READING WITH THE MAH JONGG CARDS
The following is a traditional spread which is used for the Mah Jongg, with one change: in the original spread shown in Derek Walters’ book, the north and south locations in the spread were switched.
If you position the cards according to the actual directions in Walters’ book, then if the East cards were in the east and the West cards were in the west, then the ‘South’ cards would be in the North, and the ‘North’ cards would be in the South. I don’t know why the lay-out was designed this way. You could position the North cards in the North, and the South cards in the south, but then the East cards would be in the West position, and the West cards would be in the East position. Head spinning yet? My western mind has trouble wrapping itself around this inconsistency, so I switched it. If you want to be authentic and flip the North and South cards back to their original positions, go ahead.
In this reading, the inquirer or ‘Querent’ sits in the East, and the diviner sits in the West position. The cards are all spread out face down on the table and the Querent is supposed to shuffle the cards around on the table-top, chaos-style like I discussed in the section on shuffling methods. The diviner then asks the Querent if there is a specific question they want answered, or if they desire a general reading. The Querent can either declare their question out-loud, or not, if they prefer. The cards are then pushed to one side, and the Querent is supposed to pull thirteen cards, still face-down, from the pile. The Querent then shuffles the face-down thirteen cards a second time.
With the cards still face-down, the Querent pushes three of them toward the West, pulls three toward themselves in the East, another three toward the North, and another three toward the South, leaving one card in the Center. The spread should now look like the picture at the beginning of this lesson, but the diviner will read them in this order:
The diviner turns over each card as it is read. There are no ‘reversed’ meanings with the Mah Jongg; any upside-down card can simply be turned around without affecting its meaning. If any of the Eight Guardian cards turns up in the reading, the Querent then has to draw an additional card from the pile they pushed-aside for that place in the spread, because the Guardian cards only augment the meaning of the card they appear with, they don’t have a stand-alone meaning to them.
The reason for the reverse direction is because it is the celestial compass. This is always reversed. I’ve had the Derek Walters deck for over a decade so it is nice to read someone else is using them to divine. Hope you are continuing to enjoy!