Numbers: Ace to Ten

Lesson 3 of 12 — the Arcana cartomancy guide

The number on a card tells you what stage the matter is at, from the first spark to the full house.

Key points

• Aces begin: a seed, a message, a single thing arriving.
• Twos pair and Threes grow; Fours hold still and Fives unsettle.
• Sixes are paths, Sevens are the suit at its most concentrated, Eights are talk and movement.
• Nines expand, and Tens complete what the Ace began.
• The same number in two suits is the same stage in two territories; read them together.

The numbers run a story from one to ten, and the story is the same in every suit. The Ace is a beginning: the Ace of Hearts a new feeling, the Ace of Clubs a new undertaking, the Ace of Diamonds a message or a sum of money, the Ace of Spades an ending that begins something. Twos are pairs and exchanges. Threes grow, and in the folk tradition they carry wishes. Fours are squares: stable, stuck, waiting. Fives are groups and disturbances; five has no symmetry, and something has to move.

Sixes are paths and the help you meet on them. Sevens are the suit distilled, which is why the old readers treated them with respect: the Seven of Hearts is feeling with nowhere to land, the Seven of Spades is sorrow itself. Eights are movement, talk and the social world. Nines expand toward fulfillment; the Nine of Hearts is the wish card, the Nine of Clubs the harvest, the Nine of Diamonds the journey, and the Nine of Spades the low point. Tens complete: the full house, the finished work, the treasure chest, the burden set down.

Once you hold the sequence, you can read a card you have never studied. A Six of Diamonds is a path with a cost; a Four of Clubs is work waiting on a decision. The number gives the stage, the suit gives the territory, and the meaning is the meeting of the two.

Practice

Lay the Ace through Ten of one suit in a row and tell the story of a relationship, a job or a project from beginning to completion. Then do it with a different suit.