Last week we covered the meanings of the suits in playing card cartomancy. This week we’re going to dive into the imagery of specific cards, starting with the Aces. In a very broad sense, we can think of the numeric cards as having a story arc that unfolds within their respective suit. This starts as a first inception in the Ace, and matures through result and aftermath in the Nine and Ten.
Using this idea, we can think of all the Aces as the “seeds” of their respective suits. They’re the conception or driving impulse from which the entirety of their suit flows. They are the critical linchpins that kick off the whole arc. Let’s look at them one at a time:
Ace of Diamonds: The Seed of Power – “Opportunity”
Given that the whole suit of diamonds is about power and resources, the Ace of Diamonds is the inception of that theme. While it hasn’t yet matured into a substantive power, it is the opportunity to begin building an empire. Power and resources tend to snowball; the more you have, the more opportunities you have to garner more. The Ace of Diamonds can be thought of as the initial spark that kicks off that positive feedback loop; the “seed capital” for future accumulation of resources.
The imagery Hutcheson associates with the Ace of Diamonds is a coin or a letter. We can think of these as concrete representations of different types of opportunity. The coin is a small windfall, which can be leveraged into future wealth; the letter carries a piece of critical information that opens doors for future knowledge. We might also include seeds for other types of power: an invitation that opens the door to social mobility, or an initiation that confers spiritual access.
More generally this is a card about opportunities presenting themselves to you. You may not be able to, or even want to, capitalize on every opportunity – but the options are there. The roads are open.
Ace of Clubs: The Seed of Labor – “Planning”
The suit of clubs is all about labor, and planning is the inception of that. It’s where you set your goals, and start to chart out what the path looks like to get from where you are to where you want to be.
Hutcheson associates the Ace of Clubs with imagery of a cave, or solitude. I think that highlights an important aspect of this card. It’s not (yet) about collaborative planning, or cooperation with others. It’s about withdrawal and introspection to figure out for yourself what it is you’re trying to achieve. The cave, in this sense, is the hermit’s retreat, which removes exterior distractions and enables deeper contemplation.
I loosely associate the Ace of Clubs with the Hermit card in the tarot. It has a similar feeling of withdrawal and introspection, that enables one to emerge with a clearer direction. It lays the foundation for future efforts.
Ace of Hearts: The Seed of Intimacy – “Desire”
Hutcheson associates the Ace of Hearts with an infatuation, a kiss, and – somewhat contradictorily – loneliness. This seeming contradiction resolves when we think of the Ace of Hearts as the impulse that compels us to seek out intimacy. That can be externally motivated: an infatuation or a kiss with a specific person, which prompts us to pursue a relationship. It can also be internally motivated: a general feeling of loneliness or isolation that prompts us to seek out the companionship of others.
The keyword I associate with the Ace of Hearts is “desire.” Desire is really the seed of intimacy in all its forms, the grain of sand around which the pearl of a relationship is built. Again, the intimacy described in the suit of hearts can be romantic, platonic, or familial, but in all of those cases it is founded on the desire for a closer relationship.
Ace of Spades: The Seed of Strife – “Death”
Spades is a suit of strife, and the Ace is about the underpinning motivation for that strife: fear of the unknown. Like the Death card in tarot, the Ace of Spades can represent a literal, physical death, or a more symbolic “death of the status quo” enacted through sudden, dramatic change.
There is an implicit or explicit threat of violence underpinning all forms of strife: threat of death, or threat of dramatic change of circumstances. The reason situations of strife have such a visceral hold over us is because they threaten the stability of our established order. They compel us to fight to preserve what we have, lest it be ripped from us and we be tipped into the chaos of the unknown. Without that fear, there is no reason to engage in the struggle implied by strife. Or, to put it in Buddhist terms, attachment is the root of pain.
The Ace of Spades represents the death of those things we have attachments to, be they people, systems, or modes of being.
Thus we can see all four Aces laying the groundwork for their respective suits. They plant the seeds that will mature in later cards into various expressions of their suit-archetype.
This post is part of a series on playing card cartomancy. You can find the next post here.
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