How to use a bridge deck to tell your fortune

Fall is upon us in Canada and October is considered by many to be that time of year when the veils between the supernatural and known worlds are at their thinnest. What a perfect time to pull out that favourite bridge deck and try your hand at telling the future. Will you win at the club tonight? Should you ask that Life Master in #408 to play in the tournament on Sunday? Will your partner forgive you for that terrible slam?

By Jude Goodwin
First Published in Bridge Canada, October 2021.

Using cards for divination is nothing new, but most would use the Tarot these days. However, both types of cards have the same Chinese roots. Early in the 16th century, they diverged, with cartomancy (divination with cards) using the extended 78-card standard Tarot deck exclusively, and the deck of cards as we know it today being used only for game play. This doesn’t mean, though, that we can’t use them for casual fortune telling. Here’s some tips to get you started.

First, our bridge decks have only 52 cards, while a full Tarot deck has 78. The Tarot has 4 extra honour cards (the Page in each suit) and 22 Major Arcana cards. To me this means the playing cards will be great for quick, superficial questions while a full Tarot deck should be used for more involved divination.

1. Shuffle and Deal

Shuffle your cards thoroughly. If it’s someone other than yourself asking the question, have them shuffle the cards. While the shuffling is happening, the question needs to be clearly formed in one’s mind. Take the cards in hand and deal either a one-card or a three-card spread.

2. Quick and Easy

If you need a simple Yes/No or Good/Bad answer, simply deal one card. We’ve all been in that space where we really can’t make up our minds about something, or where we are feeling anxious about a situation and really just want to know how it’s going to turn out, one way or another. Truth is, most situations will turn out just fine, but often our brains will worry and worry. Now you can deal yourself a card, and if it’s friendly, suddenly all that worry fades away. If it’s not friendly, there’s more you can do but let’s just start here.

3. The Divination

At the bottom of this page, you will see what cards are associated with a Yes, No or Maybe. And sometimes you’ll just need that simple answer. Sometimes however, you’ll want to know more. It these cases, you can look at the suit your answer came in. 

4. A little bit more please

If you’d like a little more information from that one card, you can look to the suit for what kind of answer you’ve received. Below is a brief outline of some of the meaning given to each of the four suits.

Spades (Swords): Intellectual reasoning and logic, mental energy and communications. This is the suit of intelligence, logic, truth, ambition, conflict and communication. It also represents fears, worries and doubts.

Hearts (Cups): The heart suit represents emotions, the unconscious, creativity, and intuition. An answer in this suit often refers to relationships, whether romantic or otherwise, family matters, and one’s imagination and inner world. 

Diamonds (Pentacles): This suit represents material concepts such as the body, home, money and physical things you can feel, taste, touch. On the negative side it can reflect greed, jealousy, miserliness, and unbridled ambition at the cost of all else.

Clubs (Wands): Clubs represent our creative sparks, spiritual passion and social vitality. An answer in this suit indicates a lot of energy and passion coming in for a project, relationship, interest or topic. 

How then does an understanding of a suit help your question? Let’s say you asked about a bridge partner, wondering if they’ll call for a game tonight. If the answer is ‘No’ and it’s a Spade, this could be something to do with your communications. Or it could be that partner is feeling some self-doubt. If you want to play a game with them, best to call them yourself. If it’s a Heart, it could be they’re having family issues which prevent them from playing. If it’s a Diamond, they might be worried about the costs, but more likely they’re being greedy and want to win and don’t think they will win with you. Best to let that partner loose! And finally if it’s a Club, it’s possible this person hasn’t made up their mind and will probably miss the opportunity to call in time. You could possibly call them instead. 

Of course there are many variations of divination with cards and zillions of articles written on this topic. A quick search of Google should provide many hours of interesting discovery. In this article, we’ve looked at a one-card spread. Sometimes a three-card spread will better answer a question, even using playing cards. If you’re interested in learning more here’s an article I’ve written on the three-card spread. It’s written with a Tarot Deck in mind, but you can certainly apply its principles to a regular deck as well.

LINK: giftsformystics.com/blog-archive/three-card-spread

THE ANSWER

THE ANSWER IS YES

Any Ace

Spades: Ace, Jack

Diamonds: Ace, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, Queen, King

Clubs: Ace, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, Jack, Queen, King

Hearts: Ace, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King

THE ANSWER IS NO

Spades: 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10

Diamonds: 4, 5

Clubs: 5, 7, 10

Hearts: 5, 8

THE ANSWER IS MAYBE

Spades: 2, 4, 6, Q, K

Diamonds: 2, 7

Hearts: 4, 7