In which Amelia indulges her sentimental tendencies.

Playing cards are relatively new to my divination practice, all things considered. I first began to consider a pack of french-suited cards as a tool for insight in the year 2017, around the time I began working with the Tarot de Marseille. I didn’t act on that impulse with study & practice until 2021. The red and black pips, however, have been a constant presence in my life almost as far back as I can remember. 

My mother always kept a pack of cards by her armchair in the living room, turning to them to pass the time in countless rounds of one-handed solitaire. If Mom wasn’t moving around the house getting work done, she could usually be found keeping her hands busy with a deck of cards. I have a distinct memory of counting the hearts on the cards fanned out in my father’s hands as I sat in his lap on a night when friends came over to play Spades. Game nights were a regular occurrence in our home growing up, with the kids running around outside in the twilight while the adults laughed and played around the dining room table. 

I’ll never forget the summer I turned eight years old, when I finally learned how to riffle shuffle with a bridge and carried a deck in my pocket everywhere we went so I could practice my new skill. My particular favorite deck was a pack of clover-backed cards from the Aer Lingus flight my parents took to Ireland some years prior, but I also had some Cheeto brand cards that were fun. It’s very likely  that my love of cards in general (and my particularities regarding cardstock) began with shuffling that Aer Lingus deck so much I developed blisters on my fingers. 

Fast forward through a series of summers playing cards at camp with friends, on road trips with family, and sneaking Texas Hold‘em in the back of study hall (I will never forget when my crush asked me to blow on his cards for luck one day ~ I thought I’d died and gone to heaven). As a young adult fresh out of college, I fell in love with my now husband over a deck of cards. Living off of stage management gigs, neither of us had money for expensive dates. I think it was our second date when he taught me how to play his favorite game, “Sh*thead.” I’m pretty sure I fell in love right then and there. 

So, even though I didn’t pick up a deck of cards for divinatory purposes until just a few years ago, playing cards have always been there. So much of my life has taken place with a deck of cards in hand. Herein lies the beauty of the playing card deck. 

When I look at a deck of cards, I don’t simply see a deck of cards. I see my parents, old friendships, my husband, and a smattering of life experiences. I see bits and pieces of my time on this earth, woven together to create the person I am today. When I first picked up a deck of cards to learn its divinatory possibilities, so much of myself and my life was already scribbled all over each of the 52 cards. I wasn’t picking up some foreign, mysterious tool; I was picking up an old friend. 

Learning to read playing cards has been like learning to hear a new voice from an already well-loved soul. It’s like learning that my favorite prose author also writes poetry. What a dance of discovery it has, and continues to be. And my lifetime of interactions with the cards has, in my humble opinion, only enhanced that process.

If you haven’t considered learning to read playing cards, I invite you to try picking up that deck collecting dust on the back of your shelf and just get it moving in your hands. Shuffle it, play games with loved ones, carry it around with you. Imbue it with your life. I propose it will only make the divination part that much more poignant. And if you already have some kind of divination practice with playing cards, I invite you to look closely at the cards and consider all the ways they have existed in your life beyond their use for divination, and perhaps some of the ways they can fit into the cracks of your days as you go about living. 

Happy reading, my friends. 

xoxo,

Amelia

P.S. If you are interested in learning more about connecting with playing cards, I’m currently working on an educational offer that will be available in our Etsy shop very soon!