2015 Winter/Yule Tarot Blog Hop

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Our wrangler Arwen Lynch-Poe gave us this topic for the hop:

“It’s that time of the year again! The dreaded office party. Oh no! But we are going to make it fun. Now is the time for our Winter celebration. You may call that Yule or Chanukah or Kwanzaa or Solstice or Christmas or some other name. For this hop, your challenge is to join us in an office party. Crazy right? But read on! You are to create a Winter gift for your readers. That can be your insight into which Tarot/Lenormand/Oracl card is the most like Winter for you. Maybe there’s a deck you find seasonal. You could offer a recipe that is tied to a Tarot card. Maybe tell us a story about holidays past. Create a spread, write a poem, design a card. Whatever you choose to do will be a perfect gift of you to the rest of our Tarot community. So gather round for this Winter Tarot Blog Hop as we do our own version of a virtual Secret Elf office party.”

I wish to talk about a memory connected to a deck of cards, and then give a tip how to use them for divination.

My favorite winter memory again takes me back to my grandfather. He used to love playing cards – so much that he has broke his friendship with his neighbor just because he accused my grandpa of cheating – and anyway in winter (-20 C)  you can’t do many things other than gathering around the table and play.

The picture above is of Hungarian playing cards, the aces of the four suits to be precise. Every ace is associated with a season: Heart = Spring, Pumpkin = Summer, Leaf = Autumn, and Acorn = Winter.

This is Winter. (There is another version where instead of the man an old lady is carrying firewood. I could only find a tiny picture of her on Google, so I won’t post it here.)

These are the suits:

You can see the old lady as the Ace of Acorns. 🙂

Nowadays there is a new version spreading. It’s actually so new I couldn’t yet find a picture of it on MGG (Mighty God Google). It has Hungarian national heroes and kings from our history instead  of the figures of the story of William Tell. The reason why the original was made with Swiss people’s pictures is that the deck originates in Austro-Hungarian Empire, and censors banned just about anything that could arouse nationalism. Although it is a nice sentiment to have a deck which could really be called Hungarian, I find it hard to like anything else other than the original. We have played hours on end with them, it just doesn’t seem right to have anyone else than William Tell on it.

I wish I could show you the warmth I feel when I think of these cards and the times visiting my grandparents…

The divinatory use for them is for yes/no questions. Shuffle and cut them, thinking of your question, then turn up 10 cards from the top. Repeat this two more times, taking out any aces that turned up. At the end if you have all four aces your answer is a definite yes. If you have three it’s a likely yes. If it’s two it’s not very likely, if one it’s like not likely but still have 1% chance, and if it’s no aces… you get the picture.

Have a lovely, warm Christmas and a very happy, healthy new year! And while you are at it, why not visit other participating blogs too? Here are my neighbors and the Master list to give you a clue!

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