L to R : Being the Strange Prophecies and Uncommon Predictions of the Famous Mother Shipton 1797 . Gypsy fortune teller - J . H . Singer ( New York ). Jéniska la voyante - tournée Benevol 1930 . Maina La Voyante 1910 . Mlle Lenormand recounting the future of Empress Josephine - Engraving by Louis Marie Normand .

The fairground world was very close to the gypsy world where divination was an activity reserved for women and was a direct correlation to the descendants of the Pythia of Delphi .

The seers ⁵ officiated discreetly in caravans or in luxurious mobile cabinets and used different divination techniques such as crystal balls , lines of the palm , coffee grounds and / or card games ...

The nun , Jeanne le Royer ( 1731-1798 ) entered the Urbanists Convent at the age of 21 . From an early age , she suffered from visions and ecstasies and she was the prophetess of the French revolution of 1789 .

Mlle Lenormand ( 1772-1843 ) was one of the most famous fortune-tellers of her time . Her pupil Adèle Moreau ( 1816- 1888 ) practiced fortune telling as well as palmistry , for which she created a card game : Le nouveau jeu de la main . in 1892 , she consulted for great , important persons such as Presidents Georges Clemenceau and Raymond Poincaré , as well as ministers , writers , actors and the queens Nathalie of Serbia , Marie of Romania , Amélie of Portugal and the Princess of Saxe- Meiningen .

In the middle of the nineteenth century clairvoyance was an acknowledged profession and was established , taking a real place in society . The clairvoyant consoled , reassured and predicted the future mixing the practices of sleepwalking trances and folkloric paraphernalia .

These visionaries were mostly women and they were called successively " extra-lucid sleepwalkers ", " sibyls ", " pythoness ", " fortune tellers " and " witches "! They besieged lounges , and anterooms , mixing with the magnetizers , mediums and illusionists . The line between all these practices is blurred some going so far as to combine everything into their sessions .

Madame Fraya ( Valentine Dencausse , 1871-1954 ) was a star fortune teller during the “ Belle Époque ”. She chose the pseudonym " Fraya ", to reference the Germanic goddess practicing magic . Madame Fraya set up her cabinet in Paris

10 SPECIAL EDITION | 2021