YETI YETI

I think people often forget, or perhaps don’t realize, that Tarot cards started out as a game. It’s still played, in fact. My sister, good Christian girl that she is, has a deck that she had to buy for one of her master’s classes. She’s said it’s a fairly common game where she studies in France.

Cartomancy existed long prior to the creation of the modern Rider-Waite Deck, often with whatever playing cards happen to be around. Historical records, if you want to dig into them, are pretty extensive. The practice persists into present day too though. An ex’s of mine for example – his mom would use playing cards to help diagnose people’s illnesses (something I don’t generally recommend). I’ve heard second hand of grandmothers who read playing cards at kitchen tables in the evenings at family gatherings.

I can also personally vouch. I had a stretch where I lost my only deck I had at the time, didn’t have a dime to my name, and took up doing readings with a random deck of playing cards I scored somewhere. They were perfectly accurate, if a bit harsher.

I know lot of witches are still in the closet and prefer to read with playing cards instead of proper tarot cards – and I just want those witches to know they’re carrying on the time-honored tradition of divining with whatever you have on hand and that’s kickass. Money should (hopefully) never be a barrier to a personal divination practice.

Here are some tips for what helped me

Vertical Reading + Elemental Associations

The key to reading playing cards, to any divination really, is building the system you’re reading with well.

Vertical reading is great for learning tarot, but it’s downright necessary in my experience for reading with playing cards. Vertical reading just means having a meaning or theme associated with each card of the same number.

When reading cards, you can look to the same themes that would exist if they were tarot cards, use another existing system like numerology, or create your own. Just make sure to write it down.

The next step in tarot would be to read narratively – considering where in the story of the suit the card you’re interpreting falls – but since there’s no imagery on playing cards, you’re either stuck trying to memorize a bunch meanings with no imagery to cue meanings or you can develop another set of meanings to pair with each of suits that you can draw unique interpretations from when paired with your vertical meanings.

The latter is actually what I recommend – I use elemental associations with each of the suits. Spades are Swords/Air, Diamonds are Pentacles/Earth, Hearts are Cups/Water, and Clubs are Wands/Fire. Since elemental divisions are so strong in various pagan paths, they’re an easy way in to this division but any set of four meanings will do. And again, make sure to write down these meanings too.

So say you draw the Ace of Spades in a reading. You take your associations with aces (maybe it’s beginnings) and add it to your associations with Spades (Air, Intellect, Anxiety, Academia) and you might come up with “Beginning of an intellectual or academic endeavor”.

Playing cards basically requires you memorize meanings. Additive meanings – adding a vertical meaning to the meaning of a suit – means you learn 18 meanings instead of 52 unique ones. You can, by all means, come up with 52 different meanings if that’s your style – I support you in that. I just know the memorization factor is what tripped me up and this is what helped me.

The Jack Problem

The other challenge with using a playing deck is deciding how you’ll read Jacks. I personally align them more with pages and read them as “general court member” with specific association with that. But I’ve recently started liking the framework of Jacks as “heir to the throne” which comes with a lot of associations with potential and power and usurping. Jacks don’t align perfectly with anything in tarot proper so even if you work within an existing tarot inspired framework, you’ll have to decide ahead of time what they’ll mean to you.

Tone

This is probably just a personal thing but I’ve found that the tone of playing cards can be a bit…harsh. I sometimes liked to soften it with dice or another form of divination. Other times I just sat back and basked in that salty salty feedback. Playing cards don’t “talk” the same way tarot cards do because their design doesn’t allow them too. So if you’re used to tarot cards, understand that you won’t get the same information or conversation from them. That’s fine honestly, they have their own style and charm and I really appreciate them for that.

It’s especially important to keep in mind when doing shadow work though. Since they can’t (easily) speak to broader life cycle themes the way Tarot can, you might find that either you need to pull more cards, pair it with another system like dice, or tailor your questions to fit what you find your playing cards speak best to.

Conclusion

Be wild, be free, don’t let yourself be bound by Tarot’s image as True Divination System™. Cartomancy is a tried and true divination tradition and playing cards honestly work just as well. It also doesn’t have to just be for divination proper. When I picked them up, I was using them for shadow work mostly and had great luck. They just take some practice to get used to. In retrospect, rather than from experience, I’d try pairing it with SOAP Journaling as I think it’d give the best result but I’d love to hear other people’s experience with other shadow work systems!

As always – hope this helps and if you have any questions please let me know!

*I never claim my way is the one true way. Take what is useful and leave the rest.