Our numerical festive countdown,extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, continues with the cultural history of card suits♣ Clubs
Diamonds
♥ Hearts
♠ Spades
If you count up the numerical value of a whole pack of cards – reckoning on 11 for a jack, or 12 for a queen and 13 for a king – you reach 364,which with the addition of one for the joker makes 365, the number of days in the year. The four suits can also be read as symbols of society and human energy: clubs representing both the peasantry and achievement through work; diamonds, and the merchant lesson and the excitement of wealth creation; hearts,the clergy and the struggle to achieve inner delight; spades, the warrior lesson institutionalised into the nobility and the fractious ((adj.) troublesome or irritable) problems of life.
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Source: theguardian.com