Create Your Own Tarot Spreads
Every good tarot reader masters multiple tarot techniques. When we learn to create tarot spreads, we expand our tarot reading skills.
Read MoreTarot Grandmaster
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Tarot is a book of spiritual wisdom in picture form that tells the story of all human experience.
With tarot, we connect with Spirit to discern wise guidance for the present, develop understanding of the past, and learn ways to work to manifest our goals and possibilities for the future.
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Every good tarot reader masters multiple tarot techniques. When we learn to create tarot spreads, we expand our tarot reading skills.
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Read MoreA Situational Spread is a spread that we use to handle a specific situation. Decision-making spreads are situational spreads. We can have situational spreads that we rely on and use when needed. The “Help and Hinder” spread is a popular example of a reusable situational spread.
We can also design custom spreads for one-time use to work with unique situations. We can design these spreads on our own, or with the help and input of our clients. To work with a client to design the spread and then perform and interpret the spread is a very proactive and empowering approach to tarot reading.
What Situations Demand a Custom Situational Spread?
You can design a custom spread for any reading. Simply ask the client what their questions are and who the major players are and design a spread. You might want to pull some cards to help give insight regarding positions and the greater spiritual purpose of the reading.
Specific situations could include interpersonal issues, complex decisions, spiritual questions and questions of personal growth.
You might decide to create a spread after doing an initial general spread and discovering a complex issue. Get as much information as you can from the initial spread, then pick up the cards, shuffle, and go through the process of creating the situational spread.
How do you Design a Situational Spread?
Use a pen and paper, or a computer. The graphic layout of the spread is important. Be creative in the way you layout the cards as well as in your questions. Think about the layout as a flow chart, a graph or a chart.
If you design the spread neatly you can fill in the names of the cards that appear and give it to your client to take home.
You may use tarot divination to help inspire the right questions.
You may choose to design your spread in Sacred Space.
You may create positions for each person involved, and for each possible decision. In a decision-making spread it is wise to include a position for options that have not yet emerged, as well as positions for known options.
If you want specific information about a specific person you can make a position such as “What Does Sally Want?” You can do this instead of or in addition to a general position for the individual.
You may use standard positions, such as Past, Present, Future, Final Outcome, Hopes, Significator, Challenge, etc.
Remember that creating a position uses the same skills and considerations as phrasing a question. Open-ended questions are better than yes/no questions. Questions that empower the client and teach the client to be proactive often yield the best results. A question such as “How can I discover the truth?” is sometimes better than “What is the truth?’
There is no specific number of cards to use, but remember that tarot spreads tend to become cumbersome after 15 cards or so.
You can create “dynamic” positions to describe the dynamic between people. For instance, if you have three kids and want to know the dynamics between them, have one position for each kid and see how the cards relate to each other in that context.
Your position questions can be as general or as specific as you see fit.
Performing the Spread
Perform and interpret the spread as you would any other spread. But, remember that the creative, introspective, spiritual process that went into designing this unique spread will infuse the reading with a great deal of power.
Interpreting “People Positions”
When you use a position to generally signify a person, remember the card that comes up could indicate that person’s role in the situation, that person’s current attitude, that person’s current worry or mood, as well as give information about that person’s personality.
Interpreting “Future Predictions”
In any spread, use future predictions to get a sense of possibilities, and to create proactive solutions.
In professional tarot reading, I like to use larger tarot spreads in order to get a more complete picture. But I also like to use small tarot spreads, too. A small spread can be only one, two or three cards.
There are a few reasons smalls spreads are helpful. First, if you are a new reader, small spreads will give you practice, and opportunity to learn the cards in action, without overwhelming you. Second, if you have only a short time in which to perform a divination, a small spread can give you the information you need quickly. Third, you can use a small spread, or many small spreads, as part of a longer comprehensive reading.
Here are some ideas for working with small spreads. These might be especially helpful to new readers, or readers interested in developing some helpful new techniques.
Interpreting Cards in Small Spreads
If you are a new reader, or a looking to get a new perspective on card reading, ask yourself these questions about each card you interpret.
How does the card make me feel?
What do I see in the image?
What do I know about the card?
What are the traditional interpretations (check books, class materials, Google)?
One-Card Readings
While a single-card pull can’t always give all the information you might want, pulling a single card in answer to a question can be a great way to check in with the Universe. Single card readings can also lead to dialogues with the cards which can provide a great deal of information.
For one-card readings, ask a specific question that is open-ended.
“What do I need to know about my job?”
“How should I prepare for my trip?”
“How can I best support my friend?”
When Interpreting Spreads of more than one care, you have the opportunity to see how the cards combine and influence each other, Consider:
What do the cards have in common, and what does that tell you?
How do the cards contrast, and what does that tell you?
Two-Card Spreads
Here are some two-card spreads to try.
Help and Hinder: How would a particular situation or solution help me, and how would it hinder me?
Either/Or: What do I need to know about my options?
Partnership (Why are we in each other’s lives?)
Three-Card Spreads
Here are some three-card spreads to try.
Past/Present/Future
Morning/Afternoon/Evening
Body/Mind/Spirit
Relationship
When performing small spreads, be specific about your questions.
A simple Past/Present/Future reading will make more sense if you give it specific questions, such as:
The Body/Mind/Spirit Reading works better like this:
Daily practice with small spreads will give your tarot skills a lot of versatility and flexibility. Adding small spreads to your reading style will allow you the opportunity to produce a great deal of helpful information each time you consult the cards.
