Have you ever asked yourself the question: What do the suits of playing cards mean? Where did the names come from - jack, ace, clubs, spades, hearts, etc. If - yes! Then this article is for you. Especially impressionable, please do not read)

It often happens with the player:
Sat down as a rich man - got up as a poor man.
Who took the cards, deceived by profit,
Tom does not know the game is happy.
Gambling is sinful:
It is not given to us by God, -
Satan invented it!

Sebastian BRANT. 1494 g.

A few words about the history of the issue:

There are 3 versions of the origin of the cards:

1. First - chinese, although many still do not want to believe in it. Chinese and Japanese cards are too unusual for us both in appearance and in the nature of the game, which is more like dominoes. However, there is no doubt that already in the 8th century in China, first sticks were used for games, and then strips of paper with the designations of various symbols. These distant ancestors of cards were also used in place of money, so they had three suits: a coin, two coins, and a lot of coins. And in India, playing cards depicted the figure of the four-armed Shiva, who was holding a goblet, sword, coin and rod. Some believe that these symbols of the four Indian classes gave rise to modern card suits.

2. Egyptian version of the origin of the cards, replicated by the latest occultists. They argued that in ancient times, the Egyptian priests wrote down all the wisdom of the world on 78 gold tablets, which were also depicted in the symbolic form of maps. 56 of them - "Minor Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and the remaining 22 "Major Arcana" became part of the mysterious Tarot deck used for fortune-telling. This version was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteila, and his successors Eliphas Levi and Dr. Papus and the English Mathers and Crowley created their own systems for interpreting Tarot cards. The name is allegedly derived from the Egyptian "ta rosh" ("path of the kings"), and the cards themselves were brought to Europe either by the Arabs, or by the gypsies, who were often considered immigrants from Egypt. True, scientists have not been able to find any evidence of such an early existence of the Tarot deck.

3. European version... (We will dwell on it in more detail - it is considered the main one). Common maps appeared on the European continent no later than the XIV century. Back in 1367 in the city of Bern, the card game was banned, and ten years later, the shocked papal envoy watched with horror as the monks enthusiastically cut cards at the walls of their monastery. In 1392, Jacques Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French King Charles VI, drew a deck of cards to amuse his master. The then deck differed from the current one in one detail: it had only 32 cards. There were four ladies missing, whose presence seemed then unnecessary. Only in the next century did Italian artists begin to depict Madonnas not only in paintings, but also on maps.

4. Occult... According to the writer S.S. Narovchatova, under Ivan the Terrible a certain Chercelli appeared in Moscow. Churchlli, in Italy he was called French, in France - German, in Germany - Pole, and in Poland - became Russian. He brought to Moscow a chest wrapped in a shawl, black with red streaks, which seemed to correspond to the colors - black and red. Cards began to be in demand. At first, the authorities were tolerant of practicing cards, but then they began to persecute them, since they saw the interference of evil spirits here. Of the legislative monuments about cards, he first mentions the Code of 1649, which prescribes with the card players "as it is written about tats" (thieves), i.e. beat mercilessly, cut off fingers and hands. Decree of 1696. it was introduced to search all those suspected of wanting to play cards "and from whom the cards are taken out, beat with a whip." In 1717. it is prohibited to play cards under the threat of a monetary fine. In 1733. for repeat offenders, a prison, or batogs, is defined.

So what do the suits and meanings of the cards mean?

The structure of a deck of cards is known to everyone: ace, king, queen, jack, even lower tens, nines, and so on up to sixes or up to twos in a full deck - a typical hierarchical ladder from the highest to the lowest:

The Joker is a frivolous figure in tights, a buffoon's cap, bells ... And in his hands is a scepter with a human head strung on it, which is now replaced by humane artists with musical "cymbals". In pre-revolutionary stage performances, a similar character was called Fradyavolo. "Joker" is above all, it has no suit and is considered the strongest in the game. Thus, at the top of the pyramid is not the King, but Daus ...

