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Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards

What Do I Need to Hear Right Now? Example Reading

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Occasionally, people throw questions at you that clearly they’ve been trained to ask by other readers. One of these questions is “what do I need to hear right now?”

The question is tricky, because, strictly speaking, we never ‘need’ to hear anything. To suggest otherwise is to imply that the universe is some kind of paternalistic (or maternalistic) minister of welfare with a moral compass that somehow overlaps with that of modern coastal elites.

However, this is not to say that the question is unanswerable. The cards describe situations, and we can, using common sense, derive healthy tips for our querents from them. We can also make the following assumptions about the querent, when we hear something like this:

  1. The querent is not necessarily looking for a prediction.
  2. They are more or less lost and in need of some guidance.
  3. Even if they aren’t lost, they are missing something or something isn’t clicking into place in their life.
  4. (more rarely, they are missing nothing, but they still want to invite an element of supernatural guidance into their life. This still implies a level of dissatisfaction.)
  5. The answer they prefer is probably formulated in terms of ‘oracular advice’ similar to the one heroes get by the Gandalf figure of their story (for instance, in the theory of the monomyth)

Assumptions can be deadly, but we need to start somewhere. So here’s the spread I got when I got asked the “What do I need to hear right now?” question by a querent:

What do I need to know right now? Cartomancy with playing cards

To refresh people’s memory, the meaning of the positions is:

  1. Up: What’s on his/her mind
  2. Down: what the querent treads on (they don’t like, causes trouble)
  3. Left: leaving behind
  4. Right: going toward
  5. Center: in his/her heart
  6. To the side: for him/her

Since we have nothing to start our analysis from given the vague question, let’s take a quick note of something obvious: except the cards the querent is leaving behind, all other packs end with a Spade, signifying trouble (the cards she treads on end with a Heart, but the position itself is one of trouble).

The fact that the querent is leaving behind the only good thing in her life is not encouraging. These cards speak of a happy family. Clearly this is no longer the case, at least for her. And look at what’s on her mind! Double Spade! She is not in a good place mentally at the moment. She feels isolated and impeded at every turn.

There’s desire in her heart (the Nine of Hearts) but she cannot express it (Spade on the Four of Clubs, the card of words).

The two little fans regarding the future talk about various problems, both economic and marital, but we need not delve too deeply into them. As far as the cards below her are concerned, it turned out during the reading that her dad has lost much of his mobility and is in need of assistance.

Clearly, this is the spread of a frustrated, borderline depressed woman. it could be a very good jumping-off point for more spreads, each one analyzing the various situations going on in her life. But that is not the point. The querent doesn’t want to know about each of them separately (notice how the cards seem to talk about various themes in a very cursory manner). She wants to know what she needs to know at the moment.

So, what do we tell her? First, we remind her that life is made of ups and downs, and that she doesn’t need to despair; Second, in times of hardship she must not let go of the few things that she derives (or derived) joy from; Third, there is no shame in asking for help, including professional help, and she must not exaggerate with the self-abnegation, or she’ll run herself into the ground; Fourth, she must try to make space in her life for what she desires (hobbies, passions, etc.) no matter how little time she can dedicate to it, because it will keep her sane, and when the situation improves, she’ll be glad she has planted those seeds.

MQS

astrology, Cartomancy, Creativity, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Occultism and Esoterism, Philosophy, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Fantasy in Divination: A Double-Edged Sword

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I’m currently still doing readings in exchange for recommendations for when I  decide to start offering readings from this site. After a short reading with a querent we began chatting about the process of divination, and he asked me if fantasy is required to interpret the cards. I thought this was a really great question. I’m taking fantasy as a synonym with imagination, that is, the ability to conjure up images in one’s mind.

First off, we need to distinguish fantasy/imagination from (true) intuition. True intuition is relatively rare and it does not originate from the limited structure of the personality. It is, for all intents and purposes, otherworldly. Before being appropriated by boss babes on TikTok, intuition was rightfully considered a gift of the gods. It is hard to obtain and even harder to train, although the practice of divination, as it leads to the divine, does allow for the development of intuition.

Fantasy or imagination is mostly the product of neurons bouncing together, and it is at least in good part under our control (though whether imagination is also merely a personal power is up for debate. Many occultists think it isn’t, and I agree.)

