Prior to the appearance of Gullian Hopper’s piece on Tarot divination, Prediction had only published one article on card reading in the whole of the war years and one two-part article in the post-war period. Both have as their subject divination with a pack of normal playing cards. I reproduce the first of these, the single article, below.
Are We to Believe the Cards?
asks Jeffrey Clive
Some predictions made by Cartomancy have come true with startling accuracy; but along with truth there are errors, and much depends upon the correct reading of the cards, and intuitional and psychological conditions.
The legend of cards is said to have started from the land of the Saracens, where colored cards were used, by means of which all kinds of amusing combinations could be arranged. This was seven centuries ago, and since then the oracle of the cards has been consulted by many thousands of people.
If we are not on our guard, the opening paragraph will beguile us with its light touch, skimming the surface of card history, and we will mistake its vague statements for profound truths. For once legend is not at odds with historical research: it is the case that playing cards, clearly the ancestors of the decks used in casinos and at bridge parties today, were known to the Arabs in the fourteenth century and possibly in the thirteenth century also. I will have more to say on this at a later date.
So far, so good. We next come to the many “kinds of amusing combinations” into which these Saracen cards might be arranged. If we link this to Clive’s next comment about the cards use as an oracle, we might assume that the “amusing combinations”, too, were part of the practice of divination. That would be a step too far, for there is no evidence that the Arabs of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, either in Turkey, in the east, or in southern Spain, to the west, ever had recourse to cards as a means of looking into the future.
Clive ends the paragraph with another accurate statement: that cards – whether Tarot or playing cards – have over the years been consulted by many thousands of people.
Cards as we now know them were used in the fifteenth century. The study of cards is called Cartomancy, and the experiences of hundred of years have supplied conclusive proof of their divinatory meaning.
Tarot cards as we know them existed in the fifteenth century, although we don’t know for certain what they were used for in that era! But perhaps the Tarot is not what Clive is writing about. His article is concerned with playing cards. These existed in the fourteenth century, as attested by an entry in the accounts of the royal Treasurer of France, Claude Poupart, for February 1392. It is possible also that what were once called French suits – Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades – had been adopted by that date in place of the Italian suits – Cups, Wands/Batons, Coins and Swords.
What are we to make of the second sentence of this paragraph? Is Clive suggesting that it has been proved that each individual card has its own unique divinatory meaning? Or does he intend us to understand only that the pack of cards, whether playing cards or Tarot cards, has, over the centuries, proved a reliable means of foretelling the future? I suspect the latter is the correct interpretation as in Clive’s day there were several competing sets of divinatory meanings for the minor arcana cards as well as those of the everyday playing card deck.
Josephine was told by the cards that she would one day occupy a throne and also lose it.
The famed French cartomancer, Mlle Le Normand, records this incident in her autobiography. There is no corroboration of the event from any other source, unfortunately.
Is cartomancy always successful, in its predictions? By no means. Side by side with truth there are errors. But a lot depends upon the correct reading of the cards, and such influences as psychology, intuition, and physical conditions will account for wrong interpretations.
In this paragraph, the author addresses a topic largely ignored by commentators on cartomancy: the possibility of a reader making incorrect pronouncements concerning a querent’s future trends and possibilities. He also touches on the reasons why the interpretation of a spread may be inaccurate: false intuition, the reader’s own psychology, or her physical state at the time of the reading may all play their part. A strong sense on the reader’s part that ‘everything is going to be alright’ may lead her to overemphasize the role played in the reading by the 10 of Cups while at the same time playing down the significance of The Hanged Man as the final card in the layout (probably insisting that Trump 12 ‘means you see things from a different point of view’). The reader who identifies too closely with the situation the querent is in, possibly due to the fact that she has been in a similar one herself, can sometimes project what happened to her onto the cards. If she lost money through her investments, she may tell the querent that the shares he has bought will surely drop in value based on finding the 2 of Pentacles and the 4 of Pentacles reversed among the cards in the spread. Also, feelings of physical discomfort – anything from unrecognized indigestion to backache – can be misinterpreted as intuition or gut-reaction, leading the cartomancer to take a gloomier view of the run of cards laid out before her than need be.
If, however, the cards may not definitely tell us the future it must be admitted that they can give us warnings. Extra care can then be taken if trouble or peril is foretold. Let us briefly give the meanings of individual cards.