Ace is a word of Polish origin from the German Daus. The German-Russian dictionary indicates the meaning of the word: Daus - devil. It is quite possible that Daus is a variant of the distortion of the Greek diabolos - a defamator.

King. Interestingly, all of the card images had real or legendary prototypes. For example, four kings are the greatest monarchs of antiquity: Charlemagne (worms), the biblical king David (spades), Julius Caesar (tambourines) and Alexander the Great (clubs).

There was no such unanimity with regard to the ladies - for example, the lady of hearts was either Judith, then Helena of Trojan, or Dido. The Queen of Spades was traditionally portrayed as the goddess of war - Athena, Minerva and even Joan of Arc. After much debate, the biblical Rachel began to portray the Queen of Spades: she was ideal for the role of the “queen of money”, since she had robbed her own father. Finally, the lady of clubs, on early Italian maps, acting as a virtuous Lucretia, turned into Argina - an allegory of vanity and vanity.

Valet (fr. Valet, "servant", "lackey", etymologically diminutive of "vassal"; the old Russian name "slave", "hlap") is a playing card depicting a young man. All real prototypes of jacks (according to the European version) are the French knight La Hire, nicknamed Satan (worms), as well as the heroes of the epic Ogier the Dane (spades), Roland (tambourines) and Lancelot Ozerny (clubs).

"Trump" cards, their very name, have their own special purpose. "Kosher" i.e. Talmudists call ritual sacrifices "pure" ... which, as you understand, is connected with Kabbalah.

Now the suits:

In the French version, swords became "spades", cups - into "worms", denarii - into "tambourines", and "wands" - into "crosses" or "clubs" (the last word in French means "clover leaf") ... In different languages, these names still sound differently; for example, in England and Germany these are "spades", "hearts", "diamonds" and "clubs", and in Italy - "spears", "hearts", "squares" and "flowers". On German maps you can still find the old names of the colors: "acorns", "hearts", "bells" and "leaves".

As for the occult principles, their essence is as follows:
1. "Cross" (Trefa) - a card with the image of the cross on which Jesus was crucified and which is worshiped by half the world. Translated from Yiddish, "trefa" means "bad" or "evil"

4. "Tambourines" - a graphic image of the Gospel forged four-sided serrated nails with which the hands and feet of Jesus were nailed to the wooden Cross.

An interesting fact is that in the USSR during the NEP years there were attempts to depict workers with peasants on maps and even introduce new suits - "sickles", "hammers" and "stars". True, such independent activity was quickly suppressed, and the cards were stopped for a long time to be printed as "attributes of bourgeois decomposition."

Each of us knows what playing cards are and many have played them. But has anyone wondered how the first cards and suits depicted on them appeared?

One variant of the origin of cards and suits is the assumption that the first cards appeared in Asia, from where they were already spread by the Arabs throughout Europe.

Foreign merchants, delivering goods and traveling to different lands, traded in cards with four suits, which were called pentacles, staves, cups and swords.

The origin of the card suits is not known for certain, but there are several plausible theories.

According to other assumptions, they appeared in Europe during the reign of Charles the fourth - they were invented by the royal merry fellow for the fun of the noble family.

In the Old World, gambling cards were first described around the same time period. Of the whole variety of decks, their quantitative and qualitative composition, certain communities can be distinguished:

• all decks had 4 suits (as well as special cards called jokers);
• each suit contained several representatives with different patterns or information signs;
• the card combined suit and hierarchical place.

The modern deck is a French version of the combination of a card suit and its seniority, which appeared in the 15th century. The popularity and prevalence of this particular instance is explained by the low cost of manufacturing. On French maps, the low rank was indicated by Arabic symbols, which eliminated the difficulty in drawing.