Imagination plays a large role in modern magic, and, it could be argued, in the magic of all times (though with different implications and within different frameworks), but I’ll leave this discussion for another time. The point is that imagination is one among the many legitimate sources of understanding that we have at our disposal, including in the occult world.

Ordinarily, if someone asked me what’s the one thing that is required in order to become a diviner, I would answer that they need to understand the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of what is essentially a divine language.

Yet, in philosophy of language, and even more in philosophy of science, there is a concept called underdetermination. In its most frequent use, the principle of underdetermination states that, given a number of facts, there exist more than one theory that can explain those facts and account for them. How we then choose the most appropriate theory has sparked a debate that largely goes on to this day between scientists, philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists.

Something similar happens with divination: given a spread of cards, or a chart, it is often the case that more than one explanation might appear plausible at first. True, the more cards we string together, the fewer the possible interpretations are, just as a single word out of context might mean many things, but the more words there are, the more we understand the sentence.

But take a sentence like “we saw her duck“. Was she avoiding a bullet or does she live on a farm? This is a form of underdetermination, because the possible mental images evoked by the sentence cannot be reduced to the sentence itself.

Probably if we had a perfect understanding of the language of divination we would get unambiguous results, but we don’t. We must therefore use logic and context to weed out the less likely predictions, yet even so we might be left with more than one possible image of the future in mind. The word image here is key.

Can we predict a future we cannot imagine? That is, can we predict a future (or reveal a past) that we cannot put in the form of a picture or series of pictures? If one asks me: would you be able to understand a sentence you’ve never heard before? The answer is: if I know the language, yes. We hear sentences we’ve never heard before everyday and we rarely have problems. But going back to “we saw her duck”, if I didn’t know that duck can also be a verb, I would interpret the sentence univocally, as I wouldn’t be able to create a mental image corresponding to the interpretation of “duck” as verb instead of noun.

In real world languages the ambiguity is often removed by clear context. But in divination context is not always clear, meaning it is harder to exclude possible interpretations, and we need to be capable of creating mental images of all the most likely interpretations of an oracle before choosing which one is the most likely.

We need to be able to extrapolate the many possible meanings a spread can have before submitting them to inquiry. The ability to construct mental images or scenes from the divination tool we are using is consequently incredibly important. In other words, yes, imagination is key in divination.

But the imagination I am talking about is not the unbridled imagination that so many mistake for intuition, and which usually leads either to error or to unverifiable predictions. Imagination is the ability to create possible images derived from our (limited) understanding of the medium we are using, so that we can then see which one is more likely to be accurate by finding testimonies in the spread or by asking the querent.

Like all other occult arts, divination therefore requires the cooperation of both sides of the brain (to which we may add the importance of bodily grounding, but that’s a matter for another post).

MQS

Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Occultism and Esoterism, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology

The Ghost That Came Back (Example Reading)

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Certain topics are exceedingly rare, and they should remain so, because people otherwise tend to see the supernatural at play everywhere. Traditional divination takes these topics very seriously, which is why it rarely discusses them. In most systems, a vocabulary is given to describe most situations in life, including encounters with ghosts. We are, of course, free to disbelieve, but the cards can still talk about it.

A querent asked me if there was a ghost in her (very old) apartment complex. As I said when talking about curses and hexes, the answer is almost invariably no (although, to be fair, ghosts and other entities are far more common than competent witches). Here’s the spread (it started as a three card spread, I kept adding cards until I was satisfied).

A♠️ – Q♠️ – 2♠️ – K♥️ – 2♣️ – 4♣️ – 9♥️ – 5♠️ – 10♥️

I asked the querent an open question (to avoid influencing her), that is, I asked her to describe the ghost she thought she saw. She said she thought it was the spirit of an ugly, angry woman moving in the hallways of the building. This fits very well with the Queen of Spades and Two of Spades. The Ace of Spades, aside from indicating death, is also a card of great evil.

What about the rest of the spread? Usually the Heart court cards indicate either positive spirits (God, etc.) or religious people. I asked the querent if she was planning on contacting a priest, shaman or other such figure. She said she wasn’t really thinking about it, but another tenant was.

I said that it was a good idea. Look at the King’s action: he is taking steps (Two of Clubs) by uttering words (Four of Clubs) which are positive (Nine and Ten of Hearts). But what about the Five of Spades? My sense is that the presence will not be eradicated or banished for good, since the Five of Spades is a card of imprisonment, but it will be contained in some form (the two Hearts hemming in the Spade).

