The Square of Sevens: An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note

by Edward Prime-Stevenson

Proceed then with the next Suit in the Row: and so with each Row, until you have thus sorted all the cards save the Master-Cards. This is the Reduction.

Close now and straiten-up together each of the Rows thus broken into Piles; pushing ever toward the Master-Row. Thus have you a new Figure, smaller than the last Square of Sevens, and somewhat irregular: there be in some Rows five cards, in others less; even so few, though rarely, as three or two. Note that a Pile of Cards is reckoned only as one card. Note, too, that with cards that have become hid beneath others you have no concern.

Of the Sacrifice.

Next, cast or lay aside in a parcel, all Cards in the Figure that are not contained in the three Columns, leftward (the Master-Column, and two other Columns). If, your Reduction done, any Row offer to sight but two Cards—the Master-Card and its neighbor—so must the Row abide. But this comes rarely. You will best not disturb the Cards hid in the Piles, for it is well to let Sleeping Dogs lie, and moreover needless Fingering and Quiddling of the Parallelogram is not commended. With the cards thus rejected have you no more to do. They are called the Sacrifice.

The Parallelogram made.

Now have you a Parallelogram of One-and-Twenty Cards in sight (Fig. 13), reduced from the Square that formerly held Nine-and-Forty. With these One-and-Twenty now under your eyes I will be your Querist's affair.

You may indeed ask why so much Labour is made of building the Square only to reduce it, to despoil it, and to force it to hide or to part with so many of its Sevens—as by a sudden Slaughter or a Panic or a Plague. But it is held that by such prior Shufflings, Dealings, and Placings are much cherished the accidentall Declarings of Fates intelligence; and that by the other Processes, embracing The Sacrifice, there remain for Reading just the Cards decreed; free from disposition by light-fingered Craft, or from ticklish Arrangements by Skill.

A Thing of Great Mystery and Fair Harmony—as Jacobus of Utrecht calleth the Soul.

And the Square itself, the Parent of the Parallelogram, is of great Harmony as a Mystery. Indeed all other Methods of reading fortune in Cards are incomparable to it.