Spades and the Devil
Ever since I’ve started reading the cards professionally, the notion of ‘reading the cards like the Devil’ has been infusing my practice. Not because I claim such a skill, but because others attribute it to me. As a card reader, I suppose that you can’t expect higher praise than to have your profession associated with what the Devil does, but what does it mean, to read the cards like the Devil, and where does this notion come from?
Traditionally, the Jack of Spades has been associated with announcing the ‘gift’ of cards. The Queen of Spades is a purveyor of magical truth, and the King of Spades is a grand magician. The 8 of Spades is your coven, the 7 of Spades your black magic, and the Ace of Spades your tour de force weapon that will land anybody crossing you in their grave.
In more mundane matters, the suit of spades refers to public office, magistrates, lawyers, and trouble-makers. The suits of spades will make you cry, issue your parking tickets, put you in jail, or downright kill you. Spades are pretty straightforward. They dig the earth, give you a taste of your own blood – and that of others, if you’re blood thirsty – and cut to the chase. Spades essentialize matters, for which reason they are associated with the bones, or the skeletal system.
Phantasm
In the context of reading the cards like the Devil, however, what we’re talking about when we encounter the spades as a manifestation of the cartomantic craft par excellence is the projection of phantasmatic desire. Most students of cartomancy mirror their desire to read the cards well in what they imagine the Devil is doing. But this imagining is hardly tangible. It lives in people’s heads as a form of magical realism. Which is precisely why it’s fascinating. Because it works.
Reading the cards like the Devil is like cutting the moon in two halves and then burying the pieces at the crossroads. Reading the cards like the Devil is like carrying your hot sauce in your bag, like a swag. When you read like the Devil you’re like the Tao of writing. The more you want to explain what the Devil is to you, being all penetrating and such, the more you live the paradox of speaking about the unspeakable.
Formally speaking, you find the principles of reading like the devil on the front page of this website, in all my books, or more subtly, yet the most powerfully in my smallest book. For instance, Threads: Read Like the Devil Obsessions will tell you everything you need to know. In less than 50 pages.
My Devil, Your Devil
But how can you practice this right here and right now? There are many ways, but let’s see now. Some time ago I’ve offered a comment to a student in my Cards and Magic class, who wanted to know how we read the Devil card in the Tarot in the context of our shared interest to read the cards like the Devil – something I had promised to teach everybody in the class. I said that it’s a question of distinguishing between the narratives. As a diviner, reading like the Devil is all about developing the penetrating gaze that enables you to identify the Devil in a reading as a figure associated with forms of addiction, attachment, enslavement and lack of vision.
It’s not about the diviner being involved with these significations of the card, but rather, it’s about the diviner pointing to how destructive these forces can be for another. In other words, when you read like the Devil you don’t get excited whenever the Devil card shows up on your table, as you may think this has something to do with you. It doesn’t. It will have something to do with the one you read the cards for. Your own job is to stand neutral and detached and very much above what we collectively imagine is the Devil’s domain.
Conversely, if we insist on imagining things, for instance that the Devil may be involved in making transmissions to you as a reader, then let us say this: if the Devil himself decides to teach you to read the cards in a devilish way, indeed like the Devil, he will make sure to tell you to send him to hell first, so you can be free of having to make too many wrong inferences. On this one, and in spite of his reputation for collecting debts, the Devil would most definitely want you unencumbered in your readings. Why? Because the Devil doesn’t like a dull thing. An involved reading, such as the reading that relies on sympathy with the sitter, is not the Devil’s thing, simply because a reading informed by what you imagine another person is going through is dull. For, honestly speaking, how can you ever imagine such a thing? ‘Get real,’ I hear the Devil shrieking and calling for a more sensible act than the one dictated by unnecessary emotions.
Ask your cards
Now, if you want to know to what extent your readings are exciting or dull, and hence get an idea as to how close you are to the Devil, you can just ask the cards some of the following questions or a variation on them:
In what ways do I read the cards like the Devil?
How do I embody the Devil?
What does this Devil look like to me?
How do others identify the Devil in my readings?
What does this Devil look like to them?
How do I honor my Devil?
As this is a whole series of related questions, what you can do is lay down the cards in a classical pattern, such as the square of 9. If you read with a playing card deck, pick the Jack of Spades, aka The Man in Black, as the Devil’s significator, but don’t remove it from the deck by placing it on your table. If the Jack of Spades wants to show up, it will do so on his own. You can also pick a significator for yourself. Mine is the Queen of Diamonds (trad. a woman professor with white hair). If you’re blond, the Hearts are yours. If you’re brown pick the clubs. If black, the Spades are yours. If you’re redhead or have silver hair, go with the suit of diamonds.
If the Devil shows up, the better for you. If he doesn’t then you can think of the Devil as a force that’s not yet manifest. In my example below pertaining to myself, the Jack of Spades did me the favor of showing his face. The better for me, as my significator also decided to show up.
