Date: 2015-10-19 04:00:00+00:00

THE CARTOMANCY WORKBOOK

A Beginner’s Guide to Fortune Telling with Playing Cards

Emily Peach

Copyright © Emily Peach 2015

Emily Peach has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

GETTING STARTED

USING THIS BOOK TO YOUR BEST ADVANTAGE

DIVISIONS AND ATTRIBUTIONS

THE SUIT OF CLUBS

BUILDING AND USING POSITIONAL SPREADS

THE SUIT OF HEARTS

BUILDING AND USING SEQUENTIAL SPREADS

THE SUIT OF SPADES

MAJORITIES AND COMBINATIONS

THE SUIT OF DIAMONDS

MORE ABOUT COURT CARDS

THE EXPERIMENT

WHAT NEXT

GETTING STARTED

Listed below in order of priority are the things you will need to work with this book, together with a brief explanation of their uses.  The only urgent item is the first one on the list, but you should try to get hold of the others as soon as you can, because you will need them to protect your cards properly.

A Deck of Playing Cards

There are a lot of attractive decks to choose from, but try to avoid buying plastic-coated cards.  They last longer, but they are very slippery, and can be difficult to shuffle safely.  You are, in any event, going to have to ‘mark’ your cards and marking plastic cards satisfactorily is next door to impossible.

A Notebook

The Cartomancy Workbook asks that you do quite a lot of writing and/or sketching, and as you should keep all your notes for future reference – and will probably want to add to them as time goes by – you will need a sturdy ‘specific purpose’ notebook.

A Silk Scarf

All physical objects collect ‘impressions’ or ‘vibrations’ from their surroundings and Playing Cards are no exception.  It is possible to ‘read’ those impressions and come up with an accurate description of past events, but whilst that is very interesting, you obviously do not want past impressions attaching themselves to your cards and perhaps ‘colouring’ your readings.  Silk rejects such impressions; the scarf will keep your cards clean of them and ensure that your readings are untainted, and therefore as accurate as possible.  Any silk scarf will do but it must be kept for this purpose and this purpose only.  Do not buy anything you would be tempted to wear!

A Wooden Box

When you have wrapped your cards in their scarf, cards and scarf should be kept in a wooden box when they are not in use.  The box serves very much the same purpose as the scarf, and wood is the material of choice for much the same reasons.  It, too, will protect your cards from ‘impressions’ – and from prying eyes and fingers, and unnecessary physical wear and tear and accident.

A Cloth to Work On

Ideally, this, too, should be silk.  You will be using it to cover any surface on which you intend to lay out your cards, and in many cases you will have no idea where that surface has been, or what it has been used for, or by whom – and I think in particular of the furniture provided for use at psychic fairs, charitable functions and church fêtes.  It is no use wrapping and boxing your cards carefully if you then lay them out on an unsuitable surface.  If possible, find (or make) a thick black silk cloth – and add a heavy fringe.  Clients tend to lean on the cloth, and silk tends to slide.  The fringe will help to weight the cloth, and prevent your readings drifting away from you toward the other side of the table, or – worse! – sliding off the table altogether.

‘Breaking in’ Your Deck

Immediately you have bought your Deck, begin to ‘break it in’.  Wrap it in its scarf and carry it with you everywhere for a month or so.  Sleep with it under your pillow, and handle it as much as you possibly can.  This will serve to ‘activate’ you to your Deck and vice versa, and will help you to become accustomed to the feel of your cards.  Never let anyone play with your Deck.  It is very personal to you despite the fact that many other people own one just like it.  Allowing other people to handle your cards or play games with them will destroy all the protective qualities of your scarf and box and undo all your ‘activation’ work.

USING THIS BOOK TO YOUR BEST ADVANTAGE

This book is designed to enable you to read playing cards as quickly as possible.  Each chapter consists of a mini-lecture followed by one or more tasks – and as no one likes to be asked to do anything without knowing why, this chapter sets out all of the things you are going to be asked to do, and explains why it is in your best interests to do them.

The first and most important thing to understand, though, is that the power to make your cards anything other than exactly what they appear to be lies inside you and nowhere else.

In fact, although this chapter explains quite a lot about your Deck and what you are going to need to do to it and with it in the near future in order to learn to read it accurately, it is really more about you than anything else.

THINGS YOU WILL BE ASKED TO DO

Most of the accurate information a reader provides is purely intuitive, but the Deck has divisions and attributions that – together with the two meanings allocated to each individual card – help to focus and direct the reader’s intuition.  We shall be dealing with these divisions and attributions in the next chapter, and I am afraid there is no alternative to learning them by rote.

1. Take the time to get to grips with the divisions and attributions of your Deck.

It is really important to learn this basic information very thoroughly.  Intuition is a faculty of the unconscious mind.  The unconscious mind is knowledgeable in a completely different and far more powerful way than the conscious mind, has access to sources of information that are unavailable to the conscious mind, and knows more about life, the universe and everything than anyone is ever consciously aware of – but it does have a tendency to drift like a rudderless boat unless it is directed into a specific area and made to focus upon that area to the exclusion of everything else.  Learning the divisions and attributions of your Deck will help make that happen.

2. Mark Your Cards

The standard playing card deck has been used to tell fortunes for centuries, but the absence of pictures on most of the cards – and the fact that none of them have any orientation despite the fact that each card has two meanings – has always made learning to use it unnecessarily onerous and difficult for beginners.  For this reason you will be asked at the end of this chapter to ‘mark’ your cards so as to impose an orientation on them and provide yourself with an ‘extra’ helpful Deck division.

The easiest way to ‘mark’ your cards is to draw a small arrow on the right hand side of each of the cards.  If you do this carefully and use red or black ink appropriately – red for Diamonds and Hearts and Black for Spades and Clubs – very few people will ever notice that your cards differ in any way from a regular Deck.

3. Relate card orientation to the meanings of the cards.

In this book the two meanings associated with each card are referred to as being Dignified and Ill-Dignified.  For example:

The Two of Clubs

Dignified: Job related benefits, i.e. company cars, expense accounts, etc.

Ill-Dignified: Petty theft, kick backs, bribes and ‘sweeteners’.

When the top of the arrow you have used to ‘mark your cards is pointing upward, the card will be considered to be Dignified and the Dignified meaning will apply.

When the tip of your ‘marking’ arrow is pointing downward the card will be considered to be Ill-Dignified and its Ill-Dignified meaning will apply.

Please note that the Ill-Dignified orientation of a card does not always indicate that the card is ‘bad news’ – although that will sometimes be the case.  Orientation exists solely to help focus the attention of the reader’s unconscious mind.  We shall be talking about Dignity and the importance of preserving it when reading the cards in later chapters.

4. Learn the dates applicable to each Astrological sign.

You will sometimes need to choose a card to represent the person you are reading for, and you will always need to be able to identify the card that represents your Querent if and when it appears randomly when the cards are dealt.  Usually this is done by using the Signs of the Zodiac that are attributed to specific cards.  Some people do not know their Astrological Sign – which means, of course, that you will need to be able to identify it from their date of birth.

5. Learn the physical characteristics attributed to specific cards.

Sometimes you will not be able to choose a card to represent a person using the standard western astrological system; some people are unfamiliar with that system and many people who enquire about their friends or acquaintances do not have the relevant information.  In that event you will need to use physical characteristics to choose an appropriate card.  This is not a particularly efficient way of proceeding – these attributions were allocated to the cards centuries ago by European people to represent other European people – but it is better than nothing!

6. Learn the meanings of the cards.

Learning the meanings of the cards as quickly and easily as possible involves following a five step system.  The first step is to ‘Look, Listen, and Write’.  The remaining four steps ask that you:

- Use Fantasy Plays;

- Sketch card layouts and do practice readings;

- Go through a ‘Look, Recall, and Repeat’ process, and

- Combine all of the above three steps.

This means that each of the four sections of the Deck will likely take up several hours of your time over a period of at least seven days – but, and for reasons that will become clear shortly, this will be time well spent.

ABOUT ‘LOOK, LISTEN, AND WRITE’

The easiest way to begin to learn anything is to use a ‘Look, Listen, and Write’ process – very much the same process you used when you were at school.  It is quite easy to simulate that ‘classroom’ situation by recording the meanings given in each chapter, and then playing them back to yourself.  Look at the card, listen to each of its two meanings, write down the meanings.

If you cannot or do not want to make recordings, look at the card, read each of the two meanings aloud, then write down the meanings.

Obviously, if you are reading out or listening to the Dignified meaning of a particular card, then the card you are working with should be Dignified, too, with its marking arrow pointing upwards.

As you will soon begin to appreciate, you are learning a new language.  It is therefore very important to attach the correct concept to the appropriate symbols that are going to represent that concept – material security and thrift to the figure 6, a red diamond, and an upward pointing red arrow, for example, from day one.

ABOUT FANTASY PLAYS

When you first begin to work with your cards, you may find that although you absorb the meanings of each card relatively quickly, it is difficult to relate one card to another.  The easiest way to get over this problem is to use ‘Fantasy Plays’ – in other words to try to relate the given meaning of one card to the given meaning of another by laying a series of cards out in a line and making up a story based on those cards.

Using Fantasy Plays will help the meanings to stick in your mind, and set your unconscious mind working for you so that, over a period, the simple meanings given in this book will change, deepen, and expand.

Your ‘stories’ will be very short in the beginning – and you will probably sound very hesitant at first – but as you go on you will find that you become more and more fluent and that, as more and more cards become available to you, you will begin to be able to make up quite interesting and involved little histories.  At that point, you will likely start to appreciate that those histories are no longer ‘made up stories’ at all, and that they in fact relate to you and your own situation, or to people you know and the things that are happening in their lives.

Always read out your interpretation of your Fantasy Play cards aloud.  It is important to get used to ‘speaking out’ fluently and confidently.  It is likely that your initial attempts at ‘reading aloud’ will be stilted and uncertain, but because your unconscious mind synthesises information and takes an overall view rather than concentrating on specific details as the conscious mind does, if you practice often you will soon find that you can read a line of cards smoothly and confidently, and that your stories are coherent and have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  The trick is to try not to feel self-conscious, or think consciously about what you are doing.  Just say whatever comes into your head, and go on saying it until you stop.

Best practice is to begin to Fantasy Play directly you have finished writing out the meanings of whichever cards you are working with and before you go on to the Practice Reading.

ABOUT THE PRACTICE READINGS

Every chapter is followed by one or more Practice Readings.  Like Fantasy Plays, Practice Readings will help you to remember the meanings of the cards and relate one meaning to another as well as setting your unconscious mind to work for you.  Moreover, they will also help you to learn to shuffle and lay out the cards in various patterns quickly, confidently, and professionally, and begin to understand how and why those patterns are constructed as they are.

Eventually, you will be able to design such patterns for yourself.  In the meantime, sketching card layouts will allow you to build up a useful portfolio and help you to remember specific patterns and what they are used for.

Again, best practice is to read out your interpretation of the cards aloud.

ABOUT ‘LOOK, RECALL, AND REPEAT’

Developing intuition is simply a matter of accessing and harnessing the power of your unconscious mind – which means understanding something about how your unconscious mind works.

As I remarked at the beginning of this chapter, the unconscious mind is knowledgeable in a completely different and far more powerful way than the conscious mind, has access to sources of information that are unavailable to the conscious mind, and knows more about life, the universe and everything than anyone is ever consciously aware of.  It is also capable of synthesizing everything it knows – but it does not use language.

The unconscious mind receives information from the conscious mind solely by way of images and feelings.  When your unconscious mind wants to communicate information to your conscious mind, it naturally uses images and feelings with which you are very familiar, but – either because the images are used purely symbolically, or because your conscious mind would not normally associate the ideas intended to be conveyed with the images used – its messages are often baffling or incomprehensible.  The first step toward developing your intuition is therefore to foster a mutual understanding between your conscious and unconscious minds by providing them with a common ‘picture’ language.

You will begin to develop that common language automatically immediately you start to ‘Look, Listen and Write’, because words cause pictures to rise in the mind automatically – if you think of a cat or a car right now, for example, you will automatically cause a picture of a cat or a car to rise in your mind – but it is important to improve on those initial pictures, and make them clearer and more precise.

In order to do that you will need to try to remember something from your own experience – or something about someone else – that will remind you of a particular meaning, then draw a rough sketch of the salient features of the card – including the mark you have made to indicate its orientation – and write out or make a sketch of your personal memory alongside it.

For example: the dignified meaning of the Four of Diamonds is “examinations and assessments of ability”.  You might therefore recall a particular examination of your own when you are dealing with that card – a driving test, perhaps – and write out what you remember about it.  Afterwards you will need to ‘attach’ that memory to the dignified aspect of the card by looking at the card, recalling the experience, and repeating the given meaning.

It is very important to appreciate that the unconscious mind reacts much more slowly than the conscious mind, and that the key to using this method successfully is constant repetition.

You will need to go through the whole ‘Look, Recall, and Repeat’ process several times very slowly when you begin to work with your cards – looking, recalling and repeating, and looking, recalling and repeating again – to be sure of impressing your unconscious mind that, henceforth, this is going to mean that to all concerned.

Best practice is to deal with no more than two cards every evening before you go to bed, and to think about and visualise those two cards and their four meanings and attached memories before you go to sleep and periodically throughout the following day.

ABOUT COMBINING THE STEP

Best practice is to combine the ‘Look, Recall, and Repeat‘ process with a Fantasy Play or a Practice Reading, using all of the cards you are familiar with and have learned about, once every couple of days.  You will find that your Fantasy Plays and your Practice Readings improve as a result.  The basic meanings given in this book are very simple indeed.  However, if you go through the step by step process described here, you will find that those meanings change, deepen, expand, and become much more complex over time without your making any conscious effort to make that happen.  Meanings change in that way because the unconscious mind gradually attaches layer upon layer of meaning to the original concept and its associated images as it goes through the process of synthesizing everything it knows about or associates with those images.

THE ADVANTAGES OF USING THE STEP BY STEP SYSTEM

The five step system may appear to be a slow and onerous way to get to grips with the meanings of the cards, but if you persevere with it, you will find that the results will be worth all the time, the effort, and the waiting, because the two-way channel of communication thus created will function more and more efficiently over time – and will begin to operate in areas that have nothing to do with reading cards.  Playing card symbols will begin to figure in your dreams, come to mind when you are faced with a problem, or suddenly flash in and out of consciousness when you find yourself in tricky situations – and you will understand your dreams better, solve your problems faster, and be capable of coping with difficult situations or people more effectively because of it.

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TASK ONE – Learn the Vocabulary of your Chosen Field

Like every specialised subject, fortune telling has a vocabulary of its own – terms that are specific to it.  The specific vocabulary used in connection with this particular fortune telling tool is very small, but as it is used in connection with many other divinatory tools, it is worth committing it to memory:

- The act of reading a fortune telling tool is referred to as Divination.

- The meanings allocated to the cards are called Divinatory Meanings.

- The person for whom you will be reading the cards is called the Querent – somebody who enquires.

- The pattern in which the cards are dealt is called a Spread or Layout.

- The card that represents the Querent is called a Primary Significator – a card that stands for, or signifies, the Querent in a Spread.

- Secondary Significators can represent people other than the Querent, or an aspect of the Querent’s personality.  We shall be discussing Significators at some length as we go on.

TASK TWO – Mark Your Cards

Take your time when you do this, and be as careful as you possibly can.  It takes a long time to ‘wear out’ a Deck so completely that it becomes too thin or too ragged to be of any further service; you could be living with those marks for years!

TASK THREE – Copy or Print the Readers Check List

Every reading should follow a pattern so as to ensure that it runs smoothly.  On pages 15 and 16 you will find a Readers Check List.  Write out or print off a copy of the list and pin it up in a prominent position near your working area and go over it carefully before you begin the Practice Spreads.  The check list is a list of things you will always do at the start of every serious reading, and using it while you are working with this book will help you to make doing the right things habitual.

READERS CHECK LIST

1. Read the Instructions for the Spread very carefully.

2. Lay out your silk cloth over the surface on which you intend to read.

3. Shuffle the cards your will be using yourself.

4. Decide whether you will be reading for an absent Querent or otherwise.

5. If you are not reading for an absent Querent, enquire as to your Querent’s Astrological or Birth Sign, and mentally choose a Significator based on that information; if you are reading for an absent Querent, and do not know his or her Astrological Sign, decide upon a Significator using your Querent’s physical characteristics as guidelines.

6. Check in the instructions for the Spread as to what, if anything, you are to do with the Significator you have chosen.  If you are to use a Significator, remove the card from the Deck and place it in a central position on your table.  Ensure that the card is Dignified to you, the reader, and NOT to the Querent, who will likely be sitting facing you.  Take care to replace any cards you will not be using for the purposes of the Spread back in your Wooden Box.