The interesting thing was that, according to the querent, the other tenant (who had been living in the building for much longer than the querent) told her that many years ago they had had a problem with the same presence and had managed to somehow exorcise it.

My view is that even this time the situation will not be remedied completely, but the situation should improve by calling in someone to perform a religious ritual.

MQS

Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Reading Example

A Reading Gone Wrong

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Getting things wrong hurts, but is part of the human condition. In fact, I would argue that if a reader says they are infallible, that’s a good time to put as much distance between you and them as possible. An infallible reader is either so delusional that they block out all negative feedback from their reality or so dishonest that they’ll constantly be looking for the right bridge to sell you. Either way, they are best kept at a distance.

Still, there’s no denying that getting a reading wrong is disheartening because, as much as we should keep the ego out of the equation, the ego always seeps into it. I think it’s fair to share our failures as well as our triumphs. Here is a reading I got wrong relatively recently.

The querent was asking about her recent pregnancy.

Q♣️ – 7♣️ – J♥️ – 3♠️ – 2♥️

Accepting the question was my first mistake, as such issues are way too delicate. There is no situation where “you will miscarry” is an acceptable thing to say, and if we can’t be honest there is no point in giving a reading. Even if I had interpreted the cards correctly I would never have told the querent.

Thing is, though, that I wanted to give her good news, albeit subconsciously, and so I ended up interpreting a clearly negative spread positively. The querent falls first in the spread, and there is a card of obstacles between her and the child (the Jack of Hearts). The Three of Spades in questions of pregnancy often leads to loss, but I interpreted the Two of Hearts as the solution of the problems, while in fact it was merely saying that the loss would happen soon (it was knocking at the door). In hindsight, I probably should have added some cards.

I told the querent the pregnancy would go fine, though with minor problems which would be solved, but that she should always listen to the doctor. In reality, the cards point to a situation that not even doctors would be able to salvage (the doctors don’t show up in the spread).

Two things can be learned: first, never accept questions you are not really comfortable answering; second, always keep your desire to give a skewed answer in check. It is human nature to want other people to be happy (or sad, if we don’t like them) but this gets in the way of our objectivity.

MQS

astrology, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Occultism and Esoterism, Philosophy, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Do You Need To Believe In It For It To Work?

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One of the questions that occupy way too many people in the esoteric community is whether divination or even magic require the person to believe in it in order for it to work. If you’ve ever watched the movie The Skeleton Key, you’ll know that this concept has seeped into the collective consciousness enough for it to find its way into mainstream products (I will not spoil the movie here, since it is actually a fun watch, but it depends heavily on its twist).

If you open most premodern books on magic, you’ll be stunned to discover that their content bears very little resemblance to the post-Golden Dawn landscape. This, by the way, is neither good nor bad. Things change. But we need to be aware of the change to avoid being unconsciously ruled by it. One clear difference is that the magician’s will1 or his imagining/manifesting faculties are barely taken into consideration in older sources, at least outwardly.

This is not to say that there aren’t sources that encourage the practitioner to be of firm mind and clear intent (after all, you’d want your doctor to focus, too, even though their focus is not what make their science work), but even those old sources do not consider, generally speaking, the magician’s mind to be the cause of the change. Broadly speaking, when dealing with sources that date back to before the invention of modern psychoanalysis and psychology, we must be extremely careful when interpreting their concept of mind, soul, psyche, etc.

An example will suffice. In his De Vita, Neoplatonic Renaissance philosopher and magus Marsilio Ficino encourages us, among other things, to “think solar thoughts”, or jovial, or venusian, depending on the aim. Similar remarks are found, in various form, in many old sources. A contemporary practitioner might be tempted to interpret Ficino’s invitation as saying that we must envision solar things in order for them to manifest. But neither the language nor the substance of this interpretation belong to his worldview.

Ficino’s view of the cosmos is essentially the same as Agrippa’s and that of many other premodern magi: we are surrounded by chains of sympathy and antipathy between universal powers (typified by the planets). When we think “solar thoughts” we are doing essentially nothing except stepping inside a current of power that has its own metaphysical reality regardless of our attitude toward it. This is because in Renaissance naturalism, the mind is essentially like the body, i.e., a part of the cosmos, and a movement of the mind is like a movement of the body, and just like the body can create a talisman or a concoction, so can the mind shape images that allow it to shower in certain currents of universal power.

