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

On Death (Example Reading)

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Of the many subjects that have been banished to the realm of shadows in contemporary divination, none have become more unspeakable than death. Under no circumstances should we be reminded of our mortality and finitude, largely because these are all things that fly in the face of the “you can be whatever you want” ideology that many diviners now espouse. Divination proves that no, we can’t be whatever we want. Certain patterns of our life are laid out for us and there is precious little we can do about them except, maybe, work on our ability to accept them.

Obviously, as diviners we wield a certain degree of power over our querents, and as such we ought not to abuse it to terrorize them. I don’t usually talk about death unless the question is specifically about it or unless the context somehow allows for such a discussion. But I am also no moralist lecturing the querent on what they should be asking. In this case I was asked by a woman about her father’s wellbeing after being diagnosed with a serious illness. I told her I would not diagnose anything, but I would merely look at the general flow of his life.

2♥ – Q♥ – Q♠ – K♠
10♠ – K♣ – 9♠
8♠ – Q♦
10♥

I said it largely to comfort her, but the cards have their own language that cannot be overruled by any consideration. The pyramid can largely be summarized in one word: “funeral“. There isn’t much to discuss or interpret. Look at that group of people cards: these are not specific individuals. They are just meant to indicate many people together.

Then we have the Nine of Spades, Eight of Spades and Ten of Speads interspersed. These show great evil, tears, darkness. You get the picture. In the context of this question, many people together for something tear-related is called a funeral. So there is going to be a funeral: the father won’t survive.

Due to the Two of Hearts, I thought this was going to be within two weeks (not the funeral, but the death). It ended up being almost a month (timing is always tricky). In general, I think the cards meant “soon”.

But what about the Ten of Hearts at the end? Shouldn’t it nullify the evil meaning of the other cards? Usually it does, but the Ten of Hearts also represents Heaven or paradise. In the context of readings about this sort of issues it indicates that death comes as a release from the sufferings of life. As such, as weird and unfathomable as this sounds to us in the realm of the living, the spread is positive: it ended well because it ended in death. As a matter of fact, I have been told that the father was serene and peaceful till the end.

Why Predict Death? Philosophical and Practical Implications

I hope I haven’t put off anyone with this post, but the fact is that death is possibly the most salient event in life, so it makes sense that divination should be able to address it. The readings I do about this sort of issues are very rare, and I generally warn the person that I am fallible and have been and will be wrong again.

Other readers may choose to avoid such questions altogether. This is a legitimate choice, as no one should be forced to read about topics they feel uncomfortable about. However, it is also important to recognize that such questions are legitimate and that there is nothing inherently dark about them. It all depends about the context and about the attitude of the diviner (and of the querent, of course).

One may ask what the point is of divining about death and other such topics, since the querent cannot do much about it. In reality, there is plenty of non-morbid reasons to want to know about it: one may wish to set their affairs in order, or simply get a head start in getting closure. In pre-modern Western astrology, as well as in Chinese astrology, the prediction of the native’s death, or at least of whether they had enough life force in them to lead a relatively long life, was one of the first things the astrologer looked for. This is obvious: you can’t predict fame to someone for next year if they’ll be gone tomorrow.

Most importantly, a sober and serviceable approach to such topics has the ability to make us appreciate life from the point of view of the eternal, from the recognition that many things escape our control and we are truly actors in a cosmic play.

MQS

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

Love Fool (Horary Astrology and Playing Cards Reading)

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This is the first time I use my new interest, Horary Astrology, in conjunction with playing cards. Let’s see what they have to say. The question was asked by a friend of mine who just broke up with her girlfriend. He wants to know if there is a future. This reading was made a couple of days ago.

Relationship reading, is there a future?
Answered with horary astrology

The querent is Mars, lord of the Ascendant, while the quesited, i.e., the girlfriend, is Venus lord of the Seventh. The Moon indicates the flow of the action.