7. If you are reading for an absent Querent, shuffle the cards whilst concentrating on that person.

8. If you have a Querent with you, hand the cards you will be using for the reading to the Querent, and ask him or her to shuffle the cards whilst concentrating on the question he or she would like answered.  Always ensure that the question asked is in line with the cards you will be using, and that the question is phrased as per any instructions given in the instructions for the Spread.

9. Should your Querent chatter whilst shuffling, then he or she is obviously not concentrating on his or her question.  You should politely draw this to your Querent’s attention; explain that the reading may be improperly focused as a result of this lack of attention, and request that the shuffling process be recommenced from the beginning – in silence.

10. When your Querent has finished shuffling the cards, ask him or her to place them on the reading surface, face down and en bloc, and then have him or her cut them in half once to the left.  If you are reading for an absent Querent, perform these actions yourself. Place the right-hand pile of the two piles thus created on top of the left-hand pile yourself.

11. Lay out the cards in accordance with the Instructions for the Spread.

VERY IMPORTANT!

When you are reading for someone else, it is likely that your Querent will be sitting opposite to you.  When he or she has finished shuffling and cutting the cards, they will therefore be oriented toward him or her.  It is consequently very important to turn the cards around to face you so as to preserve their proper orientation before dealing them.

Deal the cards from the top of the Deck – and do not flip them when you lay them out because that, too, will disturb their proper orientation.  Always turn the cards over as if you were turning over the pages of a book.

DIVISIONS AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Learning to use your Deck correctly is an important part of reading it successfully – and the accent here is on the word ‘learning’ because the degree of proficiency achieved by any reader depends to a great extent not upon pure psychism, but upon a sound knowledge of the physical construction of the Deck and a good understanding of the different functions and attributes of each section of it.  This chapter sets out all those divisions and attributions, and explains the information they convey to the educated reader.

The fifty–three cards of a playing card Deck can be divided into five separate units – Four Suits and a Wild Card.

Each Suit is made up of thirteen cards.  Ten of them are Pip Cards – the Aces through Tens.  The remaining three cards are Court Cards – the Kings, Queens and Jacks.  The ‘Wild Card’ is the Joker, which is unaligned with any Suit.

When the cards are used for divination:

- The Pip Cards represent situations or events;

- The Court Cards represent people, and

- The Joker represents the unexpected.

THE FOUR SUITS

Each of the Four Suits represents one of the Four Elements – Fire, Water, Air or Earth – along with an aspect of our daily lives, and three of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, as follows:

The Suit of Clubs represents:

1. The Element of Fire

2. Careers, work and business

3. The three fiery Signs of the Zodiac – Leo, Aires and Sagittarius

The Suit of Hearts represents:

1. The Element of Water

2. Love, friendship and domestic concerns

3. The three watery Signs of the Zodiac – Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio.

The Suit of Spades represents:

1. The Element of Air

2. Mental activities, communication and journeys

3. The three airy Signs of the Zodiac – Gemini, Libra and Aquarius

The Suit of Diamonds represents:

1. The Element of Earth

2. Money, material things, sports and hobbies

3. The three Earthy Signs of the Zodiac – Taurus, Capricorn and Virgo.

The fact that particular areas of life are attributed to particular Suits in this way can make it possible to determine what a reading is about before you begin to interpret it in depth.  If, for example, your Spread contained more Hearts than anything else, you could safely assume that its primary intention was to convey information about the Querent’s domestic or emotional life rather than his or her financial situation.

The same attributions also make it possible to split the Deck so as to ensure that a reading answers specific questions or concentrates on a specific area of the Querent’s life – and this is a particularly useful strategy to be able to employ, because readings tend to concentrate on things that are genuinely important rather than things the Querent believes to be important.  A Querent might, for example, be desperate to know whether or not love really is just around the corner, but one (or even a whole series!) of general whole-Deck Spreads might persist in concentrating on his or her business life instead.  Splitting the Deck is an effective way to be sure of getting a narrowly focused reading.

In addition, the Suit attributions allow the reader to differentiate between subjective and objective.  If, for example, a particular Spread contained more Spades than anything else, and the remainder of the cards were mostly Hearts, then the reader would immediately appreciate that the reading was subjective and focused on the thoughts and feelings of the Querent – and, moreover, that the situation it portrayed might therefore relate to hopes and fears rather than real events.  In that case, of course, it would be necessary either to split the Deck, or to use a particular type of Spread to obtain a more balanced and realistic view of the Querent’s situation.

THE ACES

The Aces of each Suit are allocated meanings just like any other of the Pip Cards, but they can also be used as timing cards, i.e.:

- The Ace of Clubs represents Spring
- The Ace if Hearts represents Summer
- The Ace of Spades represents Autumn
- The Ace of Diamonds represents Winter

The Dignity of an Ace determines whether it is early or late in the season, for example: Ace of Clubs Dignified equals early Spring; Ace of Clubs Ill-Dignified equals late Spring.

Consequently, and depending on its position in the Spread, the presence of an Ace can help the reader to distinguish which of the events portrayed by the other Pip Cards have already taken place, and which will take place in the future – when things have happened, or when they are due to happen.

THE COURT CARDS

Obviously, Significators are always chosen from among the twelve available Court Cards.  This means that there are two possible alternatives to chose from if the Querent is a man and two if the Querent is a woman.  Those alternatives occur because some attention needs to be paid to the probable age of the Querent.  Traditionally:

- Jacks represent children or young adults;

- Queens represent married or sexually mature women, and

- Kings represent married or sexually mature men.

However, although these attributions need to be learned because they are the best place to begin to understand how Court Cards are interpreted, they also need to be qualified, and we shall be looking at some of those ‘ifs and buts’ at the end of this chapter.

In the meantime, you will recall from the previous chapter that it is primarily from the Astrological or Zodiacal attributions that one chooses, at the commencement of each reading, a Significator to represent the Querent – and there are no ‘ifs and buts’ about this aspect of using Court Cards.  Thus, a man over the age of thirty, and born under the Astrological Sign of Aries, would take the King of Clubs as his Significator; a married woman born under the sign of Cancer would take the Queen of Hearts as her Significator, and so on.

Because the choice of Significator can rest so heavily upon the Querent’s Astrological Sign, it is as well to learn the correct dates applicable to each sign, because – as I mentioned in the previous chapter – some people do not know their Astrological or birth sign.  A list of these dates appears below:

ASTROLOGICAL SIGNS AND THEIR DATES

Aquarius: January 20 to February 18

Pisces:February 19 to March 20

Aries: March 21 to April 19

Taurus: April 20 to May 20

Gemini: May 21 to June 20

Cancer: June 21 to July 22

Leo: July 23 to August 22

Virgo: August 23 to September 22

Libra: September 23 to October 22

Scorpio: October 23 to November 21

Sagittarius: November 22 to December 21

Capricorn: December 22 to January 19

When it is not possible to choose a card to represent a person using the standard western astrological system you will need to use physical characteristics to choose an appropriate card.  I shall be dealing with the physical characteristics appropriate to each Suit on a Suit by Suit basis.

COURT CARDS AND HUMOURS

Some Spreads demand that the reader extract the Significator from the Deck and place it in a central position before laying out the Spread and beginning to read it, and others do not.  In either case Court Cards may turn up at random in the Spread, and those cards might represent:

- the Querent;

- a particular aspect or aspects of the Querent’s personality;

- friends, relatives, workmates or neighbours of the Querent;

- advisors such as lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc., or

- strangers coming into or otherwise affecting the Querents’ life.

Obviously, these randomly appearing Court Cards are important, and have to be read – and that means that the people they represent have to be described sufficiently well for the Querent to be able to identify them.

The traditional meanings allocated to the Court Cards of the playing card deck are short, restricted and ‘wooden’ and do not make the task of identification easy.  Many readers therefore tend to ‘skip read’ Court Cards and leave it to the Querent to fill in the blanks – with results that are naturally unsatisfactory to all concerned.  Fortunately, and because the Four Elements that are associated with the Four Suits are also associated with the Four Humours of classical and medieval literature, it is possible to use those Humours to put flesh on the bones of the traditional meanings of the Court Cards, and make the task of reading them much less difficult for you, and the task of identification much less difficult for the Querent.

The Four Humours divide humanity into four basic types.  Naturally, those types are less personality profiles than caricatures, but it is nevertheless unwise to dismiss them as useless, because they offer very broad but essentially quite accurate guidelines as to the fundamentals of human psychology – and those guidelines can be very useful to the modern reader.  We shall be looking at the Four Humours and the personality types associated with them Suit by Suit.

IFS, BUTS, AND COURT CARDS

The traditional use of Kings, Queens and Jacks to represent men, women, and children or young people respectively is, quite frankly, out of date, inapplicable to the world we live in, and no longer fit for purpose.  Kings, for example, often turn out to be representing professional women rather than men, and same-sex partnerships tend to present the reader with similar difficulties, because the cards are attempting to convey mental or sexual orientation, rather than simple gender.  In addition, Jacks may not only represent people of either sex, but also people of either sex who, whilst no longer actually very young, remain childlike in outlook or who act childishly some or all of the time.  Moreover, you should not overlook the fact that a certain proportion of your clientele will be the elderly parents of grown-up children.  To a parent, a child remains a child forever – even if that child happens to be retired and collecting a pension! – and where that is the case the cards will attempt to show the relative ages of all concerned.

Intuition will often allow you to identify gender – and sort out the relative age of a random Jack – but it is still a wise course to refer to any random Court Card as ‘this person’ rather than ‘this man’, ‘this woman’, or ‘this child’ and rely on the Four Humours to allow you to give as accurate a psychological picture of the person in question as possible.

TASKS

There are two tasks this time.

TASK ONE – Begin to Learn to Visualise

Obviously, the more clearly you can visualise the memories you want to attach to the cards, the better.  Everyone has a natural ability to visualise – words like ‘orange’, ‘apple’, ‘tree’, ‘train’ and ‘car’, for example, all cause images, sounds, scents, tastes or feelings to arise in the mine quite unbidden – but different senses predominate in different people, and everyone tends to rely on their primary sense and visualise in a specific, narrow sort of way.  If I asked you to visualise a lemon, for example, you might be able to imagine the taste or the smell of the fruit quite easily, but find it much more difficult to picture it.

The best way to hone your ability to visualise on a broader spectrum is to practice visualising simple objects or scenes, involving as many of your senses as possible, and making every image, sound, scent, and feeling as clear as you can.

For example: close your eyes, tilt your head up twenty degrees or so, then deliberately imagine an orange.  Try to see the orange projected onto a white screen in front of you. Do not worry if you cannot immediately come up with a picture; sight may not be your predominant sense.  Just concentrate on whatever image, taste, scent, etc., comes into your mind first, make that as vivid as possible, and then try to talk yourself into improving your broad spectrum view of the orange by using words that describe how an orange looks, tastes, smells and feels – the dimples in its skin, the indentation in the top which once attached it to the tree, the little button at the bottom, the sharp tangy smell of it, its sweet taste on your tongue, the waxy feel of its skin in your hands.

This is a very simple exercise and you can practice it almost anywhere and with any ordinary everyday object when you have a few spare moments – and it is in your best interests to do so, because the recollections or images you need to attach to your cards will involve producing quite complicated pictures, and the more you practice, the easier those pictures will be to construct.

TASK TWO – Fill in the following Correspondence Tables

Suit

Element

Aspect of Daily Life

²Signs of the Zodiac

Clubs

1

2

3

Hearts

1

2

3

Spades

1

2

3

Diamonds

1

2

3

Astrological Sign

Dates

Aquarius

Pisces

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

Leo

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Capricorn

Ace

Season

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

THE SUIT OF CLUBS

As you will recall, for the purposes of divination the Suit of Clubs represents:

- The Element of Fire

- Career, work and business

- The three fiery signs of the Zodiac – Leo, Aires and Sagittarius

Consequently, you will be aware that if more cards of this Suit than any other appear in a Spread, then the Spread will relate to matters of career, work and business rather than any other aspect of the Querent's life – and it is important to bear that in mind when you are dealing with these cards, because it is very easy to begin to associate them with money or material gain, which is not what they are about at all.  The existence of a promising business opportunity, for example, does not always guarantee a good financial return.

Effectively, you should always look to the Suit of Diamonds to forecast the financial side of any business transaction indicated by the cards of the Suit of Clubs – and split the Deck to focus on that aspect if needs be.  A complete absence of Diamonds in a Spread containing a Majority of the Suit of Clubs might, for example, indicate that the Querent is involved in charitable work for which he receives no financial reward, or that he has just begun a new job or fresh project that has brought in no money to date.  Equally, though – and particularly if the Spread contained an underlying Majority of Hearts or Spades – it might mean that a job or project is just a dream or hope that may never be realised.

Thanks to its fiery nature, of course, a Majority of the Suit of Clubs will always indicate great energy and force; a hectically busy time with the possibility that many new projects will be initiated or that old ones will suddenly take off or expand dramatically – or that something is about to crash and burn.  Always look for a Subsidiary Majority (the next Suit predominating) to determine where and how that energy and force is likely to manifest – emotionally, mentally, or materially.  Is this, for example, where the love affair really takes off, or is it where it dies a death and ends in an explosive argument?

The Court Cards of this Suit are chosen to represent people who have Aires, Leo, or Sagittarius as their Astrological sign.  As I remarked earlier, however, it is sometimes impossible to discover exactly what the relevant birth sign of a particular individual may be, and that tends to be the case when the Querent enquires about a friend or relative who is not present and whose birthday he does not know or cannot remember, and in that event you can choose a Significator using the subjects age and physical appearance as a guideline.

The physical characteristics appropriate to the Suit of Clubs are as follows:

- Jack – Blond hair and blue or grey eyes

- Queen – Red or blonde hair and blue or brown eyes

- King – Red or blonde hair and grey or hazel eyes

These attributions form a much less definite and satisfactory basis than do the Astrological signs, and you will be aware that I have misgivings about them – in fact it is likely that you will develop similar misgivings of your own as time goes by – but I have never heard or read of any other way of getting over this problem, and I have never been able to devise one either so (until you or someone else comes up with a better system!) we are all stuck with committing them to memory and using them whenever circumstances demand that we must.

You will recall that a basic understanding of the Four Humours can be very useful when it comes to interpreting the Court Cards.  The Humour associated with this Suit and the Element of Fire is the Choleric Humour.

Fire is radiant energy, and is associated with health, light, will, and speed.  When that energy is expressed in human terms it produces strong, outgoing, hyperactive, and sometimes overpowering personalities in which all experience is centered in self and personal identity.  There is an intense desire for activity, for self-expression, for direct intervention and speed of action and reaction – and this over-concern with making things happen can cause problems both physically and mentally and strain relationships with other people.  People of Choleric temperament can use their energy unwisely and burn themselves out – and their impulsiveness, and desire to act directly and immediately are not endearing qualities, particularly when they result (as they often do) in an insensitive and crude approach.

At their best, Choleric individuals are self-motivated go-getters who consistently and successfully start new enterprises.  They are extremely idealistic, have tremendous courage, and can be passionately interested in the welfare of people less fortunate than themselves.  Indeed, if the nature can be steered toward enterprises of that kind, all will go well.

Negative qualities are often just an over-plus or excess of positive ones – and this fact is particularly germane to this temperament, which finds moderation in anything difficult due to its abundance of energy.  Negatively oriented Choleric individuals are over-confident, self-indulgent and given to exaggeration.  They are, in addition, generally vain, self-important, fond of pomp, grandeur and personal display, and given to violent and destructive exhibitions of bad temper.  Most dangerously of all, they are attracted to drugs and alcohol because both of those things are like the temperament.  This tendency can lead them into grave difficulties - not least because drugs and/or alcohol exacerbate the temperament and often cause simple disagreements to end in physical violence.

Fortunately, many of the unpleasant tendencies associated with this Humour are mitigated and limited by the very factors that cause their appearance in the first place.  Fire is too volatile to sustain any emotion for very long, so that although the negative aspects of the temperament may appear very regularly, they never last very long.  Choleric individuals are basically generous people and are usually both good humoured and expansive; their frequent quarrels are soon over and genuinely forgotten because the nature is constitutionally incapable of brooding or bearing a grudge.

The real flaws in the temperament are therefore its lack of control and insensitivity to the feelings of others – either of which qualities can, if given free rein, lead to self-indulgence and a destructive, theatrical and superficial approach to life.

TASKS

There are six Tasks this time.  Please read through all of them before beginning to work through them.

TASK ONE – Look, Listen, and Write

Before you go on to deal with the divinatory meanings of this Suit, please make sure that you have all thirteen cards of the Suit laid out on your silk cloth, and that the other cards of your Deck are safely packed away in your wooden box.  Check each card on the table carefully to ensure that it is indeed a Club and not a Spade and that the Court Cards are the right Court Cards.  If you have decided to record the divinatory meanings, please make arrangements to do so.