There are the following opinions on how the visual images of the suit were formed:

• equipment of knights (lances - spears, worms - shields, bubi - banners, crosses - swords);
• four social groups of feudal society (army - lances, church - worms, merchants - booby, peasantry - crosses);
• items related to the death of Jesus Christ (lances - a spear, worms - a sponge, bubi - head of nails, crosses - a cross).

The last of these explanations stems from the church's long-standing condemnation of gambling, including gambling, which is considered a product of the Devil. In many European countries, a rather interesting name for the suits has taken root. For example, in Germany, worms are called hearts, spades - leaves, diamonds - bells, and crosses - acorns.

Names of card suits

In the Spanish set of cards, suits are also referred to as peculiar words. The inhabitants of France call them differently: lances (spears), squares, hearts, clover. The most common and familiar terms in Russia have become terms that came from France, or derivatives similar to them.

Thus, bubi comes from "bells", clubs are pronounced in Russian "trefle", worms are a derivative of "chervonny", while spades speak for themselves.

Hierarchy of card suits

In all its diversity card games there has never been a general precedence of suits, so many games have their own scale: for example, in bridge or poker there is a hierarchy - spades, hearts, diamonds, crosses. For this reason, the games are organized in such an order that would regulate the location and, so to speak, the strength of the suits.

Trump cards and special suits

In "bribe" games, there is always a suit that is more powerful than others during the game. In some games, one or more suits may have a specific meaning. In the game "Spades", by the way, a specific suit is established, which is the trump suit during the call.

Another example of the use of special suits is the game "Hearts", where the presence of cards with hearts puts you in a losing situation.

In Soviet times, playing cards was one of the most widespread games not only among adults, but also among children. And on long-distance trains, on beaches, in courtyards and school backyards, only the lazy did not play cards. A lot of people "cut" in cards - in a "fool", in a "point", in a "king", absolutely not thinking about their sacrilegious (literally, stolen from the Church) symbolism. Undoubtedly, cards are one of the oldest ways to "occupy yourself", "to pass the time", but you should know that at first they were used exclusively for pythic, fortune-telling purposes. It sounds strange, however, in the ancient world “playing cards” was obscene, outrageous, as if now someone was determined to “play”, for example, the Russian coat of arms or Orthodox “shrines”. Gradually, the oracular meaning of the cards lost its original meaning (largely thanks to Christianity) and became profane. The ancient card symbolism has changed beyond recognition over the millennia. Today, for most people, playing cards is just a "pleasant", easy pastime, not associated with any mystical-symbolic depths. But is it really so?

Card learning

History shows that in addition to card games, decks were used in other cases. Since its introduction in Europe, playing cards have been used for educational purposes. True, they did not have Christian symbols. Geography and history, jurisprudence and logic, Latin, astronomy, grammar, heraldry, martial arts and mathematics were taught with the help of maps.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Franciscan monk Thomas Murner published the book "Chartiludium logicae", consisting of educational playing cards with which he taught logic. In pedagogy, the monk achieved such success that they began to accuse him of witchcraft. In defense of Murner, the scientist Johann von Glogau spoke out, who proved that the methods used by Thomas are based on the techniques of mnemonics (memorization with the help of pictures) and are completely spiritually harmless. Later, Thomas published this book in the form of a deck of educational playing cards. The deck consisted of 51 sheets, each with 16 mnemonic symbols. Each playing card covered a certain circle of logical rules. Currently, the Murner deck is available in two copies: one in the museum in Basel, the second in Vienna. The technique invented by Murner seemed effective to European teachers of the 16th and 17th centuries. This technique was readily used to train royals. For example, it is known that Louis XIV was taught by playing cards and engravings. When Louis was six years old, he had four decks: Geography, Kingdoms, Kings of France, and Fairy Tales. But cards are different.