In a night chart, Mars is dignified by triplicity in Pisces, and is angular, while Venus is exalted, also in Pisces, and also angular. The first thing that strikes me is that Venus is moving away from Mars. Furthermore, the Moon is separating from a difficult square with Jupiter in the Seventh. I asked my friend if he had broken up with her or she had broken up with him, since from the chart it seems it was her initiative. He didn’t like to admit it, but said she had left him.

Note that Mars is in triplicity, so a decent Mars, but also conjunct Saturn. Saturn is peregrine. Also note that Venus, the girlfriend, is exalted, and exaltation is sometimes an indication of haughtiness. Clearly she thought she could do better than Saturn-like Mars as she moved away from him. My friend then told me she told him she didn’t like the fact she is to attached to her.

Well, CAN she do better? Venus is about to change sign, from Pisces to Aries, whereupon she will not only lose all her dignity, but she will also enter her detriment. Let us look at the Moon now. The Moon separates from the square with Jupiter and moves toward a sextile with Mercury Retrograde. Sextiles are positive aspects. If we put together the indications, we have: 1) Venus moving away but regretting her decision 2) A future positive contact 3) the contact is about things that go back (retrograde)

This seemed to me a sign of reconciliation. Just to be on the safe side, I had the querent pull three cards from the playing card deck. These were:

5♠ – Q♣ – 3♥

The cards are quite clear. The Five of Spades is a card of imprisonment, but it also indicates regret (which is what you are supposed to feel in prison). Then we have her significator, followed by the Three of Hearts. I would have preferred to see a Six of Hearts to show reconciliation, but the Three of Hearts will do. In this case, the added shade of meaning seems to be that the cards don’t even consider the breakup effective, because the Three of Hearts show things that flow positively without interruption.

I will update this post when I know the outcome.

MQS

astrology, Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Occultism and Esoterism, Playing Cards, Reading Example

Checking Talismans with Playing Cards

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In one of my recent posts I discussed how playing cards can detect curses (of course, it’s not just playing cards that can do it). Today I wanted to add to this subject by discussing the esoteric use of Playing Cards to check if a spell (in this case, a talisman) is a good idea or has been successfully created and is working.

I should perhaps first explain that there is a modicum of belief in magic involved in all this. The modern worldview tends to react to the idea of magic in two ways: the skeptical way (“it’s not really true”) and the new age way (“it’s not really true, but I would really love for it to be true, so I’ll play make belief and tailor everything to my preconceptions”)

Either way, magic is reduced to the acceptable role of cathartic theater or psychological tool (unfortunately, even great minds within the occult scene, like William Gray, have partly fallen for this approach, or at least considered it viable). From here it has even found its way even into the corporate sphere (a friend of mine working for Google told me she was forced to attend a “magical” day with a psychic who talked to them about tarot and Wicca). You know something is crap when pandering megacorporations appropriate it.

At least since Aleister Crowley (but there are predecessors) magic has been understood as the way of the will. Granted, Crowley’s understanding of the word “Will” is not the same as how we understand it in our everyday life, which would rather be “whim“. His view resembles more closely Nietzsche’s view of the will, so it does have some nobility.

But this doesn’t detract from the fact that most people whose view of magic has been colored by Crowley’s (and that’s almost everyone today, whether they know it or not) don’t REALLY believe in magic. Instead, they tend to see it as, again, little more than a placebo. It’s true if you believe in it. It’s true if you want it to be true.

Still, it’s my experience that belief in magic is not really required for magic to work. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any trace of the concept of the magician’s will in the traditional Western approach to magic (or in the Eastern approach, for that matter).

Because just believing in it was usually not considered a prerequisite for success, the use of divination to check the efficacy of magical workings has been advocated a long time. Besides, if belief is not enough, other, more objective factors must be checked. *

The Arab mages of old, for instance, invited people to do a horary reading to see if the use of planetary magic was warranted. Agrippa probably used geomancy for the same purpose. We don’t know about Abano, but it is not a stretch to think he would have consulted a geomantic shield to check how his spellwork was doing.

In general, all forms of divination take the reality of magic for granted within the worldview that informs their language. After all, why would divination work, but not magic? ** This is true for playing cards as well. Here is an example.

