“Just how far back into the past the history of playing cards goes, no one can say with certainty. But . . . Mr. Stewart Culin, Director of the Brooklyn Museum . . . believes that both chess and cards are derived fom the divinatory use of the arrow, and that they represent the two principal methods of arrow divination. The basis of the divinatory systems from which games have arisen is the classification of all things according to the Four Directions. This method is universal among all primitive peoples in Asia and America. In order to classify objects and events which did not in themselves reveal their proper assignment, resort was had to magic. Our present games are the suvivals of these magical processes.”

Catherine Perry Hargrave, from A History of Playing Cards, first published in 1930, and still published unabridged by Dover.