Some tarot readers prefer to use spreads with defined positional meanings. Others prefer to pull a few cards and read them without benefit of positions. Those who use this method often have a predetermined number of cards they pull and a standard way to lay them out. Some lay them in a circle or a line or a pyramid.
All these methods are perfectly acceptable and appropriate. Much about tarot is "dealer's choice." On a more spiritual level we can say that each reader needs to find the way that feels right.
Sometimes spreads with predetermined positional meanings can be very helpful. The card that comes up as a "Crossing Card," for instance, can be very helpful when you look at the card and say "OK, this describes your biggest problem."
On the other hand, sometimes the cards themselves make more sense in general than they do in the positions. For me three things are true when reading spreads.
First, as with any tarot reading, each card can mean more than one thing at the same time and can be interpreted in more than one way in the same reading.
Second, it is important to try to find an interpretation within each position that works, but if that's not possible in the time you have simply interpret the card in the context of the reading. Remember that not every card is equally weighty. If the interpretation doesn't come to you don't worry about it. Just move on.
Third, once you have interpreted the spread you can add more to the reading by simply looking at the cards without thinking about the positions. Look for card similarities and dissimilarities. Look for the ways the cards work together and the trends in distribution. Pull as much meaning from the cards as you can without worrying about the positions.
The bottom line is this. The card positions can give helpful information but the reading doesn't stop there. Look beyond the positions to get more of the story.
Pulling random cards can be very helpful, especially in a dialogue with the cards to answer specific questions. Allowing ourselves to pull as many cards as seems right is a way of opening our intuition to the wisdom of the Universe, which is what tarot reading is all about.
In a professional reading I tend to use both methods at once. I start with a specific spread which I interpret in as many ways as I can. While interpreting that spread I find areas where we need more information and need to go deeper. For me, the opening spread generates the questions of the reading.
Once that process is complete I pick up the cards and shuffle them and begin the dialogue process. I ask the specific questions and pull random numbers of cards to find the answers.
This is a technique that developed over time for me. In a reading I like to use a lot of cards. I like to pay attention to trends, and to pay attention when a specific card comes up more than once. Some readers prefer to use a more limited number of cards and dig deep into the possibilities each card presents.
It is important for good readers to understand the many techniques that are at our disposal. Our intuition will guide us to the techniques that will be most helpful in specific situations. Sometimes it makes sense to design a custom spread. Sometimes it makes sense to use more than one deck in a reading. Sometimes a spread with positional meanings is what's right. Sometimes a non-positional spread is better. Sometimes a dialogue does the trick.
Take the time to learn all the possibilities and then allow the Universe to guide you to use the ones that feel right for you.
Whether reading for yourself or another, there are many techniques for laying out the cards to find the answers you need.
One of my favorite techniques is to create a specific spread for the situation. You will need a pen and paper as well as your tarot cards for this.
The key to this technique is to be able to identify all the issues, players and questions that relate to the situation. Essentially, you need at least one position in the spread for each of these.
You might also want to include some traditional positions, such as:
The technique of creating a spread for a specific situation is particularly helpful for dream interpretation, solving issues of group dynamics, making career choices and deeper spiritual questions.
Once you decide that this technique is appropriate for a particular reading, make a list of each factor; that is, each position you want to include in the spread.
There should be a position for things such as:
Try to include every question you can think of, but also remember that spreads are best when they are fifteen cards or less.
Then, think about the graphic dynamic of the spread. Do you want the cards to make a particular shape? What is the best way to arrange the positions?
Draw the spread on your paper, assigning each position.
Finally, lay out the cards and perform the reading. You will find the insight you gain from your custom spread to be very enlightening!
Some readers use a bare minimum of cards. In fact some professional readers charge by the card! The techniques that I will discuss in this post are probably not well suited for those who prefer an economy of cards in a reading.
For those who tend to let the cards flow, clarifying cards can offer further information and greater detail in a reading. They can also spark other questions, and can help you understand cards that just aren't making sense.
Some readers use clarifying cards as a matter of course. Others use them only to narrow down a prediction, or to gain more information when they are confused by a particular card and how it might apply to the specific situation.
Because each card has so many possible meanings, clarifying cards can help the reader figure out which meaning(s) is/are most appropriate.
Here are some techniques that I use. None are techniques I learned from a book or teacher; they all developed organically over more than twenty years of reading tarot cards.
See how they work for you, and what other techniques you can develop!
1. Use a clarifying card to help you interpret a particularly confusing card. When you see a card that doesn't make sense, silently speak to the card and say "What are you trying to tell me?" or "What are you in reference to?" and pull another card from your deck. Place the clarifying card next to card that has confused you. See if the clarifying card answers your question. What happens if you blend the meanings of the clarifying card and the original card?
2. Use a clarifying card to digger deeper into the question. If the card already pulled answers the question but you want more detail, ask a more specific question and pull another card.
3. Use a second, smaller spread with a different deck, not disturbing your original spread, to gain definition, nuance and key points. Pay special attention if you see the same card twice!
4. Ask specific questions about the reading, such as "What is the best way to accomplish this?" or "What should my attitude be about this?" or "Where can I find assistance with this?" or "What is the spiritual purpose of this?" Draw one card, or a small group of cards, for each question.
5. Draw a final card to sum up the reading.
Clarifying cards are not for every reading, or every reader. But if these techniques feel right for you, give them a try and see what happens. You might be surprised at the detail and clarity you are able to derive!