THE CURATOR’S NOTEBOOK TAROT QUESTIONS
Yes. Many readers use Tarot to answer yes or no questions, often by deciding on a method before drawing. In our own practice, though, a plain yes or no rarely makes the most of a Tarot card. Its image and its relationship to the question can help us see what lies behind the decision and what deserves closer attention.
Still, the wish for a quick answer is familiar. Sometimes the moment before turning over a card tells you something too: you find yourself hoping for one answer, or dreading another.
Whenever someone asks whether Tarot can answer yes or no questions, Jen, one of Simply Tarot’s founders, is reminded of a playing card game she used to play with friends before she began reading Tarot. In the version they played, each suit had an answer. She cannot now remember where she first encountered it, but she remembers asking, drawing and reacting together. It gave them the quick answer they wanted, while leaving room to approach Tarot with a different kind of attention.
The game
First, they laid out the four aces, one for each suit. These marked where the other cards would go. Someone would ask a question and turn over a card, then place it beneath the ace of the matching suit. As the game continued, the cards formed four little columns, a bit like solitaire.
Each suit had an answer.
♥♥A
♥
♥♥
HEARTS
Yes
♦♦A
♦
♦♦
DIAMONDS
Definitely
♣♣A
♣
♣♣
CLUBS
No
♠♠A
♠
♠♠
SPADES
Maybe
Only the suit gave the answer. A seven of hearts and a queen of hearts both meant yes. The four aces stayed on the table while the other 48 cards were shuffled and drawn, one at a time. Placing each card beneath its matching ace made the answer visible in the growing columns.
This is how Jen remembers playing the game. She does not know where she first encountered it, and the four answers should not be mistaken for established suit meanings. The pause before turning over a card was part of the fun. Sometimes the answer was welcome. Sometimes it was not. And sometimes a spade left the question open.
How are playing cards related to Tarot?
Tarot and ordinary playing cards belong to a shared history of card games. A familiar pack has 52 cards divided into four suits of thirteen. A Tarot deck has 78 cards: 56 suit cards and 22 cards that include figures such as The Fool, The Lovers and The Star. Those additional cards give Tarot a different structure and a larger cast of images to interpret.
The earliest recorded Tarot decks appeared in fifteenth century Italy and were used for games. Their suits were Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins, rather than the Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades of the familiar playing card pack. The Metropolitan Museum of Art explains this early structure. The later use of Tarot for divination developed within a longer history of people finding new uses for cards.
What is cartomancy?
Cartomancy is the use of cards for divination. Ordinary playing cards have been used this way as well as Tarot. The Victoria and Albert Museum describes how Etteilla worked with a standard playing card deck in eighteenth century France before including Tarot in his work.
Cartomancy is a broad name, not one set of rules. In some methods, the individual cards carry meanings. In the version Jen played, the rank did not change the answer at all: the suit alone decided which of the four responses a question received. We can place the game alongside the wider practice of asking questions with cards without claiming that its four suit meanings are a historical tradition.
Why we do not use Tarot in the same way
Some readers use Tarot for yes or no questions, often by deciding how they will read the cards before drawing them. That can be a coherent method. The playing card game serves a different purpose: it gives one of four agreed answers as soon as the suit appears.
Tarot invites a different kind of attention from us. Even a single card has an image, a history of interpretation and a relationship to the question being asked. If someone asks whether to take an opportunity, a Tarot card might help them consider what draws them towards it, what gives them pause and what they still need to know. Those observations may be more useful than assigning the card a simple yes or no.
We keep the playing card game light and direct. We give Tarot room to explore. Reducing its imagery immediately to one of two answers can leave much of it unexplored. That would be a crying shame.