AUTHOR’S NOTE: Even when divining with tarot decks that include scenic or semi-scenic Minor Arcana (specifically the Waite-Smith, the Thoth and their numerous clones), I’m prone to rely on suit-and-number theory for much of my improvisational content.

When interpreting the cards, I pay little attention to the images after I’ve identified their presence in a spread, primarily because I internalized my chosen “baseline” definitions long ago and can call them up at will, tweaking them as needed to suit the focus of the reading. Numbered cards sporting prosaic scenes too often deliver “canned narrative vignettes” that have little or nothing to say about the answer to the question, and it’s simply too much work to reshape their testimony to that end when no obvious convergence of ideas can be found via free-association or intuitive speculation. If my core assumptions are serviceable, I buff them up with a little off-the-cuff inspiration, imagination and ingenuity and let them fly.

Of the two principles, number symbolism plays a more profound role in my practice than suit meanings, which provide a broader background theme rooted mainly in their elemental attribution. In the past I’ve likened the pair to a sports broadcasting team, with its play-by-play announcer (the numbers) and its “color” commentator (the suits/elements). My style is a blend of Pythagorean and Hermetic number theory, which begins with the purest, most energetic expression of the associated suit (the Ace) and concludes with its exhaustion in the Ten. The idea is that an element originates in the numinous realm of Spirit and gradually devolves into mundane stability and eventual decay in the domain of Earth. Unlike Pythagoras, who considered Ten to be the “perfect” number, the Qabalists saw it as being hemmed in by material constraints and ultimately “running out of gas.”

The Pythagorean component is geometric in nature (the Point, the Line, the Triangle, the Square, and a few other increasingly complex polygons), while the Hermetic architecture is predicated on the Qabalistic Tree-of-Life format of ten spheres denoting the “Descent of Spirit into Matter.” Beyond the equilateral Triangle (the precursor of the Circle that arises from its rotation) and the Square (which prefigures the Cube), the Pythagorean model wanders off into abstraction that becomes entirely mystical and religious in quality (at least according to Henry Cornelius Agrippa). Since I can’t fathom the practical importance of either one for action-and-event-oriented prediction, I usually switch to the Hermetic mode for any card numbered Five or above unless I’m working with the Tarot de Marseille, with which I like to use Joseph Maxwell’s numerology with its emphasis on “isomorphs,” sets of two numbers that sum to the same value (e,g, 1+4=5 and 2+3=5), thus creating synergistic resonance between them.

Regarding the TdM, I brought my trained graphic designer’s sensibilities to bear on the pip-card designs and created specific definitions according to the “open” and “closed” patterns formed by the suit emblems and the decorative “arabesques.” Following the lead of Yoav Ben-Dov and Enrique Enriquez without plagiarizing them, I developed a personal set of utilitarian meanings for divination, with no overt psychology or spirituality intruding to dilute the pragmatism. This yielded a secondary layer of interpretation that is more versatile than any narrowly-framed scene can offer while still aligning with the cards’ numerical and elemental significance. Not only is this mentally stimulating, it is a lot more fun than trying to puzzle out what the perceived actions of the characters on “picture” cards have to do with the querent’s circumstances.

At the moment I’m working diligently toward mastering cartomantic prediction with playing cards after flirting with it for the last ten years. The Wiccan and Pagan systems have their own approach to the application of numbers that partially agrees with classical and esoteric thinking while departing from it in several significant ways. Although I’ve found that the general meaning for a particular card can vary from one authority to another more than it does among tarot writers, I appreciate that the folk and craft underpinnings of playing-card reading seem more honest than the folkloric bloat that has been grafted onto RWS-based tarot decks over the years. It just comes across as more “real.”

Having previously accomplished the task of “rectifying” the RWS, Thoth and TdM minor-card meanings to my own satisfaction as described elsewhere in this blog, my current goal is to meld the four numerical schemes into a functionally coherent whole to the extent possible, recognizing that the theories of Pythagoras predated even the oldest forms of Western cartomancy by nearly two millennia and should be considered the philosophical touchstone for all subsequent assignment of metaphysical properties to mathematical concepts. I believe the creation of a theoretical “bridge” between these disparate doctrines is a legitimate undertaking within the scope of my larger agenda.