I went away from tarot for a few years, during which the landscape changed considerably. Ever since I learned the extent to which modern readers like to use clarifier cards when they don’t understand the significance of any card in a reading, I’ve had an ongoing “war” with the idea. Every tarot card has layers of meaning that can be taken at several levels: practical, psychological, philosophical, spiritual, etc. What’s wrong with simply thinking a little deeper and possibly shifting gears to get to the bottom of it? Too often, more cards simply mean more confusion.

On the other hand, there are ways to deal with inconclusive outcome cards. One is the quintessence, which I’ve addressed in another post. Some spread creators even add multiple outcome cards to the structure of a spread to show progress of the matter farther into the future; a twelve-card Celtic Cross is one example I’ve seen. I took a slightly different path, and created a follow-up spread that uses the previous outcome card as the Significator in a new branching scenario, much the way A.E. Waite proposed doing with court cards at the end of a Celtic Cross reading.

I just found out that this spread was converted into Chinese. Pretty cool!

Rest of the Story Spread