Spread: Waite's Celtic Cross

Having selected the Significator, place it on the table, face upwards. Then shuffle and cut the rest of the pack three times, keeping the faces of the cards downwards.

 Turn up the top or FIRST CARD of the pack; cover the Significator with it, and say: This covers him. This card gives the influence which is affecting the person or matter of inquiry generally, the atmosphere of it in which the other currents work.

 Turn up the SECOND CARD and lay it across the FIRST, saying: This crosses him. It shews the nature of the obstacles in the matter. If it is a favourable card, the opposing forces will not be serious, or it may indicate that something good in itself will not be productive of good in the particular connexion.

Turn up the THIRD CARD; place it above the Significator, and say: This crowns him. It represents (a) the Querent's aim or ideal in the matter; (b) the best that can be achieved under the circumstances, but that which has not yet been made actual.

 Turn up the FOURTH CARD; place it below the Significator, and say: This is beneath him. It shews the foundation or basis of the matter, that which has already passed into actuality and which the Significator has made his own.

Turn up the FIFTH CARD; place it on the side of the Significator from which he is looking, and say: This is behind him. It gives the influence that is just passed, or is now passing away. N.B.--If the Significator is a Trump or any small card that cannot be said to face either way, the Diviner must decide before beginning the operation which side he will take it as facing. 

Turn up the SIXTH CARD; place it on the side that the Significator is facing, and say: This is before him. It shews the influence that is coming into action and will operate in the near future. 

The cards are now disposed in the form of a cross, the Significator--covered by the First Card--being in the centre. The next four cards are turned up in succession and placed one above the other in a line, on the right hand side of the cross.

 The first of these, or the SEVENTH CARD of the operation, signifies himself--that is, the Significator--whether person or thing-and shews its position or attitude in the circumstances.

 The EIGHTH CARD signifies his house, that is, his environment and the tendencies at work therein which have an effect on the matter--for instance, his position in life, the influence of immediate friends, and so forth.

 The NINTH CARD gives his hopes or fears in the matter.

 The TENTH is what will come, the final result, the culmination which is brought about by the influences shewn by the other cards that have been turned up in the divination.

Spread: Minetta's Star of Fortune

“Those cards which crown the Significator predict the near future; those at the feet, the past; those to the left, obstacles; those to the right, the distant future; the top corners, present details; those at the feet, the past details; the card on top of the Significator [covers it], the consolation.” The book also notes that, “If the Nine of Hearts [Cups] comes out in the thirteen, it augurs good luck for the consulter and success to his wishes.”

Originally it was laid out around the significator: above, below (inner); above, below (outer); left, right (inner); left right (outer); left, right (corners above); left, right (corners below); final card crosses the significator. Later it was laid out as a cross: above, below, right, left (inner); above, below, right, left (outer); rest as above.

(From Mary K. Greer)

Oracle Patience

One well-shuffled pack suffices for this game. Itis called the Oracle because it shows which of the four powers in the world-Wisdom, Wealth, Beauty, or Courage-will be most propitious to the player. These powers are represented by the four queens, under the names of Minerva for Wisdom-spades; Juno for Wealth-diamonds; Venus for Beauty-hearts; and Bellona for Courage---clubs. The queens are placed a short distance apart, and their courts are formed round them (see Diagram) as the cards are turned up from the pack. The upper card in each court is immovable; the three others can capture and be captured.

As soon as a court is completed, but not before, that power is ready to attack, but it cannot do so until a card of its suit turns up. This may take any card or cards of its own value from the other courts (always excepting the top one), and the captor and captured are laid on the heap above the queen. The three lower cards of the attacking power have also the right of taking any others of their value which are placed underneath them; but these cards are subject to recapture.

If the turn-up cannot make a capture, it is laid on the top heap, and another is turned. Continue dealing out, forming up the courts, and capturing at every opportunity, until the pack is exhausted. The cards are then counted, and the. power that scores most wins. Aces count four, kings three, knaves two, and common cards one, each.

Reading Tips: Eye Rhyme Method

Enrique Enriquez's Method of Reading:

1. Why the Marseille Tarot? The Marseille Tarot, the tarot of the image-makers, carries the power of the cathedrals to move the human psyche, and therefore, its’ language carries the power to re-build each one of us as a sacred space.

2. Look at three cards, four maximum. This is the poem.

3. Why do I call any sequence of cards a ‘poem’? Because like a written poem, the tarot speaks the language of shape. We need to let ourselves be taken into the poem’s shape by observing its accent and rhythm.

4. The first thing the cards – each and every sequence of cards - has to tell us is that the riddle we solve on the table gives us the ability to solve one riddle in our lives. “Similia similibus curentur”. An act of magic.

5. If the character in a card is looking outside of the spread, I place a new card in front of him/her to know what she/he is looking at and to close the spread.). More cards than that and I start feeling confused. I don't work with spreads because, as I pointed out before, there is no intrinsic meaning in each specific card, nor in its position.

