About Spreads

For those who have experience with tarot, the act of setting up a spread may feel like second nature. For those who have never touched a tarot card in their life, the concept may feel a bit more complicated. A tarot spread is a layout of cards in a certain formation in order to obtain the answer to a question or gain advice on a topic. A spread may contain as few as 1 card and may use as many as all 78 cards of the major and minor arcana. 

​

To determine which card goes in which spot, each space in a spread is assigned a question or an idea that the card drawn will “answer”. Many consider these questions and answers to be a conversation with the deck. A common practice when assigning cards is to ask the question of the cards aloud or internally while shuffling the deck, stopping and pulling a card when you feel drawn to it. Other practices include a simple single shuffle and drawing in order, and cutting the deck to choose a card. Of course, the selection process is purely a personal preference and there is no truly “correct” way to do it so long as the intent is present to receive an answer to a predetermined question.

When drawing cards while asking questions, you should lay out the cards in order of the spread (the first card answering the first question in the spot labeled one, and so on) until each spot is filled. Some people choose to lay all cards face-up from the start, while others turn each card over one by one after all cards are drawn in order to comprehend each card and its meaning individually. While the upright or reversed orientation of a card is important for many decks and may impact the meaning of a card, this particular deck does not make use of the reversed indications.

​

It may seem daunting to try and interpret each card, but the process is actually very individualized and there isn’t really an incorrect way to read a card so long as it generally carries the theme of the card. While some find meaning easily within the long-form interpretation of the cards, others tend to find meaning more easily by using the keywords for the card. For example, one may ask the question “How can I expect my day to go today” and receive an answer of “The Sun”. By looking at either the keywords or the long-form interpretation, you could interpret the answer to the question as “it is going to be a bright, optimistic, day, and you can expect lots of good to come your way”. Conversely, if one were to pull “The Tower” as an answer to the same question, you could expect the day to be chaotic, full of action, generally exhausting, and perhaps mildly terrifying.