The astounding thing about all oracular forms is that they reflect the real world in the same way a recording of a scene does. This reading is from five or six months back, and it was partially confirmed a couple of weeks later, but the final feedback came only very recently.
I friend of ours was dating a new man. She’d been out of the dating scene for a while due to focusing on other things in her life. But she noticed that the guy was acting weird, as if he was looking for any excuse to cause a fight that would end the (still budding) relationship. We asked the cards and this is what happened:
Relationship reading with the tarot (Tarocchi di Layla, by Elisa Scerrato)
The cards of the cut are the Fool and Justice. Justice usually represents a solid union, not one that has just started and where the partners don’t even live together. The instability caused by the fool was already an alarm bell.
Then we have a full scene playing out: the Tower breaks up the relationship between her (Empress) and him (Emperor), but there is an obscure (Moon) influence next to him. Another woman (Popess / High Priestess). This is not even a new girl he met. The Popess has the World card next to her, showing a solid family, and the Hanged Men indicates being bound to someone, a serious commitment. I told our friends that I didn’t think the relationship had much of a future, and that she should be careful that there wasn’t any other woman around the dude.
A couple of weeks later he left her abruptly via text message. A couple of days ago, we met with our friend and she confirmed the guy was married all along, although he has an on again, off again relationship with his wife and, due to his cultural background, he doesn’t see it as strange to date multiple women, even without them knowing.
Notice how the readings flows from one card to the next in true cinematic fanshion. This ability of divination to act as a mirror is partly why I don’t believe in asking the cards for advice. This would be like asking a map for advice on where to go. The map gives you a larger picture, but the advice doesn’t come from the map: it comes from checking your plans against the available options.
There is a general stigma toward certain forms of divination such as cartomancy with playing cards, namely that they are good at discussing mundane issues, while the Tarot should be used for deeper questions. This presupposes two things: that deeper questions don’t take place in the same world as regular life and that the Tarot is too deep to talk about everyday occurences. Both these beliefs are wrong.
The Tarot is perfectly capable of talking about whatever it wishes, just like playing cards, the Sibilla deck and every other oracle. The first presupposition, though, is more insidious and requires a bit more discussion.
The oldest extant series of tarot meanings has been retrieved in Bologna. The meanings there are what you would expect from a fortune-telling deck: the Ace of Swords is a letter, the Ace of Cups the house, the Hermit an old person etc. Furthermore, some rare examples of tarot fortune-telling in pre-modern Italian literature confirm that the Tarot has probably been used for such aims long before the occult revival started by Court de Gébelin, which slowly removed the Tarot from real life and confined it to the realm of “higher metaphysics”, that is to say, of psychological onanism.
In order to justify this “higher” (I would say emptier) use, several hypotheses on the Tarot’s origins have been put forth, depending on what was considered fashionable and not too easily disproven at the time. First it was the Egyptians, then the Kabbalists, then the Cathars, etc. Instead of being seen for what it obviously is, namely a wonderful product of European Neoplatonic Christian art that anyone before the Enlightenment would have immediately understood and considered familiar, and that only the ignorance of our post-Enlightenment metaphysicians could try to disguise as a distant voice coming from distant secret masters to apply in the understanding of distant matters, rather than an immediately obvious tool to mirror immediately obvious real life situations, which are all instances of an eternal story that constantly tells itself.
So yes, the Tarot can talk about daily experience. In the same way, other, more apparently mundane forms of fortune-telling can talk about problems that some would consider ‘deep’. Just like the Tarot, they can talk about it in immediate terms, immediately understood by anyone with who has some understanding of symbols.
Here’s an example of playing cards used for a ‘deeper’ reading. The querent is a woman I met at an Enneagram convention. She asked what was the reason for her constant bouts of depression. These are the cards:
“Why am I always depressed?”
There is a sickness in her life, signaled by the Six of Spades. There are no cards of deep trauma, but something definitely needs healing. This card falling first sets the tone. The Jack of Hearts represents a child, a project, etc. Next we have the Nine of Diamonds, which is a card that represents the realization of ambitions, but more broadly can represent ambition. Then we have the Three of Spades and the Five of Diamonds. These two cards oftne indicate turning away from something. But the Three of Spades also comes directly before the ambition card. So she has turned away from some ambition. Two possible interpretations that came to mind are that she had the ambition of having a child but couldn’t or that she turned away from a childhood ambition.