Now two equally important points are raised. The first is that the cards do not so much predict what must happen as reveal the trends playing upon the querent at the time the reading is given. As Clive explains: “Extra care can be taken if trouble is foretold,” that being the second important point, namely that the querent is not the victim of fate, but on learning that an obstacle lies ahead, may take steps to overcome it or detour around it.
SUITS
Hearts relate to family matters, friendship, and love.
Diamonds deal with business, journeys, and messages.
Spades denote sorrows, loss, and suffering.
Clubs refer to money matters.
These playing card suit meanings do not exactly parallel those of the Tarot’s minor arcana. I mean that it is customary to equate Diamonds with Pentacles (or Coins), and thus have the suit relate to finances and fiscal matters, and to equate Clubs with Wands (or Rods), thereby aligning the suit with business affairs, communications, and travel. As it happens, Clive reports matters faithfully, for there was (and for all I know still is) an accepted tradition in the world of playing card divination of having Clubs relate to money and Diamonds to business. This truth lies behind a squabble we will later encounter in which some authorities aver that Clubs correspond to Pentacles and Diamonds to Wands (because, so far as some lists of divinatory meanings are concerned, they do) while other authorities insist, stressing the symbolic affinities, that Clubs must be related to Wands and Pentacles to Diamonds. Both views are right, each from its perspective.
No such argument exists with regard to Hearts and Spades. Playing card Hearts correspond to the Tarot’s Cups, and to love and affection and domestic matters; Spades correspond to Swords, and to loss, anxiety, and suffering.
There are several methods of reading the cards, but this one is considered the most usual adopted. Shuffle and ask the client to cut cards with the left hand. Spread the whole pack fanwise and face downwards, and let the client draw with his left hand thirteen cards which are handed over. Then you take them in the same order and gathering the remaining nineteen cards into a pack, put them on one side and spread the thirteen drawn cards fanwise and face upwards. Next find the card of the client, which, if he is a fair man is the King of Hearts, if a dark man the King of Clubs, the Queen of Clubs for a dark woman, and Queen of Hearts for a fair woman, and Queen of Spades for a widow. If none of these cards is present, take a seven card corresponding to one of the above cards.
It seems to have been the habit, in certain quarters, for the card reader to shuffle the deck and then have the querent cut the cards. We shall meet this procedure again in future articles.
The cards that will go to form the layout are chosen at random by the querent from the pack spread out fanwise before him. Thirteen cards are selected by the querent using his left hand. For persons who are right-handed, the right hand was associated with the conscious mind, the left hand with the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind was considered to be more closely in touch with the unseen world than the conscious mind. Clive’s instructions should be adjusted where the querent is left-handed.
Thirteen plus nineteen is thirty-two. In the method outlined here only thirty-two cards are used. Clive explains this point later in the article.
One of the court cards is taken to represent the querent. This card is known as the Significator. Hearts indicate fair people, Clubs dark people, with the King and Queen of Spades representing a widower and widow respectively. If the appropriate court card is not to be found among the thirteen cards drawn, Clive directs that the 7 of Hearts be taken to denote a fair querent, the 7 of Clubs a dark querent.
After this, count in fives starting from the client, and taking care that each new starting point will be the fifth card counting from the preceding start, so that in reality there shall be only three cards in each space. Each of the cards so arrived at is read, i.e., its meaning is given. All the cards are therefore interpreted.
The cards are not read in the order they were set down. The card reader commences with the Significator and reads every fifth card therefrom. By this means indeed all thirteen cards will be incorporated into the delineation.
Complications of this kind abound during this period. In part, they are intended to concentrate the mind of the cartomancer on the reading, though they are as likely to be a fad or fashion, for such things are hardly ever resorted to today.
The client then draws five further cards from the remaining nineteen in the pack, and with these, covers those five cards in the fan as to which he wants more information. Then take the cards of the fan two by two, one from each end, and read them in conjunction. One card, the middle one, remains, as to which nothing is said.
Five more cards are drawn and they are laid over the five cards among the originally selected thirteen that the querent would like to know more about. Let us imagine that the Ace of Diamonds has appeared in the reading. Its meaning is a letter. But what kind of a letter and from whom? Another card is chosen to shed more light on the matter. If it is the 8 of Swords, the letter contains bad news; if it is the 10 of Diamonds, the letter concerns a journey; if the King of Spades, it is from a lawyer.