Write down the Dignified and Ill-Dignified meanings of all thirteen cards.  As you deal with each card, ensure that you can see it clearly as you listen or speak and write.  Take the time to examine each card carefully.  If you cannot close your eyes and visualise the card you are working with – and, of course, its ‘mark’ – with comparative clarity in your minds eye, then you have not examined it carefully enough, and should keep looking at it until you can see it in your mind’s eye.

Remember, too, that when you are writing down the Ill-Dignified meaning of any card, then the card itself should not be sitting looking at you Dignified while you are doing it, but should be Ill-Dignified as well.

MEANINGS LIST FOR THE SUIT OF CLUBS

NOTE: Depending upon surrounding cards, Court Cards sometimes represent things other than people.  Such meanings are included in the sections entitled ‘Generally’ annexed to the card.

The Ace of Clubs

Season – Spring

Dignified: Innovation, inventiveness, and inspiration.

Ill-Dignified: Pipe Dreams.

The Two of Clubs

Dignified: Job-related benefits (i.e. company cars, expense accounts, etc.)

Ill-Dignified: Petty theft, kick-backs, bribes and ‘sweeteners’.

The Three of Clubs

Dignified: Productive partnerships and trade unions.

Ill-Dignified: Uncooperative or obstructive workmates and strikes.

The Four of Clubs

Dignified: Happiness and fulfilment through work.

Ill-Dignified: Work undertaken solely to earn money.

The Five of Clubs

Dignified: Competition, office politics and back-stabbing.

Ill-Dignified: Acrimonious discussions and legal disputes.

The Six of Clubs

Dignified: Desire to become self-employed.  A warning to seek sound advice.

Ill-Dignified: Job search.  A warning to be realistic and flexible.

The Seven of Clubs

Dignified: Continuing job-related education (i.e. evening classes or distance learning).Ill-Dignified: Difficulty in obtaining employment or promotion due to lack of necessary knowledge or skill.

The Eight of Clubs

Dignified: Heavy workloads – many tasks to be undertaken in a hurry or in order to meet a deadline.

Ill-Dignified: Boredom and lack of motivation due to under employment or unemployment.

The Nine of Clubs

Dignified: Relocation to gain or retain employment

Ill-Dignified: Verbal or written warnings.  Danger of loss of employment or residence.

The Ten of Clubs

Dignified: Social life suffering due to demands by employers or pressure of work.

Ill-Dignified: Socialising with workmates after hours causes marital tension.

The Jack of Clubs

Dignified: An unpredictable or impetuous person who is swift to act and enjoys action.

Ill-Dignified: A narrow-minded and contentious person, a bigot and a lover of discord for its own sake.

Generally: Depending on surrounding cards, this card may signify sudden departures, hasty decisions, or a change of residence.

The Queen of Clubs

Dignified: A generous person, practical and kind, and capable of independent thought and action.  An efficient and honest business person.  Depending upon surrounding cards, the success of a venture.

Ill-Dignified: A jealous and domineering person, obstinate and tending to imagine wrongs.  A person who allows employees, workmates and loved ones no independence and resorts to emotional blackmail in personal relationships and back-stabbing in business life.

Generally: Voluntary organisations, social security and welfare organisations.  Charitable works and fund-raising functions.

The King of Clubs

Dignified: An honest and conscientious person, loyal and generous, loving traditional ways and family life.  A just and enterprising man of authority.  Dependant upon surrounding cards, a mediator or arbitrator.

Ill-Dignified: An autocratic and intolerant person, prejudiced, ruthless, and lacking in feeling for others.

Generally: Philanthropic and charitable organisations.  The military and military men.  Politics, politicians and parliamentary affairs.

TASK TWO – Use Fantasy Plays

Begin your first Fantasy Play by shuffling the Suit of  Clubs.  Make sure the cards are well-mixed – you do not want to find that you are reading only Dignified cards.

Over the years I have noticed a surprisingly marked reluctance in readers – even professional readers – to use the rules of Dignity correctly or at all.  Some readers will go to almost any lengths to avoid the appearance of an Ill-Dignified card, up to and including sleight of hand.  Others simply refuse to allow Ill-Dignified cards to figure in the Deck or Spread at all, and work with a ‘fixed’ Deck, in which the Dignity of the cards is artificially preserved.

An aversion to Ill-Dignified cards is to some degree understandable – they do tend to represent the less attractive meanings of the cards, and it is never pleasant to have to confront a Querent with the sort of information such cards usually convey.  Nevertheless, it is, of course, a complete waste of time to try and get over the difficulty by dispensing with the rules of Dignity, because whilst it is possible to avoid the physical fact of reversed cards, it is absolutely impossible to avoid the reality behind the appearance of such a reversal.

The fact is that the Deck will consistently rectify itself so as to produce a true and accurate account of the facts.  Whether it achieves this end by the most logical method open to it or by some other and more tortuous route – by way of card position and juxtaposition, for example – is up to the reader, but achieve it in one way or another it most certainly will in the end.

Obviously, you will just be using the standard given meanings at the moment – and you will naturally not remember them all.  Look up the meanings as you go along – and say them aloud.  It is not, of course, useless to repeat the meanings of the cards silently to yourself, or do Fantasy Plays in your head, but it is much more effective on many levels if you do not do either one unless circumstances (like revising the previous days meanings whilst on public transport on your way to work, for example) demand that you must.

Lay out the cards one by one until you have read all thirteen of them, and then shuffle the cards and begin again.  If you go through the Suit four times in this way, you will have made a good beginning.

When you have completed your last Fantasy Play go on without delay to the Readers Check List and the Practice Spread.  The reading or listening, the writing, the careful examination of the cards – and above all the Fantasy Plays – will have primed you to perform very well on the Practice Spread, so please do not sit down and have a cup of something before you start it!

TASK THREE – Sketch, Lay out and Read the Practice Spread

The ‘Yes or No’ Spread is obviously designed to provide a specific answer to a specific question, but it will also enable you to determine which influences are helpful or adverse to that answer and discover what your Querent is thinking and feeling about it.

Naturally, you will only be using the Suit of Clubs for the purposes of this Spread, so if you are practicing with another person you should ensure that he or she concentrates on his or her career rather than some other aspect of life.

Because the Spread is designed to give a definite answer to a definite question, you must take care to phrase your question – or have your Querent phrase his or her question – in such a way that it can be satisfactorily answered by a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Questions beginning “When will I…” are therefore unacceptable for the purposes of this particular Spread, although another ‘Yes or No’ Spread you will be given later will answer such questions perfectly adequately.

Read through the Instructions for the Spread and sketch the layout in your notebook, taking care to label the sections appropriately.  Then lay out the cards and read them.

YES OR NO – A SIMPLE ANSWERING SPREAD

Key

SSignificator

1‘Answering’ card

2 & 3Helpful influences

6 & 7Adverse influences

4 & 5Mental reaction

8 & 9Emotional reaction

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE ‘YES OR NO’ ANSWERING SPREAD

Find the Significator using the Correspondence Table on page 23.  Put the cards you will not be using away in your wooden box.  Shuffle the Suit of Clubs, then lay out the cards in accordance with the diagram on page 36, i.e.:

1.Place the Significator in a central position.

2.Overlay the Significator with a single card.  This is the pivot card which provides the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer for this Spread.  If it is Dignified, then the answer to the question is ‘yes’.  If the card is Ill-Dignified, then the answer is ‘no’.  This card is therefore obviously the first card to be read.

3.Deal two cards at the lower right-hand corner of the Significator.  These cards represent ‘helpful influences’ but you should beware of interpreting these cards as being helpful to the Querent, because this is not so.  They are helpful only to the answer received.  For the purposes of illustration we will assume that the question was: ‘Will I get a substantial salary increase in early June?’  If the answer to this question turned out to be ‘No’, these cards would reveal why no substantial salary raise would be received in June, but not what would help the Querent to obtain such a salary increase in the future.

4.Deal two cards at the lower left-hand corner of the Significator, and read them.  These cards represent ‘adverse influences’, and again you should remember that these cards are not adverse to the Querent but only adverse to the answer received.  If the answer was again ‘No’, like the example used above, then these cards will show what would have helped the Querent to obtain the salary increase he wanted.

5.Deal two cards at the upper left-hand corner of the Significator, and read them.  These cards show what the Querent thought about the circumstances.

6.Deal two cards at the upper right-hand corner of the Significator and read them.  The cards show what the Querent felt about the circumstances.

These two latter sets of cards are very often extraordinarily at odds with each other, but you should not be concerned about that.  It is very common to be, say, disappointed about not getting a much needed raise and still remain quite happy about the job situation as a whole.

When you have read all of the cards through once in this way, you should return to the card that overlays the Significator and read it again upon its own merits.  This card can then be used as the ‘outcome card’ for the entire reading.

Do not forget that Court Cards represent people, and that those people have either initiated or are somehow involved in the events and situations revealed by the Pip Cards.  The Court Cards that appear in any reading almost always represent people who are reacting to a specific set of circumstances, so their position in relation to each other and the cards that surround them is very important.

TASK FOUR – Look, Recall, and Repeat

Begin the ‘Look; Recall and Repeat’ process with the Ace of Clubs.

1. Look at the Dignified Ace of Clubs.

2. Think about the Dignified meaning of the card.

3. Remember something that will remind you of that meaning.

4. Draw a rough sketch of the card in its Dignified aspect, arrow pointing up.

5. Write out or make a sketch of your personal memories.

6. Try to visualise those memories as clearly as possible.

7. Associate the memory to the image by looking at the card, recalling the memory, and  repeating the meaning.  Do not forget that you will need to do this several times.  The unconscious mind is very powerful, but it moves much more slowly than its conscious partner.

8. Deal with the Ill-Dignified meanings of the Ace of Clubs in the same way.

If you have time and are not tired, you can continue with the Two of Clubs.  The remainder of the cards can be dealt with over the ensuing week.

Remember that best practice is to deal with no more than two cards per evening.

You will need to mentally look at the cards you deal with each evening – and, of course, visualise the memories you want to associate with them and silently repeat their meanings – before you go to sleep that day and periodically throughout the following day.  Trying to deal with more than two cards per evening so as to get through the Suit more quickly will only give you mental indigestion and confuse your unconscious mind.  So please do not do it.

NOTE: If you have difficulty remembering something that fits any given meaning appropriately then you will need to imagine a situation instead.  For example, the Ill-Dignified meaning of the Ten of Clubs is ‘Socialising with workmates after hours causes marital tension’.  You may never have experienced this situation yourself, but it is easy to bring up a suitable picture by beginning with a likely dialogue – “Look at the time!  Where have you been?  I’ve been here by myself all evening waiting.  I’ve been worried to death.  You have no consideration for my feelings.  I don’t think you care about me at all.”

TASK FIVE – Combination Steps

Combine the ‘Look, Recall, and Repeat’ process with a Fantasy Play or a Practice Reading, using all of the cards you are familiar with and have learned about, once every couple of days – every day if you have the time – during the week you spend dealing with this Suit..  You will find that both your Fantasy Plays and your Readings improve as a result, and that the basic meanings of the cards will begin to expand and deepen more quickly.

TASK SIX – Read the next Chapter.

The following chapter is about building and using Positional Spreads.  You might want to use some of the Spreads described there in conjunction with your Combination Steps work rather than using the ‘Yes or No’ Spread every time.  If you decide to do that, you will of course only be able to use one card at each position rather than the three cards per position referred to in the text because you only have thirteen cards to practice with at this stage.

BUILDING AND USING POSITIONAL SPREADS

Often, a particular type of Spread will serve a particular purpose better than any other, so a reader needs to be versatile and choose the right tool for the job.

We have already talked about the advisability of splitting the Deck occasionally in order to ‘force’ the cards to concentrate on specific areas of the Querent’s life or answer specific questions.  Positional Spreads are another, and very efficient, way of ‘forcing’ the Deck to focus appropriately.

Allocating particular cards or blocks of cards to specific factors, for example, can make it easier to:

- determine what is happening in which area of the Querent’s life;

- determine what the Querent & other people are thinking/feeling;

- differentiate between past, present and future;

- force the cards to concentrate on a specific subject, and/or

- obtain a definitive answer to a specific question.

Allocating titles to the various positions that make up the pattern of a Spread means that each of those positions becomes meaningful in and of itself.  Consequently, each position restricts – and sometimes determines – how the meaning of the card or cards that occupy it must be interpreted, because it forces that card or those cards to operate within an extra and very narrow parameter.

For example, a Planetary Deal Spread consists of seven cards dealt from left to right in a horseshoe shape.  Its positions are usually labelled:

Place of the Moon – Matters of the home.

Place of Mercury – Matters of business, skill or deceit.

Place of Venus – The love life.

Place of the Sun – Matters concerning fame and achievement.

Place of Mars – Matters of enmity or adversity.

Place of Jupiter – Matters of gain, expansion and acquisition.

Place of Saturn – Matters of general restriction & intellectual deliberation.

Obviously, any card of any Suit might fall into any one of those positions.  An Ill-Dignified Four of Clubs might, for example, fall at position 1.  The standard meaning of the Ill-Dignified Four of Clubs is ‘Work undertaken solely to earn money’, but because position 1 in the Spread relates purely to ‘matters of the home’, the card is restricted to dealing with ‘matters of the home’ – and that restriction determines how the card must be interpreted.  The Four might, for example, be taken to mean that the Querent works at home because he or she needs the money and must do so.  Equally, however, it might signify that the Querent sees looking after, or living in, his or her home as work - and rather uncongenial work at that – and remains there simply because the home offers financial security.

Usually Positional Spreads either have six or seven positions, and use no more than five cards per position, or have twelve positions and use only three cards at each position.  It is impossible, of course, to relate the cards of one position to those of another, because each position exists in its own specific sphere, but if several cards occupy a single position then they must of course be related to each other – and four extra cards would go a long way toward clarifying the meaning of the Ill-Dignified Four of Clubs used in the above example.

It is possible to use the same Positional Spread pattern over and over again for different purposes, simply by allocating fresh titles to each position.  For example, the Planetary Deal Spread might be re-labelled as follows to get a forecast for the coming week:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

This ‘Weekly Spread’ is a particularly useful way to use a small Positional Spread, because although Positional Spreads have enormous capacity for precision, their predictive potential is poor unless the reader deliberately builds predictive positions into the design of the Spread.  That can be difficult where Spreads are small, because there simply isn’t room for really satisfactory ‘event oriented positions’ and good ‘time oriented positions’ in a Spread that only has six or seven positions to start with; but larger, twelve position Spreads, make the task of building in long-term predictive positions somewhat easier.

Like their smaller brethren, large Positional Spreads can be non-predictive – but they can also be predictive and very precise as to time.

Imagine for a moment, for example, that you have dealt a circle of cards made up of twelve positions of three cards each, and placed a deliberately chosen Significator in the centre.  If those twelve positions were ‘labelled’ to represent the twelve Astrolgical Houses, and read in accordance with the following key, then although the Spread would cover a lot of ground, it would be markedly non-predictive in nature because the positions only allow the cards to reveal the present:

Key:

Card 1 –Aries: the Querent, his disposition & current problems.

Card 2 – Taurus: the Querent’s financial situation.

Card 3 – Gemini: travel and communication.

Card 4 – Cancer: the Querent’s home life, siblings and parents.

Card 5 – Leo: the Querent’s pleasures.

Card 6 – Virgo: the Querent’s health.

Card 7 – Libra: partnerships and marriage.

Card 8 – Scorpio: inheritances and deaths.

Card 9 – Sagittarius: philosophy, religion, education & dreams.

Card 10 – Capricorn: the Querent’s career.

Card 11 – Aquarius: the Querent’s friends.

Card 12 – Pisces: the Querent’s burdens, restrictions & secret fears.

If, however, the same twelve positions were taken to represent the months of the year, the Spread would instantly become predictive and very precise as to time – and, moreover, if the central Significator used in the standard Astrological Spread were replaced with three randomly dealt cards, the reader could use those cards as:

‘Keynote Cards’ representing an overall picture of the year;

Cards representative of the last month of the previous year, or

Cards representative of the first month of the coming year.

The potential of any Positional Spread is, of course, always limited by the number of cards allocated to each position, and depends heavily upon the ability of the reader to give every card its full weight and interpret it according to its Suit, its position, and its meaning – which is something we shall be discussing very seriously very shortly.

The primary use of Positional Spreads is to get a definitive answer to a specific question.  For example, the question “What shall I” would demand a Positional Spread with placements designed to represent two or more alternatives.  In addition, and in the interests of precision, the reader might consider splitting the Deck.

That decision would naturally depend upon the nature of the question.  “What shall I do about my marital difficulties?” for instance, would demand the use of the complete Deck, but “What shall I do about my employer, who is giving me hell at the office?” would not.  Clubs and Diamonds would be the optimum split in such a case, because they are objective Suits.  As you will shortly discover, Hearts and Spades can paint a very misleading portrait if feelings are running high and thought patterns are very negative – and if someone is enduring hell at the office that does tend to be the case!