I asked her, and it was the second possibility. She’d had big dreams for her life when was a child, but some disappointments had led to seeing them as unrealistic and she had let go of them. I told her that she hadn’t really let go of them, otherwise the Six of Spades wouldn’t have shown up: those ambitions still fester inside of her, and the fact that she is not doing anything about them could make her sick if she isn’t careful. These cards clearly show that she needs to go after her dreams, perhaps in her free time. Alternatively, if she doesn’t want to, she needs to truly let go of them and move on.
I don’t often use the cards to track day-to-day happenings, but sometimes, if I’m feeling inspired, I will draw three cards to see what’s going to happen the next day. Of course, daily readings are much harder to make sense of because they require you to tone down the language of the cards. Still, if something out of the ordinary is set to happen, the cards will capture it quite clearly.
A couple of days ago, I was alone at home as my husband had driven to his mom for a couple of days to help her. I couldn’t go as I had a deadline and couldn’t waste time traveling. Still, he was set to come back the following day.
I felt compelled to draw three cards for the following days. You can see them in the picture: these were the King of Hearts, the Three of Clubs and the Three of Spades.
Daily reading with playing cards, confirmed by the tarot
The King of Hearts and the Three of Clubs together usually indicate a married man. My husband, of course, is a married man, if you can believe it. But the Three of Spades usually represents a removal or at least problems intervening between two people. I didn’t think too much about it, and that was a mistake, because if I had been reading those same cards for someone else I would have certainly predicted that their partner wouldn’t come home.
It was only on the next day that I remembered the cards. Out of curiosity, I asked the Tarot if my husband would come back that day.
The cards of the cut show the Popess and the Stars, in this case probably his mother taking care of him. We then have Judgement and the Juggler / Magician, which among other things could indicate work-related communication. The Charriot, showing the journey, is then slowed down by Temperance and brought to a halt by the Hanged Man. After that, the Pope / Hierophant (my husband) and the Emperor (me) unite again.
Later that day my husband said that he had unexpectedly received some work-related task that he needed to take care of from his laptop that evening and wouldn’t be able to drive back home. He came back the next day (yesterday).
Some weeks ago I made an experiment. I asked the cards if an item I had ordered would arrive the next day, knowing full well it was a Sunday. The cards’ response was:
Playing Card Reading – Will the Parcel Arrive Tomorrow?
The cards are pissed off: you’re being an idiot (Jack of Spades) tomorrow is rest day (Four of Hearts) negative answer (Eight of Spades).
Well, yesterday (Saturday) I asked the same question just to try the cards, since I was waiting for another parcel. Here’s the answer I got:
Playing Card Reading – WIll the Parcel Arrive Tomorrow?
Obviously, the answer is positive, though I did not stop to think too much about it. I thought the cards had simply given me a wrong answer because I wasn’t being serious.
Yet, today the doorbell rang. It was my neighbor with a parcel for me. It had arrived yesterday in the afternoon and had been delivered to him by mistake.
Looking back at the cards, the Three of Clubs represents intermediation, someone who does things in your stead – in this case, collecting the parcel. The Two of Hearts, which usually just shows imminent things, in this case represented what’s “near the home”, i.e., the neighborhood.
Moral of the story: don’t mess with the cards, they know better.
It’s not just about love. Playing cards (and any other oracle) can be used to identify people, find lost objects and animals and many other things. Unfortunately, this type of reading is extremely complex, and I have a less than stellar track record in this regard (as opposed to the lady who taught me, who was sort of known for finding lost rings and describing thieves)
The reason for the difficulty is that the world’s complexity is almost endless, and we only have a limited number of cards at our disposal, so that there is always a need for combining card meanings in new and clever ways to signify everything. One of the subjects I want to touch on in a next article on the philosophy of divination is exactly the fact that the limits of our imaginations can also be the limits of our ability to make predictions.
Furthermore, the language of the cards is otherworldly, at least as far as making predictions is concerned, so that the oracle will not necessarily answer the question in a linear form that is readily understood. This is why my error rate by people descriptions and by finding lost items tends to be higher than in other readings. Sometimes I can’t so much as make sense of one of the cards, let alone the whole composition.