Last year while the Sun was in Leo I was working on a Sun talisman. I’m not going to disclose the aim of the talisman. It was nothing untoward, but I’d rather keep it to myself. After the creation of the talisman I set out to consecrate it. The number of days varies.

On the first day, after the first consecration, I got the following spread:

A♠ – 6♣ – 5♠

Definitely a bad start. And I wouldn’t have expected anything less. The majority is Spades, which is bad for anything but black magic.

6♣ – 8♣ – 10♣

Second day of consecration. A mash of clubs is not positive. It shows difficulties and toil without success. Still, Spades have abandoned the spread, which is a positive.

6♣ – A♦ – 3♠

This is the third day. Close but no banana. It is still a negative spread. It has the Six of Clubs in common with the previous spread, and it closes with an unpromising Three of Spades, which bring Spades and large obstacles back into the equation. Note that this is the third day in a row I get the Six of Clubs. But the Ace of Diamonds has appeared, which indicates success, talismans and even the Sun.

A♦ – 9♦ – 10♦

Fourth day. This is the sign I was waiting for. The Ace of Diamonds is back. This time it is well-placed. The Nine of Diamonds and Ten of Diamonds together just mean “it works”, whether we are talking about an object, a business plan or a spell.

MQS

* This is not to say that the old magi wanted you to do your homeworks half-heartedly. Marsilio Ficino talks about the importance putting your heart in your spellwork.

** this would lead us off into an interesting discussion of all those that practice divination without believing it to actually work (“it’s just a brainstorming method” being the most common rationalization)

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

A Money Spread – With a Mistake

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Not even the best card readers are 100% correct, and I’m far from being the best card reader. This is an example from some time ago. The querent was a woman she asked me, generally, about her finances.

Cartomancy with playing cards – a cross spread about money

Looking at the spread as a whole, it is clear that  it’s about money. In the upper position there are money issues highlighted, particularly a sudden (Seven of Spades) expense. The position below, which often needs to be connected to the one above, indicates issues connected with authority, possibly a bank or other financial institution (the King of Spades and King of Diamonds). In the past position we have a situation of slowness and difficulties for a long time, while in the heart position there are difficulties, possibly either obtaining something or getting it back (the Six of Hearts can mean that) or just simply difficulties finding one’s footing.

I ask the querent and she tells me that she’s a small business owner and business has been slow, and she’s been having trouble applying for financial help in the form of loans to renovate her business (note the Six of Hearts) and make it more appealing.

Encouraged by how responsive the spread seems to be, a look at the future positions. This is where I got everything wrong. I tell her that, although there is trouble (Six of Spades) she will get a positive answer (the last fan with the Three of Clubs and the Jack of Hearts). Looking back it is quite obvious the cards were saying something else.

She didn’t get the loan. The fan with the Six of Spades is not positive at all, even though I had decided to interpret it positively: it merely shows she will be quickly (Two of Hearts) refused the loan, possibly because she is not deemed to have her finances in order.

However, she later did end up partnering (Three of Clubs) with another woman (Queen of Diamonds) to start something new (Jack of Hearts).

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

Daily Reading – When the Cards Describe More Than One Thing

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A couple of days ago I wrote that a user had pointed out some of my links were broken. It took me a significant amount of time to correct the issue, so this was definitely a significant part of my day.

As I have probably already mentioned, sometimes I draw three cards for the day to see how it’s going. For that day I had:

J ♣ – 7♣ – 2♣

I forgot all about the reading until evening, but then it made sense: the help (the Jack) in taking steps (Two of Clubs) on an issue (Seven of Clubs).

Furthermore, it is not uncommon for daily readings to cover more than one happening in your life. That day I fell on the street (Seven of Clubs on Two of Clubs) and people helped me get up and gathering my groceries.

This may sound silly, but our life is made up of these little things, and the cards can reflect them. It is not always that clear, but sometimes it is possible to see the immediate connection between cards and life.

MQS

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

A Cross Spread with Playing Cards

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The cross spread I use is often used to get a general picture of the querent before them asking questions. It is useful because people don’t always know what’s really important in their life: they may come to you with a pressing issue which ends up being of no consequence: you can’t find a job, but the cards say it doesn’t even matter because you’ll inherit from an unknown uncle tomorrow. The bottom line is: our perspective on our own life is always limited. The chief use of divination is to give us a wider bird-eye view of our life.

