So, I call this spread The Hand You’re Dealt and it’s..pretty open ended. I like spreads that can be adapted to a lot of situations! But the main idea for this is when you have SEVERAL things that you need to read for, and you’d like to go in depth for each of them. A rather overwhelming prospect!
This particular spread was designed for a 78-79 card tarot deck. It uses every card. If you have a deck that has more or fewer cards, then I’m sure you could fiddle with the numbers to get the general idea of this spread to work.
So, because this spread is meant for versatility, you don’t get hard and fast meanings for the positions. Use them as you see fit! I’ll just give you a general overview of what I see as being possible so far. Feel free to tweak this as much as you like and use your imagination on it.
Cards 1-6: These are the overview cards. You can pick six areas of your life to look at (love, money, health, friendships, school, spiritual?), six people in your life (mother, father, brother, sister, best friend, love interest?)…even six choices, problems, or ideas.
As some of you may have seen, when testing this spread, I picked six “selves” — witch, pagan, author, artist, fortune teller, and then my public “persona”, if you will.
Personally, I look at each of these six cards as six people who are now about to get their own reading. I used these cards to give me an overview of these people — their situations, their destinies, their potential. In at least one case, the card in this position told how I felt about that part of my life.
Note that if you want to pick six totally unrelated things, you can do that as well! You don’t have to be themey in what you pick.
Piles: Now, each person gets dealt 12 cards. If you’re using a 78 card deck, you won’t have any left in your hand when you’re done.
The cards in the piles are also whatever you need them to be. You can read them chronologically. You can arrange them into a story. I personally looked at them as the options I had in each situation. I can choose to play the card or not, but it’s in my hand. You may see them as the energies at work in each area.
It’s fun to look at where the cards end up at. Where is The Tower going to end up? Ten of Swords? What are they going to mean there? If you have a significator, where did it go? Did all of your majors end up dumped in one spot? That kind of thing.
Optional Card: If you have a card left over, you can look at it as an overview of everything going on in each area, or maybe the Ace up your sleeve to help you in an area that you don’t like your cards for. Maybe it’s something you can apply to each situation.
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If you can’t come up with six areas, you can use the basic idea of the spread and either adjust the number of cards in the piles, or just not read with the entire deck, of course. But I like the idea that you’ll see every card you have in the reading.
Also, I have to say, I’m really fond of the format of this spread — most 78 card spreads take up a lot of space, and it’s really hard to look at them as a coherent reading. By breaking it up like this, I feel like it helps to narrow the focus.