A Positional Spread can also be used with a “Who shall I?” or “What shall I?” question – but this is a dangerous question for the reader, because it infers a choice between two people, two groups, or two options.  The best way to deal with the problem is to design a Spread that has no determinative final position, but has inbuilt alternatives – in other words to tactfully alter the Querent’s phraseology to “If I” and pass the hot potato back to the Querent, e.g.:

BASIC “IF I?” SPREAD

“If I” can be designed either to show the advantages and disadvantages of a single course of action or to examine two options.  For example: imagine that the following diagram relates to a proposed relocation to America.  One version of the Spread might show the upside (cards 1, 4, 5 and 9) and downside (cards 3, 7, 8 and 11) of the proposed move, whilst a second version would treat cards 1, 4, 5 and 9 as “If I do” and cards 3, 7, 8 and 11 as “If I don’t”.  In either version the reader is free to label the three centrally positioned cards (cards 2, 6 and 10 on the diagram) to suit his or her own requirements at the time – “What the Querent hopes” , “What the Querent fears” etc.

Where such an arrangement is not possible – and sometimes it is not – using two Spreads will still allow you to pass the unwanted potato, but will allow you to give the Querent more guidance.

For example, imagine that the Querent’s problem is who to believe about the potential of a new project – his or her mother-in-law or his or her spouse.  The first step would be to choose a Significator to represent the mother-in-law, and to lay three cards each at five positions labelled:

- what she thinks or believes about the project;

- what she feels about the project;

- what she fears will happen if the Querent chooses to agree with his or her spouse;

- what she hopes will happen if the Querent chooses to agree with her, and

- what her motives are.

Obviously, you would then need to go through the whole process again using a Significator chosen to represent the spouse.  You will notice that there is no ‘determinative position’ built into this system, but that it offers the Querent insight into the views and agendas of the other people involved.  The advantage to the Querent, of course, is that it would help him or her to make an informed decision as to how best to proceed.

New readers tend to dislike Positional Spreads and avoid using them, firstly because they demand that every card be read and interpreted fully, but primarily because they feel that if only they had more cards to play with they could do a better job and/or have a much easier life.  There are several very cogent arguments against taking that attitude:

Bigger is never better!

The Sequential Spreads that we shall be dealing with shortly tend to look larger than Positional Spreads, but they rarely are when it comes down to the number of cards they use.  Furthermore and although Sequential Spreads certainly divide the past from the present and the present from the future very efficiently, those three bulky sections present the reader with a confusing number of variables and test his or her ability to relate one card to another to the limit – and every card still has to be given its full weight, and interpreted according to its Suit, its position, and its meaning.

It therefore doesn’t matter whether the Spread is small or large, Positional or Sequential, because the criteria that divide a good reading from a bad one remain the same.  Every card in the Spread is equally important.  Any card in the Spread can be pivotal – the key to the whole reading.  A ‘skipped’ or uninterpreted card therefore makes an unacceptable and potentially disastrous ‘space in the story’ that your Querent may well be paying you to relate.

It is important to understand that every Spread is a loose collection of randomly chosen cards, none of which are operating as a single pure force.  The forces represented by the individual cards enhance, mitigate, attract, repel and modify each other to a greater or lesser degree depending on their position in the Spread – and, of course, on their Dignity.

Dignity alone cannot be said to ensure a result that is gratifying to the Querent – and likewise Ill-Dignified cards are not always portents of impending doom.

A Dignified card appearing last in a Spread means that a favourable answer can be expected, or that everything will work out right in the end, but it does not mean that the result is good, all round, now.  It is therefore bad practice to rest a reading upon the Dignity of a single card, because the meaning of any single card only exists in relationship to the other cards in the Spread – which is why, of course, it is bad practice to analyse individual cards as though they were each standing in a void, alone and palely loitering, rather than synthesising all of the available cards.

There is a natural (but disastrous!) human tendency to want to make things right for the Querent that causes some readers to shy away from the correct use of the rules of Dignity.  I have noticed, for example, that once a Spread is laid out a certain proportion of readers take one look at the final card and decide that they are very unhappy with what chance has laid before them, and that they had better takes steps to change it forthwith.

Obviously, and because the meaning of that card exists only in relationship to the other cards in the Spread, an Ill-Dignified card at that position does not necessarily indicate an unfortunate result, but I have seen readers turning over the next card in the Deck - and the next, and the next if need be! - until they come to a manifestly ‘good’ Dignified card upon which to bring the reading to an end.

Even given that every Querent should leave a reading feeling positive and cheerful this sort of behaviour is a bit over the top!  Worse still, it smacks of desperation and creates a tense atmosphere that quickly affects everyone involved.

Every Querent you ever have will have questions.

In fact, every reading you ever do should end with your asking “Do you have any questions?” because that will be part of your job.  As one cannot answer a question really satisfactorily using a Sequential Spread, the only way forward is to use a Positional Spread.

It is important to be able to use your cards creatively.

If you want to ‘force’ your Deck to concentrate on something or someone, then you will need to be able to design and use an appropriate Positional Spread.

If you want to be able to read cards really well, you need to be able to give every card its full weight, and to be capable of interpreting individual cards according to their Suit, their position and their meaning.

Practising designing and using Positional Spreads now will help you to develop the ability to do that, and to feel confident that – whatever the circumstances – you can make a really good job of advising your clients in the future.

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TASK

Sketch each of the Spreads we have discussed, and label each of their positions accordingly.  Give each of them a title that will remind you of how the Spread can be used.

BASIC HORSESHOE SPREAD

BASIC ASTROLOGICAL SPREAD

THE SUIT OF HEARTS

For the purposes of divination, the Suit of Hearts represents:

- The Element of Water

- Love, friendship and domestic concerns

- The three watery Signs of the Zodiac – Pisces, Cancer & Scorpio

Obviously, if a Majority of the Suit of Hearts appears in a Spread, then the Spread will relate to the Querent’s emotional life.  It will not, however always relate to the Querent’s love life, and you must take care that you do not automatically assume that it does.

The word ‘emotion’ does not have a single well-defined meaning because it does not relate to a single well-defined state.  Love is certainly an emotion, but it is not the only one.  In fact, it is just the most attractive emotion that people are capable of.  Rage, terror, hatred, pity and contempt are all emotions, too.  Indeed, the word ‘love’ demands qualification if it is to be correctly and accurately interpreted.  Consequently, if you persist in equating this Suit with physical or romantic love alone, you are going to find yourself in a world of hurt.

Apart from that essential fact, the most important thing to remember when dealing with this Suit is that it is basically ambivalent and subjective in nature, and does not relate to facts which are tangible and material, but to feelings which are not – and that is a problem that is compounded by the fact that all fortune telling tools often reveal the surface of the Querent’s mind.

For example, your Querent may feel that his boss dislikes him, and is blocking his promotion for that reason.  If your Querent is firm in that belief, then the situation will have become real for him and your cards may well – on the surface at least – appear to confirm his belief.  More careful scrutiny of the Spread, however, might reveal that your Querent’s superior likes him well enough, but doubts his fitness for promotion – which is, of course, a very different matter, and one which the Querent must handle in a very different way.

In the same way, your Querent may feel that a woman to whom he is sexually attracted is attracted to him in return.  If you read the Spread that reveals this situation in a facile way, you might confirm him in his belief, thus causing him to behave toward the woman in a specific way – which would be all well and good if you read the situation correctly.  If you did not, the Querent would certainly suffer pain and embarrassment, and might become an object of ridicule.

Any Spread composed of a Majority of the Suit of Hearts must therefore be examined with great care – particularly if the Subsidiary Majority is another subjective Suit.  In that event, the wisest course is to read the Spread, emphasize the fact that it relates only to what the Querent is feeling or believes to be the case, and then either split the Deck or use an appropriate Positional Spread in order to ‘ground’ the reading and ensure that you are looking at a factual situation.

It is wise, too, to bear in mind that when you are dealing with the emotions of others, you are treading on dangerous and potentially shaky ground.  The rule to follow is very simple: the better you know your Querent personally, the more euphemistic you must be.  One can be as blunt as one cares to be with strangers – they expect and welcome it however disappointed they might be by what you have to say – but friends prefer gentler treatment, and if your friendships are to survive your interest in fortune telling, you had better provide it!

There is a modifying principle built into the Deck which you might find helpful when you have had more reading practice.  For the present, it is best just to learn it rather than trying to use it, because it can be confusing for beginners.

Basically, the modifying principle words on the premise that every card in the Deck is strong or weak depending on the cards on either side of, above, or below it.  Cards of ‘friendly’ nature (or cards of the same Suit) will strengthen a card for better or worse according to Dignity.  Cards of ‘unfriendly’ nature, on the other hand, can weaken or even negate the card they surround, again for better or worse according to Dignity.

Suits are considered to be ‘unfriendly’ in nature as follows:

- Clubs are ‘unfriendly’ to Hearts, and vice versa.

- Spades are ‘unfriendly’ to Diamonds, and vice versa.

Hence, a Heart surrounded by Clubs will be weakened, or have little or no influence in the reading.  Suits are considered to be ‘friendly’ in nature as follows:

- Spades are ‘friendly’ with Hearts and Clubs.

- Clubs are ‘friendly’ with Spades and Diamonds.

This means that a Spade card surrounded by either Hearts or Clubs will be strengthened.  If the Spade card is surrounded by Hearts and Clubs, however, then the enmity of the two latter Suits must be taken into consideration before one considers their impact on the central Spade card.

If you would like to, you can test the usefulness and validity of this modifying principle in practice at the end of this Chapter without causing yourself too much trouble.  You are only working with two Suits at present, and the two Suits concerned are, of course, ‘unfriendly’ and therefore mutually weakening.  It would not, however, be a good idea to make a habit of using this principle with a full Deck until you have had considerable practice at just plain reading.

As was the case with the Suit of Clubs, Significators can be chosen from the Suit of Hearts without reference to Astrological data, and using only the physical colouring and age of your subject as guidelines.  The physical characteristics appropriate to the Suit of Hearts are as follows:

- Jack – brown hair and blue or grey eyes.

- Queen – golden brown hair and blue eyes,

- King – fair hair and blue eyes.

The Humour associated with this Suit is the Sanguine Humour.

Individuals of Sanguine temperament are optimistic, happy-go-lucky, receptive, understanding, compassionate, modest, abstemious, tranquil, graceful, artistic, imaginative, loving, sensual people who generally possess the indefinable gifts of charm and magnetism.  Unfortunately, they are also extremely manipulative, much too easily influenced by other people, and lack self-control.

To a great extent these latter failings are due to the fact that individuals of Sanguine temperament are inclined to be very much (sometimes too much) in touch with feelings – their own and those of other people – and are uncommonly susceptible to the subtle levels of being.  Thus they are often unconscious of much that motivates their actions and reactions – or even that they have been so motivated at all – because while they are naturally in touch with the intangible factors and subtle forces that lie immediately behind the façade of reality (and frequently draw on the information gained from that source to their own advantage) they remain unaware on a conscious level that that is so.  As a result, they can be eternally apprehensive, insecure, fearful and self-protective – qualities that can lead them to be compulsively demanding and, as has been said, frighteningly manipulative.  They are inclined, too, to suffer from hypochondria, and to develop negative reaction patterns that cause relationships of any kind to consistently founder on the rock of one single bad experience.

The strong natural link between the subconscious realms and subtle levels of being that is possessed by all individuals of Sanguine temperament enhances their latent sensuality, psychism and artistic potential.  In addition, the innate sensitivity of the temperament makes them deeply emotional and poetic people who, because the heart rules the head in natures of this kind, are in general kindly, compassionate, and tolerant.

However, the same unconscious contact with the subtle realms that provides the essentially attractive qualities outlined above is equally inclined, in its negative aspect, to produce shallow and emotionally unstable individuals who lack consistent personal shape and identity.  The face Sanguine individuals present to the world can shift – chameleon like – to please, placate, or fool the onlooker.  Moreover, their vivid imagination can lead them to lie on a consistent basis, and they can be extraordinarily selfish and lazy.

All ‘Watery’ signs are easily swayed by people, ‘atmosphere’ and others of the subtle nuances of life, and it is therefore only too easy to conclude that they are fundamentally weak and vacillating.  However, it is important to bear in mind that the fluid Element of Water is extremely strong – the strongest, in fact, of all the Elements.  The Sanguine temperament is not weak, it is merely lazy.  However, once dedicated to an ideal – active concern for others being the ideal of choice – they are able to forget themselves completely, and pour out their talents in service to others.

Obviously, there is a natural attunement to spiritual and occult realities and a very marked psychic tendency inherent in this temperament.  In this regard, all will go well if the nature can find its level and stabilise itself, but if it does not there is danger of increasing hysteria and mental instability, because this aspect of the temperament is particularly prone to fall victim to its own negative potential.

*

TASKS

There are eight tasks this time.  Please read through all of them before beginning to work through them.

TASK ONE – Look, Listen, and Write

As usual before you begin to go on to the section dealing with the divinatory meanings of this Suit you should lay out the entire Suit in order on your silk cloth and pack all the cards you will not be using back into your wooden box.  Hearts are easy to distinguish from any other Suit, but check carefully to make sure you have the right cards in any case.  If you have decided to record the Divinatory Meanings, make arrangements to do so.

Write down the Dignified and Ill-Dignified meanings of all thirteen cards.  As you deal with each card, ensure that you can see it clearly as you listen (or speak) and write.  Remember to take the time to examine each card carefully.  If you cannot close your eyes and see the card you are working with – and, of course, its ‘mark’ – with comparative clarity in your mind’s eye, then you have not examined it carefully enough, and should keep looking at it until you can see it in your mind’s eye.

MEANINGS LIST FOR THE SUIT OF HEARTS

NOTE: Depending upon surrounding cards, Court Cards sometimes represent things other than people.  Such meanings are included in the sections entitled ‘Generally’ annexed to the card.

The Ace of Hearts

Season – Summer

Dignified: Successful, creative and artistic projects.

Ill-Dignified:Disappointment, disenchantment and loss of faith (either in another person or a belief system).

The Two of Hearts

Dignified: A new romance, friendship, or partnership.

Ill-Dignified: Separation, broken engagements or partnerships and divorce.

The Three of Hearts

Dignified: Happiness, health and vitality.

Ill-Dignified: Self-indulgence, self-harm, and self-destructive behaviour.

The Four of Hearts

Dignified: Shared lives and affection.

Ill-Dignified: Boredom and dissatisfaction with routine.

The Five of Hearts

Dignified: Worry and regret.

Ill-Dignified: Bitterness and resentment.

The Six of Hearts

Dignified: Emotional and material stability. Wishes fulfilled.

Ill-Dignified: Nostalgia and dissatisfaction with present circumstances.

The Seven of Hearts

Dignified: Choices and decisions to be made. A warning to follow one’s own feelings.

Ill-Dignified: Choices and decisions to be made. A warning to beware of gossip, rumour or malice.

The Eight of Hearts

Dignified: Unfounded suspicion and jealousy.

Ill-Dignified: Betrayal.

The Nine of Hearts

Dignified: Contentment and satisfaction.

Ill-Dignified: Complacency and vanity.

The Ten of Hearts

Dignified: Happy family life and special family occasions.

Ill-Dignified: Family quarrels and loss of friendship.

The Jack of Hearts

Dignified: An amiable and intelligent person, but a dreamer and easily led or discouraged.  Dependent upon other cards: propositions, invitations, offers and opportunities.

Ill-Dignified: An idle person and a congenital liar.  Dependent upon other cards: trickery, embezzlement and fraud.

Generally: Alternative cultural activities and organisations, cults and cult activities, television and the media.  Confidence tricks and confidence tricksters.  Pornography and pornographic publications.  Drugs and the drug trade.

The Queen of Hearts

Dignified: An imaginative, affectionate and gifted person, but lacking in common sense.  Highly intuitive and sometimes psychic, but dreamy and easily influenced by other people, events and atmospheres.

Ill-Dignified: An unreliable person who cannot be trusted or depended upon because his or her opinions change swiftly and without logical or just reason.  A perverse person, or one inclined to hysteria.

Generally: Women’s’ magazines, romantic publications and publishers.  Greeting card and fancy goods manufacture.  Spiritualism, paganism and the Old Religion.

The King of Hearts

Dignified: A person of business or law.  A skilled negotiator, kind, considerate and responsible, but ambitious.  A person of ideas and agility of mind.

Ill-Dignified: A dishonest and unscrupulous individual, likely to be double-dealing.  A violent and treacherous person.

Generally: The cultural establishment, art galleries, opera houses and symphony orchestras. The established church and servants of the church.  Powerful esoteric organisations.  Medicine, medical men and the health service.

TASK TWO – Use Fantasy Plays

When you have completed the last of your Fantasy Plays using the Suit of Hearts alone, search the remaining portion of the Deck, extract from it the cards of the Suit of Clubs, and pack the remaining two Suits back into your wooden box.  Shuffle the Suits of Clubs and Hearts well together, and commence the Fantasy Play process all over again using both Suits and treating this set of Plays exactly as if they were real readings.

The best way to do this is to extract one of the six Court Cards available to you from the portion of the Deck you are using, shuffle the remaining cards and deal yourself six or seven of them off the top of the Deck in a line across the table.  After you have read these cards by making up a story from their given meanings, you should clear them away, deal yourself another set, and begin again.  When you have done half a dozen or so of these readings, you should go directly on to the Readers’ Check List and the Instructions for the Spread.

TASK THREE – Sketch, Lay out and Read the Practice Spread

Read through the Instructions for the Spread and sketch the layout in your notebook, taking care to label the sections appropriately.  Lay out the cards and read them.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CELTIC CROSS SPREAD

The Celtic Cross is a very useful general Spread which can be used without any specific question being asked.  If a Majority should appear in this Spread, then the whole Spread should be read in the light of that Majority.  If no Majority appears, then the Spread should be read generally and in reference to the meaning assigned to each card placement by the Spread pattern, i.e.  card number 9, ‘Hopes & Fears’ and so on.

Lay out the cards as follows:

1. Find the Significator and place it in a central position.

2. Overlay the Significator with a single card.  This is card number 1.

3. Place a second card horizontally over card number 1.  This is card number 2.

4. Deal four further cards round the central group to form a cross, beginning with card number 3 at the top and proceeding in an anti-clockwise direction, i.e. card number 4 on the left, card number 5 at the bottom and card number 6 on the right.

5. Deal four further cards in a vertical line to the right of the central group, beginning with card number 7 at the bottom, and ending with card number 10 at the top.

Cards should be read in numerical order using the following Key as guide.

THE CELTIC CROSS SPREAD

Key

1. What is on the Querent’s mind.

2. Obstacles.

3. Past.

4. Present.

5. Immediate future.

6. Far future.

7. Sees self.

8. Sees house.

9. Hopes and fears.

10. Outcome.

The only difficulty you are likely to meet here is in reading card number 2 which has no obvious Dignity.  Usually, this card is read as being Dignified.  I have found, however, that this does not always render a true account of the situation, and I personally prefer to cast my eye over the Spread first, and then actually decide upon a Dignity for it.

As you can see, there is some history available in the Spread as well as more than one hint of future developments.  The Spread is said to have a validity of three months both as to past and future.  If you should find that the problem is more than three months old, take care not to promise your Querent a solution in three months.  Sometimes, when a curiously long time lapse is covered by a Spread not designed to accommodate it, the problem is one that the Querent is unwilling to face or deal with, with the result that circumstances are not moving along as rapidly as they might, and you should not commit yourself as to timing in such a situation.

TASK FOUR – Look, Recall, and Repeat

Begin the Look, Recall, and Repeat process with the Ace of Hearts.

1. Look at the Dignified Ace of Hearts.

2. Think about the Dignified meaning of the card.

3. Remember something that will remind you of that meaning.

4. Draw a rough sketch of the card in its Dignified aspect, arrow pointing up.

5. Write out or make a sketch of your personal memories.

6. Try to visualise your personal memory as clearly as possible.

7. Associate the memory with the image by looking at the card, recalling the memory and repeating the meaning.  Do not forget that you will need to do this several times.

8. Deal with the Ill-Dignified meaning of the Ace of Hearts in the same way.

If you have time, and are not tired, you can continue with the Two of Hearts.  The remainder of the cards can be dealt with over the ensuing week as usual.  Do not forget to mentally go through the cards you deal with each evening  - and, of course, visualise the memories you want to associate with them and silently repeat their meanings – before you go to sleep that day and periodically throughout the following day.

TASK FIVE – Combination Steps

Combine the ‘Look, Recall, and Repeat’ process with your Fantasy Plays and Practice Readings, using all of the Club and Heart cards you are familiar with and have learned about.  Try to do this every couple of days – every day if you have time – during the time you spend working with this Suit.

TASK SIX – Begin to Use the Joker

Find the Joker, and begin to use it with the cards you are already familiar with:

The Joker

Dignified: Surprises, practical jokes, coincidences and accidents.

Ill-Dignified: Hidden things and secrets.

You should note that both the Dignified and Ill-Dignified meanings of The Joker are ambiguous – not all surprises are pleasant, and not all accidents are unpleasant or result in physical injury.  Accidental or coincidental meetings, for example, can be very pleasant and hurt no one.  Practical jokes can be fun – but they can be unpleasant, too.  Secrets are sometimes best kept – but equally their very existence can be harmful.  Only a careful look at the surrounding cards will enable you to interpret the Joker correctly.

TASK SEVEN – Read the next Chapter

The next Chapter is about building and using Sequential Spreads.  You might want to use some of the Spreads described there in conjunction with your Combination Steps work rather than the Positional Spreads you have used to date.

TASK EIGHT

Obviously, any Positional Spread can be re-labelled to suit specific circumstances.  Imagine that your Querent wants career guidance, and re-label the basic Celtic Cross design accordingly.  Decide whether you would want to add one or more positions to the basic pattern, or add an extra card or cards to one or more of the existing positions.  Use Fantasy Plays to try out and refine your design. Sketch the finished layout in your notebook, and label the positions accordingly.

BUILDING AND USING SEQUENTIAL SPREADS

Sequential Spreads use serial patterns, in which lines or blocks of cards tell a consecutive story.  The lines or blocks can be used in various ways, but I want to look first at the most common use of a Sequential pattern – the ‘past, present and future’ pattern which enables the reader to place the events of the Querent’s ‘story’ into a time scale.

The Romany Spread consists of three horizontal lines of up to seven cards each, and is a very good example of a Sequential Spread with a serial, or line of cards, timing device.  The top line of cards represents the past, the central line the present, and the last line the future, so that the pattern gives some indication as to what happened in the past to cause the objective – or subjective – events that are apparent in the present, as well as offering a window into the future.

Most readers begin every reading with a general Sequential Spread, and then go on to use Positional Spreads to address specific questions, but it is important to be aware that the creative use of a simple Sequential pattern can allow you to ‘force’ the Deck to concentrate on whatever time period you like, however broad or narrow.  For example:  if the three lines of cards were labelled ‘June’, ‘July’ and ‘August’, or ‘Last Week’, ‘This Week’ and ‘Next Week’, or ‘Tuesday’, ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Thursday’, then the reading would become predictive within those time frames.

One of the most useful things about Sequential Spreads is their ability to answer the question ‘Why’.  Causation can, of course, be established by adjusting an ordinary Positional Spread, always assuming that the positions are made sufficiently meaningful, but the real secret of success with the question ‘Why’ is to make the Spread reveal circumstances fully, so a Sequential Spread with a ‘the situation NOW is this’ central section is by far the most viable option.  The other two sections should obviously be designed to reveal past causal events behind those circumstances, and a future that leads away from the present and shows how the present situation is likely to develop and change.

Although Sequential Spreads always look as though they should be much easier to use than Positional ones because they appear to offer the reader more room to manoeuvre, they are actually much more demanding and difficult than Positional Spreads, because they do not cubby-hole specific factors or events as Positional Spreads do, which means that their construction is inherently imprecise.  As a result, the reader really needs to understand the divisions and attributions of the Deck very well indeed, because without that knowledge it is impossible to formulate a conscious opinion of what the ‘story’ revealed by the Spread is about, or to decide whether it is subjective or objective, or to ensure that the unconscious mind is encouraged to focus as it should.  Moreover, the reader must be very familiar indeed with the meanings of the cards, and capable of using them intuitively and giving each one of them its full weight, because otherwise the reading will be far too vague to be of any constructive use to the Querent.

When we began to talk about using and designing Spreads earlier in this book, I pointed out that when it comes to Spreads bigger is not better – and this is particularly true of Sequential Spreads.  The idea that bigger is better usually takes root in a reader’s mind when he or she first begins to use Spreads seriously to read for real people, and becomes convinced that just one more line of cards added to a Sequential Spread, or just one more position added to a Positional Spread – and perhaps another card popped into each position – would make everything that much clearer.

Naturally, that idea grows like the green bay tree when initial experience seems to prove that it is correct – but in reality the improved success ratio achieved by beginners using large Sequential Spread patterns only occurs because large patterns allow a much greater margin for error than small ones.

Beginners rarely do enough work on the cards for all of the meanings, divisions and attributions of the Deck to become second nature before they begin to read for the public.  In fact, most are still at the stage where they forget the odd thing here and there and have to make a mental note to look it up.  As a result they tend to dream up Spreads which provide a multitude of options, fifty per cent of which will inevitably prove to be familiar, and thus allow them to say something relevant to the Querent – which the Querent, in the way of Querents everywhere, will fall upon with cries of wonder and delight.

It does not occur to people going down this route that they are looking for soft options or an easy way out.  Neither do they remember, in the first flush of success, that they have ‘skipped’ cards left and right during their journey through the reading – or understand that their chances of committing that sin are only increased by the complex options and alternatives provided by large Spreads.  Moreover, they do not take into account the time it takes to lay out such Spreads, or the space required to do so comfortably, or appreciate, as they pore over their latest forty-card creation, that they are exactly like a man sitting in a round tower pierced by arrow slits who has convinced himself that he faces a picture window offering a 360 degree panoramic view.  Worst of all, they do not realise that relying on big Spread patterns rather than learning about the Deck and developing their own abilities can become a habit that may end in their never learning to use their cards properly, or develop their abilities to the full.

If you are going to read for the public, it is important that you examine your own potential and ability honestly before you do so.  You will then be in a position to produce and use a portfolio of neat, compact, self-designed, purpose-built Spreads suitable to your level of skill at that time and with which you will be completely comfortable and familiar – which is why, of course, you are being asked to sketch and practice so many different Spreads as part of your work with this book

*

TASK

Sketch the Basic Romany Spread, and make a note as to how it might be labelled - ‘June’, ‘July’ and ‘August’, for example. Then label the Complex Romany Spread as follows:

- At left, from top to bottom: Past, Present, Future

- Across the top, from left to right: Work, Home, Money, Self, Others.

This pattern is, of course, Positional/Sequential. See how many other uses you can think of for this kind of hybrid.  Try, too, to work out how many cards you could safely add to each position to give yourself some ‘wriggle room’ – but do not forget to practice using one card only at each position first!

BASIC ROMANY SPREAD

COMPLEX ROMANY SPREAD

THE SUIT OF SPADES

For the purposes of divination, the Suit of Spades represents:

- The Element of Air

- Mental activities, communications and journeys

- The three Airy Signs of the Zodiac – Gemini, Libra and Aquarius

Spades do not have a very good reputation, because so many of them relate to unpleasant things like arguments and contention and illness and death, but as those things are part of life the cards obviously have to reflect them somewhere – and ‘in Spades’ is where they do that!

The most important thing to bear in mind when you are dealing with the Suit of Spades, though, is that it primarily represents mental activity – which is, of course, an intangible.  Consequently (like the Suit of Hearts) the Suit of Spades needs to be interpreted very carefully.  Mental Activity is a catch-all phrase that covers hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, fond imaginings and grim forebodings – and none of those things need necessarily be related to real situations.  As I remarked earlier in this book: fortune telling tools very often reveal the surface of the Querent’s mind primarily, and reality only obliquely.  If you keep that phrase in the forefront of your mind when you find yourself looking at a Spread littered with apparently doom-laden Spades, you will be less likely to find your heart sinking into your boots the minute you lay eyes on it – and you will, alas, find yourself looking at quite a lot of such Spreads.

Spade Majorities are very common because of the world we live in – a dangerous, stressful, and increasingly complex world.  Most people manage to deal with it reasonably well, but an increasing number of people do not, and nearly everyone thinks and worries sometimes about the global (and local!) difficulties and dangers that we all face nowadays – particularly when their energies are at a low ebb or they are in a depressed state due to other and more immediate causes.  Be aware that this is the case, and handle these Majorities for what they are – signs of stress and worry about situations that might well exist only in the mind the Querent – the ‘ifs and maybe’s ‘of his or her life.  Check carefully for Subsidiary Majorities, use your common sense, and bear in mind that real forecasts of death are very rare indeed, and form an unmistakable line-up within the Spread when they do appear.  Until you are faced with such a situation – and believe me you will recognise it immediately if and when you are faced with it – do not let these Spade Majorities bother you.  They are inclined to appear to be forecasting disaster of holocaust dimensions, but they are simply, alas, signs of the times.

This brings me to the vexed question of exactly what one should do on the rare occasion when one is faced with a real forecast of death, accident, or serious illness.  The answer is simple: nothing.  You cannot warn.  You cannot (obviously) make a bald statement of impending doom.  You cannot, in the last analysis, even hint, for you will only disturb and upset your Querent to no useful purpose.

This is naturally a very disturbing situation for any reader – particularly if the reader is personally acquainted with the Querent.  I would ask you to remember, however, that personal friendship can never take precedence over your responsibility to your Querent.  That responsibility can be simply stated.  It is your job, as a reader, to talk about the problem, expose its roots (thus clarifying the situation) and thereafter advise the Querent in such a way that he or she leaves your presence in a more positive and cheerful frame of mind.  Since foreknowledge of some impending disaster about which he or she can do absolutely nothing is unlikely to send your Querent away happy and relaxed, it is obviously not permissible to impart information of that nature.

Most importantly, of course, you should bear in mind that it is not impossible – indeed, it is exceedingly common! – for even the most accomplished of us to be absolutely categorically wrong about a reading.  This, if nothing else, should cause you to pause and think before you overstep the line of what is right and cause another person to endure unnecessary agony of mind.

The physical attributes that are associated with the Suit of Spades are as follows:

- Jack – Dark hair and dark eyes.

- Queen – Light brown hair and grey eyes.

- King – Dark brown hair and dark eyes.

The Humour associated with this Suit is the Bilious humour – and just as individuals of Sanguine temperament are oriented toward feeling, so individuals of this temperament are oriented toward thinking; the whole emphasis of their being lies in the realms of the theoretical and the abstract.

Individuals of Bilious Humour are intellectual, clever, logical, detached and self-possessed.  They have a great desire to give and receive knowledge and the capacity to do either with ease, and are highly articulate, communicative and well-informed.  Consequently, they make brilliant and interesting conversationalists – but – they are inquisitive.  It is difficult to prevent people of Bilious Temperament from finding something out – whatever that something might be – if they really want to find it out.

Additionally, Bilious people tend to be worriers, and prey to endless second thoughts, so that although they are invariably full of plans, their ideas often come to nothing because they are unable to come to a final decision as to the best way to proceed – and it is hard for them to take advice because, as you will see, they are frequently mistrustful of the motives of others.

People of this temperament possess a marked degree of manual and mental dexterity, and are very careful, diligent and persevering in everything they undertake, but they tend to dabble, so that projects and jobs (and people!) are regularly taken up and just as regularly dropped, and whilst their natural detachment enables them to gain perspective and utilise an objective and rational approach to all things, this latter quality can sometimes make them appear cold and unfeeling to other people.

The negative side of the temperament stems to a large degree from simple pride in its gifts.  Individuals of Bilious temperament are proud of their intellectual attainments and capacity. They dislike having their opinions or the quality of their intellect disparaged, and have a particular dislike of being ignored.  They are inclined, in addition, to project their own failings on to others.  Consequently, and because they themselves can be crafty and deceitful, they are often extremely mistrustful and suspicious of other people.

The leaning toward the theatrical side of life that enables people of this Humour to cope so well with abstractions can, in its negative aspect, incline them toward mental imbalance, eccentricity and fanaticism – and may, if taken to extremes, end in their becoming totally out of touch with reality.  On the negative side, also, the prudence and carefulness inherent in the nature can err on the side of parsimony – and there is a tendency in any event to value small issues at the expense of larger and more important ones.

In general, however, the truly negative side of this temperament simply produces ‘care for nobody’s’ – cynical, vacillating, shallow, posturing and deceitful individuals who consider nobody’s opinions or feelings save their own.

*

TASKS

Please read through all of the tasks for the next seven days before beginning to work through them.  There are six Tasks this time.

TASK ONE – Look, Listen, and Write

As usual, before you begin to go on to the section dealing with the divinatory meanings of this Suit, you should lay out the entire Suit on your silk cloth, checking carefully to ensure that you are working with the correct cards.  If you have decided to record the divinatory meanings, make arrangements to do so.  Write down the Dignified and Ill-dignified meanings of all thirteen cards.  As you deal with each card, ensure that you can see it clearly as you listen or speak and write.  Remember to take the time to examine each card carefully.  If you cannot close your eyes and see the card you are dealing with – and, of course, its ‘mark’ – with comparative clarity in your mind’s eye, then you have not examined it carefully enough, and should keep looking at it until you can see it in your mind’s eye.