6. First we look for a general rhythm: raising, falling, constant. Then we look for rhymes.

7. What are Eye Rhymes? Eye rhymes originate in poetry. The notion that two words with a similar sound can be exchanged to create a play of words. This is the idea of two words sharing a similar shape that can be used interchangeably for amusement or communicative purposes, and led me to think that if the tarot's shape isn't auditive but visual many images have a similar "sound" that can be appreciated at plain sight. They are rhymes for the eye. I saw this represented for the first time in Temperance and Le Bateleur, in the form their posture, arms, heads, hats, etc, they rhyme!

8. The only thing relevant in a single card is what rhymes with other cards. Rhymes define the active attributes of each card in a given sequence. We ignore the passive attributes.

9. We don't know what a single card means, nor do we need to worry about that. (Later) we will talk about my suspicion of what does each card elicits, but that will always be a provisional idea, useless in the context of a reading.

10. I would go so far as to say that each tarot card is an image looking to be turned into a metaphor when the viewer, based on his or her own experience, finds a referent for it. The image in the card isn’t a metaphor, but it wants to be a metaphor. Since the referent always changes, meaning will always be transitory.

11. We can only understand a card by contrasting it with the other cards in a sequence.

12. Trumps, pips and court cards are all part of a whole. Trumps and court cards aren't more 'valuable' than pips, but they may provide focus to our narrative since they depict human characters.

13. The cards of a sequence don't depict separate events. We read the whole sequence as one single sentence/idea. As a sequence/story line we understand the cards going from past-left to future-right, but it is all part of one single motion.

14. As a consequence of the previous points, we don't base our first glance on the card's attributes, suits, or numerological values of the pips.

15. The purpose of looking at the cards in this way is to get visions. We see things that weren't there before. Revelations. Looking at the tarot in this way is about taking a detour to find a straight answer.

16. There is a verse from medieval times, attributed to Nicholas de Lyra, which accounts for the four levels in which a text could be interpreted. "Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia" this is: "The letter teaches the actions, the allegory teaches what you believe, the moral teaches you how you act, and the anagogy teaches where you are going."

17. We need to be familiar with the principle of analogy. The tarot is an analogical machine. Any card, or any sequence of cards, can be linked to our personal experience by analogy. The important thing here is for us to have a frame of reference. In this case, we had all these feelings we experienced before actually looking at the card. In some cases, our frame of reference will be a question. In some others, our frame of reference will be our mind state. Our client also brings her mind state to the table, and her mind will draw analogies between whatever we say, or whatever she looks in the cards, and her mind state. A non-theoretical approach to the cards will always produce analogical meaning.

18. Our frame of reference is what tells us what to look for. It also asks for each reader to take responsibility for her/his own metaphors.

19. Every time we look at the cards we are (attempting) to recognize our question or concern in the images we have in front of us.

20. A person could be crystallizing, therefore needing to become more organic. A person could be expanding, therefore needing to contract. A person could be cold, therefore needing to warm up, a person could be in total order, therefore needing to break onto chaos, etc.

21. How do we know whether a person is contracting, expanding, etc? That is what the pips are telling us.

22. When we look at the pips we can always notice if the sequence goes from ORDER to CHAOS, from DETERMINED to UNDETERMINED, from ORGANIC to CRYSTALLINE, from WARM to COLD, or from EXPANSION to CONTRACTION.

23. On broader terms Wands and Swords contract -in that they evolve by generating a solid shape in the middle of the card.

24. Cups and Coins expand -in that they spread across the card’s surface.

25. Even so, we can see that Swords are expanding if we compare them with Wands, and we can also see that Coins have a particular point of view that makes them expand over a horizontal plane, while Cups ‘pile up’ or expand on a vertical plane. All these are indications of movement, and such movement will give us, by analogy, an insight into the process a person is experiencing.

26. Shape becomes meaning and rhythm becomes message.

Reading Tips: Visual Clues

Strategy 3: Following the Eyes, Gestures, and Clues Given by the Cards

A decisive step in the development of your relationship with the Tarot, this stage consists of following the direction in which the card figures are looking, or the appeal of a symbol, and answering this question: "What is this person looking at?" Or even: "What aid is The Magician's wand summoning? What is Arcanum XIII transforming? Who is turning the handle of The Wheel of Fortune?" The cards echo each other this way, creating a dynamic that makes it possible to read them without a preliminary structure or question, as we would decipher a rebus or a story told in pictures. As the base, you draw three cards; if card A of the sentence opens a question toward the left, to answer it, it is appropriate to draw a new card for this side. The same is true if card C leaves an opening toward the right. We add cards this way until the sentence is finished and the interactions of the cards within it have been stabilized. Similarly, if the meaning of one of the cards is not clear, you can pull another card above it to make its message more precise.

- Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot