Using the Dead Man's Hand
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
The thing that has brought me closer to my folk practice is my deep appreciation for the crass. The grim and grit of curse words, the ingenuity of repurposed garbage, the illicitness of card and dice games, the Venusian worship of heavy mascara and red lipstick — anything you could hid within the riff raff has made me a stronger practitioner. Because folk practice is for the folk, and the folk play the lotto and are always in the need of a smoke and a light.
Playing card divination has been a study of mine for the last five years. I’d spent a lot of time with tarot, the elaborate and robust narratives that the illustrations provide. But divination is both a deep and rich study and a crude and rustic art built on instinct and pattern recognition.
Playing cards have allowed me to create my own decks, adding sigils and keywords and song lyrics. They’re cheap and have their own fun illustrations that I can use to inspire or entertain, but the meanings of the cards are the ones you apply to them or are culturally crafted.
Take the Dead Man’s Hand.
The Dead Man’s Hand is a poker hand that allegedly were the cards in Wild Bill Hickok’s hand when he was shot.
Wellllllllll, that’s likely not true. Like many divination warnings and folklore, these stories get built in the 1920s, but the dead man’s hand has been running through casinos and pool halls since the late 1800’s. And it changes often. In Bill’s case, it’s a pair of aces and a pair of eights with an unknown card. In the 1880’s it was three jacks and a pair of tens. In 1900, jacks and eights.
My controversial opinion on this is that it doesn’t matter which is correct because truth is a tapestry we’re all weaving together. But haunted hands are great leaping off points to embracing not just the narrative of divination but the outright superstition. Superstition gets a bad reputation but it can be downright useful.
I use the Dead Man’s Hand when I’m feeling like my luck is down. I set out two black aces and two black eight and flip over a hole card. The hole card is the lesson. Or what can be made of the situation. Or the future. It all depends how I define it at the time.
On the full and new moons of every month I wander the city where I live, waiting for the street corner playing card that will leap out at me. Oakland never fails to provide. I have a couple books that I use to build my relationship to cards, but none of them are absolutes. Mostly I stare at the card on the sidewalk or in the gutter and react to it, then compare with my books to name the feeling and the outcome. It’s been a meandering relationship I’ve built, but when did gamblers ever shoot straight?
This full moon, a harvest moon, an eclipse, I’m visiting my parents in rural New England. There are no sidewalks. No corner card games to run across. There’s barely any people at all. On my usual walk I crested a hill covered in long grass and wild turkeys and a flipped red backed playing card sat at my feet with no others on the road. The fate card always finds.
I’ve recently started reading for other people with playing cards, and they are a medium that benefits from use. I don’t want to be the only person to touch my cards. I want you to play with them, to have a hand of rummy with me, I want you to get caught with a handful of cards or a single discard. Fate is something you end up holding whether your luck is good or bad.
If you’re interested in learning more about playing card divination, here’s a couple books I like:
Fifty-Four Devils by Corey Thomas Hutcheson
How to Tell Fortunes with Cards by Wenzell Brown
Fortune Telling Using Playing Cards by Jonathon Dee
Clearing the Waters by Jose Letao
Got questions? Topics your want to see me talk about? Want to book a reading? Email doyouwanttodosomewitchcraft@gmail.com and send me a note. Like the newsletter? Share with your friends!
Find me by sending a crow to the only streetlight in the smallest town you've ever heard of.
Or by checking out my website laureneparker.com