For this exercise, I’m going to assume everyone knows how to go about using reversals, even if you feel you aren’t good at it. What we’ll be doing is a pair of readings on related topics. If you don’t know how to use reversals, the book that came with your deck of choice probably has separated meanings for “upright” and “reversed” cards, and the “reversed” cards will just be upside down. This does mean you’ll have to shuffle your cards in such a way that some turn upside down. I just riffle shuffle and turn one half of the deck each time.
As a querent, you should prepare two questions, or even better, a topic you can easily ask one question about and then come up with follow up questions based on the first reading.
As a reader, the spread you use is up to you: make sure it has a least 5 cards though. I’m sort of making this number up, but the goal is to make sure there are enough cards that you see reversals and dignities. More is better, so long as you’re comfortable with the spread.
In your first reading, use reversals, even if you don’t usually do so (I don’t, so I’ll be in the same boat). In your second reading, do not use reversals, even if you usually do (now the boat is on the other foot). For the second reading, use dignity.
Dignity is an idea that sort of comes out of astrology, though in this case it’s mostly elemental, rather than strictly astrological. The core idea is that some elements play well together and some don’t. Here’s the list:
These two pairs are the upper and lower halves of the classical element list; they like each other because they’re similar. Fire and air are (usually considered) both hot, while water and earth are (again usually) both cold. That means they can hang out without fighting about what the thermostat’s set to.
It’s easy to see why fire and water hate each other: each can destroy the other, in the right circumstances. It can be more difficult to imagine why air and earth hate each other, but – and I’m cribbing from Susan Chang here – if we imagine air as drifting over top the surface of the earth, never really interacting with it at all, we can get there. Air’s too cool to speak to earth (figuratively speaking, air is considered hot in this model); earth is too… down to earth to speak to someone with its head in the clouds.
What’s happening classically is that these pairs are totally opposite: fire is hot and dry, while water is cold and moist. They have no shared attribute in common.
These are, of course, just the last possible permutations. I believe Chang says the Golden Dawn didn’t consider these as dignities at all, but she’s had some success considering them sort of grudgingly positive, like two people who work in the same office who will, by default, be slightly nicer to each other in the subway than two total strangers. These pairs share the other classical attribute: fire and earth are both dry, air and water are both moist.
You can consider these as having very minor “dignity” or as having none at all; that’s up to you. There’s an obvious imbalance in Chang’s method: most of the permutations are positive, even if only barely so, while the more traditional version leaves the deck balanced with an even split and a “neutral” team in the middle.
You can ignore these, or parse them out given their zodiacal attribution or planetary attribution. The Juggler isn’t associated with an element directly, but Mercury is usually considered airy and rules Gemini by day, so you can consider that card of air – and the Juggler is probably talking a mile a minute anyway, so it tracks. The Hierophant may not immediately be “earthy,” but he’s often associated with Taurus, which is, so you can think of him that way, even if just for the purposes of deciding if he’s in good or ill dignity in a deal of cards.
Once you’re used to thinking of the cards as playing nicely or not with one another, you can read the dignity of each card to determine whether it’s strongly or weakly disposed – that is to say, whether you read the “upright” or “reversed” meaning. This can get more complex as you go: rather than just using dignity as a replacement for flipping half the deck upside down, you can get extra data about the situation. If the “resources at your disposal” card is the only wand in a spread of cups, your resources, no matter how nice, aren’t going to be very helpful in this specific situation. Your enemy may be the King of Swords but everyone else in the situation is a Coin – they may have the best plan in the world, but if you focus on the material aspects of the conflict you’ve got a better chance than that king does.
Apart from a skill you may or may not have already practiced, what this exercise will do is to give you some experience looking at one card and then reading it in context. With dignities, no card is ever totally isolated.
Let’s loop back around. Contact your new partner and prep two questions or one big topic that can produce two questions. Then, when you perform your own readings, do the first with reversals and the second with the above dignity method. When you write up your experiences, consider of course which you think you prefer, but also how you might use either method even if you don’t do it this exact way again. What’s good about each method? If you felt you were struggling to connect cards together, has this helped? Does it produce information you didn’t think you had before? Or, and this is an option, was it totally useless? Hopefully not totally, since it’s good exercise, but not everyone likes doing wind sprints either I guess. Me. I’m the person who doesn’t like doing wind sprints.