There is, however, a reading I want to share because of how clear the cards were, which makes this a good case study. A woman had lost her bracelet and, after looking for it everywhere, was beginning to suspect her niece of stealing it, possibly as a game. Here’s the spread:
Playing Card Divination, A Reading about Theft
There is one woman in the spread. She is next to the Ace of Clubs. This is extremely important. The Ace of Clubs represents initiative, and if you ask whether someone will or won’t do something, if their significator comes up next to the Ace of Clubs (or the Five of Clubs, representing action, or, sometimes, even the Two of Clubs, which means taking steps) it shows the person will do it.
In this case, though, we are talking about theft. So this woman took the initiative, i.e., she stole the bracelet. She is next to the Eight of Clubs, which represents work. So this is not the querent’s niece, but a coworker or superior.
Note, though, that she comes up as the Queen of Diamonds, not as the Queen of Spades, so there is no inherent ‘evil’ about her. Furthermore, we have the Three of Diamonds next to the Eight of Clubs. The Three of Diamonds represents all activities that are done part-time. Metaphorically, therefore, the woman is not a ‘full-time’ thief, i.e., she doesn’t have the habit of stealing. She probably just seized the moment to have something that caught her fancy. The Ten of Hearts closing the spread shows the possibility of a happy ending.
To be more sure, I asked the querent to pick another card for the Queen of Diamonds, and she chose the Four of Clubs. So this is a woman the querent speaks to habitually. Furthermore, even though the Queen is a Diamonds, and should technically be very fair, she is surrounded by Clubs, which represent a dark complexion and/or hair (but not as dark as Spades)
Well, some days after the reading the querent’s coworker, a woman of dark complexion and hair, came forward to her, wracked with guilt, and gave her back the bracelet, which the querent had left on her desktop unattended. The woman said she didn’t know what had possessed her to steal the item.
This is not the first time that I compare divination to language. Divination systems *are* a form of language. Each has its own vocabulary, its syntax and its grammar. However, there is more to languages than just these three things (and possibly more, if you are a linguist)
Languages don’t exist in a vacuum. They are spoken concretely by concrete individuals. Each individual has his or her character, quirks, idiosyncrasies, which hugely influence the way they speak.
The Vera Sibilla is notorious for its chatty nature. She is like that old aunt with no sense of personal space who spends the afternoon drinking coffee with her neighbors and spilling tea on others without much in the way of connecting themes. Playing cards, on the other hands, tend to be more sober and to the point. In a way, I find they are easier to interpret, exactly because they are more predictable. Tarot, I find, is also more to the point, although it is more complex in other respects.
Here is an example of the same question asked by the same querent, but answered with the Sibilla first and with playing cards second.
The querent is a young man in his mid-20s we got to know at a friend’s house. He asked if he would find a job.
Vera Sibilla reading on job
Important note: this reading started as a three card reading. I had to keep adding cards because, as is often the case, the Sibilla kept giving me quirky details instead of the answer. The first three cards did not contain the answer (if I had tried to answer based on the first three cards, it would have been a no, and I would have been wrong.)
As in a recent reading I posted, the spread stards with the reversed Balcony. This time it’s followed by the reversed Falsehood card and by the reversed Peacock. The first three cards hint at the fact that is awaiting an improvement of his career (reversed Falsehood) that is not coming (reversed Balcony). The reversed Peacock shows both the struggle (it is a card of great obstacles) and the fact that he may be taking things very personally whenever something goes wrong.
Then we have the reversed significator and the reversed Love card. This means two things: firstly, that he is gay (which he confirmed on the spot) and secondly, the reversed Love card flaking the significator together with the reversed Peacock confirms my first intuition that he does take things too personally, maybe as though he were expecting employers to huddle together around him and woo him.
Since it is followed by the Merchant, which is the significator for the querent’s job, it shows again that he has emotional troubles connected with his career. Fortunately, it is followed by the reversed Ten of Clubs, which shows a favorable chance. But this card only shows a chance, not that it will be taken, so I asked the querent to pull two additional cards, and this shows that he will receive a good offer (Present of Jewels) of a part-time job (Happiness).
On to the playing card spread
Playing cards reading example on job
This one also started out as a three card reading. And it remained one. Change, Union, Part-time job. There will be a change which will lead to a part-time position.
You may say that since we had already answered the question with the Sibilla, playing cards didn’t need to add much. Maybe, but the Sibilla’s chattiness is indeed more pronounced than that of playing cards.
