In this chapter I talk about laying the cards down on the table so they can be interpreted in a known context. In the same way that astrology labels the various houses of a chart (representing the body, values, communication, etc.), so too does tarot need something known to hang its hat on. That thing is called a spread. In this chapter I show you the spread I’ve used for decades and how it works.
There are a lot of spreads out there. There’s the classic spread I talked about earlier, the Celtic Cross, which uses ten cards, and which I think is way too philosophical and nuanced for everyday work with clients who are just trying to handle day-to-day problems and issues. (See appendix 1 for more on this spread.)
And there are other, creative spreads I’ve come across, such as the three-card spread (past, present, future) and the astrological spread (twelve cards, one for each zodiac house; this spread is also described in appendix 1). And I’m sure there are others out there that have eluded me so far. But I’ve found that the spreads I’ve come across over the years just aren’t good enough for the subtleties that arise in readings.
So, from early on I’ve used the seven-card spread I learned from Jeff Norman, who came along at exactly the right time (naturally). Mostly, this Catholic woman was impressed by the way this man literally handled the cards. He wasn’t afraid of them. He didn’t treat them like God made them. He didn’t treat them like they came from hell. He simply used them the way you’d use a wrench or a screwdriver or a dish towel. Cards as tools.
Also, at that time I was trying to conquer my conditioned fear of tarot. (Catholics like me tend to be excommunicated from the Church for “dealing with the devil.”) And despite the much-vaunted suggestion that we readers should kind of “worship” cards, I could see that in his hands they were just a tool. Just to be clear: Tarot cards have no power in and of themselves. They’re not magical. They’re simply an extension of the brain. (For this reason, I don’t care if the client touches the cards or not. I don’t care which hand the client uses. The cards simply do what we ourselves are able to do. Nothing more, nothing less.)
So after seeing Jeff work on TV week after week, my fear of tarot dissipated and my spread of choice for working with clients became his seven-card spread. This has become the one I teach.
The thing about this spread is it’s like an armature in the hands of a sculptor. An armature is a crude wire structure used to hold clay. It defines the basic shape (say, the human body), but it doesn’t dictate the details. So the same armature can be used for the clay sculpture of a man or a woman (and probably a tall child).
Likewise, the seven-card spread creates limits and structure, but there’s also a lot of leeway in there for getting creative. (This is not so true of the Celtic Cross.)
So, for a reader, the spread is basic operating procedure. And I have to say that I’ve found my spread, with its structure and wide-open parameters, to be almost as important as the cards themselves. If we have some kind of structure, we’re not going to go off in all kinds of directions and on all kinds of tangents. There is the issue: the first card. There is the outcome: the seventh card. There are the ameliorating influences, the background, the things going on simultaneously and in the past, reflected by the other cards.
As you look at the spread examples that follow, when card names are given, take your pack and find those cards and lay them down in the order I show here so you can see what the heck I’m talking about.
Seven-Card Spread
In the seven-card spread, the first card identifies the issue. The seventh card tells us the outcome. Cards 2 through 6 elaborate on various aspects of the life or the problem at hand. The diagram above shows the sequence used in laying down the seven cards.
Now here’s what I’ve discovered. If you lay seven cards on the table and nothing else, you won’t really have much of an idea of what’s going on. Say the Ace of Swords is card 7. And it means: making a decision. Well, I’m going to want to know what decision. For those not using my method, there’s a lot of guesswork here and just as much room for error. For example:
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1 Ten of Cups |
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card 3 |
7 Ace of Swords |
card 6 |
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card 5 |
card 2 |
card 4 |
If card 1 is the Ten of Cups reversed (broken marriage) and card 7 is the Ace of Swords (a decision), I need to be able to tell my client what decision will be made. Is the client going to decide to leave? Is the client going to decide to stay? I never say what decision “should” be made, because who am I to give anybody advice? So I’d simply have to tell my client, “The way things stand now, if you do A and B, you’ll end up with C.”
But with my system, I’m able to come up with exact, detailed information by adding cards to the basic seven to tell me more about the basic seven.
In our example, say I add a card to the Ace of Swords and it turns out to be the Ten of Pentacles; and I add another card and it turns out to be the Six of Swords reversed—then I know the person will choose to stay in the broken marriage, at least for a while, because there’s financial security in it.
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1 Ten of Cups |
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card 3 |
7 Ace of Swords Ten of Pentacles Six of Swords |
card 6 |
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card 5 |
card 2 |
card 4 |
The thing here is that many times people simply need affirmation that the conclusion they’ve come to is the best they can do at the moment.
Now read this section again, look at the cards on your table, and think about how this all works.
Are All the Cards in a Spread Equally Important?
No, not all of them. But the first and the seventh cards? Absolutely.
I’m at the point now where sometimes a card shows up only because it contains a detail I need to know. On the card in the Rider-Waite deck, the Fool carries a white flower. Maybe the card shows up because it’s the white flower that’s important. How do I know if it’s the detail or the whole card that I need to pay attention to? I just seem to know. But, for sure, I couldn’t do this at first! Over the years of working, though, I’ve become able to do it. I have developed my right brain for so long that it just seems to take over. And things, as I’ve said, “occur” to me.
For your purposes as a student, though, each card will always mean the face value. The whole card and nothing else will matter. And you’ll be able to do good work. As you progress, though, other things will start to happen. But not until you’re ready.
So for the seven-card spread, cards 1 and 7 will always be more important than the others.
Also, sometimes I’ll be doing a reading and a card will simply seem to be larger or taller or somehow in the air above the table. So I go with that and emphasize the meaning of that card. (A VERY big father and a VERY little boy beside him, for example, is what it feels like to me.) One of my students who’s been working on this stuff for ten years has started to be able to experience this sensation once in a while.
The same goes for using only the Major Arcana to do readings. As I’ve said, these are the large and overriding issues in a person’s life, but without the Minor cards you’re probably not going to get any information that is at all useful about day-to-day things and decisions. And we live day to day, right? We have to decide things every day. So a competent reading must deal with the day-to-day, and the Major Arcana were never designed to do this.
Feeling the Cards
When I started studying tarot, I acted out a lot of the images. For the Two of Swords, for example, I crossed my arms tight across my chest and tried to see how that feels. As you progress as a reader, these feelings will make themselves known somehow inside of you, but I think it can’t hurt to know what the physical images are trying to convey.
Now look at the Three of Swords. What does it feel like? This will probably be harder because there’s no person on that card. But try this anyway at least once with all the cards. The Nine of Swords is a weeping woman. I showed this card to my four-year-old niece once and asked what she saw. She said, “The woman is crying.” Yes, she is.
As I said earlier, the tarot cards most currently in use today were designed by people who thought hard about the implications of the pictures. And so the Nine of Swords woman is indeed weeping—rivers of tears, in fact—so we know when we see it that somebody is, was, or will be in grief about something.