Cutting the Deck

Cutting the deck is the gesture of dividing the shuffled cards into two or three piles and reassembling them in a different order before drawing the spread. In the Western tradition it is usually done with the left hand, associated with intuition and the receptive side, and into three piles that are then stacked from right to left. Many readers ask the querent to cut, so that they take physical part in the reading. Beyond mixing the cards, the cut marks the transition between framing the question and receiving the answer, and the card left at the bottom after the cut can be read as the shadow card.