Cartomancy: Read Your Future With A 32-Card Deck

Cartomancy asks for no rare deck and no long apprenticeship. A plain 32-card deck — a standard pack with the 2s through the 6s taken out, the same short deck used for games like piquet and skat — is enough to question the future. Four suits, eight cards each, and a blunt, concrete language. Here is everything you need to read your first cards.

Cartomancy and the 32-card deck

Cartomancy is the art of reading the future in ordinary playing cards. Unlike the Tarot and its 78 illustrated cards, it works with the most unremarkable deck there is — the one sitting in a drawer between two card games.

To build the 32-card deck, take a 52-card pack and remove the 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s. What remains is:

• 4 suits: Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades
• 8 cards per suit: Ace, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen and King

That economy of means is exactly where its strength lies. Where the Tarot unfolds a symbolic, initiatory world, the 32-card deck answers in a concrete and immediate way: a piece of news, a delay, money coming in, a meeting. A raw language, with no detour, quick to learn and a lifetime to refine.

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The 4 suits of the 32-card deck

Each suit covers one broad area of life. This is the very first reading to make: before going card by card, look at which suits dominate your spread.

Red cards, black cards: the first impression

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The meaning of the 32 cards, number by number

The suit gives you the area of life; the number gives you the nature and the intensity of the event. Here are the meanings of the numbered cards, from the Ace to the 10.

The court cards: King, Queen and Jack

Kings, Queens and Jacks stand for people around you — and sometimes for you.

• Kings point to men over 35, men of action, reassuring figures of authority.
• Queens embody women over 35, clever and determined: a benevolent support… or a rival, in the case of the Queen of Diamonds.
• Jacks are young men: a lover, a bearer of good news, someone you can trust… or a rival, in the case of the Jack of Spades.

These correspondences come from tradition: they describe roles far more than identities. In practice, let the context of the spread point to the person concerned. Court card detail will be covered on each of the suit pages.

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The main 32-card deck spreads

There are almost as many ways to lay out the cards as there are readers. Here are a few, from the simplest to the most complete — our dedicated page on 32-card deck spreads walks through each one step by step.

Exact protocols vary from one school to another: only the method detailed below is our reference. Unsure which layout fits your situation? See which spread suits your question.

Step by step: the significator and three cards

This is the most widely used spread for beginners with a 32-card deck. It rests on a significator — the card that stands for you — around which three cards are read.

1. Choose your significator. Shuffle the deck, then take out the card that represents you, following the traditional convention:

• the King if you are a man over 35, the Jack if under 35;
• the Queen if you are a woman over 35, the 8 if under 35;
• in Hearts if you are fair or red-haired, in Clubs if dark-haired.

This convention, inherited from 19th-century cartomancy, encodes age and hair colour. If it does not describe you, simply pick the court card you recognise yourself in: what counts is the intention.

2. Cut, then draw. Gather the rest of the deck into a pile and cut with your left hand — or have the person you are reading for cut it. Spread the cards in front of you and draw three.

3. Lay them out. Place the significator in the middle, then the three cards you drew from right to left, as in this model:

4. Read. The second card sheds light on your love life, the third on an immediate event, the fourth on your working life.

In the example above, the reading could run like this. The 10 of Hearts announces success in love or in the family: a happy event is on its way, affection is shown, relationships are calm. The Ace of Diamonds announces news about to arrive: a job offer, word from an old acquaintance, an invitation. Finally, the 7 of Spades flags minor trouble at work: a project delayed, doubts to clear up.

If the spread says nothing to you, you may repeat it up to four times. You can also draw one last card as a summary — a sort of verdict on the whole reading.

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Our featured reading: the Queen of Hearts

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For a successful reading 🔮

Whichever method you choose, four simple steps are enough to connect with the cards.

One last thing: the cards shed light, they do not decide. A spread describes a trend, a climate, the influences of the moment — never a fixed fate. What you do with it is entirely yours, and a good reading should leave you freer, not less free. If a spread worries you, talk it through: a professional reader will put it back in perspective.

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Your questions about 32-card cartomancy

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Going further

Continue your divinatory journey