Last week we talked about the importance of color in playing card cartomancy. This week we’re getting more specific with an examination of the suits.
In the playing card deck we are discussing there are four different suits: diamonds (♦️), clubs (♣️), hearts (♥️), and spades (♠️). For readers coming from a tarot background, it can be tempting to try to map these onto the tarot suits – wands, pentacles, cups, and swords. Resist this temptation. While there are some overlaps, such a reductive mapping can also lead you pretty far astray.
Let’s look at the playing card suits on their own terms:
Diamonds – The Suit of Power
The keyword I generally associate with diamonds is “power,” but an equally good one might be “resources.” All the cards within the suit of diamonds relate to the assets you have at your disposal to shape the world to your will.
Oftentimes this means material resources – namely money – but that isn’t always the case. Information can be a form of power. As can reputation, influence, or social capital. For folks interested in the occult, magical power can also come into play here.
Diamonds are, broadly speaking, a pretty positive suit. They’re about having the tools you need to achieve your ends. Readings where a lot of diamonds come up indicate having the assets you need to get where you want to go.
Clubs – The Suit of Labor
Where diamonds are about assets, clubs are about work. The keyword I associate with clubs is “labor.” They’re predominantly about how you take your opportunities and turn them into something tangible; how you get from point A to point B.
Note that while clubs are a black suit, they are not necessarily negative. There can be something deeply rewarding about hard work that leaves you mentally and physically exhausted. There is a satisfaction that comes from looking at the results of a job well done, and knowing that you earned it.
That said, readings where a lot of clubs come up indicate things aren’t coming easily. You may still achieve your goals, but be prepared to put in the elbow grease to get there. Don’t look for success to fall into your lap undeserved.
Hearts – The Suit of Intimacy
The keyword I associate with the suit of hearts is “intimacy,” it’s a suit mostly relating to interpersonal relationships. Many times this refers to romantic or sexual intimacy (given that these are some of the most common questions people divine on), but it doesn’t have to. Platonic friendships involve intimacy. Familial relationships involve intimacy. The suit of hearts involves building mutual trust.
Readings where a lot of hearts come up speak to strong interpersonal relationships. Being supported by lovers, friends, and peers in achieving your goals, or supporting them in turn. Hearts indicate a need for trust and collaboration to reach success. “It takes a village” and all that.
Spades – The Suit of Strife
Tarot doesn’t really have a “bad” suit – playing cards kind of do. Nearly every card in the suit of spades relates to strife, conflict, or their aftermath. Readings where a lot of spades come up indicate conflict, division, and ill fortune. They are, by their nature, disharmonious.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that strife is not universally negative. Some battles need to be fought. Sticking up for yourself and asserting your rights may be disharmonious, but it is also worthwhile. If you find yourself in an abusive or exploitative situation, conflict is often needed to reestablish healthy boundaries. Sometimes the right answer is to cut away a gangrenous piece to save the whole.
Those cases notwithstanding, if you do a reading where you turn up a lot of spades, you’re about to go through some shit. Sometimes the conflict is necessary, but you’re almost certainly not going to enjoy it.
Alright, so we have a broad understanding of the meanings of the suits themselves. How does that get interpreted in practice? Let’s look again at our three-card, yes/no reading from last time. While there are more possible combinations than I want to fully enumerate, we can walk through some illustrative cases.
| ♦️♦️♦️ | This is a positive response, and also an auspicious reading generally – particularly in financial matters. It indicates an overall quality of wealth and power, making success easy to achieve. |
| ♣️♣️♣️ | This is a negative response, but the suit gives us a hint as to why. It’s not so much about impossibility as about effort. There would be so much labor involved as to make the goal not worth it, or impractically difficult to attain. |
| ♥️♥️♥️ | This is a positive response, and a particularly auspicious reading when it comes to love and relationships. It indicates a flow of untempered intimacy. |
| ♠️♠️♠️ | This is a negative response, and a particularly inauspicious one. It indicates troubles heaped on troubles, or an effort plagued by a series of conflicts. |
| ♥️♣️♦️ | This is a qualified positive response: “probably yes.” It indicates a strong start to the situation, particularly one relies on cooperation or relationships. This is followed by a setback, where something turns out to be much more work than anticipated. This setback can be successfully navigated, and success achieved in the end. |
| ♦️♠️♥️ | While the color pattern is the same as the previous example, the nature of the story is different. Here we see a strong, well-resourced start. Then a setback encountered due to external misfortune or strife in a key relationship. Finally the situation is resolved through greater trust and collaboration; relationships forged by coming together in the face of crisis. |
| ♦️♠️♣️ | This is a qualified negative response: “probably no.” It indicates a strong start with ample resources, followed by a breakdown in coordination or cooperation. This breakdown results in significant additional labor, wasted effort, or people pulling in different directions. |
| ♣️♣️♥️ | This is also a qualified negative response, following the “light at the end of the tunnel” pattern. It indicates success may be possible, but it will be a long, grueling slog to get there. Is the payoff worth the work required? |
From these patterns we can start to extrapolate, spinning stories told by the interplay of suits. Again, spend some time playing with three-card readings. How does the addition of suit change the message? What new clarity do we get about the nature of the positive and negative trends?
Next week we’re going to start diving into the meanings and imagery of specific cards. I’m planning to go number by number, starting with the aces. I’ll walk through what a number signifies generally, and how that projects down into each specific suit. Having a solid understanding of the interplay between number and suit will make learning the imagery specific to each card much quicker.
This post is part of a series on playing card cartomancy. You can find the next post here.
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