Naples, and loved reading Neapolitan regional cards. She used a very traditional 25 cards tableau method. Some years ago, when I first started learning tarot, it came naturally to me to adapt this method with the major arcana + the aces used as subject significators. Now, I've used this method quite a few times in the past, but since I started using the entire deck I completely forgot about it, until I found my very old majors+aces deck yesterday :D I'm gonna show it here so that maybe somebody who is interested may use it. It may be somewhat naive (keep in mind that I was 14-15), but it could serve as a basis, if nothing else. First of all Ace of Wands: Work, Passions, Spirituality, Sex Ace of Cups: Love, Friendship, Feelings Ace of Swords: Arguments, Conflicts (now I would also add, communications, study) Ace of Coins: Money, Material possessions, body LAYOUT: A very simple one 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 (26) <-- This card was left out of the spread. If it happened to be a significator for the question, it was like "Dude, leave me alone". SNAKE COUNT One feature of the traditional method used by my grandma was the "conta a serpentina" (snake count). I think that if you google it you will find it explained in some Italian forums. But at any rate, the concept is quite simple: you always count 9 starting from the significator. Let's say the question is about love. We will look for the Ace of Cups. Let's say it was card 03. We would count 3-4-9-14-19-24-25-20-15. We landed on 15, so we would read it. Then we would count 15-10-5-4-9-14-19-24-23, and we would read card 23,then we'd count 23-18-13-8-3-2-7-12-17, then 17-22-21-16-11-6-1-2-7, and then 7-12-17-22-23-18-13-8-3, going back to the significator. No matter where you start counting, with the snake counting you will always go back to the significator in 5 moves. There is another version, as far as I know, where you only count 7, allowing for more cards to be counted on before getting back to the starting point. COUPLING This one is straightforward: you pair all cards as follows: 1-25 6-20 11-15 16-10 21-5 22-4 17-9 etc. |
