![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Things you never knew about playing cards
Oct. 19th, 2006 10:26 amI'm just reading the book that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
auntygillian gave me for my birthday, 'Last Call' by Tim Powers. The book uses a lot of symbolism both of Tarot cards and playing cards. At one point, the writer specifially associates the Page of Cups from the Sforza Tarot deck http://www.tarot.com/about-tarot/decks/browsedecks.php?newdeck=35 with the one-eyed Jack of hearts.
He's pretty much correct. The mapping of Tarot suits onto playing cards is hearts-cups, spades-swords, clubs-wands and diamonds-coins. Thus, the Page of Cups is always the Jack of hearts.
The page of Cups is shown in profile in the Sforza deck (hence one-eyed). He isn't in all Tarot decks (and other jacks often are), but then to be fair the Sforza deck is the one that ties into the plot here.
I then got curious about playing cards in general and what cards were in profile and whether this was a constant in playing cards (I'd already checked several Tarot decks and realised that it wasn't there)
Going by the first deck of cards I took out of my cupboard and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_cards , the answer here is 'yes'. In fact, playing cards are even more standardised than I'd imagined. The weapons held by the kings, the items in the hand of the queens, the direction the court characters are facing, even the moustache (or not) of the kings, are all dictated. Most interesting of all to me was that the Jack of Diamonds is always depicted as looking happy.
I'd always assumed that references to 'Jack of Diamonds' in folk songs referred to money (and in some cases that definitely still holds), but now I wonder if it sometimes refers to happiness. I'm trying to find the words to the Lonnie Donnegan song, but without success. It goes something like "When you play the game of life, you've got trouble, you've got strife, Jack of Diamonds is a hard card to find"
auntygillian gave me for my birthday, 'Last Call' by Tim Powers. The book uses a lot of symbolism both of Tarot cards and playing cards. At one point, the writer specifially associates the Page of Cups from the Sforza Tarot deck http://www.tarot.com/about-tarot/decks/browsedecks.php?newdeck=35 with the one-eyed Jack of hearts.He's pretty much correct. The mapping of Tarot suits onto playing cards is hearts-cups, spades-swords, clubs-wands and diamonds-coins. Thus, the Page of Cups is always the Jack of hearts.
The page of Cups is shown in profile in the Sforza deck (hence one-eyed). He isn't in all Tarot decks (and other jacks often are), but then to be fair the Sforza deck is the one that ties into the plot here.
I then got curious about playing cards in general and what cards were in profile and whether this was a constant in playing cards (I'd already checked several Tarot decks and realised that it wasn't there)
Going by the first deck of cards I took out of my cupboard and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_cards , the answer here is 'yes'. In fact, playing cards are even more standardised than I'd imagined. The weapons held by the kings, the items in the hand of the queens, the direction the court characters are facing, even the moustache (or not) of the kings, are all dictated. Most interesting of all to me was that the Jack of Diamonds is always depicted as looking happy.
I'd always assumed that references to 'Jack of Diamonds' in folk songs referred to money (and in some cases that definitely still holds), but now I wonder if it sometimes refers to happiness. I'm trying to find the words to the Lonnie Donnegan song, but without success. It goes something like "When you play the game of life, you've got trouble, you've got strife, Jack of Diamonds is a hard card to find"