Card game in Russia

The card game in Russia dates back more than four centuries. One of the first mentions of maps is in the 16th century list of worldly "incorrigations" by Bishop Kassian of Ryazan. In the Code of Laws, published in 1649 - the code of laws of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich - the game of cards was equated with grave crimes and was severely punished, up to the death penalty. Nevertheless, in the inventories of the property of the royal court of the 17th century, decks of cards are mentioned repeatedly - obvious proof that this fun was not alien to the court. According to the historian I.E. Zabelin, in 1635 hammer cards were bought for the royal family for sale (this was the name of the cards of the first analysis from the first engraved prints). Around the same time, Nikifor Bovykin, the icon-painter of the Armory, "was ordered to re-write a funny game of cards on gold with colored paints in the prince's mansion."

Peter I did not like cards, many of his associates, including Alexander Menshikov, were fond of playing cards along with chess. It was from then that cards began to occupy the leisure of the Russian aristocracy. They became especially popular during the reign of Catherine II. A rare noble house did without cards, and card tables were an obligatory piece of furniture.

In the 18th century, decks of cards came to Russia in two ways - through Germany and Poland, hence the double name of the suits: spades (French version) and blame (German version). In Russia, they were made by individual individuals. In 1765, under Catherine II, a special tax on trade in cards was introduced in favor of the Orphanages in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In 1798, the Alexandrovskaya Manufactory was built near St. Petersburg. In 1817, by decree of Alexander I, she was given a monopoly on the production of cards. They were always stamped with a picture of a pelican feeding the chicks with its meat, and an inscription in Latin or in Russian: "He sparingly feeds the chicks." For a long time Russian maps did not differ in any obvious originality, repeating European models. In the second half of the 19th century, the Aleksandrovskaya Manufactory began to issue cards based on images taken from folk tales in the style of Russian Art Nouveau.

The ability to play cards in the 19th century, along with knowledge of French, dancing, horse riding, the art of pistol shooting, was considered a sign of a generally recognized secular education. The Russian, European "enlightened" nobleman could easily do without knowledge of Christian theology and church symbolism. Furthermore. The maps, which, in the words of Peter Vyazemsky, were "one of the immutable and inevitable elements" in Russia, largely reflected the philosophy of Russian life in the 18th-19th centuries. This was expressed with maximum accuracy by the hero of Lermontov's drama "Masquerade": "Whatever Voltaire, or Descartes, interpret, the World is a deck of cards for me, Life is a bank: rock is a mosque, I play, And I apply the rules of the game to people."

During the reign of Alexander I, the stamp of freethinking was on the card game - the emperor did not like cards or gamblers. In the minds of the "golden youth", this only made the cards more attractive. The card game took on the character of a romantic rebellion against the routine and brutality of real life. It was like a masquerade, where people, whose faces were hidden by a mask, were capable of actions and words unthinkable in everyday life. The cards, like the same mask, liberated sinful passions and revealed feelings. The concepts of honor and honesty among young nobles were also appropriate. Paying off the card debt was just a matter of honor, since the creditor in this case was not under the protection of the law and authorities. Honor and honesty were different concepts. An honest act could be despised if they suspected a person of cowardice.

The life of famous card players is a whole string of entertaining adventurous stories and historical anecdotes. Among them is the fabulist I.A. Krylov, a smart and calculating player who gave the game for many years, saw in it a way of making money and gaining independence. Much was written in chalk on green cloth by such great writers as Pushkin, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky. The cards turned the life of the famous composer A.A. Alyabyev, a hussar, A.S. Griboyedov and Denis Davydov, in an adventure novel. A fearless warrior, a knight in relation to ladies, at the same time - a gambler (cards were included in the obligatory set of hussar activities), the author of the famous "Nightingale" embodied that romanticized type of hussar that arose in the public consciousness after the war of 1812. After a quarrel at the card table in his own home, he was suspected of murder. After the trial, the composer and the hussar were deprived of ranks, orders, and nobility. He spent 20 long years in exile, categorically refusing to carry out the penance assigned to him - public repentance three times a week. Sudden transitions from luxury and wealth to poverty and back were the usual lot of the card player. Pushkin, who himself spent a lot of time at the card table, never romanticized the passion of cards, with his inherent ingenious insight in the story "The Queen of Spades" many an internal, "uterine" relationship between the dark infernal world and the card game. The end of this short story is remarkable: “Hermann has gone mad. He sits in the Obukhov hospital in room 17, does not answer any questions and mutters unusually quickly: “Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, lady! .. "

