Three-Card Cartomancy Reading
3 cards · Beginner · about 5 minutes
Three playing cards is the working reading of English cartomancy — quick enough to do at a kitchen table with the deck you play cards with. It differs from the tarot three-card in one useful way: the suits carry time. A spread heavy in Clubs is answering about days; one heavy in Spades is answering about years, which usually means you asked a bigger question than you thought.
The layout
When to use it
A question with a shape and a deadline. Cartomancy is better at circumstance than at meaning, so ask it what happens rather than what it means.
The positions
- 1
Behind it
What set this up. Often something you did not choose.
- 2
Where it stands
The situation now, in plain terms rather than kind ones.
- 3
Where it goes
The direction of travel, and the suit tells you how far off it is.
How to read it
- ✦Read the suits before the cards. Three of one suit says the whole matter belongs to that suit's business, and the timing unit for that suit is the timescale of the answer.
- ✦Repetition is the playing deck's own signal, and tarot has nothing like it: two cards of the same rank sharpen the matter, three make it the point of the reading.
- ✦Court cards are usually people. Which suit they belong to says more about how that person operates than any description of their hair colour ever did.
Pull it now
Readings here are one card or three, from an ordinary 52-card deck, read upright.
Cut the deck ✦Questions about this spread
Can I use a normal deck of playing cards for fortune telling?
That is exactly what cartomancy is. The 52-card deck was used for divination in Europe well before tarot reading spread in English, and the meanings here are for that deck rather than borrowed from tarot.
Do I include the jokers?
Most readers leave them out, and everything on this site assumes 52 cards. If you keep one in, the common treatment is a wildcard that says the matter is not yet fixed.
Are playing cards reversed like tarot cards?
No. A playing deck has no reliable top and bottom, so cartomancy reads every card upright. What tarot does with reversals, cartomancy does with the cards on either side.