Brainstorming ideas for my own cards used in fortune telling

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So I'm hoping to someday create my own unique card system for divination as a personal use kinda thing. Basicllally I want it to work kinda like the Lenormand system but using my own personal symbols and meanings for the cards.

Here are my thoughts so far:

Remove cards 6 - 10 plus the Kings, Jokers, and every Jack except the Jack of Hearts leaving only the aces, cards 2 - 5, the four Queens, and the Jack of Hearts. This should leave about 25 cards to work with.

The four symbols will be based on four flowers:

♡ Hearts: Roses flowers of love
◇ Diamonds: Lilies flowers of commitment
♧ Clubs: Clovers flowers of luck
♤ Spades: Lotus flowers of mystery

The Jack holding a leaf will represent the seeker (regardless of their gender). This card can also be thought of as being guided down the garden path.

The four Queens holding flowers will represent four Ancient Powerful Goddesses of Greece who were all linked to the tragedy of the Trojan War. These cards are the ones that must be watched out for, especially the Queen that represents Eris.

Queen of Hearts: Aphrodite the Goddess of Love and Beauty. This card can mean you will find someone you are drawn to sexually leading to a messy love affair in which many hearts are broken.

Queen of Diamonds: Hera the Goddess of Marriage and Family and Queen of the Heavens. This card can mean being bound to a promise in which one is miserably unhappy.

Queen of Clubs: Athena the Goddess of Wisdom and War Tactics. This card can mean that you will be defeated and humiliated by an enemy or rival.

Queen of Spades: Eris the Goddess of Chaos. This is the most dangerous queen card to draw and can warn you to expect much grief, fighting, and disaster to come in your life. If pulled with another queen/goddess it worsens the effect of that card(s).


Now for the numbers themselves:

Aces

Ace of Hearts: A secret love
Ace of Diamonds: A promise
Ace of Clubs: Taking a chance
Ace of Spades: Death or Birth (or Rebirth)

Twos

2 of Hearts: You will find a lover or you already have a lover

2 of Diamonds: You are engaged or married (or will be soon)

2 of Clubs: You will work hard to get ahead in life

2 of Spades: You will divorce someone you love or break off a friendship

Threes

3 of Hearts: The birth of a newborn infant or children in your life

3 of Diamonds: Planning a celebration or party

3 of Clubs: Creative ideas will come from your efforts

3 of Spades: Sinking into depression and despair

Fours

4 of Hearts: A night of passion and romance or much needed rest

4 of Diamonds: You have or will have a comfortable home of luxury.

4 of Clubs: A fierce battle in which you emerge victorious over your enemies or obstacles.

4 of Spades: You will attend someone's funeral

Fives

5 of Hearts: A beautiful and youthful person enters the seeker's life.

5 of Diamonds: A well-groomed and nicely dressed person enters the seeker's life.

5 of Clubs: An athletic and healthy bodied person enters the seeker's life.

5 of Spades: An elderly or sickly person enters the seeker's life.



So... what do you guys think of this idea?

i am not educated enough to know the effects of removing those cards from use, what can you tell me is the function you get when you removed those cards?

Honestly it's just an idea i copied from the Lenormand system of card reading. It removes cards 2 - 5 but I figured I would remove cards 6 - 10 and any court card not carrying a plant (meaning I leave the Jack of Hearts with his leaf in hand and the four queens who each hold a flower).

I'm pretty much trying to go for a flower theme here and using the four queens as metaphors for four powerful Greek Goddesses who played a role in the tragic Trojan War.

It plays into how the Ancient Greeks believed it was better to avoid the gods rather than get involved with their affairs as it often lead to trouble.

^^ah so so that tells me that mebbe the numbered cards are less important in the grand scheme of things?

I never got much into tarot myself. Over the years I've been involved with several pagans though and at the request of one I was in a ltr with, I learned numerology because she was really into me getting into some form of divination. I say that to say this, I am a skeptic with a number bias. Feel free to ignore me since I barely know what I'm talking about here.

