Before I begin my foray into talking about playing card cartomancy, I must give a huge amount of credit and thanks to Ana Cortez and her Black Ace Academy of Cartomancy which I strongly encourage you to check out if this subject is of interest. All of my ideas are shaped around the light she has shined on the cards.
Playing cards are everywhere, and have been around practically forever. They are so ingrained into our culture that we hardly spend a moment thinking about their meaning and role in so many aspects of modern society. While divination is more commonly performed with a Tarot deck or more recently a vast variety of Oracle decks designed for that purpose, the secret meaning of playing cards is hiding all around us in plain sight. When I discovered Ana's work I felt like I had recognized something that I always knew but had forgotten. A rediscovered magical wisdom.
Finding Meaning in the Cards
Playing cards have a number of obvious attributes that create a virtually infinite field of combinations. We have the 4 suits, the rank which may be a number 1 to 10 or a position in a royal court, and in most decks the 2 colors red and black. For this entry I will avoid going deeply into the details of all the other associations that can be made between the cards, their classifications, their symmetries and the reality of the world we live in. Suffice it to say, Ana's work reveals intriguing insights.
While the references above are the preeminent modern work on the subject and more than enough to facilitate a variety of divinatory uses, there are always more secrets to be gleaned. I plan to share some of my own explorations leveraging my interest in numerology, etymology, and other approaches that assume an inherent cryptomorphic (in this context, "concealing secret meaning") nature to everything. The key point here is that a cryptomorphic universe implies unlimited inclusivity.
Why Might it Work?
Explaining why things work is extremely important when trying to reproduce and control the mechanics involved in a process or reaction. Not understanding how it works does not necessarily invalidate its value. I have no objection to the tireless work to explain how reality functions in the pursuit of truth, or with any kind of positive intent including disarming exploitation. Sometimes what works for one person just works and there is no harm in letting be something that can help.
For compulsive skeptics, there is one aspect of divination, mysticism, and occult practices that is fully supported by modern science. Even if you choose to believe that these things are simply fantasy play, play is known to be beneficial. Finding new ways to imagine and reprocess information has well established benefits in many psychological practices, often without the need for conscious reasoning. Sorry, but belittling what you don't understand makes you cruel not superior.
Next time I will share thoughts on a core aspect of playing card interpretation, namely the association between suits and the concepts of the elements.