Why Hermann "turned around" and instead of the "prophetic" ace pulled out a card of spades? Traditionally, the lady of spades in card fortune-telling means an old woman, femme fatale, widow, queen of swords. She was usually depicted as the goddess of war - Athena or Minerva. Of these small components (old woman, widow - death, war - death), it is easy to see that the Queen of Spades is nothing more than a "secular", encoded image of the devil in his female incarnation. Hermann was not deceived by the "accursed countess". He became not a victim, as is customary to say in Pushkin studies, of "blind fate", of a cosmic fate. He was cheated, "thrown", defrauded by personal arbitrariness through addiction and trust in the fortune of cards, "the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning" is the devil.

Let's go back to history. Gradually, the game of cards lost the character of liberal free-thinking, "Voltaireanism". During the reign of Nicholas I, cards again became a common pastime at court. They were no longer destined to disappear from Russian life. Their popularity only grew. The author of the pamphlet On Playing Cards, published in 1914, noted that “gambling, and especially playing cards, has supplanted almost all innocent entertainment. Nowadays old and small, rich and poor, high-ranking officials and ordinary workers are addicted to the card game. " The heyday of the gambling business came at the beginning of the 20th century, many clubs appeared, where the main occupation was playing cards. But cards were never destined to play such a role as in the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. Winning or losing in a serious game was perceived as a sign of fate. The famous gambler, brute, adventurer, and at the same time - the valiant hero of the war of 1812, Fyodor Tolstoy-American killed eleven people in duels. Subsequently, having lost eleven children, he noted each personal loss in the memorial book with the short word "quit". The count ended his life as a very religious person, spending the rest of his years in constant prayer.

Maps and Church Society

And what about the Church? Why, condemning the gambling nature of the game of cards, urging believers not to sit at the “card table”, did she not resort to such a weighty argument of disgust from gambling passion as blasphemous symbols of suits? It is known that the clergy, both rural and urban, in the 19th century often "dabbled in cards" to take a break from the labors of the righteous. Surely the priests, as they say, did not take into their "minds" the shameful character of the card symbols? Some, perhaps, “took”, only because of the prevalence of the game of cards among practically all classes and the “dominant” position of the Church in imperial Russia, they looked at these symbols with a detached, “blurred” social eye, approximately the way we looked at in Soviet times ubiquitous red stars, ceasing to see in them the seal of theomachy, the replacement of the Orthodox cross with an atheistic star. “A habit from above has been given to us” and therefore, having got used to something, a person ceases to notice, “delve into” the symbolic paradigms that initially embarrassed him. There is one more peculiarity. The 19th century in Russia was a century of symbolic insensibility, a century of classical, academic, one might even say, detailed anatomical painting, which was based on the spirit of rationalism and materialism.

Interest in symbols begins to re-emerge at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was then that symbolic schools of painting and poetry appeared in Russia, cultural historians discovered the world significance of, in many respects, also very symbolic, ancient Russian icons. The Bolshevik Revolution of 17 for many decades rolled back public interest from infernal dark symbolism, Kabbalistic and Masonic signs, otherworldly meaningful traces of folk religions and pagan cults. This is understandable. “The whole world” first built - war communism, then - communism, then - developed socialism, then - simply socialism, and then suddenly they ran en masse into a “democratic society” with a capitalist face. It was not up to "Shakespeare", the boots would not have worn out. But everything is in the past. Today the card, "black and red" symbolism is revealed to the level of alphabetic transparency. And we, Christians, have the full, documentary right to indicate its anti-Christian orientation and warn "these little ones."

