Ways Of Reading 52-Card Grids I: Counting in 9s

Ways to read ALL the cards using the 52-Card decks

Now, as you’ll know, many of the oracle card decks I use here on the Daily Oracle are reduced decks from the traditional playing card packs of 52.

32 or 36-card piquet-style decks are, or were, common during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Just look at the Traditional Austrian Zigeuner “Gypsy” cards, the Kippers and the Lenormand!

And we know we can do “big” readings and layouts with those; we use Grand Tableaus, so usually either in the piquet game format (8 x 4 plus 4 cards at the bottom) or the 9 x 4 format.

But what about our larger decks, our Sibillas, like the French Sibylle des Salon or Italian Vera Sibilla ? Are there ways we can read “Grand Tableau”-style layouts that utilise ALL 52 cards with them?

Sure are!

We’ve already covered, say, the Six Main Themes spread for the Sibylle des Salons, which uses 18 of the cards to read the main themes, with the rest laid out in a grid from which you use a ‘counting’ method to identify the most important cards. You can check that one out here:

And “counting” (always very popular in French cartomancy, btw) is a method we’re going to utilise in this one too, and this time, we’re going to have ALL 52 cards in ONE grid!

So how might THAT work… and more importantly, how might we read it?

Let’s take a look!