Dice, Cards and the Quintessence Calculation: A Three-Phase Tarot Spread

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Dice and cards (particularly the numbered “pip” cards of a standard poker deck) share a long history as gaming devices. Their joint role in divination is less storied (except perhaps in the fortune-telling manual, Triompho di Fortuna, published in 1526 by Sigismondo Fanti of Venice), but I have been using them together for several years as an alternate way to select specific cards for a reading. The “quintessence” calculation goes back to the tirage en croix (French cross) spread of Continental cartomancy that was first described in detail by Swiss occultist Oswald Wirth in 1927. Here I’m bringing all three together in a single five-card layout with a slightly different spin.

The first step is to shuffle a full tarot deck while concentrating on the question or topic of interest and deal four rows of six cards from left-to-right, face-down as shown below. (You may use reversals if you like, but I didn’t in the sample reading.) All cards are from the Thoth Tarot (Retro-Thoth version); card faces are copyright of US Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT.

Next, still concentrating, roll a single six-sided die once for each row to select a card from that row. Turn the designated cards face up. These cards form the narrative “story-line” for the reading. Remove them from the layout and place them in a row or other pattern as you see fit; here I’m using a linear array but in the last photo below I show them in a clockwise circle.

The hypothetical question in this example involved a possible romantic opportunity that has yet to work itself out.

Finally, perform a numerical quintessence calculation by summing the face values of the four cards and reducing that total to a number that falls within the range of the 22 trump cards, using either “Theosophical reduction” (adding together digits) or “casting out nines” (subtracting increments of nine). Identify the Major Arcanum associated with the resulting number and place it in the spread as the “extended outcome” or “synthesis” card.

Two things to note about the calculation: 1) some practitioners don’t include the court cards because they bear no numbers, but I personally believe all of the cards on the table should be counted, so in the RWS deck I give them the numbers 11 (Page) through 14 (King), and the same for the Princesses through Knights of the Thoth deck; and 2) when using Theosophical addition you can never arrive at zero (the Fool in the modern tarot), so some diviners renumber the Fool as 22, a practice I don’t support; I “cast out nines” instead, which has the further advantage of offering more than one choice for the “quint.” (I either pick the one that best fits the overall narrative or — since they are “numerological counterparts” — I read both of them as indicating a complex scenario.)

Here we have a situation that starts out positive and hopeful, loses its way, and winds up being “managed” with less-than-affectionate expedience. After the Moon casts its pall over the affair, there is a sense of “pulling back and adapting” in which I don’t see much carefree abandon or even mutual satisfaction.

In the first version, where the Long-Range Outcome was obtained by “casting out nines” (32–9=23; 23–9=14), the 4 of Wands (Completion) suggests that “the fix is in” for opening a new chapter in the situation and the 2 of Cups (Love) implies emotional enthusiasm and gratification; however, the Moon injects ominous foreboding into the matter; the Near-Term Payoff card (Adjustment/Justice) indicates a need for judicious caution if choosing to move forward in the face of such dire misgivings; and the Long-Range Outcome card (Art/Temperance) confirms that great care will be required to achieve the desired result (my personal definition for this card is “consummate finesse,” and a friend of mine calls it the “walking a knife’s edge” card).

In the second version, the Hierophant was derived by Theosophical Reduction (32=3+2=5); the implication is that the initiative will be brought up short by conventional values and morals (the meddlesome clergyman will “bring the hammer down”). The Hierophant is my least-favorite trump card because it seems so humorlessly “tight-assed;” here it can be calculated both by simple reduction and by casting out nines until the lowest value is reached (14–9=5), demonstrating why in this case I prefer to stop at Temperance — it offers a less sanctimonious verdict while still advising circumspection.

In French cartomancy the tirage en croix is usually performed with a majors-only deck of 22 cards, so the outcome card is always a Major Arcanum. (One of my online French friends once told me that they don’t allot the trump cards any more significance than they do the pip or court cards, so excluding the latter makes no difference to the reading, and recently I’ve begun according the majors less importance in my own work although I still use the entire deck.) In my approach here, the quintessence card does double-duty, both replacing the randomly-pulled outcome card of the five-card line and filling the central “synthesis card” position of the circular pattern; I would place it either at the end of the row as I’m doing in this example or at the center of a “cross” arrangement. I’m intending that it show the long-range, big-picture closure of the issue, with the rest of the cards reflecting its progressive development. (I came upon an interesting observation by tarot historian Ronald Decker that the Indian Rig Veda derives the number Five from the four compass directions, plus “here” at the intersection where the arms of the cross meet; we might think of the synthesis card in the tirage en croix as an “X marks the spot” marker for the verdict.)

Here is the alternative view in which the narrative cards are to be read clockwise; in this layout the calculated “synthesis” card (Temperance) is in direct contact with all of the rest, and the fact that it is elementally unfriendly with both of the Water cards suggests that the emotional affair will start to unravel before it gets too far along due to over-correction and an excess of second-guessing, leaving Temperance and Justice to “pick up the pieces” while the off-stage Hierophant lurks (and smirks) in the background.

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on April 1, 2024.