This article will continue to expand how the card game beat the devil can be used in new divinatory ways. If you had a chance to play beat the devil with French Tarot you can now apply the same rules with any other tarot deck. If you need, look back to the rules here.
Beat the Devil With Tarot
In a previous article, we attempted to expand how we can introduce divinity with beat the devil. We did this by choosing a companion deck to keep score of your points during the game, we call them devil points. Each card is a point and is read in a straight line called the devil’s path.
Instead of using a companion deck to count points you will only use a single 78 card Tarot deck.
All your major arcana cards are all matches, but the fool is a wild card allowing you to match with any other card. Match the minor arcana with their pip value, aces to aces, tens to tens, and match the court cards.
Use as many piles as it takes to complete the game. Where the cards land affects your reading at the end.
How To Perform a Beat the Devil Spread
Clear, shuffle, and cut your deck. Draw two cards off the top to start two piles. If the cards match, draw one card on each of the matching piles. If the piles don’t match keep drawing cards making new piles until you have a match. You may not start a new pile until you have covered up all possible matches. This includes the many matches you will get with your major arcana. Draw and play cards until the deck is finished.
You may see more than three matches appear at any time. While it is possible to get four or more matches from your major arcana, it is only possible to get four matches with other minor arcana cards unless you have the fool in play.
At certain times during the reading, you will see more than one match. You will be able to choose which match sets to cover. There could be many major arcana’s matching. You may choose to cover other match sets until more major arcana cards appear. If it comes to a point where you have no other matches possible, cover all available matches in the major arcana before opening a new pile.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You will notice that once you draw one card onto a match there could be other matches available from that one card. You must draw the cards onto each matching set before you can observe other matches.
Near the end of the game you may not have enough cards to cover all the available matches. Place these last few cards strategically because you will be choosing to read from only one of the piles.
Reading the Cards
Once you have completed placing all the cards, find the pile with the most cards.
If more than one pile has the same amount of cards chose the one with the most major arcana cards in it.
If both piles have the same amount of major arcana cards. Chose the pile that appeared first in the reading.
These are the cards you do your reading with.
Clear the reading space and place the cards in the order they appeared. This is called the devil’s path. Read the cards from left to right to develop the path to your answer. Each card represents a situation, something you need to know, hidden challenges to overcome, or an event to work through to get to your answer.
Check out the video where we use Kim Krans’s Wild Unknown tarot deck to beat the devil in a tarot reading.
Using your Beat the Devil Cards In other Readings
If you have done your reading with the devil’s path and you want to keep working with the cards, you can. Reconfigure the cards into new patterns and ask a new question with these cards.
Using other spreads with your devil’s cards can clarify your original question. You can even pose a new question to the cards. Because the cards were pre-determined certain immutable answers are embedded in any spread you choose.
Using this method can give you a fairly robust reading while providing some entertainment through the game mechanics.
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