AUTHOR’S NOTE: Before I begin, I should mention that my personal version of the venerable Celtic Cross (CC) spread is based on Eden Gray’s model from her 1960 book, The Tarot Revealed, and not on A.E. Waite’s Christian-inflected design from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot.
Gray made a couple of significant changes that alter the complexion of the spread, and I’ve adopted both along with a few of my own. She scrapped Waite’s veiled “stations-of-the-cross” appointments for Cards 3 through 6 and replaced them with a clockwise rotation from the bottom, and she split the ninth position (“Hopes and Fears”) down the middle, moving the “Fears” component to the seventh position and eliminating Waite’s description of “Himself” for that placement since it is redundant to the “Significator” card and therefore wastes a spot in the layout. The first change appeals to the non-religious astrologer in me, and I applaud the second for its enhanced scrutability.
On my own, I modified the six-card “cross” section to rename the uppermost card “The Present” instead of “What May Come to Pass” (long before Anthony Louis did the same), thus creating a seamless timeline running from the third card (“The Foundation of the Matter or Distant Past”) to the sixth card (“The Near Future”). I’ve also designated the “Crossing” card as a source of motivation (“Major Motivators” by name) and not just challenges since it can identify either an obstacle or an opportunity (and often both rolled into one). Most of the time I dispense with the Significator card as being of little value to the narrative. Last but not least, I stick to the old assumption that the “cross” section is entirely about the objective nature of the matter itself, and the “staff” section applies solely to the querent’s subjective processing of it, including any conscious or unconscious reactions. The first six cards are developmental, the last four provide advice.
On to the subject of this essay:
It is generally accepted that the ten-card Celtic Cross does not lend itself to use of the Golden Dawn’s Elemental Dignities (EDs), which are read in three-card strings with the middle card acting as the “principal” whose potency is increased, decreased or unaffected by the mutual “friendliness,” “unfriendliness” or neutrality of the elements assigned to the two cards (known as “modifiers”) adjacent to it. A sequence of ten cards is definitely awkward to shape into triplets, and in the CC they don’t fall naturally into place.
One way to do it would be to visually sort the cards from beginning to end into eight overlapping three-card sets with the middle card in each series as the focus. For example, 1-2-3; 2-3-4; 3-4-5; etc, which would give each card except the first and last a place in the spotlight. Rather than doing this, I created a truncated CC that is amenable to EDs and I’ve been using it to good effect along with the full non-ED version of the spread.
But today I was thinking about another option. Suppose we take any three cards of a CC that have a natural affinity for one another and build triplets with them? (Note that in some cases this proposal voids the concept of “proximity” between the cards but retains the core principles; since I’m creating well-defined relationships using established spread positions, this spatial separation should not matter in the least.)*
In this paradigm, I would put Card 1 (the erstwhile “Covering” card that I variously read as describing the “Heart of the Matter;” the “Situation As It Stands” before temporal developments kick in; and the “Environment of the Question” as distinct from Card 8) together with Card 2, the home of “Major Motivators,” and Card 6, the “Near Future.” This takes the central theme of the reading forward into the realm of short-term consequences without tying it to elapsed time and assumes that the projected motivational impact of Card 2 is critical to making the leap. Its potency would be delimited by the elemental interaction between Cards 1 and 6, and the same premise would apply to the “principal” card in the following triplets. (Cards 1 and 2 don’t otherwise contribute to the timeline progression since they are “situational anchors” for the reading.)
Next, I would link Card 3 (the “Distant Past”), Card 4 (the “Recent Past”) and Card 5 (the “Present”) such that Card 4 sits at the nexus of the time-based delineation leading up to current conditions, distinguishing it as a turning-point in the situation. The same could be done for Cards 4 through 6 that are centered on Card 5, but I already treat those three cards as a fluid “real-time” continuum with no fixed interstitial boundaries or duration, so it seems that EDs would be moot.
Taking a cue from Tarot Beyond the Basics by Anthony Louis, I would then join Card 5 (which serves as a “stage-setter” for advancement) with Card 6 and Card 10, making the “Near Future” card the “jumping-off-place” for the next phase of the journey leading to the final “Outcome” in Card 10. If Cards 5 and 10 are sympathetic to one other and supportive of Card 6, that journey should be “smooth sailing.” (See the excellent Louis book for his take on it.)
Finally, I would connect Card 6 to Card 7 (the second “challenge” card after Card 2) that I’ve re-titled “Self-Defeating” attitudes and behaviors and Card 9, now focused on “Self-Motivating” aims and ambitions, making successful navigation of potentially-stressful emerging conditions (Card 6) and decisive coping with “negative baggage” (Card 7) the keys to rising above that which holds the querent back and thereby opening the door to self-empowering initiatives (Card 9). Here Card 7 would garner the lion’s share of attention when applying Elemental Dignities, with Cards 6 and 9 portraying the “before-and-after” scenario that accompanies it.
That leaves Card 8 unattached. I now read it as the “Querent’s Environment,” including external influences and the involvement of other people, and it mainly adds commentary that I’ve labeled “Clarifying Factors” mediating between Card 7 as “Limitations” and Card 9 as “Aspirations.” But in that role it also functions as the “linchpin” bringing the two onto the same page, so the affiliation of Cards 7, 8 and 9 for the purpose of EDs would not be unreasonable, with Card 8 (alternately defined as the “Querent’s Home-Base”) as the glue. As the subjective side of situational awareness, it could also be allied with Card 1, the objective “Environment of the Question,” and Card 6, the transition from present to future, but it would probably be a case of diminishing returns for the effort expended.
To facilitate this analysis, I’m linking my personalized Celtic Cross array that includes two sets of detailed position meanings in its embedded attachments.
*Although his emphasis was not on EDs, in his book Tarot Reading Explained James Ricklef addresses these “mini-spreads” within the larger CC, even decoupling them from the temporal architecture as I have partially done here. He observes: “It can be interesting to compare cards whose positional meanings seem to resonate.” While I don’t endorse his “Unconscious/Conscious” definitions for Cards 3 and 5, if you’re a Celtic Cross fan I strongly encourage reading this section of the book in addition to the similar content in Tarot Beyond the Basics.
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