The Vera Sibilla tradition is steeped in combinations that are handed down in specific order. These combinations are important, but to understand them, you need to keep in mind that, in the olden days, at least in Italy, you would simply sit in front of the fortune teller and he or she would tell you your general future, sometimes covering your whole life. In this context, the traditional combinations are highly effective. Divination is not about numbers, but if I had to put a number to it, I would say that, in a questionless reading, classic combos are around 70 – 80% accurate.
Combinations are also an extremely valid learning tool, as you let your brain wrap itself around the deck and its language, just as it’s useful when you are very little and your parents teach you specific turns of phrases that tend to have always the same meaning. Over the years, however, you learn to create variations on the theme and you develop a more plastic language that is also more adaptable to all circumstances.
Let’s take this recent reading example. A friend of ours told his parents that he won’t be able to visit for Christmas (they live in Scheswig-Holstein, in Northern Germany, while we live in Rheinland-Pfalz, in the South-West). His mother sounded cheerful on the telephone, but he asked how she had taken the news. These cards came up:
Vera Sibilla Oracle Card Reading Example
If you were to interpret these cards according to traditional combinations, you would say something to the effect of: you need to stay away from your mother (Person card reversed next to the Three of Hearts reversed) because she is a scheming bitch (Seven of Hearts reversed)
But let us take a deeper look at the cards. The Balcony card, when upright, represents the arrival of someone or something. When reversed, often it shows waiting in vain. This implies that the mother was expecting her son to visit.
Next to the mother we have the Scholar reversed. In addition to plotting and scheming, this card also shows plans that don’t come to fruition, so we can say she was planning the Christmas together. But there is more. It is also the card of illusion and a sense of futility and sterility. To choose the appropriate meaning, let us look at the central card, the Queen of Hearts reversed.
The mother could have safely come up as the Queen of Diamonds, the Wife or Married Woman. It is crucial to understand, though, that the Queen of Diamonds is essentially attached to her roles in life, rather than to feelings. This doesn’t mean she is evil or a bad mother, only that she fulfills her role primarily because it’s her role.
The Queen of Hearts, the Girlfriend, on the other hand, is essentially a loving person, one who follows her heart and who has love to give. Coming up reversed, she finds herself frustrated in this aspect.
Knowing this, let us go back to the Scholar. In this case, it must represent futility as well all the other stuff. She feels sterile and futile as a mother.
We also need to consider that we have three out of three Heart cards, all three reversed. This shows that clearly she longs for a connection she doesn’t have. Probably not the most stable person, emotionally speaking, but not the dangerous, scheming woman that you would see in the cards according to usual combinations.
As with the Sibilla, so with playing cards. This is a typical spread that can be used to get a broad bird-eye view on the querent’s life. Many versions of this spread exist. Here I discuss the one I know. Simply shuffle the cards and have the querent cut, then distribute the cards into seven small stacks of three cards each.
Pack 1 is the querent, Pack 2 is the home, Pack 3 is outside influences or outside the home, Pack 4 is money and career, Pack 5 relationships, Pack 6 possible difficulties, Pack 7 the unexpected.
The spread does not see very far into the future, and it rather reflects the present and at most the next two months, sometimes even just one.
This is a spread I often use for myself rather than for others. The following example is a reading a did for myself about three months ago.
Pack 1 (querent): 4♥ – A♥ – 2♥
The pack shows a generally stable and pleasant state of mind and tranquility in and around the house.
Pack 2 (house): 7♥ – 10♣ – 5♠
I didn’t truly understand this at the time, even though it was obvious, as it shows a sudden journey. The 5♠ simply turned out to be showing that the journey would be a sacrifice. We had to suddenly visit my mother-in-law who had broken a foot.
Pack 3 (outside): A♦ – 6♦ – K♠
Here some news of an administrative or bureaucratic nature is shown, generally unfavorable as the Spade falls last. Our accountant sent us an endless questionnaire to fill out as the government had raised some issues on out paperwork.
Pack 4 (work): K♣ – 5♦ – A♣
My significator falls here. I believe I have talked about the combination of the 5♦ with an Ace showing a new phase. In this case there is a new something coming up to me. Around a month later I managed to be accepted by a new translation agency.
