52-Card Reading Free

Although you can enjoy a deck of cards in a playful way, it is also a highly renowned divination tool. Indeed, it is by interpreting the reading of the cards that a gifted person can reveal the events to come in the destiny of the person concerned.

This practice is called cartomancy and has been very popular since the 15^th century. While there are still many decks of cards today, including the famous tarots, the most widely used and still familiar to all remains the traditional 52-card deck.

Playing cards are more than 2,000 years old. Their earliest traces are found in ancient India and China, where they accompanied the game of dice. It was only after the opening of the Silk Road, which linked Asia to the Arabian peninsulas, that merchants in caravans imported them to the gates of medieval Europe.

Very soon, the playing cards as we still know them today fell into the expert hands of fortune-tellers. These women were roaming bohemians, who lived on the fringes of society among their nomadic Romani people. Many of them had the particularity of possessing a gift of clairvoyance, which until then they had used by reading the lines of the hand of a subject, to predict their future.

But upon discovering playing cards and their somewhat esoteric side, they began to give each of them its own meaning and adopted them as a new professional tool. And their success grew greater each day. Soon, the gypsy wagons of these nomads with large families drew closer to France through Eastern Europe.

Having reached our land, this new divinatory art through cards was to enjoy a success of great scale, and that across every social class of the population. This was the beginning of what would come to be called cartomancy, the divinatory art of predicting the future for a querent through the interpretation of the cards.

In the centuries that followed, while the traditional deck of cards remained the most popular for practising gifts of clairvoyance, it was to be shaken up by the arrival of the tarot decks, which came from Italy. The most famous of them is still today the Tarot of Marseille.

With its 78 cards, made up of 22 major arcana and 56 minor ones, it went further into esotericism thanks to the addition of figures and subjective characters relating to human nature that were printed on each of its blades.

Other tarots followed, such as the Oracle of Belline, created by the renowned seer Mlle Lenormand, and heavily influenced by horoscopes and astrology. Even though many seers eventually gave in to the temptation of the tarots, most of them remained faithful to the traditional 52-card deck, of which, moreover, almost every household in France owned a copy.

As we still know it today, this deck of cards is made of 2 colours, namely red and black. The 52 cards are divided into 4 suits or signs called Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs. Each of these suits is made up of 13 cards running from the Ace to the 10 and are completed by a Jack, a Queen and a King. In cartomancy, each of the cards has its own meaning during their interpretation, and they are often given an astrological definition.

The most telling are of course those of the Kings, Queens and Jacks, used to assess a personality, but the Aces also carry great importance during a reading, for they are a sign of luck or else of misfortune to come. Each suit also has its own symbolism.

Thus, the suit of Hearts relates to feelings, to emotions and to everything connected with the affective. It represents a love relationship, a family life and the friendships that surround us.

The suit of Clubs embodies everything related to our work and to our professional relationships. It speaks to us of material goods, of money and of our inherited assets.

They are also the cards that can bring luck.

The suit of Spades informs us of everything that may be harmful in our projects, of the obstacles that may block our path and hold us back somewhat. It is often a sign of bad luck.

Finally, the suit of Diamonds recounts the movements of a life, the transactions to come and the projects to be realised. It is the suit that speaks to us most of the future.

Pyramid spread

It is a very effective divinatory reading, because it draws on the past and the present of a querent to make them predictions of the future.

After having shuffled your pack of cards, you will need to draw 6 for the past, 4 for the present, 2 for the future and 1 that will serve as the final synthesis of the reading.

You will then have to lay them out in the shape of a pyramid. The cards of the past will be its base, those of the present the middle, those of the future the top, and that of the synthesis the apex.

The interpretation of the cards will be done in order and their revelations will be very complete, for they will draw on the experience and life of the querent. This reading therefore tells us that the future often flows from our past deeds.

Circle spread

After having shuffled and cut the cards, you will ask your querent to draw a first one, which will represent them during the reading. It will be placed in the centre of the table.

Then you will take out 12 cards from the pack, and your querent will draw one. This operation will be repeated 12 times, so that you end up with 12 cards that you will lay out in a circle, like the hands of a clock. Then you will turn them over and read them.

Once this is done, you will gather them up clockwise starting from the 1 o’clock position and with these you will form 4 packs of 3 cards each. Thus, the interpretation can begin.

• The 1^st pack will represent the personality of your querent.
• The 2^nd will embody their home and their material needs.
• The 3^rd will speak to you of their future.
• As for the 4^th, it will evoke obstacles to come in the events ahead.

 Cross spread

Here you will need to draw 5 cards from the lot and place 3 in a line, 1 at the top and 1 at the bottom, so as to obtain the shape of a cross.

During the interpretation, the first card located in the middle and to the left will speak to you of your querent’s state of mind in the present moment.

The second, located in the middle but to the right, will embody their entourage.

The third which is right at the top will speak to you of their desires.

The fourth which is at the bottom will symbolise their material situation at the moment.

As for the fifth which lies in the middle of the cross, it will be the synthesis of the previous interpretations. It is the one that will dictate events to come in their destiny.