Thus, the invitation to think certain thoughts found in Ficino (and others) is not a precursor to manifestation, attraction and other modern concepts, but a natural consequence of the old view of the mind and the world.

On the other hand, from a postmodern standpoint, reality is for us to create at will. Yes, I am exaggerating, but not too much. Therefore, there is the widespread idea, or at least the widespread implication, that what happens happens because we believe in it.

Let us leave magic alone for now and concentrate on divination. Does divination work because we believe in it? Well, no. Certainly divination doesn’t require the querent to believe in it in order for it to work. In fact, it is my belief that, considering how many frauds there are in this field, a querent should be borderline psychotic to blindly believe in divination without a healthy dose of scepticism.

What about diviners? Do they need to believe in divination in order for it to work? That’s complicated, in my view. On the surface of it I would argue that, again, no, we don’t need to believe in divination for it to work. Divination systems work because they have their own internal consistency. The most obvious is Natal Astrology, which presents us with an objective set of symbols that have nothing to do with the manipulation of counters on the part of the diviner.

On the other hand, we need to allow for the fact that divination is not a mechanic set of behaviors, especially with the overwhelming majority of divination systems that do require manipulation (cartomancy, geomancy, dice, etc.) As I often repeat on this blog, divination is and remains something extraordinary. The honest desire for an answer, or at least for a picture of the future, tends to guarantee a crisp and clear answer. This is because the honest desire for an answer allows us to honestly connect with the symbols in a way that makes them fall in the appropriate order.

The querent doesn’t need to be honest in his or her desire, unless they are also the diviner. But if the diviner does not have at least a degree of confidence in what he or she is doing, then the question they put to the system is not the surface question (e.g., “Does X love Y?”) but “Do you really work?” which is an impossible question for the system to answer (if the answer is no, then the system does work).

Even then, I would be cautious in overexaggerating the importance of the diviner’s attitude. As I believe I have mentioned, one of the ways my teacher trained me was by asking me to discover secrets about her past. Clearly, the exercise was not meant to discover something new that might benefit my querent or me, but rather to build my confidence and skill. Yet it worked, and it worked well. Maybe the diviner doesn’t need to believe in divination (I know I am always skeptical until proven right), but they do need to at least be open to the idea that this is a legitimate way of receiving information, just enough to enter into the system rather than operating it from the outside as a scientist would manipulate a bunch of molecules.

My general belief at this point is that the esoteric arts do not require our consent in order to work, but they are also not the product of the mechanistic application of abstract principles. It is indeed a fine balance.

MQS

  1. Let’s leave aside the fact that the concept of Will found in modern magic is actually more complex than what it appears to be on the surface ↩︎
Card Combinations, Card Meanings, Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, I Ching / Yi Jing, Playing Cards, Reading Example

The Lost Coins (Example Reading)

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Readings about lost objects are hard. I am very much less than infallible in finding them. The reason is quite simple: most questions have a limited number of likely answers and an even more limited number of unlikely ones, so it is usually easier to make sense of the cards. “Yes he’ll marry you”, “No, he hates you”, “There doesn’t seem to be much tenderness left in the relationship, but with some effort you can keep it going a while.” There is, of course, some skill for finding nuances involved, and a good reader will add some details, but in general, the possible answers are relatively limited.

But a lost object can be anywhere, and we can either be very right or very wrong, with little space for “yes, but…” and “no, although…” Especially if we’ve never seen the place where the object was lost, it becomes hard to read the symbolism of the cards without reading our own fantasy into them. As far as I am concerned, much depends on how clear the cards decide to be with me. Since I have nothing to prove, I have no problem throwing my hands up and saying “Dunno” if that is my honest answer.

As we are moving all our stuff from the old house into the new one, plenty of things have gone momentarily missing, in the sense that I don’t know which of the dozens of boxes we’ve brought along they are in, and frankly I’m not too eager to start searching.

Except that I started itching to do some I Ching readings, and I couldn’t find my I Ching coins anymore. I did remember putting them somewhere where “I know I will find them”. The problem is that I have done the same with so many of my things in the last couple of months that the trick doesn’t work anymore. So I asked the cards for a pointer:

K♣ – 2♥ – 5♣

In general, what makes this reading relatively easy, compared to other lost item readings, is that it does not describe the place where the coins are, but rather their relationship to me. The King of Clubs is my significator. It is followed by a card, the Two of Hearts, which indicates ‘close to home’, but also ‘close’ in general. I know I cannot have left the coins in the neighborhood, which is naturally signified by the Two of Hearts, so I take it to mean ‘close’.

