In the fall of 1888, fear settled over Whitechapel in London’s East End. A series of brutal murders terrified the area, including the deaths of five women most commonly attributed to the unidentified killer who became known as Jack the Ripper.
The murders of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly—the five victims most commonly linked to the same killer—took place between August and November 1888. Police investigated, newspapers fueled public fascination, letters claiming to come from the killer began arriving, and theories followed almost immediately.
Investigators were also working in a world without modern forensic science, DNA testing or many of the investigative tools we take for granted today. Witness accounts conflicted, evidence was limited, and some of what survived from the investigation has been questioned ever since.
More than a century later, there is still no proven answer to the question at the center of the case: Who was Jack the Ripper?
For this reading, I wanted to look beyond the endless list of suspects. What did the cards have to say about the world surrounding these murders, what may have been missed, why the truth remained so difficult to reach and what—if anything—can still be known?
About This Reading
I wasn’t asking the cards to name Jack the Ripper. After more than 130 years, I was much more interested in what still surrounds the mystery: what may have been overlooked, what became harder to see over time and why we still don’t have an answer.
I used seven questions for this reading. By the time I reached the final card, the spread had developed a pattern that was difficult to ignore.
Notes From the Pull
This was a seven-card spread, and the reversals immediately caught my attention. Six of the seven cards landed reversed.
The only upright card was the Three of Cups, which appeared first for the world surrounding the case. After that, every card was reversed.
Three of the seven were Major Arcana: the High Priestess, the Moon and the World. There were no Wands anywhere in the spread, and only two court cards—the Knight of Pentacles and Page of Cups.
And then there was that final card: the World reversed. In a reading about a mystery that has remained unfinished since 1888, that was quite an ending.
The Tarot Spread
I created this seven-card spread specifically for unsolved mysteries. I wanted to look at the case from the outside in—starting with the world surrounding it and gradually moving closer to what may have been missed, what continues to obscure the truth and, finally, whether anything more can still be known.
Questions Asked
- What social and cultural environment surrounded the case?
- What narrative did the public inherit over time?
- What was understood clearly at the time?
- What was missed or ignored during the investigation?
- What continues to obscure clarity today?
- What has been the cost of the case remaining unresolved?
- What can be known—and what cannot?
Before I started turning over cards, I had no idea the spread was about to become so reversal-heavy. The Three of Cups came out upright, and then one reversed card followed another until I reached the seventh and final position.
By then, I was paying very close attention to what was happening.
Cards Pulled & Interpretations
Card 1 — The World of the Case: Three of Cups
The Three of Cups was the only upright card in the entire spread, and it appeared for the world surrounding the case.
This is such a social card. There are people together, cups raised, and a sense of community and shared experience. For Whitechapel, that immediately made me think about how crowded and connected this world actually was.
The Jack the Ripper story has become so atmospheric over the years that it’s easy to picture empty, fog-covered streets with a mysterious killer appearing out of nowhere. But people lived there. People worked there, drank in the local pubs, stayed in lodging houses, traded gossip and moved through the same streets night after night.
That makes the Three of Cups interesting in this position. The murders happened inside a community, not outside of one.
And then something else happens in the spread.
The Three of Cups is upright.
Every card after it is reversed.
I don’t want to force meaning onto that pattern, but I can’t ignore it either. We begin with people together in an ordinary living world. From the next card onward, everything turns upside down.
Card 2 — The Narrative We Inherited: The High Priestess (Reversed)
The High Priestess reversed feels almost too fitting for the story we inherited. This is a card I associate with hidden knowledge, secrets and things that remain behind the veil. Reversed, I don’t see that veil lifting. If anything, it feels harder to tell what is actually behind it.
And isn’t that exactly what happened to this case?
Jack the Ripper became larger than the murders themselves. Letters, newspaper stories, suspects, theories and eventually more than a century of books, documentaries and speculation were layered over what actually happened in Whitechapel.
The part that bothers me about the High Priestess here is the possibility that somewhere inside all that noise, something true became harder to see. Maybe the mystery wasn’t always as impenetrable as it looks from where we stand today. Maybe the mystery wasn’t always as impenetrable as it looks from where we stand today. Maybe the original story became harder to separate from everything that came after it.
Card 3 — What Was Seen Clearly: Six of Swords (Reversed)
The Six of Swords is normally a card of movement—leaving troubled waters and heading toward something calmer. But this one was reversed.
That immediately made me think of an investigation that couldn’t get across the water.
