Two of Spades: union in labour, two people working side by side

Meaning

Richmond's Twos are unions, and in the suit of labour the union is a working one: “An agreement to work for another”, “A joining of forces”, “Work done by two persons jointly”. Elsewhere he sums the card up in three words, “union in labor”.

We read the card as working side by side. The tradition sees its people as doing their best work with others, loyal and cooperative, valuing a companion who shares the load and good at building something together; it suggests that relying on themselves too, and not only on a partner, keeps those bonds strong.

In the spreads

The Two of Spades sits in the Neptune row, Mars column, after the Four of Diamonds, its Moon card. Its path runs to the end of the row and climbs: its Saturn, Uranus and Neptune cards are the three crown cards, the Ten of Clubs, the Eight of Diamonds and the King of Spades, and its Pluto, Result and Cosmic Lesson cards are the first three cards of the spread, the Three of Hearts, the Ace of Clubs and the Queen of Clubs.

It gives to the Six of Spades, which is also its Mars card, and receives from the King of Clubs. Its six birthdays, from 12 January to 2 June, have no cusp.

Life path and karma cards

Read from the Life Spread: the card before the Two 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): Six of Spades; Taurus (Venus): Six of Clubs; Gemini (Mercury): Eight of Hearts; Cancer (the Moon): Four of Diamonds; Leo (the Sun): Two of Spades; Virgo (Mercury): Eight of Hearts; Libra (Venus): Six of Clubs; Scorpio (Mars and Pluto): Six of Spades and Three of Hearts; Sagittarius (Jupiter): Queen of Hearts; Capricorn (Saturn): Ten of Clubs; Aquarius (Uranus): Eight of Diamonds; Pisces (Neptune): King of Spades.

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)

Twos: unions and joinings, agreements between two persons sourced

Richmond's table for the card (p. 156)

“An agreement to work for another”, “A joining of forces”, “Work done by two persons jointly”; on p. 210, “union in labor” sourced

Our keyword line (2026)

Working side by side. 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 41 and spirit value 54, read through its suit, labour, and its number, a union: one meaning under each of the seven planets, most of them events (p. 156).

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 working side by side, kept strong by self-reliance as well as partnership.

Claims about it

• 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

• Six of Spades its first karma card, the card it gives to
• King of Clubs its second karma card, the card that gives to it
• Four of Diamonds its Moon card, the card before it in the Life Spread
• Eight 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