That Five of Clubs is interesting. In general it represents effort, but it is connected also with the body in general, understood as moving, acting ‘machine’, and also the hands. Close at hand, maybe? Or close to my body?

Either reading would have been correct. I found the coins in an internal pocket of my jacket where I usually don’t keep anything and don’t bother looking.

MQS

astrology, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

The Downgrading of Intuition

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Many people of the ‘spiritual but not religious’ milieu tend to believe they invented intuition, or that intuition came into existence when glossy oracle cards with gaudy images and inspirational quotes started being published–the kind that was especially en vogue before Doreen Virtue went from a fundamentalist with a deck of cards in her hands to a fundamentalist without a deck of cards in her hands.

But, believe it or not, intuition is a concept with a legitimate philosophical history. It is present, either implicitly or explicitly, in the epistemology (theory of how knowledge happens) of many great traditional Western and non Western philosophers.

If had to provide a generalization of what the tradition meant by intuition, I would say that it’s the immediate apprehension of universal principles and truths. It had nothing to do with the stream-of-consciousness-like association of ideas that many moderns mistake for psychic ability.

Old philosophers held that true intuition could only happen when someone had developed all their human faculties (including, and especially, reason) to their utmost degree, so that such faculties, having been tamed and trained, fell into place and were ready to receive truths otherwise reserved to the gods. In other words, intuition was the reward of the flourishing human.

Nowadays, “I’m intuitive” is usually synonymous with “I’m incapable of simple deduction but I am also deep up my ass and don’t take well to criticism.” Back in the day, intuition was regarded as the efflorescence of the rightly cultivated mind. Put simply, in the past intuition was considered suprarational. Now it is implicitly considered irrational.

So much so that intuition is today relegated to psychic exercise, whereas in days of yore prophecy through psychic means was regarded as a wholly separate matter: the famous prophetess of the Oracle of Delphi, for instance, entered a state of ‘enthusiasm’, that is, of literal divine possession, whereas intuition was, essentially, a gift of God to the philosopher who had educated himself to the point where his excelling human faculties grazed on the superior sphere of divine knowledge, allowing some of it to filter down to him.

This fact is especially clear when we consider the old conception of the cosmos as an onion-like set of emanated spheres, with humans in the middle, capable of either falling deeper or rising above. But the modern intuitive moves in a world that has no clear up or down and where over a century of psychologizing everything has planted in people’s minds the impression that everything is in their head and that, therefore, if it’s in their head it’s true. We could summarize this by saying that intuition in the older sense required people to get out of their ass and become bigger than they were, whereas by today’s standards it requires them to entangle themselves even further in their delusions.

MQS

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards

Playing Cards That Indicate Gain

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I’m doing it with the Sibilla, so it stands to reason that I should do it with playing cards too. As usual, this list is not meant to be complete. It is only intended to look at the cards as if through a cross-section based on a particular topic. In this case, gain.

Three of Hearts

In my playing card system, the Three of Hearts is a gift. It represents all things that we acquire easily. It is not, strictly speaking, a card of gain, but it can entail gain. For instance, if someone asked about their business, this card falling at the end of the spread would indicate improvements and therefore, within the context, additional wealth, that is, gain.

Five of Hearts

The Five of Hearts is the card of abundance. It is one of the cards that can indicate a very positive evolution and increase of wealth. As with the Three, the Five, being in the suit of Hearts, is not strictly about money, but it can promise positive situations in a reading about finances. Furthermore, next to money cards, it increases their import.

Nine of Hearts

Not much to say here. In many respects the Nine of Hearts is like the Three of Hearts, but much more powerful.

Ace of Clubs

The Ace of Clubs is a very strong card, which indicates power within the situation. If it falls next to the querent, it shows the querent actively obtaining something, having power over it. However, unlike in the suit of Hearts, the Club suit requires effort and action, and is therefore less rosy than the Three, Five or Nine of Hearts. The Ace of Clubs can also indicate a powerful vision that comes true in material terms.

Three of Clubs

The Three of Clubs is a card of union, and can represent a business affair. As such, it usually promises gain in material issues, but we must be careful in our analysis of the whole spread, as we all know a business deal can be disastrous when attended by Spades or less promising Club cards. By itself, the Three is mildly encouraging.