Next, the thirteen cards originally drawn are read as six pairs; the first and thirteenth card are taken together, the second and the twelfth, the third and eleventh, until only one card, the seventh, remains, which is assigned no significance.
The convolutions of reading a spread by counting off a certain number from one card to the next and then pairing the cards from either end of the layout is reminiscent of a procedure outlined in the Golden Dawn’s handbook of Tarot lore known as Book T. If anyone can tell me whether the author of Book T borrowed the technique from the cartomancers or whether it seeped into cartomantic practice via the intervention of G.D. initiates, I would be greatly indebted to the informant.
The eighteen cards are shuffled and stacked in three packs, the 1st card forming the base of the 1st pack, the 2nd the base of the 2nd pack, and so on. The client chooses one pack for himself, one for his house, and one for his surprise. Taking up each pack and spreading it fanwise, the cards are again read in relation to their new positions, and the client thus obtains about himself, his house, and his unknown destiny (the surprise pack) the details for which he wished.
To the thirteen cards originally drawn are now added the five cards subsequently chosen. All eighteen are shuffled together and dealt out into three packs. The querent is allowed to name these three packs as he pleases. One is named for himself, one for his house (presumably his domestic situation), with the third being dubbed Surprise. The cards of each pack are read in turn. The first will yield information about the querent, his personality, goals in life, and such like. The second relates to his home or family circumstances. The third describes the unknown; events good or bad coming his way that he has never in his wildest dreams contemplated happening to him. Clive’s last words intimate that the querent was instructed to isolate some specific aspect of his life, an area he was dubious or had misgivings about one presumes, and to request – silently it would seem – that the cards cast light thereon.
Here briefly are the meanings of the various cards:-
I have added gender to the list where I thought that to do so aided comprehension of a card’s meaning. There are too many dark young men. The asterisk (added by me) is there to highlight the fact that the King of Clubs was probably meant to denote a dark rich man, symbolically, if in no other sense, the partner of the Queen of Clubs’ dark rich woman.
Cards can only be read with these limited meanings as accorded by tradition. To sum up, the following suits denote:
The meanings are indeed exceedingly limited. They do, however, cover all the major occurrences to be met with in life – mourning (9 Spades), travel (10 Diamonds), marriage (9 Clubs), and so forth. It is likely that further back in time, these sparse meanings were the forerunners of delineations such as those supplied by Sepharial in his The Art of Card Fortune Telling; for by the 1930s one branch of Tarot reading had the 9 of Swords representing sadness and disillusion and the 10 of Rods denoting travel (remember that at some point, and in certain circles, the meanings of the Diamond suit attached themselves to the Rod or Wand cards of the Tarot). My point is that in all probability Clive’s meanings are but the tip of the iceberg; that other card readers may have worked with a richer, more detailed cartomantic vocabulary.
Hearts:- Joy, pleasure, happiness.
Diamonds:- Are less happy omens, denote unpleasant letters.
Spades:- Are bad.
Clubs:- Speak of money and business.
The way Clive sets out the suits – always in the order given above: Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs – obscures the fact that they constitute a hierarchy of beneficence. If we reorder them as Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades, we find that Hearts are the most fortunate suit, with Clubs slightly less fortunate, Diamonds bordering on the ominous, observing a kind of armed neutrality, and Swords possessed of downright negative implications.
The meanings of cards placed in groups according to their number also give the following indications:
Though out of fashion today, this method of totting up how many of a certain type of card appear in a spread and assigning meanings to the combinations was at one time popular among commentators on cartomancy, if not among actual cartomancers; several authors furnish their readers with lists similar to that supplied by Clive. Not that the experts often agreed among themselves as to what significance these combinations should carry.
There are other types of cards besides playing cards used in cartomancy, of which the best known is Tarot. A pack of Tarot consists of 78 cards, 22 being called major arcana, and 56 minor arcana, divided into four series, each having its own color called rods, cups, swords, and pence.
The author ends with a brief nod in the direction of the Tarot. If one didn’t know what the Tarot was before reading his account, one would be little the wiser after having done so.
This fascinating study of the cards is growing in popularity these days, like other Occult sciences such as astrology, oniromancy, graphology, and palmistry.
Given that this article was written in 1946, the statement is probably accurate. With the end of hostilities, people had more free time to devote to such activities as psychical research and various forms of divination.
[Prediction (UK), May 1946]
