OTHER POINTERS WHEN READING FONTAINE’S SPREAD
- If, wherever the Ten of Hearts appears in a spread, to the immediate right of it and below are either two male court cards or two female court cards, then that indicates two marriages for the subject. This is especially true if the Ten of Hearts is the First Card.
- If the Ten of Hearts is the thirty-second and last card in the spread, Fontaine declares the subject of the reading will never marry.
- If a Queen and a Jack (Knave) are of the same-color suits, and are separated by another card of the same-color suits, then it indicates a future marriage between the two of them.
- Fontaine said each row in the spread can be considered to represent a year in the subject’s life. So if reading the whole spread as one continuous story doesn’t work, you might want to try reading each row of the spread as a self-contained unit.
- If the subject is single, Fontaine prescribes a way to determine how many more years of singlehood the subject may look forward to, if the inquirer is interested. Count from the First Card to wherever the Nine of Hearts (betrothal) is in the spread. You then count from the First Card to wherever in the spread the Ten of Hearts (a wedding) is. You subtract the lesser number from the larger number, and the difference between the two is how many more years the subject will remain single.
THOUGHTS ON FONTAINE’S APPROACH TO PIQUET/EUCHRE DIVINATION
Fontaine seems to assume the inquirer’s primary concern is romance, and he takes a whole-life approach, a ‘this is how your life is going to go’ determinism that I’m uncomfortable with. The way your life will transpire can look different at age fifteen, twenty-three, thirty-six, or fifty-two. People often have a shorter, more-immediate focus to their questions, for which this assumption does not work well. This is where you may prefer Miall’s prescribed lay-outs. Fontaine’s is for more-complicated questions.
The Nine of Hearts, the betrothal card, can be any commitment the subject has made, particularly an emotional one, and to Miall, it’s a wish-granted and money-and-social-luck card. The Ten of Hearts, the marriage card, can be any merger, business, personal, or otherwise, and to Miall, it’s the general good luck card, strong-enough to wipe out any evil in the cards around it. The Nine of Clubs could be a proposal or proposition of any kind, not just marriage, and to Miall, it represents friction caused by opposing the wishes of friends. Be prepared to bring all your own understanding of the playing cards’ fundamental meanings into the picture, in addition to Fontaine’s or Miall’s assigned meanings. Fontaine’s Grand Tableau is a useful format, but you may find it works well with some questions, not so much with others.