Ace of Diamonds

The Ace of Diamonds represents news in general, but it also represents gold and all things that have high value. It is a card of great riches and wealth when not impeded by other difficult cards.

Three of Diamonds

The Three of Diamonds is a money card. As such it is usually read as small gains, whether in a positive sense (as in a small inheritance or a small raise) or in a negative sense (as in having only little money). Furthermore, we must be careful to note whether the little money is being gained or spent. By itself the Three shows gain.

Four of Diamonds

The Four of Diamonds represents agreements and pacts. Being in the suit of Diamonds it is geared more toward material affairs and thus indicates contract, whether positive or negative will be shown by other cards.

Five of Diamonds

The Five of Diamonds indicates change, especially (though not exclusively) within the context of money matters. It can indicate money changing hands for better or worse.

Seven of Diamonds

This is like the Three of Diamonds, but it shows a larger amount. Furthermore, the Seven is more clearly indicative of gain over loss. It is a more inherently fortunate cards.

Nine of Diamonds

The Nine of Diamonds is strongly connected with the realization of plans, material projects and with social ascent. Increase in wealth may or may not be tied to it, though in our society it usually is. It represents strong satisfaction in money matters, and upward mobility with all the perks that are entailed.

Ten of Diamonds

The biggest money card in the game, the Ten of Diamonds indicates success all around. For entrepreneurs it shows the reaching of great goals, while for business owners it can represents advantageous situations that generate wealth and ease in terms of money. Note that gain can be intended also as a reduction in expenses, so if the question is something like “Will I manage to get my landlord toreduce my rent in the next contract?” that counts as gain.

MQS

astrology, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Playing Cards, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

On Readings Without Question

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The following is an attempt at reorganizing some old notes I have taken on the subject of divinations without a specific question, adding to them some new insights,

Divination Without Questions Is Possible (With Exceptions)

There is a relatively well-known tarot reader who says that a reading without a question is basically two people talking over a bunch of colored cardboards.

This is not true. It was customary, among old-time fortune-tellers, to have the querent sit in front of them and never have them speak anything that wasn’t their name at the beginning of the consultation. I know for a fact that this is a tradition in the Italian countryside, and I believe it is the case all over the world as soon as one leaves the hipster pseudointellectual tarot community bubble and seeks the real deal.

Let’s leave aside the fact that, technically speaking, there is always a question. Even if the querent sits with their arms crossed in front of you waiting to be astounded, the implicit question is “What’s going on in my life, now and in the near future?”

Times change, and sensibilities change with the times. Many querents nowadays wish to take a more active part in the reading. Furthermore, readings without a question are obviously more difficult, and the modern diviner who doesn’t have time to waste is certainly happy to get more cooperation. I know I do. But this doesn’t mean that a reading without a question isn’t possible.

There are exceptions to this, of course. Some oracles do require a question. Horary Astrology, for instance, usually needs one, and the more specific and focused it is, the better. True, some old authorities give rules for judging “Universal Questions“, but these universal questions were asked back when many people didn’t know their birth time and often had to travel for days to see the astrologer for probably the one and only time in their life, so instead they asked the astrologer to tell them about their future in general in more than one sector of life.

Confronted with the impossibility of looking at the person’s birth chart, the astrologer erected a horary chart for the time the consultation took place, a moment that was probably significant, since the querent had gone to great trouble to visit him. Today, the astrologer is one Zoom call away, so this hardly justifies vague Horary questions.

The peculiarity that makes Horary more sensitive than other oracles is that there is no manipulation of physical counters involved: you don’t reshuffle the planets whenever the querent’s whim settles on a new fancy. Therefore, the question put to the heavens must be meaningful and at least relatively important to the person asking it. In a way, this limitation of Horary is due to Astrology’s nobility, seeking as it does answers from the heavens themselves.

Cartomancy is not noble. It spreaded like wildfire among the lower classes exactly because you didn’t need to have studied trigonometry in order to deal out a spread. Cartomancy is therefore as sturdy as the beasts of burden that the lower classes used in the fields. Like all beasts of burden, of course, cartomancy too has its limits: you can ask random questions (“Tell me about my life. Now tell me about my sweatheart. Now tell me about my job. Now about my neighbor”) but if you abuse it, it collapses to the ground exhausted.

But the fact remains that cartomancy (and tarot reading is a form of cartomancy) is a trusty, resistant beast.