Orthodox symbolism of the cross

On blasphemous card symbols

Ushakov's dictionary answers: "ace" is a Polish word from the German Daus and means a playing card of one point. The German-Russian dictionary also indicates another meaning of the word : Daus is the devil. It is quite possible that Daus is a variant of the distortion of the Greek diabolos - a defamator. The structure of a deck of cards is known to everyone: king, queen, jack, even lower tens, nines, and so on up to sixes or two in a full deck - a typical hierarchical ladder from the highest dark forces to the lowest, "demonic sixes". In Christianity, the number "six" symbolizes completeness, the perfect number of days of creation. In the deck of playing cards, based largely on the symbolism of the anti-Christian teachings of Kabbalah, the number "6" symbolizes the beginning of our mortal, "lower" world. Sometimes another card is added to the deck - the Joker. An ambiguous figure in tights, a buffoon's cap, bells, a broken posture. And in his hands - a royal rod with the dead head of a man strung on it, which is now replaced by secular artists with musical "cymbals".

Temple in Demre

In pre-revolutionary stage performances, a similar character was called Fradyavolo. The Joker card is the highest, it has no suit and is considered the strongest in the game. At the top of the pyramid, in any scenario, there is by no means a monarch, but that very Daus, from which only the sign of the cross and prayer can be fenced off. Thus, the hierarchy in the deck of cards is subordinate to the "prince of this world." "Trump" cards, their very name, have their own special purpose. In Talmudism, ritual sacrifices are called “kosher,” that is, “pure”, so the real meaning of gambling games is to humiliate our sacred places, because by covering the cross with the “trump six” the players unconsciously assert that the “six” is higher and stronger than the Life-giving Cross! An indication of the anti-Christian background of card games are some of their rules, such as when a combination of three sixes beats any other combination.

All four card suits imply the cross of Christ along with other sacred artifacts that have become symbols of the Orthodox faith: a spear, a lip and nails. All four Christian symbols in total represent the redemptive suffering on the Cross of the Son of God, His feat of saving mankind from death, separation from the Creator and the power of the devil. Let's talk in more detail about each of the card suits.

Temple in Demre

So, the suit of cards "cross" is a sacrilegious image of the Cross of the Lord. The suit of cards “blame”, or otherwise, “lances”, dishonors the Gospel lance, the spear of the holy martyr Longinus the Centurion: “One of the soldiers pierced His ribs with a spear” (John 19:34). The suit of cards “worms” will spoil the Gospel lip on the reed: “One of them took a sponge, gave it vinegar and, putting it on the reed, gave Him to drink” (Matthew 27, 48). The card suit "tambourines" blackens the Gospel forged tetrahedral nails with which the hands and feet of the Savior were nailed to the Tree of the Cross. The Apostle Thomas, who said, “if I don’t see His wounds from nails on my hands, and I don’t put my finger in the wounds of the nails, and I don’t put my hand in His ribs, I will not believe” (John 20:25) and, “I believed, because he saw ”(John 20:29).

For a modern person, all these Gospel analogies seem to be "priestly fables", far-fetched by the correlation of Christian symbols with cards. If so ... There is a lot of historical evidence of their symbolic identity, found recently on ancient vestments, church vessels, during excavations of Orthodox shrines. This is exactly the case that symbols are depicted on Orthodox shrines that are identical (literally, one-to-one) with those used today in playing cards, only one essential reservation needs to be made. It was not Orthodox artists and temple builders, jewelers and artisans who blasphemously copied card symbols, but “dark people”, haters of the Church of Christ, using their power, wealth and social influence, tore off our Christian symbols of salvation and designated them for occult, “nasty” purposes decks of playing cards. We will cite only one of the evidences of this symbolic sacrilege, but documentary and irrefutable.

