Cartouche is a French word which means oblong box and refers to the shape found around the images of important priests discovered in some ancient Egyptian temples. Murry Hope, an English lady and practitioner of Egyptian magic, invented the Cartouche system in 1983. She and Jed Collard formed Ostaris Publications and published the first 3,000 decks that same year. In 1984, Collard sent some sample cards to St. Martin's Press and they immediately responded with an offer for the worldwide rights to print and distribute them, but wanted Hope to expand the small instruction booklet into a large book which she did. St. Martin's Press then doubled the size of the cards and produced the expanded booklet in a hardback format as "The Way of
Cartouche."

The Cartouche deck comprises twenty five cards which each have a number and an image. Those cards which portray a god, goddess or element have in addition a set of hieroglyphics which describe that image and encapsulate its power. The image on each card may have a fixed or mobile nature. For example, Nephthys is a goddess shown on card number seven. She is represented by an image of a cup or container and the ka hieroglyphic (representing the personal life force) appears in the top right hand corner of the card. As Nephthys means psychic receptivity and that which I slightly obscure and fluid she consequently has a mobile nature.