When I get the Jester card, I usually put the deck down and take a breath. It’s like a little reminder to check if I’m grounded. I handle it two ways. If one Joker shows up, I pull another major card and ask myself what I need to learn. With the other Joker, I keep things practical - whatever the reading says, I give it a month max and figure out one simple thing I can actually do.
If a Joker falls out while I’m shuffling, I knock on the deck three times or wave some incense over it, then cut the cards again. After that, I’ll slip an extra card under whichever card feels most important, which helps me figure out where to start.
Think of the Joker as the Fool’s chaotic cousin who shows up uninvited to the party.
Okay, can we talk for a second about how some people act like using playing cards for divination is somehow ‘lesser’ than using tarot? Like, excuse me, cartomancy predates most modern tarot decks by CENTURIES. Playing cards were being used for fortune-telling when Rider-Waite was still a twinkle in Pamela Colman Smith’s eye. Yet here we are, with tarot gatekeepers acting like you need a PhD in Kabbalah and a blessed-by-moonlight deck to do a proper reading.
News flash: divination is about intuition and connection, not whether your deck has pretty pictures or comes from a metaphysical shop that smells like sage. /rant
Anyway, traditional cartomancy doesn’t include Jokers, but your dual-Fool approach makes sense. I’d read them as different aspects - maybe one as new beginnings (traditional Fool) and the other as divine chaos/trickster energy. Or one for calculated risks and one for pure spontaneity.
I’ve been using jokers in my deck for a while now. Jung had this quote about the fool being the precursor to the savior, which kind of fits how I see them.
The thing with jester cards is they’re ambiguous, just like tarot itself. They can be whatever comes up in the reading. When I pull a joker, I treat it as wild card energy that’s outside the regular 78 cards. Since you have two of them, you could read them as different things - chaos, humor, transformation, whatever feels right for that particular reading.
Good question about using Jokers in cartomancy. The Jester isn’t a traditional Tarot card. In playing-card readings, though, people often use Jokers. Linking them to the Fool makes sense-they share that trickster vibe and can point to new potential, sometimes with a chaotic edge.
If you have two Jokers, you could split them like this:
Or read them as stages of the Fool’s path:
To dig in, try a short meditation. Sit with your Fool card (or a Joker) for about 10 minutes. Picture yourself as the wanderer at a cliff’s edge. Notice what’s below and what you’re carrying. See what that says about the kind of risk or openness in play. Then spend a few minutes with the Magician to feel how that raw potential turns into focused will. It can help you see how the Joker/Fool energy shows up in your spreads. Use what fits your reading style.