Let’s approach this the pedestrian way, and apply a structural method to our interpretation. We look at rows and colums and consider the spatial metaphors that these invite us to imagine. As for the suits, we also apply the rule of looking at their function, rather than symbolism: the Hearts are our blood relations, including our passions and joys, the Diamonds lend us transacting power, the Spades keep order, and the Clubs build houses or relations.
We read the rows first, then the columns, and then the X that crosses the tableau. We also create a synthesis at the end. The idea is to remember to dance with the cards. The pedestrian way of following a method is just a way of getting there, not the whole experience. The whole experience is found in the way in which what you see unfolding as a pattern right under your nose ends up validating your hunting instinct for the good story. Now let’s see what we can say.
Rows
My father passed on the gift of cards (King of Hearts), though his vision first reached me (6 of Diamonds) after a schism (2 of Spades). As my father died when I was 8, we can indeed talk about a separation. I first got serious about the cards after I had been communing with all sorts of other forms of divination, as my mother, who was an avid reader and my first mentor, had other preferences within the interpretative arts.
Reading the cards like the Devil manifests for me in delivering messages (Ace of Diamonds), first for the sheer pleasure of it (5 of Hearts) and then for the mental stretch that the oracular affords me (Queen of Diamonds).
I work with the cards in a very elastic way (5 of Clubs) with the help of the Devil himself (Jack of Spades) who initiates my projects, or finds suitable subject matters for me (Ace of Clubs).
Columns
There is a sense of fresh familiarity to my readings (King of Hearts, Ace of Diamonds, 5 of Clubs), even though the Devil may spoil my pleasure on occasion (2 of Spades, 5 of Hearts, Jack of Spades).
While my cartomancy work is being witnessed far and wide (6 of Diamonds, Queen of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs), my readings demonstrate a tight muscular fiber (6 of Diamonds, 5 of Hearts, 5 of Clubs), under goading from the spirit of my father (King of Hearts, 5 of Hearts, Ace of Clubs).
Synthesis
In this reading what we can observe is that we have three court cards, two aces, one traditionally associated with writing letters (Ace of Diamonds) and the other in this context with a pen (Ace of Clubs). One could argue here that what is at stake is the written verbal punch, more than the aggressive fencing one can also perform with an ink pen via the Ace of Spades.
This idea is supported by the two fives associated with the body and what you do for yourself – the center card, the 5 of Hearts, Eros, is all about pleasure, while the other, 5 of Clubs, is about stretching the mark.
Eros, the god of magic, literally on the Devil’s head, is what makes my readings interesting. While the Jack of Spades mirrors the 2 of Spades, suggesting a form of conflicting ambivalence, the sex card separating the two black cards suggests pleasure derived from paradox.
If you’ve got to make a pact with the Devil, would it be a ‘white’ one? The only logical card that can suggest a devilish bond must necessarily be the 2 of Spades, the suit of the craft. There’s thus pleasure in the bond. Erotic power is at the center of it. The Devil likes it, and so do I. The Queen of Diamonds receives the Eros card almost with a kiss.
The card indicating the cartomantic path is the 6 of Diamonds. This one takes you places. In the context of magical discourse, we could argue that this card stands for remote viewing. Above the Queen of Diamonds associated also with Mercurial power, we can infer that what we’re dealing with here is precisely the penetrating gaze. In a mundane reading the 6 of Diamonds card emphasizes the vehicle for vision, namely our eyes. This card tells us that we can see things from afar, hence its association with foresight.
As the 6 of Diamonds mirrors the Ace of Clubs, we could argue that this is suggestive of focused remote viewing. The vision is on point, so to speak. The Devil has his finger on it.
As the Jack of Spades precedes this point that we find on the card of the Ace of Clubs, he emphasizes even more the idea that what defines my reading like the Devil is the reading on point: focused, determined, and penetrating. This approach is also the result of discipline – the Jack of Spades gazes on the 5 of Clubs, almost stating the universal truth: no pain, no gain (5 of Clubs, Ace of Clubs).
Eros whispers to me, ‘just say it: hail love, hail jouissance, hail the sublime pleasure in being touched by the raven’s f(e)ather.
From a spatial point of view, we could say that the reading like the Devil approach to cartomancy is my foundation (bottom row). At the core is my passion for it (middle row), while my aspiration (top row) is to actually differentiate myself from the ways of my father. That makes perfect sense to me. As I was saying earlier here, if the Devil must inform my readings, then they cannot be the result of merely imitating others who came before me. What I’ve developed pertaining to this method must be the result of my vision alone. On point.
How are you doing? If you take the reading like the Devil method to your heart, can you identify your own unique nerve in it?
Cards: Otto Tragy for Altenburger Spielkartenfabrik 1910, in my private collection.
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The courts
My book dedicated to the reading of playing cards has a lot to say about the four suits, but, for a change, you may give The Power of the Trumps and Pips a go, as it’s filled with great court card and pip card stories in addition to the tarot trump cards.
