Last week we kicked off our series on playing card cartomancy. In this post we’re going to be exploring the first foundational element in cartomantic divination: color.
Throughout this series, I’m going to be assuming a standard set of American playing cards, such as those made by Bicycle. Such a deck has fifty-four cards (thirteen each in four suits, plus two jokers). This deck can be divided into cards of two colors: red (hearts and diamonds), and black (clubs and spades).
As a rule of thumb, red cards are generally positive or affirmative, while black cards are generally negative. There are some nuances to this as we get into meanings of specific cards, but when starting it’s usually safe to assume that red cards are the “good” ones and black cards are the “bad” ones.
This gives us an immediate sense of the overall energy of the reading, depending on the balance of red cards and black cards. Spreads where a lot of red cards come up indicate things generally going smoothly, and the desired outcomes being achieved. Conversely, spreads where a lot of black cards come up indicate challenges, failures, and setbacks. If there is a shift from one energy to the other throughout a reading, that can give some clues about the direction things are trending.
All of which is pretty abstract, let’s make it more concrete with a simple card spread: a three-card yes/no reading. While you theoretically can do yes/no readings with a single card, just going off the color (red being “yes” and black being “no”), it’s so stark and prone to misinterpretation that I don’t much like doing it. A three-card reading allows for a lot more nuance to emerge, and while it’s a very simple spread, it’s still one I use frequently.
The first thing to consider in this reading is how to frame your question. I have a whole post on how to effectively frame questions for divination, but the piece that’s most relevant here is phrasing your questions such that an affirmative response is a positive outcome. If I ask a question like “am I going to lose my job?” and I get a lot of red cards, what does that mean? Is that an affirmative response, that I am in fact going to lose my job? Or is that signaling a positive outcome, that my job is safe for now? The ambiguity can be hard to interpret. If instead we were to phrase the question as “am I still going to have this job in a year?” the answer becomes much clearer: an affirmative response is a positive outcome, and vice versa.
With that in mind, we take our deck, contemplate our question, and shuffle as desired. Some people prefer to shuffle a set number of times, to keep things as consistent as possible for every reading. Others shuffle until their intuition signals them to stop. Experiment with both, to see which you prefer. Now deal out three cards, face-up.
With three cards, there are four possible outcomes: all red, all black, or split with a majority in one direction or the other. If all three cards are red, the answer is a clear, unequivocal positive. If all three cards are black, the answer is a clear, unequivocal negative. Most results, however, will be mixed. Majority red with a black card indicates “probably”; it’s not a sure bet, or there’s room for improvement, but it’s likely to resolve favorably. Majority black with a red card indicates “probably not”; it’s in the realm of possibility, but unlikely on the current trajectory. Both these results are interesting, because they show us places where our own efforts have room to make a difference in the outcome.
Moreover, these same three cards can be read as a story. The order of the colors can give us some clues about how the answer will unfold.
| 🔴🔴🔴 | An unqualified positive |
| 🔴🔴⚫ | A pyrrhic victory, what looks like a success can turn sour at the end |
| 🔴⚫🔴 | A major setback, but one that can be recovered from |
| ⚫🔴🔴 | A rocky start that gets turned around and put back on track |
| ⚫⚫🔴 | A long, hard road – but with the potential of a light at the end of the tunnel |
| ⚫🔴⚫ | A false hope, quickly dashed |
| 🔴⚫⚫ | A promising start goes off the rails |
| ⚫⚫⚫ | An unqualified negative |
Spend some time playing with color before moving on. Practice some simple, three-card yes/no readings, where all you’re looking at is the color of the cards that come up. What information can you glean from that? What information are you still lacking?
Next week we’ll start to fill in some of the surrounding detail by exploring the meanings of the four suits.
This post is part of a series on playing card cartomancy. You can find the next post here.
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