My knee jerk reaction is to drop my jaw and be mortified that you've discarded numbers. Especially 7 and 9. But like I say, I'm biased here. Also, in my bias, I am delighted to see Eris represented. I shall go off and joyously partake of a hot dog (minus the bun) sometime in the near future to celebrate this. Though I am a bit confused why she is a dangerous card to pull. Personally, I would have gone for Oya if I was taking that route. She's scary, imho, and awesomeness. Still, I am pleased to see Eris. I am torn here. Lol.

For me, due to my number thing, three is considered the joy of living number and four is the balance/love/responsibility. I would have flipped the spades for three and four. I can appreciate depression being a sort of death to life, but it seems more disruptive to internal balance to me and more fitting as a four. My two cents as a number junkie. For whatever that's worth.

Really though, I think it's great that you're finding your own way to do this. So often people get stuck on the standard definitions and won't even venture out into cards that aren't Rider Waite or something like that. I was married to someone who learned from their grandmother how to read tarot using playing cards and to trust their intuition above all else, and they were beyond good at it. It blew my mind. I totally support this method you're trying out and encourage you to work on it until you get it just how it should be for you. It can be a lot of fun and it looks like you have a solid start here.

Lol thanks guys. And I appreciate the healthy criticism.


I probably DO need to work on the numbers I picked. I didnt really think about numerology much but rather things like how 5 kinda resembles a human body (arms, legs, and head), 2 makes me think of a relation between two people for better or for worst, three makes me think of creation, and four makes me think of stability and structure etc.

I also might work on the flowers i picked... if im going to have the four queens represent Greek Goddesses maybe assign a plant to each one based on their sacred symbols?

For example I got the Rose for Aphrodite and Lily for Hera down pat. Instead of a Clover I could make the Club an Olive Tree which was sacred to Athena, and the Spade would be harder to connect to Eris because her only real sacred symbol was the apple. I guess I could call it an apple tree? Hell I dunno.

And from what I read about the Trojan War it was Eris who tossed the golden apple with the inscription "To The Fairest" at a wedding she was not invited to in which the three goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena all tried to lay claim to and it lead to the Trojan war because the Goddesses thought the apple came from a mortal named Paris and each Goddess made him an offer if he would decide who was the "fairest". Athena offered him military power to conquer all of Greece, Hera offered him wealth and power to rule over all of Asia and Europe, and Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in all of Greece which turned out to be Helen the Queen of Sparta who was already married. When Paris took Helen with him to Troy it lead to a horrible war in which the entire city was sacked and destroyed and every man was killed and every woman and child enslaved.

So as you can see it was Eris who was the main culprit and she did it not only out of petty spite but because she enjoyed causing problems (hence her title as the Goddess of Chaos and Discord). She was one of the very few Goddesses in Ancient Greece who was actually considered truly "evil" because there was almost nothing reedemable about her unlike the other gods who at least could be kind or feel remourse once in awhile. She was so evil in fact that there were no temples dedicated to worshipping her because that's how hated she was.

Therefor I feel it best to link her with the darkest "queen" card aka The Queen of Spades.

Eh, maybe, maybe not for the numbers. I mean, it's a totally different form of divination and besides, they're your cards. You'd be the one bonded/connected/whatever to them. They'll speak to you as they will. I just can't help myself on the number front. Lol. I have no idea why. *shrugs* But regarding numerology, you pretty much got 'em spot on anyway. Five is considered freedom/individuality (a very human number), four and three I yammered about already (but three is highly expressive and social, and four is highly stable and structured), two is relation/cooperation (very much about how we relate to others and relationships in general) and one is individuation/assertion (very much about the self).

I'm digging the idea of plants. It seems totally fitting and appropriate for goddesses. And yeah, an apple tree flower would totally do it for Eris.