People knew something terrible was happening. Police were investigating. Whitechapel was frightened. The murders were receiving enormous attention. There was certainly no lack of urgency.
And yet none of it carried the case to the other side.
For a question about what was understood clearly at the time, I think that’s important. They knew there was danger. They knew women were being murdered. They knew they needed to stop whoever was responsible.
Knowing there was a problem and knowing how to solve it were two very different things.
Card 4 — What Was Missed or Ignored: The Moon (Reversed)
Then came the Moon reversed for what was missed or ignored.
The Moon is already a card of shadows, uncertainty and not being able to see the whole picture. Reversed, I kept coming back to the idea that something may have been there to see, but it wasn’t recognized clearly enough at the time.
That doesn’t necessarily mean one enormous clue was sitting in front of investigators. If I’m reading the card literally, it could have been something much smaller—a witness statement, a pattern, an assumption nobody questioned, or several pieces of information that were never connected.
What makes this card especially interesting is that it follows the reversed Six of Swords. First we have an investigation unable to move forward. Then we have the Moon, with all of its fog and uncertainty, appearing in the position of what was missed.
Something wasn’t being seen clearly. The cards don’t tell me exactly what it was, and I don’t think they need to.
Card 5 — The Mask: Knight of Pentacles (Reversed)
The Knight of Pentacles reversed made me think about repetition.
More than 130 years later, people are still going through surviving records, arguing over many of the same suspects and returning to the same pieces of evidence. New theories appear, old theories come back around, and every so often someone announces that Jack the Ripper has finally been identified.
And yet here we are.
For “The Mask,” I wonder if that’s part of what obscures the case now. So much has been written and argued about this case that separating what actually matters from everything that has collected around it may be part of the problem now.
The Knight of Pentacles reversed feels stuck. There is movement around the case, but very little movement forward.
Card 6 — The Cost of Unknowing: Page of Cups (Reversed)
The Page of Cups reversed brought me back to the human side of this case.
Jack the Ripper became a legend. His victims became part of that legend.
That’s an uncomfortable thing to sit with.
The killer has been turned into books, movies, tours, costumes, theories and endless speculation, while the women who died can sometimes feel like supporting characters in his mystery.
If you’d like to learn more about the women themselves, The Five by Hallie Rubenhold takes the focus away from Jack the Ripper and puts it back on the lives of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
The Five
— Step away from the mystery of Jack the Ripper and discover the lives of the five women whose stories have too often been overshadowed by their killer.
Another killer who became almost inseparable from the legend built around him is the Axeman of New Orleans, whose story I explored in another unsolved mystery tarot reading.
For the cost of not knowing, I think this card asks what happens when fascination with an unanswered question begins to overshadow the people at the center of it.
We still ask who Jack the Ripper was.
Maybe one of the costs of never getting that answer is how easily that question became bigger than everything else.
Card 7 — What Can Be Known (and What Cannot): The World (Reversed)
And then I turned over the final card.
The World reversed.
Of all the cards that could have ended this reading, this one stopped me.
The World is completion. The end of the journey. The moment when all of the pieces finally come together and the cycle closes.
Except ours was reversed.
The question was: What can be known—and what cannot?
I don’t know that the cards could have answered more clearly.
This case has been waiting for its ending since 1888. Generations of investigators, historians, writers and amateur sleuths have tried to give it one. Suspects have come and gone. New theories have promised answers. Modern technology has even been brought into the search.
And still, the World remains upside down.
Maybe something new will eventually surface. But this card also leaves me wondering whether part of the truth was lost with the people who were there—details that were never recorded, never connected, or simply disappeared with time.
The final card doesn’t close the mystery.
It leaves it open.
Overall Interpretation
What strikes me most about this spread is how little movement there is in it.
The Six of Swords can’t cross the water. The High Priestess keeps her secrets. The Moon leaves something obscured. The Knight of Pentacles goes nowhere. And finally, the World itself cannot complete the cycle.
That pattern feels bigger to me than any individual card.
I went into this reading wondering what the cards might show about a mystery people have been trying to solve for more than a century. I came away much more interested in why the answer has remained out of reach.
There are hints throughout the spread that something may have been missed, or that the original truth became harder to see as more theories and stories accumulated around the case. But there is no dramatic reveal waiting at the end. Instead, the final card brings us straight back to the thing that has defined the Jack the Ripper case all along:
It is unfinished.
Want to read more from The Mystic Digest?
I regularly use tarot to explore unsolved mysteries, legends and stories that still leave us with questions. You can find more of my tarot readings here, including subscriber-only readings published on Tuesdays.
