How to Read Katina Cards

How do you read Katina cards?

You read Katina cards by laying cards from the 65-card Katina deck in a spread and reading each one through its group, its position and the cards around it. The deck is best known in Turkey and Greece, and its language is built around people, relationships and the signs of a bond. It has no suits or numbers as tarot does; instead it has groups of cards, and each group speaks in its own way.

To know the deck, it is enough to know the groups:

Group	Cards	What they bring to a reading
Ladies, lords, sultans	4 each	types of person and their qualities; Mida, for example, is a distant, cold and touchy woman
Rulers	4	the forces that govern a situation: power, crisis, tenderness, strategy
Horses	4	separate themes of initiative, pride, longing and patience on a long road
Spirits	4	desire, flowing feeling, travelling thought and what works beneath the surface
Elements	4	the wheel of time, fire, water and the diamond: climate and value
Special cards	Attart, Valide	handed-down knowledge and the weight of the elders
Guide card	the Dervish	wisdom, listening and a mature view drawn from experience
Symbol cards	34	concrete signs such as the Heart, the Road, the Letter, the Fox

Katina is not a list of predictions: it gives no dates and reads no one’s mind. It shows who stands inside a situation, which force is at work and where things may arrive if they carry on. That is why the question that suits Katina best is not “What will happen?” but “What is going on here, and where do I stand?”

How to read Katina cards step by step

1. Start with one question

Write the question down and keep it to one subject: “Why can’t I find my place at work?”, “Where does the tension with my family come from?”. Katina speaks most strongly about relationships, but work and family questions read well in its language too, because they also happen between people. Never ask about two matters in one spread.

2. Shuffle all 65 cards together

Don’t split the deck; shuffle every card while you think of your question. Decide at the start whether you read reversed cards, and don’t change that halfway through. When the shuffle feels finished, cut the deck or simply draw from the top in order.

3. Choose the spread that fits the question

A single card is enough for a daily look. For a broad situation use the ten-card Katina Cross; for a choice between two or three paths, the ten-card Three Paths; for a relationship, the seven-card Mirror of the Heart. Read the positions before you turn any card.

4. Read the centre card first

In the Katina Cross, begin with position 1, “Center of the matter”. Write one sentence connecting its theme with the question. Then compare the surrounding cards: which theme do they extend, and where do they introduce tension or contradiction? Read hopeful and hard cards as different aspects of the same situation, preserving the severity of each instead of allowing one to cancel another.

5. Read person cards as types

When a lady, lord or sultan appears, note its position before interpreting the type. In “Your stance”, Mida brings distance, coldness and touchiness into a question about your own behaviour. In “Environmental effect”, compare those qualities with the exchanges you have observed around you. Record the words or actions behind the comparison rather than assigning a hidden motive to someone else.

6. Add the horses, emotional themes and symbols

Read the horse cards through their separate themes. Zara concerns a first step; Munzur patience on a long road; Kalif pride and standing your ground; Hesse longing. Compare their positions to see where initiative, waiting or self-respect enters the question. Spirits and elements contribute emotional themes, while symbol cards bring messages, journeys and masks into the reading.

7. Read the neighbours and what repeats

Compare each card’s theme with its neighbours. The Dervish’s wisdom sits in tension with the Fox and its themes of cunning and concealment: where do spoken words and observed actions agree or diverge? If travel, waiting or power recurs across several cards, note each position separately and explain the shared theme. Keep the difficult meanings intact when you join them into the reading.

8. Read reversals in context, then sum up

A reversed Katina card shows the same theme delayed, overdone or in shadow, and the question and the neighbours decide which. End with one sentence that names the heart of the situation and one step you can take.

Example: the Katina Cross for feeling stuck at work

The question: “Why can’t I find my place at work?”

1. Center of the matter: Tagral. Power and control. Compare your responsibilities with the decisions you can make, and identify the part of your role you want to discuss or clarify.
2. Past effect: Munzur. Patience and sustained effort. Compare this theme with a task or responsibility you have worked on over time, noting what that experience contributes to the present question.
3. Energy flowing forward: Zara. A light but determined first step: an application, a proposal, a request for a meeting.
4. Higher awareness / what is noticed: Kalif. Pride and standing your ground. Examine what recognition means to you and which contribution you want to describe at a meeting.
5. Spiritual direction / fate influence: the Great Diamond. Value and inner strength. Ask which skills and commitments matter to your sense of worth, and how you express those priorities at work.
6. Lower awareness / what is repressed: Ariman. Desire, ambition, jealousy and control. Ask which expectation you find difficult to admit or express. Compare the theme with your own account of rivalry or pressure.
7. Your stance: Mida. Distance, coldness and touchiness. Compare these qualities with your own words and actions at work. Which exchange do you want to describe more clearly, and what part of your stance do you want to examine?
8. Environmental effect: Valide. Authority and the weight of elders. Compare the theme with the actual approval process at work: who makes which decisions, and what do the role or written procedures require?
9. Hope or fear: the Sailboat. Departure and a new direction. Describe what attracts you to a change and what concerns you about it, using the options you are actually considering.
10. Outcome: the Dervish. Wisdom, listening and reflection on experience. In this position, weigh what you know and what you learned in similar circumstances. Which information do you want to bring into your decision, and which part of the question still needs an answer?

Together. Tagral’s power and Valide’s authority bring decision-making into focus. Compare Munzur’s patience with Zara’s initiative and Kalif’s pride; they are different themes, rather than a single measure of movement. Read Mida’s distance and Ariman’s ambition, jealousy and control alongside your own behaviour notes. For a practical step, write three sentences about this year’s contribution and prepare a meeting agenda, including the responsibilities and decision-making powers you want to clarify.

Mistakes beginners make with Katina

• Giving Katina cards tarot meanings. The Katina Moon speaks of deep, romantic feeling, not of the illusion and fear the tarot Moon carries. Read every card within its own tradition.
• Reading cards one by one, cut off from each other. In Katina the meaning lives in the neighbours and in what repeats. Never draw a firm conclusion from a single card.
• Skipping the centre card. Starting at the edges turns the picture upside down. Centre first, then the rest.
• Pinning a person card on someone you know. Read Mida’s distance and touchiness through the position. If you associate those qualities with an exchange, describe what was said or done before assigning the type.
• Softening the hard cards. Dare concerns upheaval, crisis and worry; Ariman desire, jealousy and the shadow of control; the Fox cunning and concealment. Read those difficult themes in their positions, and name the tension each brings into your question.
• Laying the spread again when you dislike the answer. Finish the first interpretation before drawing new cards for the same question. Record the position you found difficult and the answer you hoped to hear, then check whether the situation has genuinely changed.
• Reading the spread without the question in front of you. The same Katina card can speak of a person in a love question and of a colleague or a deal in a work question. Keep the written question beside the spread and let it decide which of a card’s meanings applies.

Keep practising

Learn the groups first: draw one card a day, identify its group and write one sentence using its own theme. For two weeks, compare person types with the four horses’ separate meanings. Then examine rulers, spirits, elements and symbols in the same way, noting what each group contributes to the question.

When you are ready for a broad question, choose the Katina Cross among the Katina spreads in the Larisa app: write your question, draw the ten cards and read the centre card yourself before you open the reading. If you can put the centre into one sentence, the rest of the reading hangs on it.

To see how a position turns a card’s meaning, read about card positions. For love questions, Katina love reading walks through Mirror of the Heart step by step; if you want to read the same question with tarot too, the method is in how to read tarot cards. You can also continue card by card: Attart, one of Katina’s two special cards, stands for knowledge passed from hand to hand and is a good place to start.