MEANINGS LIST FOR THE SUIT OF SPADES

NOTE: Depending upon surrounding cards, Court Cards sometimes represent things other than people.  Such meanings are included in the sections entitled ‘Generally’ annexed to the card.

The Ace of Spades

Season – Autumn

Dignified: Decision to change self or lifestyle, home or job.

Ill-Dignified: Enforced change due to illness or bereavement.

The Two of Spades

Dignified: Truce declared, differences resolved, harmony restored.

Dignified: Quarrels, conflicts and misunderstandings.

The Three of Spades

Dignified: Networking, new contacts and ideas.

Ill-Dignified: Disappointing meetings and boredom.

The Four of Spades

Dignified: Opportunities to learn to communicate better (i.e. writing courses, theatrical and art schools).

Dignified: Opportunity to learn to communicate better (i.e. business courses and training).

The Five of Spades

Dignified: Journeys undertaken (for business or pleasure).

Ill-Dignified: Journeys delayed (by, for example, illness, bad weather, strikes or equipment failure).

The Six of Spades

Dignified:  Important news received by letter, telephone or e-mail.

Ill-Dignified: Delays in receipt of documents or letters due to communications breakdown (by, for example, crashed computers, disconnected telephones and postal and other strikes).

The Seven of Spades

Dignified: Losing touch with friends and family (due to failure to write or telephone).

Ill-Dignified: Losing touch with friends and family (as a result of bereavement or a deliberate decision).

The Eight of Spades

Dignified: Success through word of mouth recommendations.

Ill-Dignified: Failure due to backbiting and malicious gossip.

The Nine of Spades

Dignified: News or new ideas received intuitively or through dreams.

Ill-Dignified: Premonitions, depression, misery and despair.

The Ten of Spades

Dignified: Temporary social exclusion (i.e. due to hospitalisation, rest or retreat).

Ill-Dignified: Social exclusion (i.e. ‘sent to Coventry’ or imprisonment).

The Jack of Spades

Dignified: An active, clever individual, subtle and skilful, but inclined to be domineering.

Ill-Dignified: A deceitful and sly individual, secretive and belligerent.

Generally: Events and/or people moving swiftly in and out of the Querent’s life.  Large corporate entities in the communications industry. Propaganda and advertising agencies. Psychologists and psychiatrists.  Detectives or enquiry agents.  Malicious gossip, slander and libel.

The Queen of Spades

Dignified: An intelligent and complex person, highly perceptive and quick witted.  Often skilful at balancing opposing factions one against the other to further own ends.

Ill-Dignified: An unreliable person, deceitful and sly.  A narrow minded and intolerant person.  A gossip.

Generally: Academic achievement and successful examination results. Minor awards for writing or speaking.  Salesmanship and oratory.  Depending on surrounding cards, failed examinations and functional illiteracy.

The King of Spades

Dignified: A rational person with a logical and inventive turn of mind, but sometimes over-cautious and old fashioned.  A person of law and an upholder of authority.

Ill-Dignified: An obstinate person of calculating and impersonal temperament, sometimes malicious, unjust, or cruel.

Generally: Universities, professional associations and schools.  Upholders and interpreters of the law.  Injustice, unfounded accusations, and baseless scandal.

TASK TWO – Use Fantasy Plays

This time, when you have completed the last Fantasy Play using the Suit of Spades alone, you should search the Deck and extract the Suits of Clubs and Hearts and The Joker, shuffle the cards well together and commence the Fantasy Play reading process again exactly as you did in the last session.  After you have completed half a dozen or so of these readings, go on without pause to the Reader’s Check List and the Practice Spread.

NOTE: Because you now have the greater proportion of the Deck in hand, your chances of dealing one or more Aces in any given Fantasy Play or Practice Spread are quite high.  It is therefore a good idea to remind yourself that Aces operate as timing cards.  Remember that the appearance of one or more Aces in a Spread can help you to determine whether events have happened, are happening, or will happen. For example: imagine that it is autumn, and that the Spread you are using contains two Dignified Aces – Hearts at position 3 and Diamonds at position 11:

Cards 1 and 2 would refer to events that took place in the past – before the summer.

Cards 3 through 10 would refer to events that took place during the summer, give some indication of the present situation, and describe events likely to occur before the winter – a mixture of the immediate past, the present, and the immediate future.

Cards 11 through 15 would refer to events due to take place in the future – during the early part of the winter.

Additionally, of course, Aces can be used to answer the question that every Querent asks – ‘When will that happen?’ – because even if your Spread does not throw up an Ace, you need only ask your Querent to shuffle the Deck, and then turn the cards over one by one until one or another of the Aces eventually appears.

TASK THREE – Sketch, Lay out and Read the Practice Spread

Read through the Instructions for the Spread and sketch the layout in your notebook, taking care to label the sections appropriately.  Lay out the cards and read them.

It would be a good idea at this point to use an absent friend as your subject for this Practice Spread – preferably an absent friend who’s Astrological Sign you are genuinely unaware of.  This will help you learn to choose a Significator from a physical description only.  The exercise will also give you practice in reading without the ‘feedback’ that is usually generated by the physical presence of a Querent – and if you write out or record your findings you will, of course,  be able to check your accuracy with your friend afterwards.

Please check with your friend that it is alright to use him or her as a guinea pig beforehand.  Doing ‘secret’ readings for friends and acquaintances without their knowledge is the equivalent of eavesdropping on their telephone conversations or reading their mail – in other words, it is something that ‘nice’ people do not do.

If you have a friend that wants to participate, ask him or her to set you a general question.  The Spread is designed to give an overall picture of any given situation, including past, present and future circumstances, together with the feelings and attitudes of people other than the Querent who might be involved in the situation.  However, it is not an ‘answering’ Spread, so you should ensure that the question is phrased so that it does not require an absolute answer.  Questions beginning ‘When will he/she…’ or ‘Will he/she…’are therefore unacceptable for the purposes of this particular Spread (you cannot guarantee the appearance of an Ace!), while questions such as ‘What are the circumstances behind…’ do very well.

If you formulate the question clearly in your own mind before you begin and visualise your friend as clearly as you can while you are shuffling the cards, you should get very acceptable results.

THE KABALISTIC CROSS SPREAD

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE KABALISTIC CROSS SPREAD

Lay out the cards as follows:

1. Find the Significator and place it in a central position.

2. Deal cards 1, 2 and 3 to the left of the Significator.

3. Overlay the Significator with Card Number 4.

4. Deal cards 5, 6 and 7 to the right of the Significator.

5. Deal cards 8, 9 and 10 above the Significator, commencing with card 8 at the top.

6. Deal cards 11, 12 and 13 below the Significator, commencing with card 11 at the top.

Key

For the purposes of this Spread, the Significator is once again overlaid by another card, this time card number 4, which is usually taken to signify the Querent’s state of mind.  This card should be read before all the other cards.

Cards 13, 12 and 11 should next be read, beginning with card 13.  These three cards represent the past, and the Spread is usually understood to take into account circumstances three months into the past and three months into the future.  Card 13 is therefore considered to be furthest away in time so far as the past is concerned.

Cards 1, 2 and 3 should be read next, commencing with card number 1.  These three cards represent current circumstances.

Cards 10, 9 and 8 should next be read in that order. These cards represent future circumstances, and card 8 is held in this instance to be furthest away in time.

With the exception of card number 4, all of the above-mentioned cards should then be read again in the light of cards 5, 6 and 7, which represent the feelings of other people involved in the situation.

Interestingly, this aspect of the reading frequently contrasts or openly conflicts with the evidence of card number 4, which represents the mental condition of the Querent.  This process of reading the circumstances upon their own merits, and thereafter in the light of the feelings of others, and then contrasting the whole with the attitude of the Querent, provides a very good overall picture of a situation, and it is surprising how the ‘feeling’ of a reading changes as one approaches it from a series of different angles in this way.

TASK FOUR – Look, Recall, and Repeat

Begin the Look, Recall, and Repeat process with the Ace of Spades.

1. Look at the Dignified Ace of Spades.

2. Think about the Dignified meaning of the card.

3. Remember something that will remind you of that meaning.

4. Draw a rough sketch of the card in its Dignified aspect, arrow pointing up.

5. Write out or make a sketch of your personal memories.

6. Try to visualise your personal memory as clearly as possible.

7. Associate the memory with the image by looking at the card, recalling the memory and repeating the meaning.  Do not forget that you will need to do this several times.

8. Deal with the Ill-Dignified meaning of the Ace of Spades in the same way.

If you have time, and are not tired, you can continue with the Two of Spades.  The remainder of the cards can be dealt with over the ensuing week as usual.  Do not forget to mentally go through the cards you deal with each evening  - and, of course, visualise the memories you want to associate with them and silently repeat their meanings – before you go to sleep that day and periodically throughout the following day.

TASK FIVE – Combination Steps

Combine the ‘Look, Recall and Repeat’ process with your Fantasy Plays and Practice Readings, using the three Suits you have dealt with to date and the Joker.  Try to do this as often as possible during the time you spend working with this Suit.

TASK SIX – Read the next Chapter.

The next Chapter deals with the various types of Majority, and explains how you can make them work for you.  You might want to use the Spread that is used as an example in the next chapter in conjunction with your Combination Steps.

MAJORITIES AND COMBINATIONS

Majorities fall into two categories: dominant Suit Majorities, and dominant face number Majorities.  As you will see, dominant Suit Majorities can be either random or ‘forced’.  Dominant face number Majorities, however, are always random and are usually referred to as ‘combinations’.

RANDOM DOMINANT SUIT MAJORITIES

You will recall that if a Majority of any one Suit appears in a particular Spread, then it is possible to determine what that Spread is about before you begin to interpret it in depth.  Such a Majority might be made up of single Suit cards that are scattered throughout the Spread – past, present and future – so that the theme of the entire Spread is determined by the dominant Suit, but that is not always the case.  Majorities can be made up of single Suit cards that are confined to a specific area – bunched into the present, for example, or into the further end of the future – in which case they are specific to their position, and do not relate to the Spread as a whole.  The reason for their appearance may, of course, be obvious from preceding cards, if any, but equally it may be that the event they portray is an out-of-the-blue ‘bombshell’ affair, the cause of which is not rooted in the Querent’s past, but nevertheless impacts strongly on his or her life at a particular point in time.

Obviously, if such Majorities are confined to blocks of cards that represent the past, then it is sufficient just to interpret those cards and pass on, because the Querent will be quite aware of that situation, and your describing it will only serve to give him or her confidence in your ability to read the cards, but that is not the case where the Majority is indicative of something that will happen rather than something that has happened or is happening now.

Standard Sequential Spreads usually have a three month range in either direction – in other words you will be looking at three past months, the immediate present, and three future months whenever you use a Sequential Spread – unless, of course, the presence of one or more Aces stretches out or narrows down those time frames.  Whether Aces are present or not, however, a Positional Spread is always the next step where a dominant Suit Majority is ‘bunched’ in the future section of a Sequential Spread, because that is the only way of finding out whether it is a long or a short term situation, and what its effects might be.

The best Spread to use in those circumstances is the hybrid Positional/Sequential Complex Romany Spread used as an example on page 60, suitably relabelled, for example:

COMPLEX ROMANY SPREAD

At left, from top to bottom: Future month 1, Future month 2, Future month 3

Across the top, from left to right: Work, Home, Money, Self, Others.

in order to attempt to discover which area(s) are affected by the dominant Suit Majority, and for how long a time.

If, for example, the ‘now’ in your Sequential Spread reading were the 1st of July, then the block of cards representing the future (in the absence of any Aces testifying to the contrary) would cover the remainder of July together with August and September, and your follow-on Positional or hybrid Spread would cover October, November and December.

FORCED DOMINANT SUIT MAJORITIES

It is possible to use a particular kind of Positional Spread in conjunction with the divisions and attributions of the Deck to force a series of Dominant Suit Majorities by ensuring that the positions of the Spread are filled with cards that are ‘like’ those positions in nature – Clubs to careers, for example.  This involves splitting the Deck into five piles:

Clubs

Hearts

Spades

Diamonds; and

Court Cards plus The Joker

then ‘fanning’ each of the piles to choose five cards at random from each of them. The randomly chosen cards can then be placed into five positions entitled ‘I Work’ (Clubs), ‘I Feel’ (Hearts), ‘I Think/Believe’ (Spades), ‘I own’ (Diamonds) and ‘I am’ (Court Cards and Joker).

Naturally, and because the Spread is a Positional one, any number of titles can be applied to its pattern to achieve a specific result, but by using the titles suggested here, the Spread can be made to cover every area of the Querent’s life, and reveal a picture of self and circumstance at a particular instant in time.  That instant will, of course, be NOW, because if the pattern is used in this way it can never be predictive, but only factual in the now, and will therefore only reveal what is happening, or being thought or felt, now.  Consequently, whilst this is a good Spread with which to begin a series of other Spreads, it is not suitable for single Spread reading situations, nor to answer questions, or end a reading.

The only difficulty you are likely to encounter in using this Spread at the moment lies in negotiating your way through the ‘I Am’ section of it, which will naturally be occupied by five Court Cards – or Four Court Cards and The Joker.  The important things to remember here are that Court Cards can no longer be approached as mere indicators of gender, that every human being has both a masculine and a feminine aspect, and that the Four Elements exist in people in a blended and interdependent condition.  You will recall that Kings, for example, often turn out to be representing professional women, rather than men, and that same-sex partnerships tend to present the reader with similar difficulties, because the cards are attempting to convey mental or sexual orientation, rather than simple gender – and you will be aware, too, that we have only looked at how the Four Elements manifest in a pure condition.

You will find that you will be more than capable of interpreting the ‘I Am’ section of this particular Spread pattern once you are familiar with the basics of the Four Humours, and are consequently able to identify strengths and weaknesses, and pinpoint which traits are uppermost – positive or negative depending on the Dignity of the cards – from the cards at your disposal.  The presence of The Joker in the ‘I Am’ position in the Spread always indicates that the Querent is thinking, feeling or acting in a way that is out of character, for better or worse according to the Dignity of the Card.

DOMINANT FACE MAJORITIES

Dominant Face Majorities are usually referred to as Combinations.  Combinations give meanings to groups of cards of the same face number that appear within a Spread – three of the four Fours, for example, or three of the Fives.  The Combinations are as follows:

Aces

4 – Great power or force

3 – Riches and success

2 – Change of place, residence or Work

Twos

4 – Conferences and conversations

3 – Reorganisation

Threes

4 – Resolution and determination

3 – Deceit

Fours

4 – Rest and Peace

3 – Industry and industriousness

Fives

4 – Quarrels and fights

3 – Order and regularity

Sixes

4 – Peace

3 – Gain and success

Sevens

4 – Disappointments

3 – Contracts

Eights

4 – Much news

3 – Much travelling

Nines

4 – Added responsibilities

3 – Correspondence

Tens

4 – Anxiety and responsibility

3 – Buying, selling and commerce

Jacks

4 - Armed forces or dominant cliques; swiftness and rapidity of action

3 – Groups of people, parties or celebrations

2 – Old friends from the past

Queens

4 – Local or City government.

3 – Groups of Women, clubs and powerful friends

2 – Gossip or slander

Kings

4 – State or world government, meetings of the great

3 – Fraternal organisations or lodges. Groups of men and fashion

2 – Business opportunities

Combinations are best learned piecemeal when you have the time rather than in an indigestible chunk right now immediately, but as they tend to turn up sometimes occupying a single position in a Positional Spread it is obviously worthwhile getting to grips with them eventually, because when that happens the cards are obviously trying to convey something important. In the meantime, please bear in mind that when you are using a Positional Spread which contains an ‘I Am’ position, the Court Cards occupying that position cannot be considered to be a Dominant Face Majority.

TASK

Think about the Spread we have discussed, and make a decision as to how you would design it: 5 immediately visible lines of cards, for example, or 5 ‘packets’ of cards to be opened one at a time.

THE SUIT OF DIAMONDS

As you will recall, for the purposes of divination the Suit of Diamonds represents:

- The Element of Earth

- Money, material things, sports and hobbies

- The three Earthy signs of the Zodiac – Taurus, Capricorn & Virgo

The Suit of Diamonds is the Suit of money and material things, and is perhaps the most straightforward of all the Suits to deal with.  In many ways it is also the most useful, for it is wholly concerned with the tangible; the here and now, the absolutely real.  There are no ifs, ands or buts about this Suit, and because of its down-to-earth nature it makes an excellent Subsidiary Majority.

A Majority of this Suit, on the other hand, can be extremely difficult to deal with.  There is no ambivalence about it, of course; quite the opposite.  The difficulty lies in avoiding the mere recitation of fact.  It may be interesting and impressive to your Querent that you are able to reel off the facts of his or her life with a fair degree of accuracy, but it is not at all helpful, and so, paradoxically – this most real of all Suits must be read in the light of its subsidiary back-up.

