You always carry a deck of cards. Why not use them to tell your fortune ?
by Margie Pignataro for Gifts for Card Players
It is possible to do a Tarot-like reading using regular playing cards. Each card in the deck has its own meaning, as well as all the suits. Using spreads similar to those used in Tarot, it is possible to create a supposedly detailed picture of the future. That is the fascinating news.
Not many people know that playing cards were developed in the 13th century directly from tarot cards. And they are the second oldest way of fortune telling.
There are four suits in a pack of 52 playing cards. Each has a meaning –
Hearts mean happiness in all aspects of life including (but not only) in love. They mean good things especially if more hearts stand together which reinforces their meaning.
Spades are often considered as a negative sign, but they suggest positive hope for good future, mutual trust and friendship.
Diamonds have positive basic meaning. It could be interpreted as luck and blessing. When there are many diamond cards together in a reading it means wealth.
Clubs are negative sign. Clubs mean separation, loss, injury, accident or bad luck of some kind. Fortune tellers do not see a club card as a card of death nor predict death of a person on the basis of a club card.
The complicated news is that there is little agreement as to exactly what individual cards mean. Let me give you an example.
I have with me my prized deck of cards: my My Little Pony set. I’m going to shuffle them and take one at random. (I shuffle better than my professional poker playing husband, but I’ve been doing it since I was ten.)
And I chose the King of Spades. On the Pony deck, Rainbow Dash is the King of Spades, the fast flying tomboy Pegasus with rainbow hair, and she sits perched on a puffy white cloud with a pleased smile.
At the bottom of this article is a list of ten websites (of possibly dozens available) that provide detailed instructions explaining how to tell fortunes using regular playing cards.
Using the list, I will list all the possible readings for the King of Spades:
A Mature Man “brown to black hair and dark eyes. They are usually in some form of authority, gives good advice, witty, helpful, yet, not too family orientated.”
“Man from the past, trustworthy person.”
“Dark-haired man; or a man with Air predominating in his chart. An ambitious man, perhaps self-serving. “
“Widower”
“An ambitious and authoritative man. A very dark haired man.”
“A man who will cause problems in marriage or relationships. One who will get in the middle, divide and conquer..and then destroy.”
“Introspective, ethical, communicator, stern”
“dark man”
“dark haired man, ambitious, usually successful, his ambition overrides everything else
“A man over 35, with dark brown to black hair, and dark brown eyes. Usually a widower or divorced man, or a man from a foreign country. Ambitious and powerful, can be arrogant and deceptive.
As you can see, there is no agreement. Most agree that it’s a man with dark hair. Many of the interpretations are vague, and many are so detailed it seems highly questionable. If we are to interpret “dark” metaphorically, we could draw the conclusion that almost all of the interpretations find this man to be dangerous.
So what does this mean? Who do you trust? Who has the best format and interpretations? The sites themselves would encourage you to trust your feelings, go with interpretations that feel right, with methods that suit you emotionally.
Often fortune tellers will build meanings in a variety of ways. For example the numbers on the cards don’t have to have individual descriptions. For a quick and dirty fortune, interpret the card as a scale from 1-10. For example, using what you’ve learned about the different suits, if you’ve asked a question about your upcoming bridge game and the answer is the 10 of Spades, you might surmise the game will not go well, in fact might be a bit of a disaster, but because Spades represents hope for the future, you and your partner might learn some good things and put them to use at next month’s regional in Calgary. If the card dealt was the 10 of clubs on the other hand, it’s possible you won’t even make it to that bridge game !
I think good exercise, if you’re truly interested in wowing your friends between card games with a bit of on-the-spot fortune telling, might be to match each of your cards to a card in the traditional Tarot Deck as best you can and then use that meaning.
The 10 websites below will help you learn more about fortune telling with playing cards. Start easy, just using the suits, and then build your skills as you go along.
By the way, according to Serena Powers, the card I drew can offer a quick fortune for me: “If you need a quick answer to your question, you simply need to draw one card. A single card can give an overall impression about your problem…In addition, this method is suitable for finding out how your day is going to go.”
So what would this King of Spades tell me about my day? According to the ten sites below, I should be looking for a mature dark-haired man who means to wreck havoc in my life. Possibly, even create problems in my marriage.
Or, I could interpret this in my own creative way and according to My Little Pony. After all, I chose the deck and it is meaningful to me. Rainbow Dash is the bravest of the ponies, an incredible flyer and a great friend (they all are). She is inclined to sleeping too much and being lazy. And she feels ashamed that she’s into a nerdy thing like reading (!). She can be arrogant and boastful, a little pushy and impatient.
Yep, sounds like me. And yes, I slept too much today.
2. http://www.white-magic-help.net/About_White_Magic/fortune_telling_playing_cards.html
3. https://foxhugh.com/divination/fortune-telling-with-playing-cards/
4. http://www.gipsyfortuneteller.com/meaning.htm
5. http://www.serenapowers.com/playingcards2.html
6. http://www.talisman.net/tarot/regcard.html
7. https://exemplore.com/fortune-divination/How-to-Read-Tarot-with-Playing-Cards
8. http://ecauldron.com/pagan-library/divination/the-art-of-fortune-telling-with-ordinary-playing-cards/
9. http://www.howtoreadtarot.com/playingcards.html