Pack 5 (love): 5♣ – 9♣ – 3♠
I interpreted this as having lots of things to do that would keep me distant from hubby (the actions create distance, interfering with my love life). Indeed, for two or three weeks afterward it was as if we didn’t live together as we were occupied with our own projects.
Pack 6 (problems): 5♥ – 8♥ – 9♥
Quite frankly, no great problem was on the horizon. If the other cards had been worse I could have judged that the realization of my wish would be compromised, but the spread was relatively tame, so in this case the cards were just saying there was no big issue coming up.
Pack 7 (surprise): 2♦ – 6♥ – Q♥
This was clearly a message bringing a reconciliation with a woman. It turned out that a couple of days later I was contacted by an old college friend I hadn’t spoken to in almost ten years.
In the previous article I started talking about free will and prediction. There I talked about some factors that influence our freedom of decision.
Another incredibly important aspect is information. We orient ourselves by interpreting available information. If our free will were absolute, our knowledge of how the world works and how we move in it would not matter, because we’d be able to reach any result regardless of the initial conditions.
This is patently absurd, yet it is maintained by some diviners (appropriately, those who are incapable of deriving specific information from the divination process). It kind of reminds me of one of the definitions of God in the Book of the 24 Philosophers, where it says that God is that whose will is equivalent to his power and knowledge (or wisdom).
This was a fancy way of saying that God’s every action is always exactly the right one at the right moment because the fact that he wants it is the same with the fact that it can be done and also the fact that it is the right thing to do. This may be very true of God, and if we conceive (as I do) that the divine is immanent in the world, it is also true of humans, but only in so far as they understand themselves as limited fractions of this whole process. In so far as we crave things and don’t know how to get them, this view of the world is fairly deceiving, especially if you plan on charging people who expect to be given reliable information.
From a more mundane and practical standpoint, we have limited knowledge (or wisdom) and this always changes from moment to moment. As our information changes, so do our decisions. This has nothing to do with “destiny”: if we did not adjust our behavior to match our knowledge we’d already have died out. It is about survival.
The First Spread
Here’s an example. As I mentioned in my journal section, my husband and I are looking for a bigger home. We had eyed an apartment some weeks ago that seemed perfect, and upon visiting it, we were even more convinced to buy it. Some days ago I asked the tarot if we would be able to buy it.
“Will we be able to buy the apartment?” Tarocchi di Layla, design by Elisa Scerrato
As can be seen from the cut (Strength and Justice) we were very determined (Strength) to buy (Justice).
The opening of the spread repeats the statement by showing that we are gung-ho about buying the apartment (Stars and Chariot) but that we are not considering everything (Moon) as we head toward the handshake (Lovers)
The second line shows the clarifying (Sun) intervention of a woman (Empress) who will bring certain less than pleasant aspects to light (Devil). The result is that my husband (Pope) will lose all interest in buying (Hanged Man)
This is exactly what happened. Two days after I did this spread, my husband came home and told me that one of his friends from an Enneagram group he is in has some experience with real estate and could help us decide. We set up a Zoom meeting with her, where she went through the apartment’s documents with us and raised some serious red flags we had completely missed that would have turned buying that apartment into a financial and bureaucratic nightmare. Needless to say, my husband (and I) lost all interest after that.
As you can probably guess, nobody forced us NOT to buy. Nor did destiny force our hand. In fact, we probably could have gone on with the deal, and fairly quickly (Strength + Justice in the cut of the first spread can signify a signed contract). But we would have been idiots.
And note how skewed my question was: we were completely besotted with the place, so I asked if we would be able to buy it, not if it was a good idea to buy it. The tarot clearly overrode my question and told me that certain unknown facts would surface that would influence our decision. Note also that the tarot did not say that we should not buy (my experience is that divination reflects reality, not what reality should be). The tarot said that we would change our mind.
The question is: were we destined to change our mind? Well, it is complicated, and the complication arises from the fact that the moment of divination is a very special moment, where spirit reflects on itself through the diviner. I will need to come back on this issue in more detail in some future articles.
The thing is, though, that we were not forced to change our mind: we simply realized it was the smart thing to do. Sure, you may say, if we had been more gullible, or if the apartment had completely blinded us out of our wits, we would have gone on with the deal anyway and regretted it later.
But being gullible or not is neither a choice nor an imposition: it is part of one’s being, at least to an extent, even if it is originally a learned behavior. The tarot simply computed the available information, both that which we could change and that which we had no control over, added the information about who we are at our core, and came to the conclusion that someone like my husband and I, in such a situation, would probably change their mind upon receiving better data.
