Five of Diamonds: a change of course and a taste for the new

Meaning

Richmond's Fives are change and travel, and the Five of Diamonds moves both the person and their affairs: a journey, a change of location, a change of course. Most of the entry is about gain, which we do not quote.

We read the card as restless values and a taste for the new. The tradition sees its people as adventurous and enterprising, quick to try something new and inclined to change course often, in work, in where they live and in what they want; it finds the steadiness they look for in deciding what is worth keeping, and staying with it.

In the spreads

The Five of Diamonds closes the Saturn row of the Life Spread, at its left-hand end under the Neptune column, after the Seven of Clubs, its Moon card. Its path continues along the Uranus row: the Queen of Spades, the Jack of Clubs, the Nine of Diamonds, the Seven of Spades.

It gives to the Nine of Diamonds and receives from the Three of Clubs. Its eleven birthdays run from 22 January to 2 November and fall under every sign but Sagittarius and Capricorn; 20 February is a cusp between Aquarius and Pisces, and an 8 August birth, under Leo, has the Five itself as ruling card.

Life path and karma cards

Read from the Life Spread: the card before the Five of Diamonds, then the ten after it, the order running on from the crown line back to the top right. The names of the places are Camp's, used descriptively.

Birthdays and ruling cards

The ruling card is the card of the life path in the place of the Sun sign's ruling planet; Leo takes the birth card itself and Scorpio two cards. On a date marked cusp the Sun changes sign during the day in some years, so without a birth time both cards apply.

For every sign, as the tradition's modern rulers give them: Aries (Mars): Nine of Diamonds; Taurus (Venus): Jack of Clubs; Gemini (Mercury): Queen of Spades; Cancer (the Moon): Seven of Clubs; Leo (the Sun): Five of Diamonds; Virgo (Mercury): Queen of Spades; Libra (Venus): Jack of Clubs; Scorpio (Mars and Pluto): Nine of Diamonds and Four of Hearts; Sagittarius (Jupiter): Seven of Spades; Capricorn (Saturn): Two of Clubs; Aquarius (Uranus): King of Clubs; Pisces (Neptune): Jack of Diamonds.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Suit in Richmond (1893, p. 28)

The emblem of autumn, the third season, and of the third period of life; his reading of the suit is about gain, which we do not quote sourced

The suit's season and planets in Richmond (pp. 27 to 28, 41)

Autumn; Jupiter and Neptune, each with a reading of gain we do not quote. Facts about his book, not about anyone born under the card sourced

Number in Richmond (pp. 42 to 45)

Fives: change, a cross in the path, a journey sourced

Richmond's table for the card (p. 136)

“A […] journey”, a change of location, and a change of course, quoted with its items on gain left out sourced

Our keyword line (2026)

Restless values and a taste for the new. our construction

Our theme for the suit

Values, Possessions, Worth our construction

A suit element or a single planet

None in Richmond or any founding text; the sets other sites give disagree, and ours was dropped in October 2026 disputed

How the schools read it

Olney H. Richmond (1893)

An emblem of solar value 31 and spirit value 43, read through its suit, the harvest gathered in, and its number, change: one meaning under each of the seven planets, most of them events (p. 136).

Randall and Campbell, Lein, Camp (1947 onward)

Read the birth card as character rather than events. Camp's line adds the life path, the karma cards and the yearly spreads used on this page, and gives the card a nickname, which we do not use.

Card Blueprints and Seven Reflections

On 20 February Card Blueprints gives two ruling cards from a fixed table of cusp dates, and Seven Reflections asks for the sign. We compute the Sun and give both cards only when no birth time is known.

EsoTerrier

Read here as restless values and a taste for the new, steadied by deciding what is worth keeping.

Claims about it

• The ruling card follows a fixed table of cusp dates, the same every year.

  disputed

  What the record shows: The Sun enters a sign on different days across the leap-year cycle and in different time zones, so a fixed table is wrong on some days of some years. We compute the Sun's sign and show both cards only when it changed sign during the birth day and no birth time is known.

• Each suit has an element and a ruling planet.

  disputed

  What the record shows: No founding text gives the suits elements, and the sources that do disagree with each other. Richmond gives each suit a season and two planets (pp. 27 to 28, 41), which we report as his. We dropped the attributes in October 2026.

• Each card has a traditional nickname.

  disputed

  What the record shows: The nicknames are Camp's coinages, or Randall and Campbell's, not Richmond's; taken as a set they mark a text as derived from his. We use none of them.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Nine of Diamonds its first karma card, the card it gives to
• Three of Clubs its second karma card, the card that gives to it
• Seven of Clubs its Moon card, the card before it in the Life Spread
• Queen of Spades its Mercury card, the card after it in the Life Spread
• Natal Chart where the Sun sign that picks the ruling card is worked out