How I Read Tarot with UNO Cards
Everyone’s always super fucking shocked and stoked when I pull out the UNO cards to read tarot. And while the enthusiasm is totes appreciated, the shock is a little lol-y to me because guess what… tarot cards were actually originally created as playing cards! So, it always feels really cute and correct to me to be able to circle back to some of that original intention while utilizing the knowledge and magic that’s since been applied.
I originally got this idea after listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Doing Great with Vicky Vox (Please, for the love of every fucking god and goddess, bring this show back!) On her pod, Vicky interviews guests by reading tarot for them, but using regular playing cards. I’d actually heard of this before, but hearing Vicky do it week after week really got me interested. I tried a few times and even though it worked, it just didn’t exactly work out for me. Just looking at all the symbols on the cards didn’t click right with the way my brain works, I guess, so I just kinda left that gig to Miss Vicky.
Then, one day after playing UNO with my partner, I was like, “lol, let me try reading tarot with these UNO cards, just for shits and gigs.” I let my intuition dictate how the colors translated to the suits, and I pulled a couple cards. I can’t for the life of me remember what we pulled the cards on, but I swear, it worked! I then looked into one of my tarot guide books to determine whether the way I translated the colors to suits were correct… and it was! I was so tickled by the experience, I truly never stopped reading UNO tarot since. I also later realized that maybe regular playing cards didn’t “work” for me because I don’t have as strong a relationship to those cards as I do with UNO. Many of us find that the relationship to our tarot decks really fuckin’ matters, and I think it rings true for my little love of UNO too.
Anyway, here I explain how to read tarot using UNO cards.
Basically, with an UNO deck, you’re reading all the minor arcana cards, minus the court cards. So, that’s all the cards with numbers that pertain to a suit (Cups, Wands, Swords, Pentacles). Remove all the other non-numbered UNO cards, like Reverse, Draw 2, and Wild cards, and keep them to the side in case you ever wanna play the real game again. You can apply meanings to these extra cards if you want, but I just haven’t gotten there yet. UNO, of course, has numbers 0 through 9. I read the 0 as 10. And what we do is, we just equate each color with a suit. Yellow is Swords. Blue is Cups. Green is Pentacles. And red is Wands. The really cool thing that’s unique about reading UNO cards versus regular playing cards is that you have a chance to get doubles because there are double numbers in UNO (except for 0). So, that’s cool, that’s fun, that’s unique, and it’s always spot the fuck on. Duh!
If you’re a person who works better with lists, here’s how it breaks down:
UNO tarot is minor arcana, minus court cards
Remove all non-numbered cards
Read the number 0 as 10
Yellow = Swords
Blue = Cups
Green = Pentacles
Red = Wands
BONUS: You can get doubles with numbers 1-9!
Wanna learn more about how UNO tarot works? Book a sliding scale reading with me!