Tag Archives: playing card reading

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

Push and Pull (Example Reading)

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There are couples who stay together a lifetime, couples who break up at the first sign of hardship, and then couples that seem to follow some kind of fated path made of pushing and pulling. This is one example.

8♥️ 6♣️ 7♣️ 4♠️

Q♣️ J♦️ K♣️

9♣️ 3♣️

6♥️

Note the absolude predominance of Clubs. Clubs are a heavy suit that causes difficulties and slowness. There is no card of great love, but the Eight of Hearts is a card of fun and good times.

Followed by two problematic Club cards, the Six and the Seven, which end up in break-up (Four of Spades) it is clear that the two didn’t break up from one day to the other never to see each other again, but have been on a constant path of ups and downs ending up in separation.

At the time of the reading the two were broken up, so when I told the (female) querent what I was seeing she confirmed that they’ve been on again off again for quite some time.

Look the second line! We have the two significators united by the messenger card (Jack of Diamonds). So the two have broken up but are still in contact. The querent told me it’s not so much that they send each other messages as they communicate and cause misunderstandings with one another through mutual friends (the Jack of Diamonds can show a go-between). Clearly not a very healthy situation!

The final cards, the Three of Clubs and Six of Hearts, show a reconciliation in the union, but the Nine of Clubs before them implies this is going to be a long-term goal rather than a matter of days or weeks. So the unsatisfactory situation is likely to persist for a while.

As far as giving the querent some advice based on this spread is concerned, I would personally be wary of that Jack of Diamonds between them. It is much better to clear up misunderstandings directly instead of playing up the drama by involving friends as if the two were still high-schoolers (they are in their 40s).

All in all, this spread gives off bad vibes for a relationship. It seems the two are attached more to the drama than to each other. To each their own.

MQS

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

An Experiment (Example Reading)

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A friend and I have decided to do a little experiment with the German skat deck. He has applied for a job and we wanted to see if he’ll be hired.

An Experiment with the German Skat deck

According to the meanings I’ve received, the Eight of Diamonds (here the Eight of Bells) is the card of work and business, so the cards seem to be on the ball. We also have the Ten of Hearts which is a contract (a marriage/union) with the Ten of Diamonds/Bells indicating it’s a relatively well-paid full-time opportunity. The Seven of Hearts here should indicate relief and pleasantness in general. It could also mean the querent is going to have fun, but considering it comes before the contract, I incline more toward the former interpretation.

There’s that King of Spades / King of Leaves there, which puzzles me. Technically the querent is the King of Hearts. This could show that someone else gets the contract, but this would be a really weird way for the cards to communicate (“Will I get the job?” “Someone else is going to be really pleased”). It can happen that the cards say someone else gets the job, but they would show this as a negative for the querent. Also, this cannot be the boss, because two women are the boss and are looking for someone to hire.

Maybe the King of Leaves could represent the type of job. It is in the medical field. Technically, medical subjects would be indicated by the Ten of Clubs/Acorns or the King of Clubs/Acorns, however I have seen many sources that assign the meaning of doctor to the King of Leaves / Spades. It could indicate that the job is going to have to do with lots of bureaucracy and office stuff, and that would true.

I will update this article when I get the result.

MQS

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

The End of Misfortune (Example Reading)

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This is a cool reading because it shows that the cards tend to describe a situation and take their time to do so, so that trying to immediately get a yes or no out of them can be problematic and cause mistakes (though making mistakes is part of the human condition, obviously). This is the reason why, talking about the Bolognese tarot, I tend to disregard the yes and no rule of the Death card. It is also the reason why I don’t believe in the yes and no value of playing card colors.  To me, that’s just a coin flip, and coin flips don’t work as reliably as actual divination, which is a language.

Here the question was if an unemployed man would get a job.

A career spread. Divination with playing cards.

The first thing I noticed is that the reading ends with a very positive combination of Queen of Diamonds, Eight of Clubs (work) and Six of Hearts (reconciliation/solution/adjustment). This bodes well, but the rest of the spread is more disastrous.

