Playing cards

I do hope I'm posting this in the right thread and that what I'm about to say won't be considered too OT. Please advise me if necessary mods!!

This past week I decided I wanted to learn how to read with playing cards (cartomancy). Ever since that decision I have been dreaming every night about doing cartomancy readings, which I have never done with tarot even though I've been working with it for years! I decided this partly so that I could read at any time and any place without contention (religious family etc), partly because I felt it might enhance my tarot readings too by sharpening my intuition.

This morning I was pondering the "red is good/black is bad" thing as I was finding it a difficult concept to grasp, given that with the tarot suits I view them all as neutral (I use pip decks). Suddenly the whoooole thing clicked into place and the following table of correspondences emerged:

Spades - Swords - Air - Masc. - Neg
Hearts - Cups - Water - Fem. - Pos
Clubs - Batons - Fire - Masc. - Neg
Diams. - Coins - Earth - Fem. - Pos

Masculine or black cards are bad because air and fire are destructive forces.
Feminine or red cards are good because water and earth are creative forces.

It seems terribly obvious I know but for me this is a major breakthrough - and I understand the tarot better as a result of it as well.

Are there others on here who read playing cards? I'm going through the indexed posts but most of them stop at 2008 or so.

This is also my first post over here in Oracles. Hello!
Dawn

Hi Dawn, I can’t see the 4 suits as you do – 2 negative and 2 positive. As Michael J Fox said: I see possibilities in everything. For everything that's taken away, something of greater value has been given. You could run through all the suits (air, fire, earth, water) and find something positive and negative about each of them. And I use spades/earth, clubs/air, hearts/water, and diamonds/fire.

... but if your system works for you, use it.

I am learning Ana Cortez's system of reading playing cards. I feel like she presents a more nuanced approach to understanding the suits than what you've presented here, but I do sort of use your approach when I take my first glance at a spread of cards, just to get a general impression of what's going on.

Sent from my PI86100 using Board Express

well it's easier to learn as most books and sites teach you, dawn tarot...
your own method could come later...the correspondences you stated
are basic ones....that red/black thing is probably old as cartomancy itself...

Interesting that we all use different methods!

Obviously in a reading it wouldn't be so clear cut as this - the cards interact with each other and tell a story of sorts I'm just so happy I've made sense of something, I did look briefly at cartomancy way back when and felt it was too complicated I found tarot easier because I'm a very visual learner. However as I've progressed I think cartomancy might be more accessible to me now and I'm very excited about being on this new journey.