Basically, Majorities and Subsidiaries serve to give subject and accent to a reading.  If, for example, a Majority of Clubs appears with an underlying Subsidiary of Diamonds, then the subject of the reading will be a business or career opportunity or project, and it will be the project itself that is of primary importance, and not the financial aspects underlying it – despite the fact that these might cause the project to founder on the shores of insufficient cash-flow!  If the situation is reversed, however, and there appears a Majority of Diamonds with an underlying Subsidiary of Clubs, it will be the financial factor that is of primary importance and the project will be secondary to it.

This is best illustrated by taking as an example an imaginary Querent who is looking to take up a new job.  In this instance, should a Majority of Clubs appear with an underlying Subsidiary of Diamonds, job satisfaction would most probably be the primary object of the Querent’s search for employment; salary and benefits taking second place.  If, on the other hand, the situation were to be reversed, causing Diamonds to replace Clubs as the Majority, then the primary object of the Querent’s search for employment would be financial, and job satisfaction would take second place.

The physical characteristics appropriate to the Suit of Diamonds are as follows:

- Jack – Rich brown hair and dark eyes
- Queen – Dark brown hair and dark eyes
- King – Dark hair and dark eyes

The Humour associated with this Suit and the Element of Earth is the Melancholic Humour.

Individuals of this temperament respond best to manifest reality, the world of the physical senses and the here and now.  They tend to rely on reason and the witness of their own senses to the total exclusion of everything else, and have a great understanding of how the physical world works.  As a result, these people have more patience with the material in all its many aspects than individuals of any other temperament, and have a greater practical grasp of the mechanics of life on the physical plane.  They are clever in financial matters, make good organisers, and are generally thrifty, practical, industrious, stable, conscientious, reliable, punctual, conservative and prudent – and in consequence are often considered to be rather dull by others of a less staid turn of mind.

Unfortunately, the greatest strength of the Melancholic temperament is also its greatest weakness.  With the best will in the world, people of this temperament cannot free themselves of their concern with the practical and the material, and this can lead to an increasing narrowness of outlook as they grow older – and an addiction to neatness, routine and order.

At its most negative, the temperament produces dull, materialistic, and avaricious individuals who can be wasteful and prodigal when it comes to themselves and their own comfort, and very mean and miserly when it comes to the welfare of other people.  In addition, it should be remembered that this temperament is goal oriented in both its positive and negative aspects, and that it can therefore be single-minded and ruthless

in its pursuit of success, money and power for its own sake.

*

TASKS

There are six Tasks this time.  Please read through all of them before beginning to work through them.

TASK ONE – Look, Listen, and Write

As usual, before you go on to the section dealing with the divinatory meanings of this Suit, you should lay out the entire Suit on your silk cloth, checking carefully to ensure that you are working with the right cards.  If you have decided to record the divinatory meanings, make arrangements to do so.

Write down the Dignified and Ill-Dignified meanings of all thirteen cards.  As you deal with each card, ensure that you can see it clearly as you listen or speak and write.  Remember to take the time to examine each card carefully.  If you cannot close your eyes and visualise the card you are working with – and, of course, its ‘mark’ – with comparative clarity in your mind’s eye, then you have not examined it carefully enough, and should keep looking at it until you can see it in your mind’s eye.

MEANINGS LIST FOR THE SUIT OF DIAMONDS

NOTE: Depending upon surrounding cards, Court Cards sometimes represent things other than people.  Such meanings are included in the sections entitled ‘Generally’ annexed to the card.

The Ace of Diamonds

Season – Winter

Dignified: Large outlay on property ( i.e. the purchase or renovation of a house).

Ill-Dignified: Outlay on material goods (i.e. cars, computers, washing machines, sports equipment).

The Two of Diamonds

Dignified: Fluctuating financial situation (i.e. part–time, seasonal, or temporary work and self-employment).  Warning to avoid purchasing on credit.

Ill-Dignified: Reckless spending leads to unserviceable levels of debt.

The Three of Diamonds

Dignified: Promotion or change of job improves financial prospects.

Ill-Dignified: Offers and opportunities passed up to fear of change or dislike of responsibility.

The Four of Diamonds

Dignified: Examinations or assessments of ability.

Ill-Dignified:Prizes or money earned through a sport or hobby.

The Five of Diamonds

Dignified: Job loss or redundancy and help from a bank or advisor.

Ill-Dignified: Hardship and financial distress and help from a friend.

The Six of Diamonds

Dignified: Material security gained by prudence, saving and thrift.

Ill-Dignified: Personal bankruptcy or repossession of property.

The Seven of Diamonds

Dignified: Gambling and unprofitable speculation.

Ill-Dignified: Loss of personal possessions through theft or carelessness.

The Eight of Diamonds

Dignified: Financial security secured by financial skill – stocks, bonds and investments.

Ill-Dignified: Dishonest dealings, theft and embezzlement.

The Nine of Diamonds

Dignified: Inheritance and unearned income – winnings and gifts to self.

Ill-Dignified: Charitable work or acts – gifts made to others.

The Ten of Diamonds

Dignified: Lifelong security and prosperity.  Inherited wealth or property.

Ill-Dignified: Family quarrels over  money, division of assets, wills or trusts.

The Jack of Diamonds

Dignified: A practical person of conventional virtues or views.  Patient, hardworking and clever with material things, but rather slow, and inclined to lack awareness of the feelings of others.

Ill-Dignified: An avaricious and grasping person, complacent and rather timid.  Dependent upon surrounding cards, monetary affairs at a standstill or breakeven.

Generally: Financial backers, large commercial organisations such as banks or commodity and brokerage houses. Money markets and monetary funds.  Liquidations, Receiverships and Trustees in Bankruptcy.  Credit agencies and finance companies.

The Queen of Diamonds

Dignified: A shrewd, sensible and down-to-earth person, but loving splendour and personal display.

Ill-Dignified/ A changeable person, narrow in outlook, and suspicious of anything not understood.  Grasping and careful, yet a spendthrift in matters concerning the self.

Generally: Ostentatious display concealing poverty and want. Gambling and gaming houses.  Money spent on luxuries rather than necessities.

The King of Diamonds

Dignified: A steady, methodical and reliable person, loyal trustworthy and patient, but slow to think and act.

Ill-Dignified: A dull and materialistic person.  An obstinate, heavy-handed and sometimes tyrannical person.

Generally: Increase of wealth or status.  The attainment of a degree in accountancy or law.  Establishment in a profession.  Large corporate entities or Government Departments.  Professional failure.  Removal from a Register of Qualified Practitioners.

TASK TWO – Use Fantasy Plays

This time, when you have completed the last Fantasy Play using the Suit of Diamonds alone, you should take out the other three Suits and the Joker, shuffle the entire Deck well together, and commence the Fantasy Play/reading process again exactly as you did in the last session.  After you have completed half a dozen of these ‘readings’, go on without pause to the Reader’s Check List and the Practice Spread.

TASK THREE – Sketch, Lay out and Read the Practice Spread

Read through the Instructions for the Spread and sketch the layout in your notebook, taking care to label the sections appropriately.  Then lay out the cards and read them.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE ‘YES, NO & IF SO WHEN?’ SPREAD

Because of the difficulty in identifying the timing of any given event accurately, it is always as well to include this particular Spread in your working repertoire.  It is designed to provide a clear answer as to time in response to a clearly formulated question – a question that demands (a) the answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and (b) an indication as to when the even associated with the question will take place.

The Spread is a very simple one, but it is nonetheless accurate.  It can be used not only to obtain an answer to a given question, but also to expand upon the circumstances surrounding the question; and it depends upon the appearance (or not, as the case may be) of any one or more of the four Aces.                You should commence, when you have shuffled and otherwise prepared the Deck yourself, as follows:

1. Formulate the question clearly.

2. Count off thirteen cards from the top of the Deck and lay them down in a pile face up.

3. When you have counted off thirteen cards, and if no Ace has appeared, square the pile you have made neatly, and begin to make another pile

4. If, however, an Ace appears before you reach card thirteen, stop that pile there, and begin to make another pile.

5. Complete a second pile exactly like the first one, stopping only when you have either turned up an Ace, or reached card number thirteen

6. Complete a third pile, again only stopping when you have either turned up an Ace, or reached card number thirteen.

7. Discard all the cards that are not in one of the three piles.

Reading the results of this Spread can be very easy – at least in the first instance.  Imagine for the moment that your deal has thrown up the 5 of Hearts Dignified at Pile One, the Ace of Hearts Ill-Dignified on the top of Pile Two, and the Ace of Clubs Dignified on the top of Pile Three.  Because the card in Pile Three is Dignified, the answer to the question is ‘Yes’.

Moreover, the positioning of these three cards reveals that:

(a)the matter is a cause of worry, and perhaps regret, but is not presently decided – no Ace at position One;

(b) according to the Ill-Dignified Ace of Hearts at position Two the matter will still be undecided by late summer, causing disappointment, and

(c) as per the Dignified Ace of Clubs at position Three a decision will be made in early Spring, when the Querent will begin a new and more productive cycle.

You might then read the card at position One as the reason the matter is not presently decided; read all the cards in Pile Two to ascertain the reasons for the delay; and then read all the cards in Pile Three to probe the events surrounding the situation when the matter is decided in the early Spring.

Should you obtain three Aces in this Spread, all Ill-dignified, then the answer to the question is a categorical ‘No’ – at which point you can either read the topmost cards only or read the contents of all three piles so as to find out why, treating pile 1 as past; pile 2 as present, and pile 3 as future.

Should you obtain no Aces at all, then you can again either read the topmost cards only or read all three piles to ascertain why the question is undecided, again using the three positions as past, present, and future.

Whatever happens, of course, you will get a definite answer to a definite question – and a time frame to put it in!

TASK FOUR – Look, Recall, and Repeat

Begin the Look, Recall, and Repeat process with the Ace of Diamonds.

1. Look at the Dignified Ace of Diamonds.

2. Think about the Dignified meaning of the card.

3. Remember something that will remind you of that meaning.

4. Draw a rough sketch of the card in its Dignified aspect, arrow pointing up.

5. Write out or make a sketch of your personal memories.

6. Try to visualise your memory as clearly as possible.

7. Associate the memory with the image by looking at the card, recalling the memory and repeating the meaning.  Do not forget that you will need to do this several times.

8. Deal with the Ill-Dignified meaning of the Ace of Diamonds in the same way.

If you have time, and are not tired, you can continue with the Two of Diamonds.  The remainder of the cards can be dealt with over the ensuing week as usual.  Do not forget to mentally go through the cards you deal with each evening  - and, of course, visualise the memories you want to associate with them and silently repeat their meanings – before you go to sleep that day and periodically throughout the following day.

TASK FIVE – Combination Steps

Combine the ‘Look, Recall, and Repeat’ process with a Fantasy Plays and Practice Readings, using all Four Suits and the Joker.  Try to do this as often as possible during the time you spend working with this Suit.

TASK SIX

Read the next Chapter.

MORE ABOUT COURT CARDS

As you will recall, Court cards can represent any one of the following:

- the Querent;
- an aspect of the Querent’s personality;
- an individual other than the Querent, or
- an event, thing, or commercial entity.

I think, therefore, that it would be useful to look at how the cards try to help the reader to determine which of the above they are attempting to portray, and to discuss how and why the Four Humours and the nature and  Dignity of the cards surrounding a Primary Significator can facilitate its interpretation.

COURT CARDS AS DELIBERATELY CHOSEN PRIMARY SIGNIFICATORS

As you know, all of the cards in a Spread are equally important.  All should therefore naturally be read, but deliberately chosen Primary Significators rarely are read.  In fact, usually they are just removed from the Deck, placed in a central position and then ignored – and that can be a very serious mistake, because it can make the task of reading the Spread much more difficult.

The ‘personality profiles’ provided for the Court Cards by the Four Humours are certainly very general one-size-fits-all affairs, and are obviously not intended to provide full or complete descriptions of the individuals they represent by themselves, but they are there to be used, and they should be used under all circumstances.  Where a Significator has been deliberately chosen, the information supplied by the appropriate Humour can help the reader to understand how the Querent is reacting to the events and people symbolised by the other cards in the Spread, and why.  A Sanguine personality, for example, would not react as a Choleric individual would to an irritating person or event – with a sharp explosion of rage, soon over and forgotten.  People of Sanguine temperament are champion grudge bearers; the cards would still be recording echoes of that single situation months (or years!) into the future.

You will recall that Suits are ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’ to each other – Clubs are ‘unfriendly’ to Hearts, and vice versa, for example.  Consequently, if a Heart card is surrounded by Clubs then it will be weakened – and that remains the case even if the Heart card in question is acting as a Primary Significator.  In other words, the Hearts Querent would be at a disadvantage in the situation represented by the Club cards, and ill-equipped to deal with it, and naturally his or her attitude would reflect that fact, despite the fact that a deliberately chosen Primary Significator cannot exhibit that discomfort by turning itself upside down!

RANDOMLY APPEARING PRIMARY SIGNIFICATORS

Using the Humours to help interpret Court Cards becomes even more important where Primary Significators appear randomly in a Spread – in other words where a Significator has not been chosen beforehand, but just turns up somewhere when the cards are dealt.

When a Querent’s Significator appears randomly in a Spread, it should be treated in exactly the same way as a deliberately chosen Primary Significator.  It is therefore not sufficient to identify the card as representing the Querent, and then pass on, because the position and Dignity of a randomly appearing Primary Significator can be very revealing, and might perhaps be the key to an otherwise obscure situation.

A Querent who consistently appears in his or her own past, for example (particularly if the past as revealed by the Spread is considerably more interesting or lively than the present or the future) obviously has a severe problem that is self-explanatory and needs no further comment from me – and the same can be said of a Querent who constantly appears in a rosy Hearts and Spades future that is preceded by a rather dull past and present.

ILL-DIGNIFIED PRIMARY SIGNIFICATORS

Ill-Dignified Primary Significators should immediately indicate to the reader that the negative qualities of the temperament are uppermost at the time of the reading and/or that the Querent is at some kind of disadvantage.

In that case, of course, it is very important to determine what that disadvantage is, why those qualities are uppermost, and where and how (or upon whom!) they are likely to impact.

Again, the ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’ nature of the surrounding cards can give the reader a clue as to why the Querent is negatively aspected in the Spread.  If, for example, a Querent’s Ill-Dignified Significator were surrounded by cards of an ‘unfriendly’ Suit – and particularly if those ‘unfriendly’ cards were Court Cards – then the situation would be likely to bring out the worst in the Querent.  How ‘the worst’ might tend to manifest would depend on the nature of the Significator’s Suit and its associated Humour, and the severity of the situation would depend on the Dignity of the other cards.

DIGNITY AND RELATIONSHIPS

The Dignity of Court Cards is, of course, very important when it comes to evaluating the nature of personal relationships.  Thus, whilst a Dignified Primary Significator and a Dignified Court Card of an ‘unfriendly’ Suit might indicate a simple clash of personalities or a misunderstanding, the reversal of either of those cards would indicate a one-sided enmity or dislike.  Double reversals, of course, almost always indicate the existence of a strong, mutual antipathy.

SERIAL RANDOMLY APPEARING PRIMARY SIGNIFICATORS

The rounded complexities of human character and personality are revealed in Spreads by the presence of multiple Court cards – a series of two or more – all of which represent the Querent, and are so arranged as to present a truer ‘personality profile’ for him or her.

These Significators can be of the same or another Suit, and of a different age or face gender to that of the Primary Significator.  Usually, in fact, the only indication that otherwise unidentifiable Court Cards in a Spread are acting as Serial Significators representing aspects of the Querent‘s personality is that the ‘stranger’ cards will be by position obviously related and attached to the Primary Significator – positioned directly overhead, to the left or right or at the foot of it – and that the surrounding Pip Cards indicate feelings and opinions that are manifestly those of a single individual rather than a group of different people.

Obviously, if the Primary Significator is a King or a Queen and the Serial Significators are Jacks, then the Querent is behaving in an immature way.  This can, of course, indicate a generalised immaturity in a particular area of life depending on the Suits of the Jacks in question, but it can equally indicate a temporary attitude – a response to an isolated event or set of circumstances.

Serial Significators do not, of course, always indicate immature behaviour patterns, and this is particularly the case where several such Significators appear and are of similar face gender or maturity – a King Primary Significator and two further Kings or a King and a Queen, for example.  In such cases, the cards usually indicate that the Querent is a complex and intelligent person who is undergoing an important period of personal growth and expansion.

Combinations, incidentally, do not usually group around a Primary Significator.  Rather, they tend to group in a particular position in the Spread and be supported by explanatory Pip Cards that underline their importance and reinforce their message.

Sometimes Serial Significators can indicate the presence of acute psychological problems, but this is very rare indeed, and you should naturally not jump to the conclusion that your Querent is a certifiable lunatic just because his or her Spread is full of Serial Significators.  In fact, this ‘unbalanced’ line-up – rather like that which forecasts a death – is instantly recognisable for what it is and, of course, with one important exception, the same rules apply.

