About the Tarot
Spreads, Card Lay-outs
As you are shuffling the cards, preparing them for use, you must also decide what spread or lay-out that you intend to use. Remember, the cards are magical, they want to work with you, so they need to know what you expect from them before you start. I think there are as many different ways for working with the Tarot, or spreads, as there are types of Tarot decks, all of them useful. Here are the three most common lay-outs or spreads that I most commonly use:
1-card draw – this is most useful in answering a specific question. As you shuffle the cards, you focus on the question. Then you fan the cards out in front of you and choose whichever card your are most attracted to… Note: if more than one cards comes when you draw, take them all… all are intended for use as part of the answer.
3 card layout – the cards are laid out side by side and from right to left are read as Past, Present, Future. This layout will provide insight around a specific situation or goal.
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| 3. Future | 2. Present | 1. Past |
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The Celtic Cross
See the diagram for the Celtic Cross Layout and the explanation of the positions. This lay-out can give you quite a bit of background information about a set of questions, or a forecast for on an upcoming period.
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Positions are:
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Notes on the Celtic Cross Spread
You will find many different versions of the Celtic Cross spread, all valid. We each have our own way of working with the Tarot. When she first started reading, Mary-Anne designed her own spread based on her knowledge of astrology. It works incredibly well for her… When I use the Celtic Cross, I reverse positions three and four and five and six, with three being on the bottom, six being on the right, and I normally places the cards in positions 7 through 10 to the LEFT of the cross. This was the way I was taught, it works for me… do what works for you.
Here’s something else that works for me and nicely supplements the longer readings. To supplement a Celtic Cross Reading, I always add 8 cards below the Celtic Cross, from right to left:
- Thoughts and Directions
- Hopes and Goals
- Potential for Success
- Love
- Spouse, Partner (or potentials for)
- Popularity
- Home
- Travel/Journeys
A Simple Spread Using the Major Arcana
This spread was taught to me by a professor of esoteric studies from the University of Toronto. I was looking for a simple spread to use for fast, yet detailed answers on the phone. It has become one of the mainstays in my "bag of tricks" because of its ability to bring forward a comprehensive answer quickly. Here’s how it works:
Start by framing your question, or asking the person you are reading for to give you a question. Shuffle as usual, then you will lay out four columns of cards, laying out the cards in each column until you come to a Major Arcana. The first Major Arcana that you come to becomes the last card of column one, then you start column two until you come to the second Major Arcana, and so on until you have four columns each ending with a Major Arcana.
Now you read each Column as follows:
- Where you or the Querant is now, ie, the Present
- What you have going for you
- What’s going against you
- Outcome/future
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Current Position/Where you are Now |
What’s Going For You |
What’s Against |
Outcome/Future |
Reading the Cards
This is where things get tricky – and fun. Mary-Anne and I have often wondered why, in the ten years and more of working together, we have written about everything BUT the Tarot. Yet the Tarot is the tool we use most frequently for readings both for clients and ourselves. I think the reason that we have been so reluctant to write about it is that working with it is such a personal process. That, and the fact that scholars of the Tarot have dedicated whole life-times to understanding the intricacies of the cards and the symbology contained within them. It has always seemed a bit presumptuous for us as simple readers of the Tarot to try to talk about what it means.
Still, our years of experience with these magical cards counts for something… We can at least talk about how we work with the cards. One of the fundamental principles of working with the tarot is the process of objective noticing.
Funny, I’ve been using the Rider-Waite deck with clients for some 30 years now, and they never cease to amaze me. No matter how often I look at those cards, I can see something different in them with every reading. This is because I have developed the Art of Noticing – that ability to look deeply into the cards and allow them to speak to me of their own accord… without interference from my ego, without allowing any judgment to cloud my insights. This is what I mean by "objective noticing", letting the cards do the talking….
When you first lay out the cards, you should notice a story. The cards should somehow relate to each other and as a whole the layout should relate a kind of story that has an opening, a body and a close.
Look for The Story
I always suggest that readers take a moment once they’ve laid out the cards to simply focus on the cards in front of them, to kind of breathe them in and let the story arise. Once you have a feeling for the overall story or message in the reading, you can start reading the cards, one by one beginning with the first position and following these around.
The cards need to be read in context, based on what’s around them and how they are sitting in relationship to other cards in the reading. As you proceed through the reading, there should be a consistency in the information that is coming from the individual cards.
As you read and focus on the cards, your subconscious mind and your soul self will be triggered by the ancient signs and symbols imbedded within the Tarot – derived from numerology, astrology, the archetypes and elements, the Tree of Life and more. To really understand and make the most of your work with the Tarot, you will want to study also all of these symbolic systems.
