The four suits

Lesson 2 of 12 — the Arcana cartomancy guide

Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: the four territories every reading moves through.

Key points

• Hearts are feeling: love, friendship, family, the home, what you care about.
• Clubs are doing: work, growth, effort, ambition, friendship built through shared labor.
• Diamonds are having: money, property, deals, documents, news and the pace of the material world.
• Spades are facing: difficulty, endings, truth, the things that must be dealt with.
• A majority of one suit in a reading names what the reading is really about, whatever you asked.

Each suit is a territory. When a card appears, its suit tells you where in your life the matter lives. Hearts cover the emotional life: romance, friendship, family, the house you come home to. Clubs cover the active life: work, projects, growth, the people you build things with. Diamonds cover the material life: money, possessions, contracts, and in this tradition also messages and news, because news is what moves money. Spades cover the hard life: conflict, loss, endings, illness, and the truths you would rather not say.

Spades frighten new readers, and the old books did not help; they filled the suit with funerals. Read them more carefully. Spades are the suit of effort and honesty. A Spade in a reading says something needs facing, cutting or ending. That is often the most useful card on the table.

The suits also carry a season and a speed, which Lesson 10 covers. For now, learn to count them. Lay any reading and tally the suits before you read a single card. Four Hearts in seven cards means the question, whatever its words, is about feeling. Four Spades means it is about difficulty. The minority suit is just as telling: it is the part of life the situation is neglecting.

Practice

Draw seven cards and count the suits before reading anything. Say out loud what the majority suit suggests the reading is about. Then read the cards and see if you agree.