Temple in Demre

Documentary evidence

In Turkey, in the city of Demre (Myra in Lycia), there is an ancient temple-basilica. Initially, a church stood in its place, where Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker was buried in a marble sarcophagus. The stone church was destroyed by an earthquake. After that, on the church ruins, no later than the 7th century, the worshipers of St. Nicholas erected a church in the form of a basilica. It has undergone many historical devastations and rebuildings, mainly related to the temple facade. In 1087, Italian merchants opened the sarcophagus in the temple and took the relics to the city of Bari, since there was practically no one left who professed Christianity in the vicinity.

Over the years, the church was covered with sand, brought by the nearby river Miros (Demre). The thickness of the sandy layer reached 5 meters. In 1853, after the outbreak of the Crimean War, with the mediation of the Russian consul on the island of Rhodes, the church of St. Nicholas with a plot of land around it was bought by representatives of the Russian Empire in the name of Princess Anna Golitsyna. Excavation and restoration work began. However, very soon the Ottoman government invalidated the deal and canceled the signed agreement. A century later, in 1952, one of the Turkish newspapers acknowledged the existence of this deal due to the fact that excavations around the church of St. Nicholas had begun again a year earlier. They lasted four years, during which it was possible to remove the 5-meter sand deposits and restore the temple interiors and partially the paintings. Today the temple is open as a museum (almost in the open air) for pilgrims and tourists. We write about in detail in order to exclude the possibility of dating the temple painting after the century of iconoclastic heresy. The wall paintings in the temple are authentic. This is not a "remake". There is a large utility room to the left of the altar in the temple. In it, on one of the marble columns, all four Christian symbols of the "suit of cards" are depicted. They, of course, are not "cards", but truly Christian, just anyone who sees them for the first time immediately recalls those similar to them, depicted on the "cards". He sees and thinks.

Sacred geometry. Energy codes of harmony Prokopenko Iolanta

Card suits. Sacred meaning

The classic names of the four suits are spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. However, in different languages, these suits receive other names. Peaks, depending on the dialect, become swords, shovels, spears, acorns. Hearts - cups, hearts. Tambourines - denarii, diamonds, squares, bells or bells. Clubs - with clover leaves, clubs, flowers, leaves.

There are many interpretations of the shape of the card suits. In the occult sense, they have the following meaning.

Clubs - a suit depicting a cross. This is the very cross on which Jesus was crucified, and which is worshiped by half of the people of the whole world. Translated from Yiddish, “trefa” means “bad, unclean”. Reflects the peasant class ("leaves", "clover") and the element of air.

Spades, or "blame". They symbolize the spear of the holy martyr Longinus the Centurion, with which the centurion pierced the side of Jesus. Reflects the military class ("spears", "shovels", "swords") and the element of fire.

Hearts represent the Gospel sponge, which one of the soldiers filled with vinegar and gave Jesus to drink. In addition, the suit reflects the feudal class of the clergy, the state ("roses", "cups", "hearts") and the element of water.

The tambourines represent the location as well as the shape of the four-sided nails with which Jesus' feet and hands were nailed to the cross. Reflects the class of merchants, finances ("bells", "coins") and the element of the earth.

In the days of the USSR (during the NEP years), there were attempts to give the cards a communist style. The maps depicted workers and peasants, and they wanted to remake the suits into sickles, hammers and stars. However, soon the distribution of the cards was closed, and the press was stopped in order to prevent the spread of "the attributes of bourgeois corruption."

Hans Leonard Schaufelin maps, Germany, c. 1535 g.

Maps of Peter Flötner, Germany, approx. 1535 g.

Hans Leonard Schaufelin maps, Germany, c. 1535 g.

Maps of Peter Flötner, Germany, approx. 1535 g.

Hans Leonard Schaufelin maps, Germany, c. 1535 g.

Maps of Peter Flötner, Germany, approx. 1535 g.