In a spread, the Wind Cape names mental weather: a head full of competing ideas, plans, and opinions — energizing at best, scattering at worst.
— The divinatory art of the 52-card deck —
The 5 of Clubs is the card of the mind blown in every direction. In the Playing Card Oracles it is the Wind Cape — the alchemist Dumlin’s cloak possessed by the four winds — where ideas, plans, and dreams gust from all quarters and the whims of thought make a difficult master.
The meaning of this card is depicted allegorically in C.J. Freeman’s story of Albertus Dumlin, the frustrated alchemist whose shabby cloak was seized by the four winds — and who, proclaiming he held them harnessed for the benefit of all mankind, was swept head over heels down the street and into the canal. The powers of the mind can be likened to those tumultuous winds. Air is the Element of Clubs, and with this card ideas, plans, and dreams are “blowing” in every direction.
It helps, Ana suggests, to imagine yourself standing in the center of the card, in the position of the middle Club. The four surrounding Clubs are the four winds, each with its own direction and agenda.
Certainly the whims of thought make a difficult master. The mind quickly becomes a trap, and confusion keeps the key just outside our reach.
In a spread, the Wind Cape names mental weather: a head full of competing ideas, plans, and opinions — energizing at best, scattering at worst.
As an energy, it can deliver surprising realizations and genuinely new ideas: the gusts do bring things. The work is standing at the center rather than being blown about.
Its cautions are specific: memory slipping in the swirl, and Dumlin’s fate — the over-inflated opinion of oneself that mistakes being possessed by winds for commanding them.
Traditional cartomancy reads the 5 of Clubs around new acquaintances and help arriving — a sociable card. The Playing Card Oracles reads it through its allegory of the wind-filled cloak.
In this system the Fives are crossroads cards: options, confusion, new energy, change. Here the crossroads is inside the head.
In the Playing Card Oracles it is the Wind Cape: a mind going in every direction — mental confusion, a head filled with ideas and opinions, surprising realizations — with warnings of forgetfulness and inflated self-opinion.
C.J. Freeman tells of Albertus Dumlin, an alchemist whose old cloak was inexplicably possessed by the four winds. Declaring he had harnessed them for mankind, he was swept through the town and into the canal — a parable of thinking you command the winds that are actually blowing you.
Stand in the center. The book suggests imagining yourself as the middle Club, with the four winds gusting around you — observe the competing thoughts without mounting any single gust, and the confusion loosens its grip on the key.
The full grammar of the deck — geometries, timing, and the voices of all fifty-two — lives in The Playing Card Oracles: A Source Book for Divination.