This is a spread I did for a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in a while (note that it is possible to take out the significator of the person, as I did here, but it is not necessary)

General card reading with the cross spread

The first thing I noticed, which ended up not having anything to do with the rest of the reading, is the past position, with the Ten of Clubs, the Ten of Hearts and the Two of Hearts. Upon asking if she’d traveled with family (the Two of Hearts) she said she’d been to Japan with her brother. Clearly this was a journey she’d wanted to go on for a while because the Ten of Hearts is a card of great fulfillment.

The cards over the head and those under the feet are often to be connected (though this isn’t a hard rule). In this case she’s thinking about a woman from her family (Queen of Hearts with Ace of Hearts) in a surprising way. This is not very easy to interpret, so we look under her feet and we find the Three of Spades, the Nine of Clubs and the Nine of Hearts. She’s not happy (Nine of Hearts below) about their interaction, she feels like taking some distance from her.

Upon asking my friend, she said she’s been very disappointed in realizing her mother is starting to have occasional senile moments, which she has reacted to by cutting off contact, not because she doesn’t love her, but because she doesn’t know how to deal with the stress of her realization. I explained to her that the cards in her head still show a great deal of love (three heart cards) so the best course of action is to talk openly about it.

As I was saying this to her, the cards in the center or heart position suddenly made sense to me (I had skipped over them initially because I didn’t know how to interpret them). Contact (Two of Diamonds, Four of Clubs) is going to resume (Six of Hearts) quickly (it’s in the center)

As for the two future positions, they talk about financial/work issues. The right fan (what’s coming to the querent) shows something that should be given to her by an authority figure but there are issues. Looking at the other fan I ventured a guess that it’s money. My friend said she’s waiting for a loan to be approved to refurbish the store she owns. This will be hard and long and she’s probably going to have to jump through absurd hoops (Nine of Spades, Jack of Spades) but the money should come (Seven of Diamonds closing).

MQS

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

A Deceptive Pregnancy Spread (Card Reading Example)

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This spread is proof that we always need to have good communication with the querent, because sometimes readings are deceptive.

Sometimes spreads don’t answer the question at hand. This happens in two cases: when something more important is going on (or about to happen) in the querent’s life or when the cards want to give us details about the question that we haven’t asked for. This latter case requires great care, especially if the question is of a delicate nature.

A woman asked me if she will get pregnant. This is the spread (this is a rather old reading):

A pregnancy question answered with playing card divination

You’d probably think (and you’d be right) that my first instinct was to say “no” due to the horrible mesh of Spades following the Jack of Hearts, which is the child card.

However, something didn’t sit right with me about this spread. I wasn’t at all convinced the spread was answering the question directly. The reason is that the cards Ace of Spades, Nine of Spades and Ten of Spades can show bereavement, and bereavement can only happen if there *is* a child.

The King of Spades could be a doctor performing an abortion, but this isn’t confirmed by any other card (e.g. the Six of Spades). In this case, the King of Spades seems to be more like a priest celebrating a funeral.

I asked the querent if she already had a child, and she said that she unfortunately had a miscarriage in the recent past when the pregnancy was already relatively advanced.

So the cards were not saying that she wouldn’t have a child: they were merely reflecting a recent trauma. With that in mind, I interrupted the reading, telling her the cards were telling her to take time for herself. This was an excuse, of course: I could have done another reading, but I didn’t want to risk having to predict another miscarriage.

Fortunately, today the woman is the happy mother of two twins.

MQS

Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Reading Example, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot

Using Playing Card Divination on Psychological Questions (Example Reading)

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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.

MQS

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

Daily Playing Card Reading and Tarot Reading Example

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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).

MQS

Card Reading, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Everyday Oracle, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Reading Example, Sibilla della Zingara, Vera Sibilla

Sibilla and Playing Cards, Linguistic Differences (Reading Example)

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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.

MQS