I can appreciate why Eris would be a good fit for that, she was a bit of a sh** starter. Lol. I just have this discordian bent is all. I see her a lil differently. But yeah, you are correct, if you are keeping with the greek theme, she's it. All the way.

Lol I can understand the fixation with Eris. Speaking of "bad girl" goddesses, I think people here know of my Lilith obsession which I have been very vocal about hehe.

But unlike many neopagans who I feel have whitewashed her story trying to transform her into a benevolent goddess of feminism and equal rights, I feel that this should be an insult to real feminists. I mean how exactly is a primordial she-demon who brings death to birthing mothers and infants a friend of women?

I feel like one of the few who see Lilith for what she really is (and I'm OK with it). To me she is the misanthrope who hates women and men (and children) almost equally and one who goes by many names expanding over several different cultures. She was originally know to the Mesopotamians as the Demon Goddess Lamashtu and to the Ancient Greeks as the monster Lamia.

She could be in good company with Eris as both were hated in ancient times for centuries for bringing harm to mankind and yet in modern times they have both now found their own cult of worship.

You know something I got to thinking about? The spade symbol kinda looks like an upside down apple. Don't you think?

Last edited by DeathFlowerKing on 07 Jan 2023, 9:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe use more flower symbolism?
Just because I love flowers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_symbolism

I really like that idea! It could be like my Hanafuda card deck except with different flowers with their own meanings.

And I'll still keep the four Queens holding flowers to represent the Goddesses I mentioned and the Jack holding a leaf will be the seeker card.

Ooohhh...the spade does kinda look like an upside-down apple. Yeah. That works and then some.

It is odd how both goddesses have this dark history and dark nature yet have this more modern following who seem to ignore that and place their more modern values on them. I'm not sure if I'd consider that evolving for the time or a straight up disregard for who they are at their more primal/natural core. I guess that's all too subjective to pick apart properly.

I've always been keen on bad girl goddesses myself, to a certain degree anyway. I'm not always keen on how people portray feminity and insist it's this gentle, malleable, soft quality ...like bamboo bending in the breeze to avoid breaking. There's so much more to it to me and those darker goddesses seem to bring those things to the table. My two cents is that feminity doesn't have to mean meek or subdued...in nature which is inherently feminine, methinks, it can be harsh and brutal with zero fu**s given and that cannot be ignored and if you ask me, god help those who try to ignore it. I find these goddesses to be impowering in a lot of ways and scary as all get out. I respect that and then some.

Frankly I think it's a total disregard for what they really are about which in itself is a kind of misogyny.

I feel that if people are gonna respect the old gods and goddesses they need to fully understand what they were about and not just cherry pick the part that makes them "feel good" while completely ignoring the parts that make them uncomfortable.

This is why I have such an issue with what neopaganism has transformed into today.

And yes I agree, femininity does not have to equal "weakness".

Honestly though what draws me to Lilith is that I can relate to her not as a woman (because I'm not a woman) but as a misanthrope who holds just as much contempt for my fellow humans as she does.

She could potentially destroy my life if she wants to but I still have great respect for her as the being who saw what a sad clusterf**k humans would eventually turn out to be.

I feel that because of her link to miscarriages, stillbirth, SIDS, abortion, and homosexuality (I'm a gay man myself) she actually a symbol of anti-creation rather than pro-creation. She takes pleasure at any attempt to keep humans from reproducing and overpopulating, because with so many humans in the world we're frankly destroying it.

She is like the part of nature that keeps us in check. We think we have conquered nature but I think the covid pandemic and climate change have proven that you just don't fool with mother nature!

It's kind of the same thing with Eris. Like Lilith being a form of population control in nature, Eris has to give chaos to the world because without chaos then order cannot exist.

Both Lilith and Eris are cruel and evil to us humans who think of ourselves as being more special than we really are, but we are a cruel and not to mention stupid abd selfish species destroying the earth and hurting each other like no tomorrow.