The Ace of Hearts is the wellspring of all feeling — a reservoir of love, devotion, and desire so deep its bottom cannot be reached. In the Playing Card Oracles she is Agana, the heart as lonely hunter: emotion held at its source, waiting to be drawn and set flowing.
The great raptor pictured on this card is a striking symbol: it is said that the heart is a lonely hunter, and like this bird of prey the heart must seek out what fulfills its basic needs — a creature of desire, thirsting for and devouring affection, nesting where it finds love.
Agana is inner Water, our feeling life. The energy here is a well of feeling so deep it is doubtful one could ever reach the bottom. Herein lie all the potential of love and devotion, passion and compassion — as well as obsession, fear, and compulsion. The suit encompasses the realm of the subconscious, hinted at by the one closed eye in the illustration.
And just as Water must flow out of its bed to cycle through nature and be renewed, emotion must be drawn from the well of Agana — or our inner Water becomes stagnant, the valleys of life go dry, and passion dies before it is born.
As a presence in your spread, Agana points to the source of feeling itself: a great capacity for love, devotion, or desire that is real but largely unexpressed — held below the surface, in the subconscious.
As an energy, the card asks you to draw from the well: speak the feeling, make the gesture, let the Water move. Nearby Heart cards can tap this reservoir and be magnified by it.
Left unexpressed, the same depth turns stagnant — the lonely heart, desire that circles as obsession. If Agana appears amid difficulty, ask what feeling has been left too long in the well.
Traditional cartomancy counts the Ace of Hearts among the most welcome cards in the deck — love, the home, happiness, a new relationship or emotional beginning.
In the Playing Card Oracles, Aces are the primal cards: storehouses of their suit’s energy in its purest, most complete form. Their forces are largely latent — seeds requiring the right conditions to come to fruition — and nearby cards in a spread can plug into an Ace and draw from its power. Each Ace bears the magical name of its suit.
Traditionally it is one of the happiest cards in the deck — love, home, and emotional new beginnings. In the Playing Card Oracles it is Agana, the wellspring of the Heart suit: deep, largely unexpressed feeling and the full latent potential for love, devotion, and desire.
Agana is both the magical name of the Heart suit and its Ace. The card shows a raptor perched on a heart — the heart as a lonely hunter — and represents inner Water: the subconscious well of emotion from which all feeling must be drawn and renewed.
Aces are storehouses of their suit’s purest energy — incredible potentials that remain largely latent, like seeds. Cards near an Ace in a spread can draw on its power, and several Aces together suggest a person containing their talents, resisting manifestation.
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.