The deck in your hand

Lesson 1 of 12 — the Arcana cartomancy guide

Fifty-two cards, four suits, no pictures to memorize: why an ordinary deck has been read for centuries, and how this app reads it.

Key points

• Playing cards were read for fortune within a century of arriving in Europe; the first printed system was published in France in 1770 by the reader known as Etteilla, using a 32-card deck.
• Two broad traditions survive: the French, which often reads with 32 cards and gives Clubs money and Diamonds news, and the English and American, which reads all 52 and gives Diamonds money and Clubs work.
• Arcana reads the full 52-card deck in the English and American tradition, with Jokers optional and reversals off by default.
• A playing card has no scene painted on it, so you read three things: the suit, the number, and the color.
• Everything in these lessons is a lens, not a prophecy. The cards describe; you decide.

Long before tarot decks were sold in bookshops, people read the deck they already had. Playing cards reached Europe in the fourteenth century, and within a few generations readers were laying them out on kitchen tables to ask about love, money, journeys and trouble. The first systematic method was printed in Paris in 1770 by Jean-Baptiste Alliette, who wrote under the name Etteilla and read with the 32-card piquet deck, the deck French card games used. The tradition that grew from his work still reads 32 cards in France today.

English and American readers kept the full deck of 52. Their suit meanings also settled differently. In most English-language books Diamonds are money and the material world, Clubs are work, growth and friendship, Hearts are love and the home, and Spades are difficulty and truth. In the French lineage Clubs (trefle) often carry money and luck, and Diamonds (carreau) carry news and journeys. Neither is more correct; they are two dialects. Arcana speaks the English and American one, because it is the one most of the sources in English agree on, and we say so whenever a card’s meaning differs between the two.

What you will not find on a playing card is a picture telling you what to feel. That is the strength of the deck. You read the suit for the subject, the number for the stage, and the color for the mood, and then you read the cards next to each other. The rest of these lessons teach you exactly that, one layer at a time.

Practice

Take a real deck if you have one. Separate it into the four suits and look at each pile. Notice what you already associate with hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades before you read a single meaning.