Six of Spades: worries ending, and a quiet stretch of steady work

Meaning

Richmond's Sixes are the straight line, and the Six of Spades is its quietest stretch: “End to worry. Settlement of difficulties. Steady and satisfactory employment”, “Quiet, uneventful life”. The modern reading of this card as fate is not his and is not ours.

We read the card as steadiness, duty and quiet persistence. The tradition sees its people as patient and reliable, carrying their responsibilities without fuss; it notes that long quiet stretches can tempt them to put off change, and that making changes when they are due serves them best.

In the spreads

The Six of Spades sits near the end of the Neptune row, under the Uranus column, after the Six of Clubs, its Moon card. Its path is short to the top: after the Queen of Hearts come the three crown cards as its Venus, Mars and Jupiter cards, the Ten of Clubs, the Eight of Diamonds and the King of Spades, and then the head of the spread.

It gives to the Nine of Spades and receives from the Two of Spades, so both its karma cards are of its own suit. Its four birthdays, from 8 January to 2 April, have no cusp.

Life path and karma cards

Read from the Life Spread: the card before the Six of Spades, 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.

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

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 winter and the fourth quarter: the spade, “an instrument of labor”, and the acorn that “becomes a new tree in time”; quoted with its item on mortality left out sourced

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

Winter; Uranus, ruling “from a point of labor”, and Saturn, whose reading we leave out. Facts about his book, not about anyone born under the card sourced

Number in Richmond (pp. 42 to 45)

Sixes: monotony, a life moving in straight lines sourced

Richmond's table for the card (p. 164)

“End to worry. Settlement of difficulties. Steady and satisfactory employment”, and “Quiet, uneventful life” sourced

Our keyword line (2026)

Steadiness, duty and quiet persistence. our construction

Our theme for the suit

Work, Will, Routine, Inner Strength 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 45 and spirit value 05, read through its suit, labour, and its number, monotony and settlement: one meaning under each of the seven planets, most of them events (p. 164).

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.

EsoTerrier

Read here as steadiness, duty and quiet persistence, with changes made when they are due.

Claims about it

• The Sevens are spiritual tests, the Sixes fate and return, the Nines universal giving.

  disputed

  What the record shows: Richmond reads the Sevens as obstacles, the Sixes as monotony and settlement and the Nines as disappointment (1893, pp. 42 to 45). The modern readings are the tradition's later development.

• The cards show past lives and mark old souls, and the Spades are the suit of old souls.

  unverified

  What the record shows: Nothing of this is in Richmond. In Camp's system “karma” names a relation between two spreads; reincarnation is a belief, not part of the arithmetic.

• 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 Spades its first karma card, the card it gives to
• Two of Spades its second karma card, the card that gives to it
• Six of Clubs its Moon card, the card before it in the Life Spread
• Queen of Hearts 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