Cards

As I sit here at 2 am on a Wednesday morning I am playing with a deck of playing cards. Cards have always fascinated me as long as I can remember. I first encountered them as a child playing card games such as Go Fish and War, but then later found them to be a tool through which I perform. As I began to learn to manipulate the cards and practice slight of hand I did not stop to think what they meant. A deck of 52 cards is so common place these days that you can find them in just about any store. They are used in many games; therefore, are usually titled playing cards, yet they originally stood for something completely different.

A deck cards can be thought of as a calendar of sorts. There are 52 cards in a deck, which correspond to 52 weeks in a year. The two colors in the deck, red and black, stand for the to halves of the year. The summer solstice and the winter equinox. Four suits in the deck are the four seasons in a year. The the 12 face cards correspond to the 12 months in a year. Thirteen cards in a suit are equal to 13 weeks per season. And finally if you add up all the pips in a deck they equal 365, which is the same number of days in a year.

With all this cards become a lot more than just a tool to play games with, but a measure of time. Each individual card stands for something different: A different week, or month, or season. Gypsies used to use cards to read peoples fortunes. Now I know what your thinking, Gypsies scammed people out of money. Yes, there were a few that did, I am sure, but I do believe that a lot of them actually knew what they were doing. With each card being different and corresponding to a specific time and/or message, these people were able to a pretty accurate reading.

For all these reasons and more cards will always have a special meaning to me. I do not pick up a deck of cards without thinking what they mean. So next time you open a pack of playing cards to play a game or do a magic trick for your buddies, remember that what your holding in your hand is a lot more complicated than just 52 pieces of paper with numbers and pictures on them.