Now, as the Playing Card Oracle Decks are getting more recognition and exposure than ever (both versions now living in Meow Wolf’s amazing “House of Eternal Return”), there are a couple of major things I am hoping their popularity brings into greater public awareness. COOL things you would probably never notice with a passing glance.
First SECRET I am going to spill the beans on:
- Male and Female EQUALITY
Traditional Playing Card Decks have 3 Court Cards (Jack, Queen, King), of course. Playing Card Oracle Decks have 4 Court Cards: Two Male and Two Female. An older male and female (King and Queen), and a younger male and female (Jacks and Ladies). And all this is achieved by the bold move of my father (CJ Freeman), putting cards of the number 10 up into the Court and naming them Ladies.
The illustrious Lady of Hearts, Bethany. From the “Alchemy Edition” Playing Card Oracles Deck. Illustrated by CJ Freeman.
A Radical concept in Playing Cards, or any deck of cards. People mess with decor of playing cards all the time. But hardly anyone messes with the underlying structure of the cards. As if it is holy writ. But not only was my dad’s particular bold move a good idea (actually a great idea) on multiple levels, but it is also not without historical precedent.
There is a little known document from the year 1377 . In it, a German Monk (“Johannes of Basel”) describes playing cards. And his detailed description of the playing deck as he goes about condemning their use is something we can remain deeply indebted for. In his writings this Monk describes the deck as consisting of 4 suits, with 13 cards in each suit, including a “King and his attendant and a Queen and her attendant.” Hmmm… So where is the attendant to the Queen? Presumably we are talking about a younger or subservient female. But where did she go?
Without adding a 14th card to the deck, one might look to cards of the number 10. Is it possible that cards of the number 10 at some point in history were stripped of their rank and gender and relegated to a pip card? And certainly a male dominated Court might be a preferred archetype for various individuals and organizations of the time.
And there is numerological support. 10’s are the only “pip” that is not a single digit. It is a number of a different order. This is number science 101. Certainly whoever created the deck was not a schlep with numbers. Also, even numbers are considered female, odd numbers male, as the further sequencing of Jack, Queen, King demonstrates. So the 10 as a younger female is numerological HEALING for this deck of 52.
The Lady of Hearts strikes again! This time from the Original Edition of The Playing Card Oracles (currently published by U.S. Games Systems)
We now have the numerological perspective, the historical support, as well as the argument for gender equality. AND LET US NOT FAIL TO MENTION: For card reading, fortune telling, and other mantic arts, a male/female balance is a gift from on high. I dare say, for myself, using a deck with lopsided representation of male and female is like working with a broken deck of cards.
Way to go, Dad!
Next cool secret I am going to spill the beans on:
- The Return to NATURAL TIME.
The 52 card deck is a perfect model of natural time. This is not really news, as scholars in the card world have known and written about this phenomenon for a long time. But even the scholars stopped short. They were like, “Yeah, and there’s this COOL CALENDAR in playing cards. But what do you do with it??? Ehh… who cares. Let’s have another cigar…”
Again, hooray for the bold and visionary leaps of my father. He was like, “Eh, I’m OUT OF CIGARS. Let’s have another look at this calendar thing.” He was not afraid to do something different. He began playing with cards in unconventional ways – ways that made use of the calendar. He made moving, dynamic card calendars that allow you to look forward and backwards in time – as calendars do. He literally turned the 52 card deck into a working time machine.
Well, to more correctly put it, he got the machine running again. Someone created it, way back in the day. But the deck did not arrive on the doorstep with an instruction manual. And so we play games to pass the time. This is like having the car from Back to the Future sitting in your garage and using it to drive to the 7Eleven and back. So my dad used it for what I can only believe playing cards were intentionally created for and then shared what he found with me. And together, he and I wrote a modern day manual for driving the hot rod time machine that is playing cards. We named the manual “The Playing Card Oracles, A Source Book for Divination.”
me, playing with the time machine.
Oh yeah, one more cool thing. The calendar in the cards is TIMELESS TIME. It is time that always applies because it’s natural time, based on lunar and solar cycles, and observable planetary rotations.
Sigh.
So this is radical. The Playing Card Oracle Decks are a return to Natural Time-Keeping along with (finally, finally, FINALLY), Gender Equality. They get your thinking straightened out on a couple of important issues = Time and Sex. And it was all there. Already IN the cards. But it took the brave leaps of my dad to bring it out from under the dust and into the hands of you. Now. So what are you going to do with it??
Get your hands on some cards and check it out, of COURSE! And when you check out Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, NM, you’ll know a little something secret about the cards there. (P.S. Do not miss the paintings in the hallway off of the magical forest. They are originals of my dad’s and something really special 🙂
The Playing Card Oracles in the “House of Eternal Return”, where you are encouraged to explore, touch, and play with the art!