A lot of traditional cartomancy (which means to read cards, so if you are using cards in any way you are practising cartomancy – even if you follow Camoin or Waite) was done by card interacting.
This seems to be employed by most Tarot readers with trumps, where it is perhaps easier to see how trump VI and XIIII might a more harmonious situation than XIIII and VI, which tends to indicate you love him more than he does you. Yet, with the pips, few people seem to look at how the suits interact save from seeing if one suit dominates.
Now, a dominant suit is indeed important. But only by looking how two or three suits work together will you get a sense how that dominant suit works.
A lot of this seems to be two-fold. Firstly, people are relying on the pseudo “elements”, and secondly, even in most TdM literature, people are using the Anglo French-playing card model (even when it’s not mentioned, see Camoin) i.e. seeing batons as dealing with “club” stuff, and coins with diamonds.
Rather than getting into which suit is which, again, I use the following: batons/diamonds/bells; swords/clubs/acorns; cups/hearts, and coins/spades/leaves.
Swords deal in matters of toil, your job and work life, responsibilities and wages.
Cups deal matters domestic: your spouse or serious partner; your family; your house itself, and possessions.
Batons and Coins gain a lot of their meaning from what they with. Albeit together, they are very, very bad. But on the whole:
Batons the next big thing: be it a new love-affair or career idea. Normally involves a second person.
Coins deal in matters relating to security: health, government (normally taxes), and legalities.
In the chart below, the left column denotes the dominant suit or the card on the left. The subsequent columns are the modifying i.e. less of that suit or the card on the right.
So for example, if I had the Five and Eight of Coins and the Two of Batons. I would look for Coins in the left hand column and work across for Coins with Batons.
Together they are summarised as: “Swift resolution. Aid from friends v. abandonment. Convalescence.”
Is it abandoment or aid from friends? Well, the Two of Batons often indicates a consumation of a friendship or new relationship so it seems likely, unless there were further cards, that a friend will try and help this person or vice versa in context. Don’t however assume that this friend has a magic wand, at best it’ll result in an improvement hence convalescence.
