Larisa
What are Katina cards?
Katina is a 65-card reading deck with its own families of character cards, forces and everyday symbols. It is especially familiar to readers in Turkey and Greece. Larisa describes Katina as mainly concerned with relationships, and its cards are read together to explore the dynamic of a situation.
The deck has no Major or Minor Arcana, no suits and no numbers; its cards fall into families, and knowing a card’s family is the first step to reading it. The lady, lord and sultan cards describe a type of person and that person’s qualities. The horses, spirits, elements and rulers show a stance or a force at work in your life. The symbol cards are images everyone knows, such as the Fox, the Key, the Road and the House, and they are the easiest way into the deck.
The story of Katina
The deck takes its name from Katina, the heroine of The Witches of Smyrna, a novel by the Greek author Mara Meimaridi that became a bestseller in Greece. In the novel’s framing story, Katina’s writings are discovered in a dusty trunk in her house on Aegina, bringing the story of her life in Smyrna into the present. She was born around 1878 in Cappadocia, came to Izmir (Smyrna) at the age of ten after her father’s death, and learned the secrets of fortune-telling and charms from a Turkish woman named Attari; the deck’s Attart card carries a name close to hers. Rising from the poor quarters of Izmir, she marries one husband after another, each wealthier than the last, but the one who truly wins her heart is a Turk named Ali Pasha. She always trusts the cards: one day, seeing “black lands” in them, she reads it as a warning of disaster and leaves Izmir before the great fire. Legend also has it that her 65-card deck had passed from witch to witch for more than a thousand years before it reached her hands. Today the deck is best known in Turkey and Greece, and it is still opened most often for questions of love and relationships.
How Katina cards are read
Relationships first. In Larisa’s words, Katina is “on the whole, more about relationships”. That is why each card is read in love and relationships right after its general meaning; work and money questions are read too, but the deck’s real language is the language of the heart.
A card talks to its neighbours. In Katina, no firm verdict comes from a single card. The same card softens, grows stronger or changes direction with what falls beside it: the Heart next to the Fox suggests a feeling mixed with calculation. When a theme repeats across a spread, such as a road, news or waiting, the reading is built on that repetition.
Person cards describe a character. The lady, lord and sultan cards describe a type of person; that person may be you, your partner or someone around you, and the card’s place in the spread decides who. Larisa reads Mida, for example, as a distant, cold and touchy woman.
A reversed card is read in context. Katina cards can fall reversed. For Larisa, the situation determines how a reversal is read; she does not assign it the same meaning in every reading. A reversed card most often shows the same theme delayed, overdone or in shadow.
No dates. No Katina card names a day or a month; a card describes the direction of a process.
Katina spreads
Three core Katina spreads: the seven-card Mirror of the Heart for relationship questions, the ten-card Three Paths when you are torn between two or three options, and the ten-card Katina Cross for looking at a whole situation. Each spread’s page explains what every position asks and walks through a complete example reading.
Frequently asked questions
What is Katina and how many cards does it have?
Katina is a fortune-telling deck of 65 cards. It consists of the special cards, the guide card (the Dervish), spirits, elements, horses, ladies, lords, sultans, rulers and 34 symbol cards. It is opened most often for questions of love and relationships.
What do the Katina cards mean?
Every card has a theme of its own: the Ring speaks of commitment, the Road of a journey or a new direction, the Letter of news. But the meaning does not come from the card alone; your question, the card’s position and its neighbours complete it. Each card’s page covers its general meaning, love, work, the reversed reading and its neighbours separately.
How is Katina different from tarot?
Tarot looks at every area of life with 78 cards and four suits; Katina focuses mostly on relationships with 65 cards and its own families. In Katina the person cards describe a character, and the cards are tied more closely to their neighbours. The full comparison is in Katina vs tarot.
How does a Katina love reading work?
Mirror of the Heart is a seven-card Katina relationship spread. Its positions are Essence of the emotional matter, Your true feeling, Their true feeling, Visible situation, Hidden or unspoken thing, Near emotional development and Heart guidance.
Read each card in its position before comparing the visible and unspoken themes. Use Your true feeling and Their true feeling to compare the two sides of the bond as represented by the cards, grounding the interpretation in the behaviour and conversations you know. Follow the worked example in the Katina love reading guide.
Are Katina cards read reversed?
Yes. A reversed Katina card does not carry an opposite meaning; it shows the same theme delayed, overdone or in its shadow side. Larisa reads each reversed card according to the situation, and the question and the cards beside it decide which direction comes forward.
Can I draw a single Katina card?
You can; a single card gives the main theme of the day or of the question. But Katina’s strength lies in the cards speaking to each other, so a single card is a headline rather than the whole story. When you want to open a matter up, three cards or a spread such as Mirror of the Heart shows much more.
Where to start
If you are new to the deck, read how to read Katina cards first, then explore symbol cards such as the Fox, the Heart and the Road. Meet the person cards through Mida, one of the four lady cards. Read the Dervish separately as the deck’s guide card, followed by Attart, whose name recalls Attari, Katina’s teacher in the origin story.