Playing Cards

Lee:

I don't know if I mentioned this before--maybe I did on another thread. If I'm repeating myself, disregard.

My introduction to cartomancy, almost 40 years ago, was through playing cards. One of my fellow students, a Gypsy whose only known name was "Gypsy" insisted that I sit down one day so she could read for me. She spread out about 25 regular playing cards from an ordinary deck. I don't remember all she said, but I do remember she accurately predicted two of my three marriages, and described in some detail the women involved in each.

I was bitten by the card bug at that time, and I still believe that playing cards are a viable medium for the practice that all of us here know and love. I also feel, as one of the posters mentioned above, that playing card readings tend to be "blunt."

(catboxer)

Hi, Dave --

As I've been reading Robert Camp's card definitions in "Destiny Cards," they are indeed concise and logical, and quite well-written, but it also strikes me that many of them are rather limited in their scope. For example, the 2 of Diamonds is defined strictly in financial terms, as a "money partnership" or some kind of partnership related to money. I think this is fine for Camp's system, in which one does general readings which tell you what will happen over the coming week or year, so, for example, if you get the 2 of Diamonds in the Wednesday position, that means that on Wednesday something will happen related to a financial partnership.

But if one were to ask specific questions as is more common with Tarot readings, , for example some subject which doesn't relate to financial partnerships, what do you do then? Do you find yourself expanding the scope of the meanings beyond what Camp has written?

I am enjoying these meanings and I may experiment with using them to read with non-illustrated-pip decks. I'm also experimenting with using meanings for the numbers 1-10 based on 1-10 of the trump cards.

-- Lee

Lee:

I think that somewhere -- maybe in his introductory material -- Camp specifies that diamonds generally indicate money or material, but that they apply also to all measures of value, and thus would encompass interpretations that could embrace observations about a person's "values."

True enough, he specifies that two diamonds is the card of "wheeling and dealing," but it seems there's always enough wiggle room in this system to admit alternative interpretations, dependent on the general nature of the spread.

Two diamonds, incidentally, is my daughter's birth card, and if there was ever a person who lives by her wits it's her.

(catboxer)