EXERCISES
- Do a basic three-card, past-present-future reading with the playing cards. Then do a Three-Aces-Spread reading (with the three-aces spread, you just have to think of a yes-or-no question).
- Just for fun, try the Mimir’s Head layout.
- Do the fifteen-card spread as demonstrated above.
- Given the four different layouts in which you employed these cards, was there any one of them which you preferred over the others? What general observations do you have about the playing cards as a divining tool?
- Extra Credit: look at the picture at the beginning of this lesson, and try reading it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cartomancy:
Webster, Richard. Playing Card Divination for Beginners. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2002. ISBN: 0-7387-0223-4
I personally own this one. His interpretations of each card’s meaning are a little different from mine, but often complementary to what I define the card’s meanings to be. This was the book I started with when I taught myself to read the playing cards. You can’t go wrong with this one. It’s a good introduction to the subject.
Clark, Ann J. Let’s Try Cartomancy: Divination With Playing Cards. A Taster Guide for Beginners. Independently-published. 2018. ISBN: 978-1717874146
A short (72 pages) introductory guide to divining with the ordinary playing cards.
Dee, Jonathan. Fortune Telling Using Playing Cards. Imagine Publications. 2015. ISBN: 978-1623540692.
This book is a longer introduction to cartomancy (216 pages). I don’t have it, but most of the reviewers on Amazon who have it seem to like it.
Hutchinson, Cory Thomas. 54 Devils: the Art & Folklore of Fortune-Telling With Playing Cards. CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2013. ISBN: 978-1491225783.
Artisson, Robin, and Caroline St. Clair. Hands of Fate: the Art of Divination With Playing Cards. Black Malkin Press, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2016. ISBN: 978-1530539499.
I am listing these two titles together, because they appear to take the same approach to playing card reading, invoking folk & fairy tales as a way of adding meaning to a card reading. These are two titles you might want to look at when you get more comfortable with reading the playing cards and want to add more depth to your readings.
Card Science:
The following books are a whole ‘nother system, and a more-complex one, for using the playing cards beyond games and card-reading, but I include them because they have heavily-influenced my understanding of the meanings of the playing cards. First, you must understand that with these books, every day of the year has a particular card assigned to it. These books are not short, but they are master-works on the subject:
Camp, Robert Lee. Cards of Your Destiny: What Your Birthday Reveals About You, and Your Past, Present, and Future. Naperville, IL: Source Books. 1998. ISBN: 978-1-4022-8616-2
A revival of, and great expansion on, the ‘science of the cards’ first talked-about by Olney H. Richmond in his work, The Mystic Test Book (also available on Amazon). This book is heavily-aimed at forecasting how each year of your life will go. I don’t get an annual forecast by an astrologer, instead, I do this system for myself every year.
Camp, Robert Lee. Love Cards: What Your Birthday Reveals About You and Your Personal Relationships. Naperville, Illinois: Source Books. 2004. ISBN: 978-1-4022-86131.
This book gives more of a character run-down for each card in the deck than the previous book does. It also gives an assessment of how a love relationship for each card would work out with every card in the deck. I have found Love Cards to be very accurate about every married couple I know, sometimes brutally-accurate. Based on this book, I can tell you: no matter how devoted to each other they seem, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner will not be a long-lasting match; just too much intensity there. Seriously, consult this book before you marry; you might save yourself a lot of heartache.
Robert Lee Camp has a website: https://www.7thunders.com/and he offers training in his card-science system. You could actually make a career of this. I just like to go to his website to see what my card-of-the-day and 54-day-period are.
Sullivan, Geri and Saffi Crawford. The Power of Playing Cards: An Ancient System for Understanding Yourself, Your Destiny & Your Relationships. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. ISBN: 0-7432-5057-5.
This book complements Camp’s works and goes into a nice depth of detail about each birth card.
All these books are available through Amazon.
I have reasons to believe that Spade element is Fire and Club is Air.
I have seen that same attribution of element-ownership, Spades=Fire and Clubs=Air somewhere, but I can’t recall exactly where. Since Clubs seemed to me to be roughly-analogous to Wands in function (both get waved in the air), and Spades struck me as being roughly-analogous to Swords in function (both cut), the elements I assigned to both followed-on from that. But your correspondences make sense. Clubs and Swords are weapons (which are wielded in Air), and Spades and Wands are tools. Also, Clubs are associated with communications, which is a very ‘air’ thing. Richard Webster, in his book “Playing Card Divination for Beginners” says Spades=Fire and Clubs=Earth(!). I always thought Diamonds were Earth, since Diamonds are analogous to Pentacles/Coins. I’m going to have to do more research on this matter. Thank you for mentioning this!
Hi! Great information in this article & thank you for sharing.
Question, for Spades the Section of Medieval is missing. What is their medieval section?
Thanks!
Thank you for calling this to my attention! I overlooked that detail. It is now corrected.