The first row shows that the subject is a thorn in the heart of the person (Two of Spades, Ace of Spades and the Six of Diamonds showing worry). Then we see that every step taken (Two of Clubs) to solve the issue has met with misfortune (Seven of Spades), meaning that the person has probably tried to find a job repeatedly but failed. This explains the very emotional cards in the first row, as well as the fact that the Happiness card (Ten of Hearts) is squeezed between Misfortune (Seven of Spades) and Tears (Eight of Spades). This is a whole unfortunate period unfolding in the person’s life.

There are some cards I am not quite sure about: the Two of Diamonds, Seven of Diamonds, Seven of Clubs. 2♦️ + 7♦️ can be a cheque or paper money, or projects about money. I asked the querent a couple of questions and it didn’t really help. I think a more general reading would be that, quite obviously, the lack of a job has impacted negatively (7♣️) his financial situation.

Then finally we have a woman who is either going to help him find a job or give him a job. If I had to bet I would say this is a female boss, since she shows up as a Diamond and not as a Heart. Either way, the period of misfortune is going to thankfully end.

MQS

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

There Is No Ghost (Example Reading)

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When we give a reading about extraordinary questions like the occult or the paranormal, it is easy to fall into the trap of wanting to confirm the querent’s bias or subjective experience.

This is why I tend to avoid queries about such things as past lives: for one, I don’t believe in reincarnation, or rather, I believe that the soul of the world constantly reincarnates through every individual that is born, but I don’t believe in the existence of seprate or individual souls that reincarnate karmically; for two, I fail to see the importance of knowing about what one might have been in a previous life; for three, suppose I tell someone that they were an illiterate farmer, when another reader convinced them they were a cool witch who was burned at the stake for her mystical powers, how is the querent going to choose who is right apart from their whim of the moment?

Still, certain topics, such as magic or spirits, are within my tradition and I do believe in them, so I accept readings, but I warn querents that the likelihood of something of the sort happening in their life is very low even if they go looking for it, let alone randomly.

This one querent thought there is a ghost haunting the third floor of the building she moved to. This is the spread that came out:

A card reading about a ghost

As can be seen, even without interpreting the spread, there is no trace of haunting in the cards. The final two cards, the Nine of Diamonds and the Ten of Diamonds, are a lucky combination, they can show success, protection or even simply the fact that the “energy” is clean, not charged with magical or paranormal forces. The querent shows up at the beginning of the spread with the Three of Diamonds, which is a doubtful card in this context. It makes me think more about random things that she, the Queen, misinterpreted.

The Jack of Hearts is even more doubtful. It could show the presence of a child (a living child, that is) or an animal (again, a living one) who does something the querent misinterprets. The querent said that there are both children and animals in the building, so that’s a possibility. Frankly, I should have either added cards or done another spread.

Still, this is enough to make me think that there is a non-paranormal explanation for the querent’s experience, so the spread is enough to answer the question in that regard.

The funny thing is that, after the reading, the querent started talking to me like I am not very competent at reading cards. I am obviously open to being wrong, and I understand that it must be frustrating being told that one’s subjective experience is probably the result of a misinterpretation (it must feel like ‘gaslighting’, to employ an overused word). All I could do was trying to be as understanding as I could in delivering the answer.

After all, for every instance of real haunting or real magic (at least, real according to the oracle) there are thousands of cases of people who spend years burning sage to smoke out a presence that isn’t there, yet the ghost who isn’t there often ends up influencing their life more than those that are there.

MQS

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

An Assault (Example Reading)

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I don’t often pick three cards for the day, and usually when I do they show very minor situations, for the very good reason that most days are very minor in themselves. The day before yesterday I shuffled the Bolognese Tarot and this came up for the following day:

Three cards for the day

The Sun and Moon, in the Bolognese Tarot tradition, indicate sorrow or tribulation. Usually, when the Moon falls last, the sorrow is serious or lasting, while if the Sun falls last it eventually overcomes the Moon, so the sorrow is shorter or less impactful. Still, what we have here, is sorrow knocking at the door, even though it’s passing. Curious, I decided to deal out some other cards, even though I wasn’t sure the cards would keep talking about the same thing. This came up:

The rest of the deck

Clearly this is not a happy string of cards, and it seems to be dealing with a young woman (the Page of Cups). I wasn’t sure if the young woman had anything to do with me or was experiencing something herself, so I left it at that.

