Who invented paper fortune tellers

You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Email Address:.

Sign me up! Scalliwag Toys. Skip to content. Want to hear a joke about paper? This is Not a Cootie Catcher. Incredible, It Is. Unfortunately, since there is no illustration, it is impossible to know how the paper salt-cellars referred to here were made. There are no illustrations in this book but comparison with later works, which are illustrated, and which show the listed designs in a very similar order makes it almost certain that these designs can be identified in this way.

Unfortunately there is no illustration of the design. As far as I can tell the Salt Cellar is not mentioned in this book. A design called 'Ein Salznapfchen', which is not illustrated, but which from the context is most probably the Salt Cellar, appears in a list of designs in ' Der Kindergarten ' by Hermann Goldammer, which was published by Habel in Berlin in Unfortunately there is no illustration to confirm the identification of the design.

The same section of the book also referes to, but does not illustrate, a 'Lowenmaul' Snapdragon , which is most probably a reference to a Salt Cellar used as a snapper.

Unfortunately no illustrations of these designs are provided. Steiger and Company in New York in In case you do not remember although we know that you made at least 50 of them back in your elementary school days , paper fortune tellers are quite simple and easy to assemble.

All you need is one piece of paper, a pair of scissors and a pen, a marker or pencil. First take a corner of the sheet of paper. Bring it down across to the other side and then cut off the remaining paper underneath the fold. Next fold all four corners into the center of the paper to make the points touch. This shape is known as a blintz base or a cushion fold in origami. The sheet should now be another perfect square so turn it over and do the same thing to the other side. Finally, fold all of the outer corners up so that they touch and there are pockets on the bottom for your fingers to control the fortune teller!

The further I examined this intersection between divination and literature, the more I found intrinsic ties between them. Countless examples of literary divinations began to unfold, not unlike dare I say the many layers of a cootie catcher. For example, take bibliomancy, in which a book often a bible is dropped and whatever page falls open portends the future. Or fortune cookies, containing tiny, prophetic koans. Or automatic writing, where a pen-toting medium allows a message to flow onto the page without conscious effort.

All of which is to say—language is given extraordinary social and psychological power. And the implication? Language can transcend time, slipping past us to peer into the future. And oddly, this makes sense—already, writing is viewed as a sort of time travel. Through language alone, we can meander through the mind of a long-dead author, accessing ideas and images from prior centuries.

When the tarot was first popularized in Europe during the mid th century, it was not used for divination, nor for psychological insight. Like a standard poker deck, the tarot was simply a set of cards used in game play.

Over time, it shape-shifted. The cards were shuffled and dealt and passed hand to hand, until they had transformed into tools for premonition. What was it about the tarot that allowed such a dramatic re-purposing? If something can tell a story, chances are that it can tell your story. The Fool who steps into the unknown… the Three of Swords bearing heartbreak… the patient, dangling Hanged Man… As any good writing teacher can tell you, the microcosm contains the macrocosm— within the tarot, we view an individual illustration and immediately it expands, jumpstarting associations with similar images in our own lives.

And so, through these archetypal narrative images come tales. And tales lead to questions. And questions lead into the future. The tarot and the cootie catcher are far from the only divinatory forms that succeed as not only literature, but as games as well. Ouija provided a rare opportunity for young men and women to be intimate in public, unsupervised, as game play required users to sit close, knees touching, with hands overlapping on the planchette.

Cootie catchers, too, involve partnership to operate, as does the tarot—all telltale traits of gaming form. Once again, language and divination find themselves hand in hand.