Dreaming of playing cards : what can this symbol evoke?

What one was dealt and what one does with it

A pack of cards brings together two things life rarely separates so clearly : a deal one does not choose, and a way of playing it that belongs to oneself alone. One does not decide one's hand ; one decides everything else.

That is what makes this symbol so useful. The card dream often visits those hesitating between two explanations of their situation — the fault of what they were given, or of what they did with it. The game answers that both count, and that deciding between them is futile.

What to look for is what you were doing with your hand. Studying it at length, hiding it, playing too fast or refusing to play each say something precise about your relation to what you did not choose.

The identical back

All cards look alike from behind, and that is the game's condition : without that uniformity nothing could be hidden. The secret is not cheating, it is the rule.

Dreams often use this structure to speak of situations where everyone holds something and nobody shows : a negotiation, a family with old unsaid things, a relationship advanced under cover. Nobody lies there, and yet nobody says everything.

The decisive detail is the state of your hand. Cards one cannot read, that change, or that another sees while you cannot see theirs each tell a precise asymmetry — and it is almost always the asymmetry, not chance, that is the dream's subject.

What the game shows changes the reading

• A hand one cannot read — the sense of not having the information that concerns you.
• Hiding one's hand — a necessary prudence, or a habit become impossible to leave.
• An opponent who sees your cards — an endured asymmetry, more often felt than proved.
• Refusing to play — withdrawal from a game whose rules one judges unfavourable.
• Cards changing in hand — an unstable frame, where what seemed settled shifts.
• A good hand badly played — regret over a real opportunity, which the dream rarely says lightly.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in games of chance because they stage a person's relation to what they do not control : some seek there proof of an injustice, others the occasion for skill. It notes that the court figures — king, queen, jack — are ancient and function as characters. Other readings stress the divinatory dimension of cards, and the wish to know in advance what is not yet decided.