Vague Questions Don’t Necessarily Yield Vague Answers

Another common myth is that if one asks a general question the reader is entitled to give them a general answer. Even worse, some readers say that, in the absence of a question, they can read “the general energies surrounding your life.” The problem is that there is no such thing as a (meaningful) general answer. “Tell me about myself.” Well, you seem to be a featherless biped with one heart, two lungs, etc.

The thing is that when the cards have been shuffled and dealt, they always tell a specific story. Sometimes this story is not what the querent secretly wishes us to talk about, but that’s not our fault–we are merely reading what’s there. Furthermore, we as readers may sometimes not be able to decipher the story in the cards, but it’s there. We may, as a result of our confusion, try to string together the cards in a looser way than usual (“There seems to be a woman next to you whom you love dearly and is going through a rough patch in life. It could be health-related, but I may be wrong. Can you help me with this?”). The cards, however, are always specific, never vague.

As a matter of fact, our life is never vague. It is always made up of details. These details may be mundane, but they are specific. In our life there is never “the general energy of the moment”. You don’t go the supermarket and find the general energy of the moment on sale. There is no such thing.

There is the coffee I’m brewing, the floor I’m sweeping, the feeling of dread I’ve been struggling with for some months, the mom I just talked to on the phone, etc. And the mom I talked to is my mom, not a general mom floating in the world of Platonic ideas. No energy. No universals. Universals are always embodied in our limited existence. I don’t talk to “momness in itself”. I talk to my mom. Therefore, the fact that our querent asks us a general question cannot embolden us to give a general answer, though it CAN justify us in being more cautious and loose in the interpretation.

Again, if we don’t have a specific question, it may be harder to interpret the cards, especially because certain cards together may appear to be open to more than one interpretation if we don’t have enough context.

And here we come to an important point. Some diviners think they need to be able to awe the querent with incredible details without missing a beat and think they should never ask them for clarification. I say that the querent exists in order to be tortured until every last bit of useful information that I need in order to interpret his damn spread has been wrung out of his writhing body, because at the end of the day it’s him who wants to know about his future, not I.

This authoritarianism is all the more justified in case of a general question. I am not going to talk for ten minutes straight without catching my breath only to be told “no that’s not me.” I’d much rather proceed cautiously and ask the querent for clarification step by step (and, if nothing makes sense, start anew).

BUT, the point remains that when we lay out the cards, the cards are going to talk about specific situations in the querent’s past, present or future. They are not going to give us “the general energy”.

MQS

Card Meanings, Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards

The Copyright Claim (Example Reading)

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This is a fun little reading I did some time ago for myself. I’ve waited enough to know with relative confidence that it was accurate. Basically, one day, about four or so months ago, I found a message in my folder by someone claiming I had appropriated their image without asking them for permission.

Since I only use stock photos from WP’s archives or pictures I have taken myself, I knew this could not be the case. Still, the person was threatening legal action against me, and I wanted to avoid issues, so I sent them an email asking what picture they were referring to, and saying that I could take the picture down although I highly doubted I was in the wrong.

I also pulled some cards from the playing card deck. This was the reading:

Q♠ – 2♣ – 3♥ – 10♠ – 9♥

Notice immediately the Queen of Spades. The person who sent me the email was a woman. If it had been a man, in the absence of mentions of a woman, I could have taken it to indicate some evil intent on his part. The fact that the woman is represented by a Spade does not necessarily indicate that she is trying to scam me or anything. It could very well be that she thought she was in the right and was angry (Spades) at me. The reality is that I have no real evidence from the spread about her true motives.

She is immediately followed by the Two of Clubs, which indicates a step taken, so obviously the angry woman took a step, or I wouldn’t have an email in my folder accusing me of breaking the copyright law.

Finally, note the Ten of Spades, a usually negative card, besieged by two of the most positive cards in the deck, the Three of Hearts and the Nine of Hearts. The Ten of Spades is the night, and it indicates everything that is dark, secret or obscure, but also all things that come out of nothing. The two positive cards surrounding it represent the positive solution of the problem. Therefore, the solution comes out of nothing, which, I reasoned, is the same as saying that the person writing me that email will, more or less, disappear into the night. Thus, I judged that little or nothing would come of the situation. So far I seem to be correct. The woman hasn’t answered my email. It may be that she realized she had made a mistake.

MQS