Where the imbalance is obviously due to drugs or alcohol, it is possible to point out to the Querent that a change of lifestyle would be very beneficial; that some of the people with whom he or she is presently associating do not have his or her best interests at heart, and that he or she should take that information on board and make plans to make changes immediately, now, today.

COURT CARDS THAT REPRESENT PEOPLE OTHER THAN THE QUERENT

Court Cards that represent people other than the Querent present less of a problem than those representing aspects of the Querent’s personality, but they can sometimes be difficult to sort out.  Sometimes the grouping and juxtapositioning of the Pip Cards provide the best clues to identifying the Querent’s friends and relatives, because they tend to group around these ‘intruders’ in such a way as to indicate the presence of opinions and feelings that are opposed or manifestly different from those of the Querent – and may in some instances disclose situations that do not relate to the Querent at all.  Most readers become familiar with Spreads or portions of Spreads that do not really say anything about the Querent – particularly if they work with elderly people, whose lives often revolve entirely around their various children, grandchildren, friends and neighbours.

Court Cards almost always indicate intimate relationship to the Querent by presenting themselves as being of the same Suit, so that the wife of a Querent whose Significator is the King of Spades will often appear as the Queen of Spades, notwithstanding the fact that her real Significator might be something quite different.  The child or children of the marriage would repeat the Spade pattern as far as possible – but the rule will only obtain as long as no member of the family is at odds with the Querent, because were that the be the case the antagonistic individual would immediately shed the Spade identity and take on an ‘unfriendly’ Suit identity instead.

COURT CARDS THAT REPRESENT EVENTS, THINGS OR COMMERCIAL ENTITIES

You are aware, of course, that Combinations of Court Cards act in this way, but sometimes single Court Cards can signify events, or things – like news, or commercial entities.  When this occurs, the single cards are acting as emphasis cards, because usually the news, event, or entity they represent will be represented elsewhere by Pip Cards as well.  The Jack of Spades, for example, frequently appears supported by the Dignified Six of Spades where events are moving swiftly and communications of some kind are flying to and fro with great rapidity.

*

TASKS

There are two Tasks this time.  Please read through and complete the first task before reading the instructions for the second one.

TASK ONE – Sketch, lay out and read the Practice Spread

Read through the instructions for the Spread, and sketch the layout in your notebook, taking care to label the sections appropriately.  Lay out the cards and read them.

NOTE: At first sight, this can appear to be a very complicated Spread.  It also tends to become a favourite, thanks to its versatility and the amount of information it provides.  I have assumed the presence of a Querent throughout the instructions – and it would be a good idea for you, too, to ‘assume’ a Querent, and give out your requests and instructions exactly if you were conducting a ‘real’ reading, even if your only audience is the family cat.  It is very important to get used to giving clear instructions to your Querent.  Clear instructions make for trouble-free readings, and now is a good time to begin to practice giving clear, unambiguous instructions.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE COMBINATION SPREAD

The Combination Spread will allow you to enjoy the best of all possible worlds because it is both Positional and Sequential. It is therefore an excellent Spread with which to begin a reading.

1. Determine which card is to be used as a Significator.

2. When the Querent has shuffled, ask him or her to place the cards face down on the table, and cut them in half to the left.

3. Ask the Querent to cut the left hand pile of the two piles thus created to the left.

4. Ask the Querent to cut the right hand pile of the original two piles to the right.

5. The four piles thus created constitute a mini-reading, and they are Positional.  Beginning with the pile on the Querent’s far right, the positions represent:

Pile 1 – Careers, work and business

Pile 2 – Love, friendship and domestic concerns

Pile 3 -  Mental activities, communications and journeys

Pile 4 – Money, material things, sports and hobbies

6. Turn the four piles towards you, so that the pile on the Querent’s right ends up on your right, and so on.  Don’t forget to turn the blocks towards you so as to preserve the Dignity of the cards.

7. Turn over the top card on each pile, and read them one by one.  Don’t forget that these cards are Positional, and must be read accordingly regardless of their Suit.

THE COMBINATION SPREAD – MINI READING

Pile 1 – Careers, work and business

Pile 2 – Love, friendship and domestic concerns

Pile 3 -  Mental activities, communications and journeys

Pile 4 – Money, material things, sports and hobbies

8. When you have completed the mini reading, search each of the four piles for the Querent’s Significtor.

Do NOT extract the Significator or alter its position within the pile. The pile which contains the Significator is Positional, i.e. if the Significator is found in Pile 3, then the theme of the reading will be mental activities, communications and journeys, and all the cards must be read in the light of that fact regardless of their Suit.

9. When you have found the Significator, set aside the other three piles and lay out the pile containing the Significator from right to left in lines of six cards each beginning at the top of your table, and working toward the bottom.

10. When you have finished laying out the cards, look for the Significator.  If the Significator is not surrounded by cards on all four sides, have the Querent chose another card or cards from the discarded piles, and place that card or cards so that the Significator is properly ‘ covered’.

THE COMBINATION SPREAD – MAIN READING

S is the Significator

C is the ‘Cover’ – an extra card used where necessary to ensure that the Significator is surrounded on all four sides.

11. The lines of cards now form three blocks or columns.  They are Sequential.  The block to your right represents the past, the central block the immediate present, and the block at the left the future depending on where the Significator is placed or the nature of the cards in each block.

If the Significator is sitting in the left hand (future) block, for example,  most of the reading will likely represent the past; might indicate that events have been moving very quickly, and will certainly mean that you will need to use another Positional Spread to get a three month future forecast – unless, of course, that future section consists of Hearts and Spades, and the rest of the cards show a mundane face, in which case you may be looking at a ‘fear of/dream of’ situation depending on the nature and Dignity of the cards.  In that event, you should read the Past and Present blocks as usual, and then go on either to split the Deck or to use a Positional Spread afterwards in order to get around the ‘dream factor’.

If the Significator is sitting in the Past, most of the reading will represent the future – again unless that Past section consists of Hearts and Spades, in which case, of course, in the past is likely where the Querent would prefer to be and the central block will represent the immediate present, and the right hand block the future.

12. Commence by reading the four cards surrounding the Significator.  These cards represent factors that are of immediate concern.

13. Read the blocks. (See page 95 to see the layout of the Spread).

TASK TWO – Conduct an Experiment

1. Make arrangements to do a general reading for a friend or relative in his or her absence.

2. Make arrangements to record your reading.  It is very important that the reading is recorded, so if you do not have suitable equipment yourself, please try to borrow equipment from someone else.

3. Read through the notes you made relating to the Combination Spread so as to thoroughly familiarise yourself with how the Spread is laid out and used.

4. Choose a time when you will not be disturbed.  Turn off your mobile!

5. When you are ready, turn on the recording equipment and visualise your Querent as clearly as you can whilst laying out the cards.

6. Read the Mini reading aloud.

7. Read the Main Reading aloud, beginning with the four cards surrounding the Significator.

8. When you have finished speaking, leave the cards on the table, and go away and relax.

9. In half an hour or so, return to your table, turn on your recording, and listen to your reading.

10. When the recording has come to an end, read the next Chapter.

THE EXPERIMENT

I could  just have explained what happens when a person begins to read intuitively, pointed out why that information is important to you, and moved right along – and I confess that I was tempted to do that - but having seen so many students slowly develop a glassy-eyed expression of wary disbelief whenever I broached the subject (the thought “Is she nuts?” sometimes seemed to blossom over their heads as if they were characters in a cartoon) I have learned to let personal experience be the teacher.  Hence your ‘experiment’.

You will likely have noticed when you were listening to your recording that the content of the reading was news to you, because you did not remember saying most of what you were hearing.  This does not, of course, mean that you are losing your memory – or your marbles!

Reading intuitively induces an altered state of consciousness – a day-dreamy and completely harmless minor form of trance.  The conscious mind is not directly involved, and therefore does not store the information as it would store, say, the gist or details of an ordinary conversation.  You will rarely remember much, if anything, about any of your readings.

Moreover, if you listen to your recording again now, and consciously look at the cards on the table – or even look up their meanings as they are given in this book - you will find that you cannot really trace where the ‘story’ you are listening to came from, because the meanings you have worked with throughout this book have either changed, expanded dramatically, or appear to have been replaced by others that are completely personal and meaningful to you.  This does not mean that you have done something wrong, or need to back-track and start over.

As I explained earlier, meanings learned consciously change and become much more complicated over time because the unconscious mind gradually attaches layer upon layer of meaning to a single concept.  The same process results in an overall interpretation of any particular group of concepts because the unconscious mind automatically uses all the information available to it from any source and synthesises that, too.  You will rarely be able to trace the source of anything you say in a reading by consciously looking at the cards and trying to make connections afterwards - and there is no point in trying.

Lastly, you will almost certainly find, when you discuss your reading with your absent Querent, that the ‘story’ you listened to when you played back your reading is not really a ‘story’ at all, but contains factual information relevant to your Querent, and that your reading has made something (or some things) much clearer to him or her and/or introduced factors of which he or she was unaware or had forgotten.

So far, so excellent – but there are ramifications to this success story that are important to you, and that you need to be aware of, and take steps to deal with.

Every Querent will naturally have questions at the end of every reading.  Usually an intuitive reader remains in a mild state of trance for a little while after the main reading has ended, and the answers to those questions come easily and are given quite accurately without thought or hesitation.  On the odd occasion that that is not so, then of course the reader need only construct a suitable Spread in order to answer the question and satisfy the client.  Eventually, though, every reading must come to an end – and the light trance state that accompanies it must be brought to an end immediately the reading is well and truly over.

Trance states of any kind always come to an end all by themselves in time – it is not possible to remain in an alpha state indefinitely – but it is very important that you learn to bring your readings and the altered state that is an essential part of them to a deliberate conclusion and exert some control over what might be called your ‘comings and goings’.  Professional readers generally develop their own ‘grounding’ techniques so as to ensure that they do not remain vulnerable to every psychic wind that blows.  These take many forms.  Some people stamp their feet, others close imaginary doors, make tea, take the dog for a walk, or do any one of a million other personally meaningful things that mean “OK.  That’s it.  I’m done’ to them.

Begin to develop and refine your own grounding technique as of today.  Use it at the close of every Fantasy Play, Practice Reading or ‘real’ reading from now on.  Make it a habit, something that you do automatically and without thinking immediately it is time to stop working and go back to your normal everyday life.

WHAT NEXT

Having gone through all four Suits of your Deck, and spent a good many hours learning about and practising with your cards, ideally you should now spend some time consolidating what you have learned, perfecting your skills, and planning your future as a reader – how much time, of course, depends on you.

Consolidating What You Have Learned

Try to identify and deal with any gaps in your knowledge.  Learn a Combination a day, for example, read over each of the Four Humours until you are familiar with the basic traits of all of them, and/or get to grips with any meanings that consistently elude you – most people have at least one of those.  Make sure, too, that you really do know all the dates applicable to the Astrological Signs.

Perfecting Your Skills

It is a good idea to continue to do Fantasy Plays and Practice Readings daily – and to add a new dimension to them by conducting them, soup to nuts, as if they were real readings for real people.

Mix and match the Spreads you have used to date – and be on the lookout for new ones. One or two Spreads will inevitably become favourites, but having a wide range of familiar options will ensure that you are always in a position to choose the right tool for the job.

Begin to Develop a Pre-reading Formula

The best way to ensure that all your readings run smoothly is to decide upon a formula and stick to it.   Eventually the formula becomes a soothing ritual that puts you in the right frame of mind to read.  Practicing it by yourself now will help you to look and feel confident and experienced when you are faced with a client who is not a friend or relative.  What kind of formula is, of course, up to you, but there are several basic ingredients that should be included in your pre-reading recipe for success.

You will need to begin every reading by asking your Querent for his or her Astrological Sign.  You will then need to request that the Querent remain quiet during the course of the reading and refrain from asking questions until you have stopped speaking.  Emphasise that you will not be able to remember what you were saying if you are forced to stop to answer questions.  As you are going to have to make this speech every time you do a real reading, it would be useful to compose it carefully and use it to begin your practice sessions.

As you know, you will need to begin the actual reading process by shuffling the cards yourself so as to ensure a random mix.  Shuffling can be a tricky business, so it is as well to practice shuffling intensively until you never drop any of the cards.  There is nothing you can do to stop cards shooting across the table like a river in spate when your Querents are shuffling, but you do not want something like that happening to you.

Once you have shuffled the cards yourself, you will need to ask your Querent to shuffle them whilst concentrating hard on whatever it is he or she would like to know.  As you will be aware from the Reader’s Checklist, a Querent who is talking or admiring the wallpaper whilst shuffling is not concentrating, and you will need to explain that this lack of attention could lead to disappointing results, and ask him or her to begin the shuffle again.  Definitely make this speech part of your practice period, because you are likely going to be using it a lot; Querents tend to be nervous, and nervous people tend to chatter.

You will need to ask your Querent to place the cards on the table en bloc and cut them once to the left when he or she has finished shuffling.  You will then need to put the right hand pile on top of the left hand pile yourself, and collect up the cards prior to dealing them.  When you are practising, do not forget that a real Querent would likely be sitting opposite to you.  You would therefore need to turn the block of cards around to face you so as to preserve their orientation before dealing them, and then deal the cards from the top of the Deck, turning them over as if you were turning over the pages of a book.

Readings are best begun with a Sequential Spread that provides maximum initial information.  Choose or design a Sequential Spread that you are comfortable with and practice laying it out until the process becomes something you can do without thinking.  This will leave you free to concentrate and focus on getting ready to read rather than having to worry about setting the cards down correctly when you have a genuine Querent.

When you have finished reading your initial Spread, you will need to ask your Querent if he or she has any questions.  As he or she always will have questions, it is a good idea to get some practice at dealing with them by drawing up a list of likely questions – ‘when will I?’; ‘what will they do?’, and so on – and deciding how you would design or choose Positional Spreads to deal with them.

Planning Your Future as a Reader

Begin to think about where you want to go, and what you want to do with what you have learned.  Consider whether you want to make reading a business, a hobby, or something that you are only

Naturally, if you want to make reading your profession, there are various things you will need to consider very soon – not least how and where you intend to advertise, and where you mean to work – but just now I want to deal with one or two of the most important practical aspects of reading for a living.

You must take steps to ensure your personal safety.

This is very, very, important.  Any flyers, advertisements or advertorials you create will naturally have to make plain what you do and what you charge for doing it, and will include a telephone number and, possibly, your business hours.  However, for safety’s sake neither your name nor your home address should figure in advertising materials intended to be distributed or posted in public places, and under no circumstances should they display a picture or pictures of you.

It is a good idea for this and other reasons to adopt a name for business purposes.  If you choose to do that, though, please bear in mind that ‘Jane Smith’ or similar will be more appealing to the average client than something more exotic.  It is also a good idea to have a work telephone number separate from your personal mobile or fixed line telephone.

If you decide to work from home, and unless you are living in a very secure building with a doorman or concierge, try to make sure that there is always someone close at hand to help you if needs be before you invite a total stranger into your house, and never agree to visit someone else’s home unaccompanied unless you are at the very least acquainted with that person, or have been introduced through a reliable friend.

You must keep proper accounts.

Wherever you decide to work, and whether you work full-time or part-time as a reader, you must keep proper accounts.  Fortune telling is generally a cash business, but you should not fall into the error of failing to declare those cash payments as taxable income in the belief that no one will ever know that you have received them.  The Revenue Service is well aware that cash businesses exist, and that fortune telling is one of them.  Polite letters from the Revenue Service requesting that readers make arrangements to present their accounts for inspection are quite common.  Everything you receive should therefore find its way into your accounts.  Simple books of account can be found in any good stationery store, and a local bookkeeping service can advise you as to which of your expenses are deductible and (if you are working from home) which of your utility bills can be apportioned between home and office.

A word of warning.

Few people can afford to give up the day job and set up as a full-time reader right away – in fact most people end up reading evenings and weekends for some time before they are in a position to launch out on their own.  In the meantime, of course, they are salaried employees who need to stay that way until they can afford to move on.

Fortune telling is not an activity that is universally well thought of.  An interest in it will certainly not endear you to the corporate world at large, and might cause problems in some areas of your personal life as well.  Be discreet!  Adopt a reading name and invest in a reading related telephone number.  Keep your activities as a reader strictly separate from your daily working life unless or until you want or are able to make reading your daily working life.

People close to you will, of course, always be ‘in the know’ about what you do, and you will need to impress upon them, too, the need for discretion.  No one should ever recommend you by name, or give out your home or work address or your private or work telephone number.  Not even to your cousin from Nebraska…

Wherever you go, and whichever path you choose to take I wish you peace and happiness, good health and success.  I have enjoyed working with this book.  I hope you have, too.

Emily Peach

December 2014