Every now and again I play around drawing and lining up random cards – not because I have a question and want to do a reading but because I find it fascinating how the individual cards can look so different depending on which cards are next to them, how some compilations immediately draw me in, visually, while others just make me yawn, and how some cards’ compilations will instantly shout out an interpretation to me even though there wasn’t even a question. One of these random drawings I still remember because it resulted in this incredible 5-card String:

Now, firstly, from a purely aesthetical standpoint, this is just beautiful! If you have my deck, you might want to re-enact this with your own cards, the digital presentation on the screen doesn’t really do it justice. The Coffin and the Woman seem to blend into each other – because of the colour schemes, and because the ropes in the Coffin and the yarn threads in the Woman seem to connect. Something very similar is true of the Man and the Mountain, with the bluish colour schemes and the clouds connecting the two cards. The Heart connects Woman and Man very well, too: the pinkish red the Heart has in common with the Woman, the glowing yellow, with the Man. From a visual standpoint, each part of this String is connected just beautifully with all its neighbours.

And then, secondly, if we look at this String as a relationship reading: wow! Several possible interpretations sprung to my mind immediately. The strongest one was that here we have the potential of true love – but there is also deep conflict present because both lovers bring with them something profoundly problematic. In the case of the Woman there seems to be a death which still influences her – maybe she is a widow? – or, she hasn’t yet truly ended the mourning process over a previous relationship that ended not by death but because of a split-up. An alternative interpretation would be that there is something else that she is still in the process of letting go of, or something that she is burying deep inside, that might influence how she can approach this current relationship. The Man, on the other hand, seems to bring with him some kind of problem or difficulty, too – it seems most likely to me that he is somehow emotionally blocked or stunted. For example, maybe has difficulties sharing or showing his feelings, or is even wont to blocking them completely, doesn’t know (yet?) how to allow them at all. Since they are both facing each other and the Heart, though, I might venture the interpretation that through their shared love there is the potential that they both overcome their respective hurdles: she, her still ongoing grief or suppression, and he, his difficulties with emotional growth, emotional warmth. Now, if Woman and Man weren’t facing each other my prognosis might intuitively have been much more pessimistic – I mean, just look at this:

Now there is still love, or at least the potential of love, present. But both lovers appear to be much more focused on their respective problematic issues than on their love for each other; it seems much more likely that they will keep drifting further apart because of these issues.

Please note that the interpretation(s) I suggested here were created in a context-free vacuum! If I’d drawn these cards for existing people with existing personalities and histories, this would have influenced my interpretation of the String a lot – possibly so much that it would have turned the context-free interpretation on its head!

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