Last week we talked about the divinatory meaning of the fours in a deck of playing cards, which are all variations on the theme of stasis. This week we’re talking about the fives.
Up until now, the numerology informing our interpretations of the pip cards has been pretty standard. It’s not identical to the meanings of numbers in other systems, but it’s at least close. For the fives, sixes, and sevens, this pattern breaks down. The meanings ascribed to these numbers are pretty unique to playing card divination.
The fives all take the energies of their respective suits and project them into the body. The best explanation I’ve heard for this is that it comes from Christian theology: that the number five relates to the five wounds on the body of Christ. Regardless of the origin, we can think of fives as all being related to the physical body in some way.
Five of Diamonds: The Embodiment of Power – “Luck”
What do power and resources look like when projected into the body? This one is sort of obscure. Hutcheson lists the imagery of the Five of Diamonds as “good luck” and “laughter.” To be honest, for a long time I didn’t see the link; I just memorized that imagery and moved on. The breakthrough for me centered on the idea of this card as relating to good luck.
In Norse cosmology, a person was composed of many aspects. It wasn’t a simple division of body and soul, there were different conceptions tied to the individual. One of these concepts was the hamingja – approximately translated as “luck.” The hamingja related to a person’s fate, and encompassed their good fortune, prosperity, social standing, and success-bringing power. Having a person of strong hamingja along was likely to bring success to your ventures.
The idea of hamingja straddled the line between facet of the self and guardian spirit. On the one hand it was intrinsically tied to the individual. On the other, there are accounts of people lending their hamingja to others temporarily, or bequeathing it to a family member upon their death.
For me this idea captures the essence of the Five of Diamonds very well. It’s not about charisma, precisely, but about a presence or force of personality that tends to bring success to all your endeavors. It leads to good fortune, it leads to laughter, but it’s not precisely either one.
Five of Clubs: The Embodiment of Labor – “Health”
Where the Five of Diamonds projects power into the body, the Five of Clubs projects labor. There is a fascinating reciprocal relationship between health and hard labor. On the one hand, having a healthy body gives you the ability to be more effective at manual labor. You are able to use your body to apply effort in a sustained way. Conversely, physical exercise is massively beneficial for both physical and mental health. The scientific consensus is overwhelming that the benefits of regular exercise outweigh those of any medication ever invented, for promoting, prolonging, and preserving health.
Hutcheson also associates this card with imagery of a barn. To my mind, this is partly because barns are usually found on farms, where manual labor is very important. And partly because barns are tools for the protection and preservation of animals, who in turn will likely nourish the farmer. Again a reciprocal relationship between labor and health.
Five of Hearts: The Embodiment of Intimacy – “Fertility”
The Five of Hearts takes the intimacy inherent in its suit and projects it inward, into the body. Fertility is a clear example of this. Conception is the result of an intimate act, as well as generating new life within the body that must be nurtured and grown until it can exist on its own. There is little more intimate than the bond between mother and child, particularly before birth when they are nourished by the same breath and blood.
In addition to fertility, Hutcheson also links the Five of Hearts to imagery of a chapel, or a bed. I think this is because these are places where we carry out the small, intimate rituals related to the progression of a body through life. Birth and christening, marriage and the consummation thereof, death and funerary rites. Historically, the chapel and the bed were where our bodies were ushered through points of major transition.
Five of Spades: The Embodiment of Strife – “Illness”
When projected into the body, strife and trouble shows up as illness. In the case of a traumatic injury, it is physical violence that has carried past the barrier of the skin to impact the internal machinery of the body. In the case of infection it is a very literal battle within the body, waged between the cells of the immune system and the invading organism. Where the Five of Clubs is about good health, the Five of Spades is about a body in disharmony or dysfunction.
Taken to the extreme, injury and illness result in the death of the body, which can also be a meaning of the Five of Spades. It’s not about the transformative power of death – which is captured in the Ace of Spades – nor about the processing of death – which will show up when we get to the Nine. The Five of Spades is about the body, and in the context of death refers specifically to a corpse; it’s the physical shell left behind when the processes of life have been extinguished.
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