The Playing Card Oracles
A Source Book for Divination — the foundational text and original deck that started the revolution.
— The divinatory art of the 52-card deck —
Author, teacher, researcher — founder of the Order of the Black Ace and forty years deep in conversation with the humble deck of fifty-two.
Ana Cortez is author, teacher, researcher and founder of the Order of the Black Ace — an esoteric society for the study of playing cards. For more than forty years, Ana has dedicated herself to unveiling what lies hidden in the humble deck of fifty-two.
While the mystic mainstream has focused on Tarot and Oracle decks, the playing cards have been quietly revealing layer upon layer of powerful transformational potential. The cards most people use for games had secrets they were dying to tell, and Ana embarked on an archeological mission — one that began in childhood and continues to unfold with new discoveries to this day.
What she has uncovered changes everything. It is not about fortune telling, or birth cards, or anything the world has seen before. Playing cards hold a sophisticated divination technology that predates any other — sacred geometries of time, made for prophecy, right under our noses for centuries, somehow unrecognized until now. It was never locked behind mystical credentials. Just buried under piles of assumptions.
The work continues through Ana's many publications and through the Order of the Black Ace, where a growing community of students and truth seekers worldwide are discovering newfound passion for their practices and making their own discoveries every day.
Before Ana became a leading divination expert, she was a young single mother navigating some of life's darkest valleys. Nearly homeless with two small children, she found herself stripped of everything except the unshakeable knowing that there was a bigger calling for her — but nothing like anything she could name or define.
It was during these early, vulnerable years that Ana's real education began. Not in classrooms, but in the real-life trials of finding your way in a world you somehow don't fit into, and in those long hours pondering over playing cards. They were speaking, whispering secrets no traditional spiritual methodology had ever offered.
And in coffee shops after kindergarten drop-off, or late nights in that run-down trailer, she began to write.
Ana's father, CJ Freeman (1941–2010), was an occultist, visionary mystic and self-taught artist who first glimpsed the hidden architecture within the cards in the 1970s. What began as his “intuitive illustrations” evolved into their life's work together — a father-daughter mystical partnership that would crack open secrets dormant for centuries.
Ana and CJ were receiving an entirely new system, and they knew they had to document what was being received. Together they became the co-creators of The Playing Card Oracles and The Doors of Somlipith — not just books, not just cards, but transmission vehicles for transformational codes that no one had seen in cards before.
Together, Ana and CJ built something that could only emerge from the marriage of profound dedication and mystical partnership — a system that speaks directly to anyone who's ever felt like the mainstream never fed their deepest longings, who's always known that somehow their deepest wounds were preparing them for their greatest gifts.
CJ passed in 2010, but their shared work continues through their publications, the Order of the Black Ace and the growing community of practitioners worldwide. What began as a father-daughter investigation has become a movement that is revolutionizing the way the world sees and reads cards.
CJ & Ana · Boulder, CO · opening of The Playing Card Oracles From divine transmission in the most unglamorous circumstances to a mystical empire transforming perception on a fundamental level.
A Source Book for Divination — the foundational text and original deck that started the revolution.
A New Dimension of Card Reading — advanced mysteries for initiation, with CJ's original oil-painted images.
The Art of Transformation in Life and Card Reading — two books in one: Ana's origin story plus personal alchemy for any kind of card reading.
You've been drawn to playing cards your entire life because something deep inside you recognizes their language. Why do you think there is no other deck as widespread? The cards have been speaking all along. This humble pack was never for games — it is perhaps the oldest book on the planet, and it is the key to unlocking your highest timeline, your most profound potential, your most authentic self.
The prophets of old anticipated this time. They knew seers like you would be ready to ditch the mainstream mystic narrative and start listening to your own inner voice. Imagine: a book of unbound pages, slipping through centuries in its original form, because it had the perfect disguise. Everyone thought it was for games.
Now we know differently, and it is time to get down to business.
Ana with CJ's Medusa · the Two of Spades · photo by Tree Stoddart From her sanctuary in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Ana continues expanding this empire of sacred remembering. Every day, more seekers awaken. Every day, the code spreads.
The revolution that began with her father's visions and her own four decades of dedication is now your invitation to join the awakening.
“People worldwide are remembering. The ancient codes are being recognized. What began as hidden knowledge for initiates only is now an unstoppable awakening. We are all becoming initiates.” — A.C.
What began as a father-daughter investigation has become a family inheritance — carried forward by daughters, cousins, and the wider tribe of practitioners who have made the work their own. The lineage is not closed. It widens.
Naga · Ana · Allison (The) Playing Card Oracles should be on the required reading list for card readers of all levels. I simply couldn’t put the book down.
— John Alan, The Tarot GuildThe book that she wrote and CJ Freeman illustrated is one of the favorites in my personal library.
— Stuart Kaplan, Founder, U.S. Games SystemsI was immediately magnetized. I’ve never been pulled in like I have with this.
— Payam, Santa Fe, NMIt goes beyond teaching divination and feels more like a ‘travel book’ into the realms of the cards themselves.
— Marina F., BrazilYour work, along with Mr. CJ Freeman’s, is, in my opinion, the most accomplished and profound in the history of cartomancy. Thank you so much.
— Soul Shadow TarotIf what you want is a system that is deep, unique, innovative and different from everything you ever saw before, then this is definitely the book to get.
— Marina, Amazon reviewFrom intimate academy students to international media attention, the uprising grows stronger each day. Mystics are no longer content — they know there is more — and they are flocking to the profound mysteries that only the original 52-card system can provide.