The Playing Card Oracles by Cortez/Freeman

raventepes

I was gifted the Playing Card Oracle months ago by one of my local shop owners, and I've been useing it sparsely since. I've found it very useful, and it reads like a dream. Also, I've found that it really likes to play with others; that is to use other oracle decks (NON-TAROT) in conjunction with it for a singular reading. So far it plays best with my Faery Wisdom, Saint Deck, and Rune Magic cards, though I imagine other decks can be used, I haven't attempted it yet.
 

room

raventepes said:
Also, I've found that it really likes to play with others; that is to use other oracle decks (NON-TAROT) in conjunction with it for a singular reading.

YES. Breakthrough thinking raventepes.

Glad you like it, I do too. If you have the Thoth, try it with that--packs a punch.
 

raventepes

I DO have a Thoth, and I'll go ahead and give it a try.
 

6 Haunted Days

I ended up getting a good size gift certificate from Amazon for Christmas, so I ordered the book and deck, and just got it today!

WOW am I impressed so far. Looking through the cards was amazing, the artwork is incredibly evocative and dream like. I really love the backs...swirls, sprials, obviously some celtic influence there....and the colour I think is perfect a dark creamy yellow.

The book looks very indepth and fascinating. I can't wait to delve into it. The cards are bigger than normal playing cards, but not huge. I think it works well, you see the paintings and feel of the card that much better.

Someone mentioned they thought the book was self-published. It must be their own company, but it is high qaulity. Some self-published books I have gotten in the past have been of horrible low grade qaulity and fell apart. But this one is excellent. Just wanted to point that out.

I'm very glad I discovered this on here, thanks!

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Lee

I just received the cards. It was nice to get them, after having had the book for a while. I was surprised to see that unlike my copy of the book, which was self-published but with a USGames sticker on it, the deck was actually published by USGames.

I notice that many of the hand-lettered titles which appear on the cards as shown in the book are replaced on the physical deck by a nicer font. Also the book shows the back design as going all the way to the card edge, but the actual cards have a cream-colored border around the swirly design. Perhaps the border was added to accommodate USGames' copyright notice?

Anyway, the cards look very nice and I'm looking forward to working with them.

-- Lee
 

Joermit

I'd be interested to see what you think of them, Lee... I had this book for a while and found it really interesting... the concept of the geomancy and patterns the cards makes was fascinating... (thought it really weird that several of the pattern names, Albus and Dumbledore I believe, where prominent in the Harry Potter books)and how so much information could be gotten from only 4 cards... please let us know what you think... I've borrow that book out and honestly don't think I'll be getting it back...lol... so perhaps I'll have to order it again... thanks!

Joey
 

Lee

Yesterday and today I had some free time, so I was able to spend some time with the deck. I read over the card meanings a few times, reordered the cards by suit, the re-reordered them by number. Then today I tried the 4-card spread.

I found that the 4-card spread in itself wasn't very satisfying, so then I went the whole route and derived the three geomantic figures. It seems like a complicated process when you read it in the book, but when you actually do it, it's actually fairly straightforward and simple. Although I must say, I'm not accustomed to doing mathematical computations, drawing diagrams, and looking things up in the book when I do card readings. (One has to look up the meanings of the geomantic figures, although I suppose after a while one would learn them well enough to not have to look them up.)

With the geomantic process added, I found the reading suddenly made sense. The geomantic considerations add a structure and a direction to the reading, and really do help to interpret the cards by narrowing the possibilities of positive and negative for each card. The readings I did were satisfying, and I'm encouraged enough to continue working with it.

