable Figures and Texts
For playing card cartomancy, the foundational text is Etteilla’s Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots (1783), though he worked primarily with tarot. The first dedicated playing card guide appears in French in the 1840s, Le Grand Etteilla, which includes a system for the 32-card piquet deck. In English, the tradition was carried by Robert Bird (1822–1888), a London astrologer and card reader whose The Complete Fortune Teller (1849) gives meaning for every card in the 52-card deck, including the joker.
For Kipper, the original instruction booklet was printed by C. L. Wüst with the first deck. No author is named, which has led to speculation that the system was developed collectively in the Berlin fortune-telling community of the 1890s. The first standalone book on Kipper cards is Die Kipperkarten: Ein Handbuch der Wahrsagekunst (1905) by an unknown author, published in Leipzig. In English, the late 20th century saw a revival, with authors like David Bolzon (2008) and Chris Bird (2012) issuing modern interpretations. The oldest surviving instruction sheet (circa 1895) advises the reader to “let the cards speak as one image tells the next, without forcing a meaning.”
Common Misconceptions
Kipper cards are just the same as Lenormand cards. They are not. Kipper and Lenormand both use 36 cards and share a few card names (House, Ship, Letter), but the imagery and reading logic diverge. Lenormand cards are more symbolic and use a map-grid style; Kipper cards are more narrative and scene-based. A Lenormand reader cannot simply switch to Kipper without retraining.
Playing cards are less accurate because they are not “real” oracle cards. This is a modern commercial bias. Playing cards have been used for divination for at least 250 years, with a deep folk tradition across multiple cultures. The accuracy depends on the reader, not the deck.
Kipper cards are German Lenormand. This misconception arises because both were popular in Germany. In fact, Lenormand cards were produced in France and Germany, but Kipper developed independently, possibly from the same pool of idealogues (like the “Kartenlegen” tradition). Kipper is its own system, with its own spread structure and card interpretations.
All playing card readings use the same meanings. This is false. There are dozens of systems: French, English, Romani, American. The four of clubs in one tradition means “a small gift”; in another it means “a woman’s illness.” The reader must stick to one coherent system.
FAQ
Can I read Kipper cards with a standard playing deck? Not directly, because Kipper’s images are fixed and specific. But you can map the 36 Kipper cards to playing cards using a key (the House card might correspond to the Ace of Hearts, etc.), though this dilutes the original system.
Which deck is easier for beginners? Many find Kipper easier because the images provide immediate context. Playing card cartomancy requires memorizing abstract meanings and practicing flexible interpretation.
Are Kipper cards based on playing cards? Historically, yes. The 36-card Kipper count mirrors the 32-card piquet pack plus four extra cards, and the earliest Kipper decks were printed on the same stock as playing cards. But the system is designed independently.
Do I need special cards for Kipper readings? You can use a standard Kipper deck (still in print by niche publishers) or a Lenormand deck with a supplemental Kipper key. For playing card readings, any standard deck works, though some readers prefer vintage cards for the feel.
The choice between Kipper and playing cards is not a matter of which is “better.” It is a matter of how you want the symbols to speak: through the concrete scene of a house with a smoking chimney, or through the abstract pulse of a four of hearts landing reversed in the future position. Both methods have carried real insight for over a century. We keep both decks in our library, and we reach for the one that matches the question.
For a deeper look at other oracle systems, see our guide to oracle systems. If you want to understand the specific symbols of the Kipper deck, explore our Kipper card glossary. And for a comparison with the Lenormand tradition, read our guide to Lenormand cartomancy.