In the previous installment, I described how I work with a single card and how I use a single-card spread for divination. This segment explains some techniques I use to interpret two cards together. This often comes up, even if you use larger spreads like the Celtic Cross, because you often have occasion to compare two related cards in the spread.
First, remember all those years of English classes in school, when you were instructed write an essay to "compare and contrast"? By comparing, you find points of similarity; by contrasting, you find points of difference. When doing this with two cards, you want to work on as many levels as you can: book meaning, symbols, numerology, and also your own esthetic/intuitive response to the cards. The goal is to see the pair of cards as a system with three parts: (1) what the first card says that the second doesn't, (2) what the second card says that the first one doesn't, and (3) the region of interpenetration where both cards point in roughly the same direction.
Here's an example. (I'm fearless, you see, drawing two cards at random from my deck and having faith that I can say something worthwhile about them, whatever they turn out to be!) I drew (from the Waite-Smith deck) VIII Strength and the six of swords. In terms of "book meanings", a few similarities come to mind. Both of these cards have connotations of a situation under control. There is none of the sense of being helpless and overwhelmed that some cards show, nor is there any feeling of indulging urges. Seeing the two cards together, my mind is drawn to the slow, steady strength of the way the figure on the six of swords holds his pole and pushes off to propel the boat. There is also a strange echo between the posture and expression of the maiden on the Strength card and the bundled seated figure on the six of swords. Perhaps they share a certain quiet power from facing and surmounting difficulties.
The
sixes as a group represent mastery, return, and reciprocation. So
there is a link with the Strength card, although it is somewhat
obscured by the melancholy that pervades the swords as a suit in the
Waite-Smith deck. The six of swords represents mental mastery in the
sense of having made a decision and set one's course, despite a
rather somber emotional environment.
There are also many points of contrast between the cards. Strength, as a major arcanum, represents a primal force, whereas the six of swords simply represents a situation. The colors are very different: Strength is done in warm colors, yellow sky and orange lion. The six of swords is cool, with lots of blue and gray. Strength is very earthy, with lots of greenery. The six is watery. Strength shows stasis; the six shows motion, albeit slow and somber.
Numerologically, both six and eight are numbers of stability and perfection, but in very different ways. Eight is 2x4, 2x2x2, the number of vertices on a cube, the security that comes from right angles everywhere. It is very solid. Six is a perfect number, being 1+2+3, the sum of the first three integers. This is a more mobile form of stability, subsuming odd numbers as well as even ones.
Putting it all together, here is my summary of "compare and contrast": First, Strength's distinctive features are warmth, static balance, growth, earthiness, and optimism. The distinctive features of the six of swords are motion, melancholy, coldness, and distance. Their common focus is discipline, steadiness, character, determination, and mastery of emotions or hardships.
The next technique for interpreting a pair is less analytical. Here we try to connect the two images into a single scene, and tell a story about them. Imagine them either as successive frames in a movie, or as things happening in two different parts of the scene at the same time. With these two cards, I'll use the second approach. Side by side, there is something striking about these two cards. The Strength maiden and the ferryman have their backs to each other, as if they are avoiding each other. One can almost imagine that this scene is the aftermath of a quarrel or tragedy, leaving both parties to turn away from each other in silence. The Strength maiden perhaps is the victor, or the inheritor. She remains in her place on the land, and wears her garlands. The ferryman feels he cannot stay. There is no anger, just a quiet determination to leave the place behind and set off for a distant shore. What is the event that separated these two? Why does neither seem to take any joy in the outcome?
Just with these two techniques, I've started to produce a fairly rich set of associations for this card pair. If there was something on my mind or in my recent past that sent two people into these different modes of somberly taking charge and retreating into themselves, the cards would fall quickly into place. The contrast of one person surviving by holding her place, and the other by setting off on his own, is a common one in many areas of life.
A card pair is a very interesting structure. Although there are only two cards, a third element is almost inevitably produced by their overlap. In this case, the possibility of an event in the recent past, that both parties are responding to in their own fashion, emerges when we seek to connect the cards. One can almost see it in the blank space between the cards. Of course, the particular interpretation will be different for every reader and for every circumstance, but these techniques for working with a card pair almost always produce a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. This is one of the things that makes the tarot so powerful. 78 cards by themselves represent a great range of experience, but if each pair also yields something new, then there are 78 x 77 = 6006 additional possibilities. (You'll get something quite different, by the way, if you swap the order of the two cards in a pair.)
In the next installment in this series, I'll discuss how to use two cards as a divination spread. This is not very commonly done, but it has some interesting uses!
Go to Tarot Reading Two: The Two-Card Spread
Return to Telperion Grove
Copyright © 1998 Tom Tadfor Little