Yesterday, aside from being a mentally taxing day for me, a friend of mine was assaulted by a junkie while walking the dogs, but she managed to make it out of it with nothing more than a big scare and a broken fingernail. She alerted the police, and she asked me what I thought would come of it. This time I whipped out the playing cards.

What will be the consequences of the assault?

The Jack of Spades immediately calls attention to himself, showing a criminal in this case. It is surrounded by two Spades, so trouble or inconvenience for him. The Four is also a card of violence, but I don’t think it has anything to do with it: they are describing what happens to him. Then the spread takes a sharp turn for the better (for the criminal, that is): things change (Five of Diamonds) and he walks (Two of Clubs). I doubted there would be serious consequences. Note also the absence of the law (the King of Spades) or of the prison card (the Five of Spades).

The man was stopped, since he is known around town for being a weirdo, but my friend is probably not going to press charges since she was told there were no witnesses and it would turn into an endless battle of he-says-she-says for what, in the eyes of the law, was a minor scuffle on the streets between two adults. I’ll update the post if anything new happens.

MQS

Card Reading, Cartomancy, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards

The Hothead (Example Reading)

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If you ever happen to receive a comment from someone whom the cards describe in the following way:

2♠️ – 6♦️ – 2♣️

you can safely flag all their future comments as spam. Their actions (Two of Clubs) presuppose (behind) a volatile and unstable temper (Two of Spades – Six of Diamonds). It is someone who is simply looking for a target to live out their idiosyncrasies depending on the fixation of the moment.

MQS

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

In The Name Of Love (Example Pyramid Reading)

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Yesterday we had a nice reunion with some friends. One of them asked the cards if she has a shot with her dance instructor, whom she’s crushing hard on. These were the cards:

6♣️ – Q♣️ – 10♥️ – 9♠️
K♣️ – 10♣️ – Q♥️
A♥️ – 3♣️
8♠️

The first thing that jumped at me was that nasty Eight of Spades at the end, which literally says “it will end in tears.” If we take the three angles of the pyramid, they are the Six of Clubs, Nine of Spades and Eight of Spades. Bleak.

My querent’s card falls on the first line, together with the Six, the Ten of Hearts and the Nine of Spades. If we were to read this line as a literal sentence, it would be “Coming from a place of fatigue your happiness there’s not“. In other words, my friend is not just single, but lonely, has been for a while and she’s unhappy about it. This is interesting, because it shows that her crush is more like a compensation mechanism.

Then we come to him, the King of Clubs, who is on a journey (Ten of Clubs) with a loved woman (Queen of Hearts) that leads to a house (Ace of Hearts) of union (Three of Clubs). He is engaged. The final Eight of Spades does not say that he is unhappy about the engagement, but that the engagement brings tears to the querent.

MQS

Card Combinations, Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Sibilla della Zingara, Tarot, Vera Sibilla

Understanding the Order of the Cards

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One thing that I often receive messages about is how to understand the order in which the cards fall. Whether it’s the Vera Sibilla or playing card, there is one fundamental rule that applies in the majority of cases: later cards modify those that fall before.

Keep in mind that divination with cards is like the reading of a book, so the cards build the equivalent of sentences with their own grammatical structure. This is why I prefer to read the cards together rather than in isolation, as would happen in many contemporary positional spreads, where to each position corresponds one card.

In the tradition I come from, there can be positions, but there are always at least three cards, and sometimes five, covering one position. When we have two or more cards together, it becomes possible to “agglutinate” their meanings.

“Boy” and “run” becomes “the boy is running.” “Boy” and “friend” becomes “the boy is with a friend” or “the boy is a friend.” “Boy” and “Australian” becomes “the boy is Australian.”

Similarly, if we put two playing cards together such as the Three of Clubs (Union, marriage) and the Ten of Hearts (Happiness) they say: the marriage is happy. In the Sibilla, if we put the Ace of Club (Marriage) and the Four of Hearts (Love) together, it becomes “a loving marriage” or “a marriage of love.”

These are the first steps only. There are many more nunaces. However, the basic thing we must ask ourselves when interpreting two or more cards together is whether they add to each other or they contradict each other.

