AUTHOR’S NOTE: I threw the cards for this reading last night, but right now I’m sitting in Emporia, Virginia at the end of the second leg of our trip, so this is a validation of yesterday’s prediction rather than a new forecast. Since the subject is a road trip, I adapted the usual suit meanings for Hearts and Diamonds to fit the context, but Spades needed no adjustment.

Overview: Red cards dominated the pull. My French-Canadian mother-in-law always called a brilliant red hue “red-red,” while the artist in me would have termed it a “saturated” color. Saturation is the emphasis here, and red cards are generally more fortunate than black ones, so I didn’t anticipate any difficulty until later in the journey with the 5 of Spades. In the Art of Cartomancy divination material, Kapherus (J. David Arcuri) notes that four red cards and one black card indicate that the querent may have a strong influence on the matter via an act of will, and I can think of nothing more demanding of willpower than driving long distances at highway speeds in heavy traffic.

Per Kapherus, “Unless it is besieged by Spades, the 8 of Hearts is a positive addition to any reading.” Here, at the beginning of today’s trek, it foreshadowed a favorable start to a cooperative effort.

The 10 of Hearts is an even more auspicious omen, suggesting that we would hit our stride as we got up to speed during the first half of the day’s travel.

The 2 of Diamonds is a card of reciprocal effort. In this scenario, it implied the hand-off of driving responsibility that occurred half-way to our destination.

When I told my wife the 5 of Spades had turned up near the end of the run, she had a hunch and checked the status of Interstate 95 road work south of Richmond, VA. It turned out that heavy construction was underway in that area, and it had the potential to slow our rate of progress considerably. The road was torn up in places, but what actually happened was that we were almost involved in a high-speed accident involving two semi rigs. We were following a Fed Ex tractor-trailer going around 70 mph in the passing lane when the driver veered sharply to the right into the travel lane and forced another truck off the road. They didn’t make contact but it was a near thing; fortunately the second driver was paying attention while the first one may have been falling asleep at the wheel because, after the close encounter, he wandered onto the rumble strip twice more before we were able to get around him.

All of the Fours signify stability, and with the 4 of Diamonds the closest I could come to a related meaning in the Kapherus text was “rented property,” This seemed to be confirmation that we would make it to our next hotel stop without further incident. In fact, except for that small bit of excitement, the entire trip was uneventful. Tomorrow it’s on to Savannah, GA.