The tarot predicted our behavior in the same way your mom who knows you are obsessed with chocolate icecream can predict you had chocolate icecream for dessert after dinner with your friends: it is a prediction based on knowledge of your nature and of the available information. The difference between your mom and the tarot is that the tarot (like all oracular forms) has a wider and deeper view of reality. The Tarot is, in a way, like a cosmic botanist who knows a red rose bush will sprout from this or that seed, even though this knowledge does not force the rose to be red. It is simply part of its nature.
The Second Spread
By the way, today before writing this article, I did a second spread just for kicks (the tarot is very tolerant of my shenanigans) to ask if that apartment was seriously off the table, as I am still a bit in love with it. Here’s the result
“Is the apartment really off the table?” Tarocchi di Layla, design by Elisa Scerrato
In the cut we have Death and the Wheel: definitive change (the Death card can never be undone, just like real death). The spread itself is even more blunt. The Devil and the Moon show hidden dangers, and the contract, signified by Justice, is blocked (Hanged Man) thanks to a woman (Popess / High Priestess). Note how much more concise and harsh the spread is compared to the first one: it’s as if the cards were saying “Dude, really, knock it off already…”
Side note: I don’t know exactly why my husband’s friend came up as Empress in the first spread and as Popess in the second one. My best guess is that the tarot didn’t want me to get confused in the first one: if she had come up as the Popess, I would have linked her to the Pope, and would not have interpreted him as my husband, but since in the new spread neither I nor my husband show up, the cards were free to use a more natural significator for her.
In the Sibilla section of this site I posted some spreads that may also be used with playing cards. One type of spreads is generally used for broad readings without a specific focus. I must confess I don’t often use these spreads myself when reading for others (especially the 21 card spread which I will cover in another post), although I have found them invaluable for a quick glance into my own future.
A typical general spread is the cross spread. The disposition of the cards, after shuffling and having the deck cut by the querent, is as follows:
4 – 9 – 14
2 – 7 – 12
1 – 6 – 11
3 – 8 – 13
5 – 10 – 15
Cross spread for cartomancy with playing cards
The center of the spread (cards 1, 6, 11) indicates the querent’s present situation, or something that is happening that is very important to them. To the querent’s left (2, 7, 12) is his or her recent past. To the querent’s right (3, 8, 13) is his or her future in the next month or so. Above the querent (4, 9, 14) are his or her thoughts or something they are aware of, while underneath (5, 10, 15) shows something the querent doesn’t like or doesn’t know.
This spread is general, but I am sure it can be adapted to answer broad questions (“Tell me about my career”). It can also be used to investigate a person the querent is interest in knowing about (“My friend’s been behaving strangely lately…”)
One variation of this spread consist in shuffling the remaining cards again and dealing out an additional three cards for the further future or for the “answer”.
Here’s an example. I asked a friend of mine if we could do a spread for her as a demonstration and she graciously accepted. Here’s what came out.
3♣ – 3♥ – 9♣
J♥ – A♦ – 4♠
8♥ – 6♠ – 8♠
K♠ – 6♦ – A♥
7♠ – J♠ – 7♦
Example of a general cross spread with playing cards
It is never a good idea to start talking immediately, especially when the spread is general. It is always better to simply let your eyes absorb the cards as a whole.
Still, it is quite evident that the central heap is rather problematic, as it shows illness. This is not the querent’s own illness, but that of a relative (Eight of Hearts). This is confirmed by the future cards, where there is worry in the house, with the King of Spades in this case as the doctor. The querent’s grandma needs some minor surgery, it turns out, but given her age, her family is understandably concerned. Fortunately there is no indication of great difficulties, let alone bereavement.
The querent’s thoughts, however, are occupied by the desire for a lasting love union (upper fan), which however she doesn’t have, considering the past fan (blocked news concerning romance).
The bottom fan is difficult to interpret, as it doesn’t appear to link up with the others. It is very possible that, in her life in general, the querent doesn’t feel seen or appreciated (the Seven of Diamonds is money, but also rewards, broadly construed) and she feels unlucky.
This spread, as can be seen, is short and quick, and should ideally only be used as an “opener” to break the ice, before moving on to specific spreads.