When they add to each other, the sequence in which they fall doesn’t matter that much (though it may add shades of meaning). “A beautiful girl” is roughly the same as “A girl who is beautiful.” But if we have “War” and “Peace”, saying “Peace and then war” is very different from saying “War and then peace”.

In the Sibilla, Fortune + Death is the end of fortune (literally, “the fortune meets its end”), whereas Death + Fortune is an end that brings fortune. Generally speaking, the cards falling after have the power to modify those that fall before.

That being said, divination is an art more than a science: we should never apply our rules so rigidly that we stop thinking about what the cards are saying. In most cases, in the Sibilla, Thief + Marriage has a similar meaning as Marriage + Thief: someone or something is interfering with the marriage.

Ultimately, each spread is a world in itself and the specific key to it must be found by following the clues that the cards leave behind.

MQS

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

Is Her Mental State Going to Improve? (Example Reading)

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As you may have read in another post, I recently lost my dad. My mother has always been the worrier type, and taking care of him in this last period has exacerbated these traits. I’ve seen her not just depressed, which would be normal, but utterly confused. A couple of days ago, when I discovered my dad’s playing cards, I asked how her mental state would evolve, and if it would improve (I used this picture as header pic of that post):

Will her mental state improve?

There are two points in this spread that immediately jumped at me:

  1. The Two of Diamonds (2♦️) followed by the Four of Spades (4♠️). The Two is a card of communications, especially written, but it is also strongly connected with attitudes, mental states etc. Followed by the Four of Spades, it gives a critical point in her inner life.
  2. The Five of Diamonds (5♦️) squished between Spades. The Five of Diamonds indicates change, transformation, the ability to move on from one state to another. This ability is negated by the surrounding spades.

Clearly she has entered a rather dark tunnel. The following cards offer hope: the Two of Hearts with a Heart court card indicates someone close to us. It could be me, it could be my uncle. The fact that two hearts follow the Spades indicates healing. It may indicate that focusing on the family, especially me, is a source of positivity for her. It could show help from me and my uncle or other close male relatives and friends

The final two cards are the Six of Clubs and the Six of Hearts are interesting. If the 6♣️ hadn’t been present, the three consecutive Hearts would have shown full recovery from the problem. Tbe 6♣️ though, is a card of fatigue, tiredness and of things slowing down, and of problems that seemed solved resurfacing.

Therefore, as may be expected, while the 6♥️ promises improvement, the 6♣️ shows relapses and that scars will remain. I expected no less.

MQS

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

A Career Cross Spread (Example Reading)

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When I was taught to read playing cards, the cross spread was presented to me as a general spread. However, over time I discovered that it can also be used to answer specific questions of a general nature, or simply to explore certain compartments of the querent’s life. Here is a recent spread on a male querent asking about his career:

A career cross spread. Divination with playing cards

To summarise the main meanings of the various fans:

  1. Left: past-present
  2. Center: in the heart, sometimes present
  3. Right: present-future
  4. Above: thoughts, would like
  5. Below: dislikes, problem
  6. To the side: future/answer

The cool thing about larger spreads is that sometimes we can just identify a single spot that answers the question clearly, and everything else gives details that may or may not interest the querent. Here, the clear answer occurs in the right spot: 9♣️ 8♣️ 8♠️, which translates as “for a long time the job will give the querent tears”.

Now that we have identified a clear sentence, let’s fill out the details. Since the sentence is quite negative, let’s look at other negative spots. In his heart, the querent has the 3♠️ which brings difficulties, complications etc. But it is followed by cards that bring hopes of a solution (the two Hearts). Clearly there has been something that caused the querent to start hoping.

Now look at the fan above: he would like a contract (3♣️) that gives him happiness (10♥️). Between these two cards we find the sickness card (6♠️). This could indicate that it is a vain hope or a sick hope, one that is not grounded in reality. On the left we see that he has a small income (3♦️) but works hard (5♣️ J♣️) so it’s not that he doesn’t deserve job security. Below we see a difficult situation with a man that might be his boss or a superior. Clearly he is not the teacher’s pet (the Q♣️ simply shows that the querent’s troubles reflect badly on his love life).

The final fan unfortunately robs the querent of all hope, although it argues that there will be help from a man. To dig deeper I should have done another spread. As it stands, the detail is quite vague.

MQS