Gong Hee Fot Choy

I've had a rough couple weeks and decided to try out this book/"game" for a bit of a break. I found it at Half Price Books for, like, six bucks, and it seemed to fit in with my love for Tarot and Lenormand. Hey, I'm always on the lookout for new cards to "read."

Gong Hee Fot Choy is a book and (what they call) a game board; you have to supply your own playing cards. Anyway, I don't know if there are a lot of different versions of this, but for the record, mine is the Third Edition by Margarete Ward.

So here's what you do: Get some playing cards and remove the jokers, twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes. You should have 32 cards left. Then lay out the board, which is really just a folded sheet. Shuffle the cards and make a wish. Then place a card on each "House" on the board.

It'll look something like this:

You'll notice the cards don't quite lie flat, which is kind of a nuisance; in fact, that is my one main complaint about this whole thing. The "board" won't lay flat, so the cards kind of slide around when you lay them out.

The book that accompanies the board gives detailed meanings for each card in each of the Houses. For example, in the spread above, that Ace of Spades (the death card) in my House of Compass means: "someone who has passed on is trying to contact you. Relax and call to name in silence each person that you love that is on another plane. You will greet them and they will be very happy."

There's a bit of a learning curve in immediately identifying patterns and messages in the cards, but the more I've worked with this, the more quickly it comes. For example, I now have it fixed in my brain that the Ace of Hearts is the abode card, and in the above spread it lands in the House of Undertaking. Even without the guide book, I can hazard a guess that means there may be a home project afoot at some point. Or, since I work from home, some new project of mine will become a major undertaking.

A passing knowledge of Tarot helps in some cases but not all. The Nine of Hearts = the Nine of Cups in that each are the "wish card." But the Ace of Spades, aforementioned as the death card, is not exactly the same as the Ace of Swords here. There are some similarities, then, but it's not an exact correspondence.

I like this; it's fun. But I would recommend one include an element of timing in one's wish or reading, since otherwise it feels rather open-ended. To wish for something to happen, and then have a reading that suggests it will, naturally leaves one wondering, "When?" So maybe wish for something to happen within a certain time frame. Or, if doing a general reading, make it for the week or month or something and see how that plays out for you. Since I've only just started this myself, I can't attest to the accuracy. But it did give me some encouragement, so I'm hoping it's at least somewhat on the mark.