A recent exchange in the comment section made me go back to some notes I’ve been sitting on for a while about how different card spreads used to be in the past, compared to how they tend to be nowadays. A good example for this is the famous spread used by the Golden Dawn, which has become known as the Opening of the Key.

The Opening of the Key is a complex, multi-stage spread that was (and still is) used within the Golden Dawn system and has been adopted by Paul Foster Case’s and Crowley’s followers as well.

From a magical standpoint, the allure of this spread is that it mirrors within its layouts the whole GD system, being therefore a tool for learning it. Since I do not particularly advocate the Golden Dawn system, I’ll leave this aspect to your consideration, should you be so inclined.

From a purely divinatory standpoint, though, the interesting aspect of the Opening of the Key is that it affords us a glance at how card spreads used to work in traditional cartomancy.

Nowadays we are used to what many call “positional spreads“, that is, spreads where each single card is read more or less independently from the others based on the meaning of the position. The most famous positional spread is certainly the Celtic Cross, also taken from the GD system and popularized by Waite. Over time, though, more and more ridiculous spreads have emerged, with positional meanings as abstracted from actual reality as possible.

If we take a look at many books on divinations published before the 60s, when the Rider Waite deck truly took off, and with it the Celtic Cross spread, we find very different spreads.

Many traditional spreads, used both for tarot and for playing cards, share the following characteristics:

1. They tend to be large and unwieldy. Many of them take up a whole table. In part, this reflects the old idea that you wouldn’t be potentially in contact with your go-to fortune-teller 24/7 via social media, and so the diviner ought to be able to cover as much of your life as possible in one go. There was also a certain old-fashioned mistique to these spreads, it being the idea that your life unfolds like a book that can be read page to page. Furthermore, the way of reading the cards was different: you didn’t waste too much time on each single card, but simply used it as a building block to be added to the others. Therefore, you needed many building blocks.
2. Very few positional meanings. Many old spreads used to be either sequential or tableau-like, or a mix of the two. If certain chunks of spread did have a particular positional meaning attached to them, such positions were always covered by more than one card (usually three or more). The cross spread I was taught to use with playing cards is one such example.
3. Strange techniques. In the English-speaking world, the idea that there are special reading techniques has largely gone lost for over half a century, as tarot became a tool for psychological masturbation that eschews all technicality in favor what one’s heart palpitations. This was until some people, tired of how ineffectual and watered-down the new-age version of the tarot had become, discovered Lenormand cards. In reality, reading techniques have been part of many cartomancers’ toolkit for centuries. Two of the most common techniques (though not the only one) used in old tarot and playing card divination were card counting (starting from a card and counting a certain number of cards to land on the next card to be read) and card pairing (pairing the cards on the opposite sides of a row two by two.)
4. More than one stage. It was not uncommon for many spreads to have more than one stage to them. Back then, divination was not seen as something to run to for every minor inconvenience, but rather as something affording a general overview of one’s main issues and prospects. Cartomancy was, at least in part, a parlor game, though a serious one, with serious implications.

One of the characteristics of the early Golden Dawn, before it became a battle of egos, was its (relatively intelligent) syncretism, as well as its attempt to act as a reservoir of everything the occult Western tradition had created over the centuries. Many of the founding members of the Golden Dawn were very well acquainted with, and even contributed to the then-growing literature on fortune-telling.

It comes therefore as little surprise that THE Golden Dawn spread, the Opening of the Key, is just as much an occult compendium as it is a compendium of quaint fortune-telling techniques. Let’s read the original instructions together (From Book T):

A Method of Divination by the Tarot

1. THE Significator.
   Choose a card to represent the Querent, using your knowledge or
   judgment of his character rather than dwelling on his physical
   characteristics.
2. Take the cards in your left hand. In the right hand hold the wand over
   them, and say: I invoke thee, I A O, that thou wilt send H R U, the great
   Angel that is set over the operations of this Secret Wisdom, to lay his hand invisibly upon these consecrated cards of art, that thereby we may obtain true knowledge of hidden things, to the glory of thine ineffable Name. Amen.
3. Hand the cards to Querent, and bid him think of the question attentively, and cut.
4. Take the cards as cut, and hold as for dealing.