Regarding the card images, I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that, much as I respect the RWS tradition (and I've certainly relied on that tradition in much of my own published work), the Cortez/Freeman images are more efficient and effective for divination than the RWS. They seem to cover a wider range of issues and tone, and each one is fascinating in its own right -- unlike the RWS, where some cards are clearly more interesting than others. I think part of the reason for this may be that, from what one might speculate based on the scant evidence, neither Waite nor Smith was particularly interested in divination with the pip cards, or at least didn't spend a whole lot of time engaged in it. Waite pooh-poohs the practice in his book, and Smith, who probably worked with tarot a bit as part of her Golden Dawn training but who took on the RWS project as a job, converted to Catholicism a few years after her work on the deck and probably never touched a tarot deck again. Cortez and Freeman, on the other hand, evolved their images, interpretations, and reading methods over decades.

Nonetheless, my ultimate goal is still to read not with their deck but with regular playing card decks. But I like their images/meanings, so I plan to use their meanings with regular playing card decks.

I'd also like to experiment with using their meanings with unillustrated tarot decks. I haven't yet decided how to deal with the extra four cards in the Minor Arcana. Cortez/Freeman actually have four court cards, by considering the 10's as Ladies. So I might even remove four cards from the tarot deck, perhaps the four 10's, or the four Pages...

-- Lee
 

Phoenix Rising

Thanks for sharing with us Lee. Can you give an example on how she does the Geomancy? Is it a matter of adding the pips, of the shape they make?

Are some of the meanings, have any common traditional meanings to them? The Ace of heart, seems to be common across most methods as being the "Home" card.
 

Lee

Their system is largely based on number+suit, so there's not much room for some of the traditional meanings. But some of the cards do have traditional meanings, for example:

Ace of Spades: Secrets, change, death

2 of Hearts: Lovers

5 of Diamonds: the "Peddler's Ace", I think she says in the book that this card has this title in some old card games

8 of Spades: "Field of Stones", the worst card in the deck. She says that "Dating back to the time of Napoleon, the 8 of Spades was believed to be a card of ill omen."

Jack of Clubs as Lancelot and Jack of Hearts as La Hire: these are standard French assignments of persons to cards.

About the geomancy, here's how I described it earlier:

Lee said:
The way it works is, there are 16 figures, each of which has its own pattern of dots, its own meaning, its own name, and a correlation with one of the seven planets of antiquity. You can see the figures here.

Each figure is composed of four rows. Each row contains either one or two dots. And this is where Cortez's four-card spread comes in. In her spread, which is laid out vertically, each card can be matched to one row of a geomantic figure. Her method is to derive the geomantic figure from the four-card spread by a simple binary analysis of the cards. If the card number is odd, the geomantic row receives one dot. If the card number is even, the geomantic row receives two dots. Thus, a geomantic figure (called a Witness) is derived from the four-card spread. This geomantic figure, since it has its own meaning and astrological correlation, can be interpreted so as to provide an overall direction for the spread.

Then, a second geomantic figure (another Witness) can be derived, this time by analyzing the cards by color rather than by number. The differences between the two Witnesses can be seen as either providing a temporal framework (first this, then that), or a psychological framework (inner mind, outer personality).

Finally, the two Witnesses together can be used to generate a third geomantic figure, called the Judge, by adding together each row of the two figures. The Judge provides an ultimate outcome, and Cortez has a list of six rules governing the analysis of the three figures together (i.e., what if you have two negative Witnesses and a positive Judge, etc.).
 

6 Haunted Days

I absolutely am in love with this system (book and cards)....learning a ton from it!

I was wondering if any noticed this either though....Lee perhaps you did as you're studying it as well.

Under the suit sign designations....she has West under hearts (which fits) and water but then she has the season spring? And for Diamonds she has fire and south but than its Autumn as the season. It seems completely messed up to me. In all the books and magical correspondences I have seen over the years West is always Autumn. Autumn is the middle age, the decline, etc. So how does that correlate to fire? Which usually goes with adolesence?

I guess just seeing the words South and then Autumn jars me. As well as seeing Spring with West.

This is what I am used to across the board (meaning many different books, systems I have studied over the years.

North- Winter- old age (earth)
South- Summer- Adolesence (fire)
East - Spring- childhood (air)
West- Autumn- mid life (water)

Anyone have a take on why it's kind of mixed around the book?