Divination systems are like languages. We’ve seen in the previous post how true this is. But it is even truer when we consider that whatever you learn from a book or a blog post is actually a standardized version of the language of the cards.

Now, standard language is an abstraction. Nobody speaks it. Shakespeare spellt the same word in two or three different ways over the course of the same play. The same goes for older writers in most languages. Standard language is an invention of the modern nation state, just like statistics. In order to exert clearer clontrol over their often large territory, the intellectual class of the various nations came up with rigid rules which are more or less helpful, but they are just that–made up rules that capture a measure of truth, but leave other things out.

Language is a more fluid phenomenon.
But you will find that no real person on the street actually speaks standard English or Italian or German, unless they are “highly educated”, which just means that they have absorbed more rules. I do noy mean to disparage rules. I’m merely observing that language is a living thing, which lives through the mouths of those who speak it. Therefore it is always a rather individual phenomenon: everyone has their dialect, their accent, their pet words, their filler words, those expressions that they constantly use because their grandma used them even though even other natives don’t use it, those expressions that mean something to the people in their hometown but something wholly different in a different region, etc.

The same is true for divination systems, especially complex ones like cards. You need to find your language with the cards. This can only be done by using them for yourself and even more for others. Studying meanings and combinations is useful to make up for the fact that you are not a “native speaker” (nobody is) and traditional meanings are usually passed down for the good reason that they are often valid. I have tried to make the traditional meanings as palatable as possible by creating a numerology to make sense of it (which I will revise as better ideas arise). But you can’t let yourself be drowned in rules, or you’ll never speak the language of the cards fluently. I’m still discovering my own language as it is a life-long endeavor.

To help you, I’m going to post some interpretations of some card spreads in the future, so that you may see how I do it. Take it as a jumping off point, not as something to slavishly adhere to.