This is a "Swiss-Army-Knife" life-reading spread intended for examination of life's circumstances in four major areas: Personal Life: the individual as a self-contained entity; Family Life: the individual in relation to family; Social Life: the individual in relation to friends or partners; Work and Public Life: the individual in relation to the broader public. The … Continue reading The “Square of Life” Lifeworks Spread
Tarot Spreads
A Simple Yes-or-No Spread
Answering straightforward yes-or-no questions in a clean, simple way has never been easy with the tarot because the cards are highly nuanced, telling complex stories rather than pronouncing clear-cut verdicts. Different approaches have been tried, including single-card pulls that rely on the general positive or negative nature of the card drawn, or - even more … Continue reading A Simple Yes-or-No Spread
The “Sword and Shield” Decision-Making Spread
This is an earlier and more complex 15-card version of the "active-or-passive" decision-making spread I previously posted as the Balance of Forces spread. It is a study in its own right, in that it uses a qabalistic Tree of Life format with my own take on Adam Kadmon, the "Heavenly Man," standing within the Tree … Continue reading The “Sword and Shield” Decision-Making Spread
The “Fool in the Middle” Spread
This is a slightly cheeky poke at workplace dynamics (and by extension, politics). The "boss" (Fool) is at the center of the corporate universe, and there are up to twenty options to represent co-workers, either as second-level supervisors (Aces) or peers (court cards). The idea is that you only need to populate as many of … Continue reading The “Fool in the Middle” Spread
The “Second Opinion” Moving Line Spread
This is a "Majors-Only" spread in which only four of the cards are drawn from the 22-card deck; the rest are derived from the card first drawn in each row. It adopts the concept that all of the Major Arcana cards except the Fool as "0" have one or more "numerological counterparts" based on the … Continue reading The “Second Opinion” Moving Line Spread
“In the Court of the Crimson King” 3-D Elemental Matrix
This isn't a spread per se, it's a simpler substitute for the initial step of the "First Operation" of the Golden Dawn's Opening of the Key method. Instead of separating all 78 cards into four stacks and finding the Significator, only sixteen cards including the Significator are selected for the matrix, four in each elemental … Continue reading “In the Court of the Crimson King” 3-D Elemental Matrix
The “Double Whammy” Yes-or-No Spread
This is an intense little spread that is more complicated than it looks. It uses only the 56 suit cards and also two standard dice, and is designed around the astronomical Earth-Sun-Moon cycle. The waxing lunar cycle builds toward "Yes" and the waning cycle fades toward "No." The idea is to first lay out the … Continue reading The “Double Whammy” Yes-or-No Spread
The “Fool’s Insight” Spread
This spread uses the Fool card from a second deck as a kind of impartial observer of the situation described in the reading. It represents an archetypal Inner Fool “holding up a mirror” ( the cards in the spread) to reflect the querent's wisdom or folly in the matter at hand. The idea for the … Continue reading The “Fool’s Insight” Spread
Location is Everything
As most experienced tarot readers know, the cards are less than stellar at identifying where an event forecast in a reading is likely to take place. Locations determined solely from the images are often far afield from the reality of the querent's circumstances. A related question is where a missing item has concealed itself. I … Continue reading Location is Everything
The “Truth vs. Lies” Conflict-Resolution Spread
This spread weighs whether the true or false aspects of the querent's situation and environment will have the upper hand in determining who comes out on top in a conflict. (As I like to say when performing divination, "The good guys don't always win.") It has the feel of a "trial by combat" to it. … Continue reading The “Truth vs. Lies” Conflict-Resolution Spread
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 