“First Operation”
This shows the situation of the Querent at the time when he consults you.

1. The pack being in front of you, cut, and place the top half to the left.
2. Cut each pack again to the left.
3. These four stack represent I H V H, from right to left.
4. Find the Significator. It be in the HB:Y pack, the question refers to work,
   business, etc.; if in the HB:H pack, to love, marriage, or pleasure; if in the
   HB:H pack, to money, goods, and such purely material matters.
5. Tell the Querent what he has come for: if wrong, abandon the divination.
6. If right, spread out the pack containing the Significator, face upwards.
   Count the cards from him, in the direction in which he faces.
   The counting should include the card from which you count.
   For Knights, Queens and Princes, count 4.
   For Princesses, count 7.
   For Aces, count 11.
   For small cards, count according to the number.
   For trumps, count 3 for the elemental trumps; 9 for the planetary trumps;
   12 for the Zodiacal trumps.
   Make a “story” of these cards. This story is that of the beginning of the affair.
7. Pair the cards on either side of the Significator, then those outside them, and so on. Make another “story,” which should fill in the details omitted in the first.
8. If this story is not quite accurate, do not be discouraged. Perhaps the
   Querent himself does not know everything. But the main lines ought to be
   laid down firmly, with correctness, or the divination should be abandoned

“Second Operation”
Development of the Question

1. Shuffle, invoke suitably, and let Querent cut as before.
2. Deal cards into twelve stacks, for the twelve astrological houses of
   heaven.
3. Make up your mind in which stack you ought to find the Significator,
   “e.g.” in the seventh house if the question concerns marriage, and so on.
4. Examine this chosen stack. If the Significator is not there, try some
   cognate house. On a second failure, abandon the divination.
5. Read the stack counting and pairing as before.
   “Third Operation”
   Further Development of the Question
6. Shuffle, etc., as before.
7. Deal cards into twelve stacks for the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
8. Divine the proper stack and proceed as before.

“Fourth Operation”
Penultimate Aspects of the Question

1. Shuffle, etc., as before.
2. Find the Significator: set him upon the table; let the thirty-six cards
   following form a ring round him.
3. Count and pair as before.

Fifth Operation
Final Result

1. Shuffle, etc., as before.
2. Deal into ten packs in the form of the Tree of Life.
3. Make up your mind where the Significator should be, as before; but failure
   does not here necessarily imply that the divination has gone astray.
4. Count and pair as before.

There are many characteristics to the Opening of the Key that mirror the checklist I’ve created above:

1. The spread is large. Especially in its fourth operation, it requires a big table to perform.
2. Few positional meanings. No individual card signifies anything in particular. What counts is the diviner’s ability to string the meanings together into coherent sentences that apply to the querent’s concrete life. The stacks themselves do have general meanings (business, pleasure, etc.) but these are broad, and you will never find yourself applying them to just one card.
3. Techniques. These are, more specifically, card counting and card pairing, which are plucked straight out of the fortune-telling tradition.
4. More than one stage. This is quite evident. Although many GD initiates ended up simplifying the method (more on this in a later article), the complete operation, which could take up upwards of two hours, consisted of five stages which offered a glimpse into the various facets of a situation.

Quite clearly, there is more to the Opening of the Key than what I’ve listed, aside from the heavy occult overlays. For one, the GD added a method for discerning whether the divination is valid: one needs to find the significator in the appropriate stack. This is in part due to the desire to import the notion of ‘radicality’ used by many horary astrologers, according to which certain charts cannot be judged if certain configurations are present or absent; and in part it is a system of magical checks and balances to avoid idle curiosity (again, more on this in a later post).

MQS