by Marcus Katz
The Road Less Travelled (Unusual option spread)
A Method for divining out-of-the-box solutions to intractable problems.
For this method, it is recommended that you use a deck to which you are not commonly drawn, if at all. Find the most outlandish (in your opinion), horrible (to you), and unreadable (by you) deck possible.
Take four cards for your reading, having considered the problem.
Place the four cards in a tight box arrangement.
Then lay out the next twelve cards in a tight box around the first four.
Lay out the next twenty cards in another box around the previous ones.
Lay out a larger box of twenty-eight cards around the previous ones.
You should now have a box-grid of cards eight-by-eight.
You will be left with fourteen cards out of that box.
Put away the cards laid out on the table and lay out the first nine of the fourteen cards in a three-by-three box arrangement.
Discard those cards too.
The remaining five cards are the out-of-the-box solution to the problem.
A Note on Performance
You may realize that this method, like some, can be easily shortened – in this case by simply taking the last five cards out of the deck once shuffled. However, this is not the point. How we arrive at those cards – the journey we take – is as much part of the solution as the destination. You may also note certain patterns arising in the layouts before you discard them, particularly at the corner cards.
When performing this reading for a client, it is also part of the delivery to import the nature of the answer as being unexpected but appropriate.
My Secret Garden (Feminine Mysteries Working)
Discover the Way of Initiation for the Feminine.
The Tarot is a repository of sacred myth and story. It is the myth of the divine, the creation and of our daily life. At a certain level, it is gender-based, showing the projection of masculine and feminine qualities in its symbols and characters.
To explore this duality, work through your deck and take out all the cards which you would deem feminine. Leave any masculine cards or those of which you are unsure in the deck.
Take the feminine energy cards and shuffle them.
Lay out nine cards in a row.
See these cards as a narrative sequence, a Heroine’s Journey. For men, this will explore your Anima.
Devise a daily routine over nine days and nights that reflect the energy and challenges of these nine cards. Ensure every day has a challenge or test devised upon the particular card, and a reward.
Now take out the “masculine” cards for six days and do the same. Consider them as a Hero’s Journey – for women this experience will explore your Animus.
Compare and contrast the experience of the two sequences.
You might devise your experiences using the books listed below.
Recommended Reading
Maureen Murdock, The Heroine’s Journey (Boston: Shamballa, 1990)
M. Esther Harding, Women’s Mysteries (London: Century, 1999)
Sylvia Brinton Perera, Descent to the Goddess (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1981)
Strong Like Bull (Masculine Power Working)
Create a Tarot Dream Snare for powerful and precise dreaming.
Buffalo, Bison, Tatanka
With strength in your stride you grace the earth
In natural rhythm and harmony
You teach the cycle of abundance
And the selfless ability to give of ourselves.
In this method we create a powerful Dream Snare fashioned of the Tarot cards which will attract the vision and invoke the powerful spirit we require for a task in hand.
Take out of your deck the most powerful representation you can find of the spirit you wish to capture in your dreams, be it courage, intellect, wisdom, or love.
Place that card in the centre of a table.
Place around it four cards which represent to you protective spirits, guardians or other means of defence and protection.
Now take the rest of the deck and shuffle it whilst concentrating on the five cards you have placed upon the table.
Draw six cards which represent the Upper World of which the five drawn previously are of the Lower World.
You can now fashion these cards into a mandala, perhaps by photographing them or otherwise working with them.
Hang this image above your bed for powerful dreams.
5 Stages of the Soul Spread
Using Tarot to locating yourself in the five stages of your souls journey.
The day you were born a ladder was set up to help you escape from this world.
Rumi
According to the work of Harry R. Moody and David Carroll, the soul passes through five distinct stages:
1. The Call
2. The Search
3. The Struggle
4. The Breakthrough
5. The Return
In this straightforward spread, we shuffle and select three cards for each line of the stages, answering the following questions:
1. To what do I need to heed to hear my very souls Call?
2. On the Outer and the Inner, what practice is my Quest?
3. What is the nature of the struggle that is my Way?
4. Where can I find Initiation?
5. What is my spiritual Task?
Recommended Reading
Harry R. Moody & David Carroll, The Five Stages of the Soul (London: Rider, 1998)
LOL Spread
A divination by humour, honouring the muse of comedy, Thalia.
Comedy, like divination, is a matter of timing. The Muse sacred to comedic matters is Thalia, the Muse who assists men to flourish when they are praised in poetry. The structure of a joke is much its own language as a Tarot reading, and here we use that structure to create a Tarot spread which reframes any situation.
The twist with this method is that it is an example of a linked spread, where (in this case) three different spreads relate to each other.
Take a situation where you would like to see things differently.
A. The Setup
First lay out three cards – the Protagonist [Card 1], and the Inciting Incidents [Cards 2 & 3]. These tell you of the character flaw which is being exposed by the situation and the way in which the world exposes that flaw.
B. The Dramatic Necessity
Now perform another reading, taking the cards back into the whole deck and shuffling again. Lay out five cards.
These tell you of the pattern by which this event will continue to play out until you get the punchline.
C. The Punchline
This spread is a re-framing all that has gone before. Take all the cards back again and shuffle. Then take the three cards at the bottom of the deck and these will tell you the lesson to be learnt from the event.
If the punchline does not make any sense to you, it is clear that you haven’t yet got the joke.
The Muses Spread
A spread for divining your creativity or a creative solution to a problem.
Hesiod even gives their [the Mousai] names when he writes: “Kleio, Euterpe, and Thaleia, Melpomene, Terpsikhore and Erato, and Polymnia, Ourania, Kalliope too, of them all the most comely.” To each of the Mousai men assign her special aptitude for one of the branches of the liberal arts, such as poetry, song, pantomimic dancing, the round dance with music, the study of the stars, and the other liberal arts … For the name of each Mousa, they say, men have found a reason appropriate to her: … Thaleia, because men whose praises have been sung in poems flourish (thallein) through long periods of time.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 7. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.)
Lay out three cards, one for each of the Muses. She will speak to you through those cards and inspire you.
Illus. A Muse.
Calliope, the muse of epic poetry: these three cards inspire you to hear the poetry and structure
of the situation.
Clio, the muse of history: these three cards tell you all that has befallen previously in this situation.
Erato, the muse of love poetry: these three cards will tell your heart what it seeks within the situation, and what rewards will come.
Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry: these three cards tell you of the song which is being sung, the message to your soul.
Melpomene, the muse of tragedy: these three cards warn you of where to be careful.
Polyhymnia, the muse of songs of praise to the gods: these three cards tell you how to act to ensure just reward.
Illus. A Muse.
Terpsichore, the muse of choral songs and dance: these three cards show you the next actions to take to be creative.
Thalia, the muse of comedy: These cards hint at what might be let go in the situation and what might be considered unimportant.
Urania, the muse of astronomy: These three cards indicate the timing of the situation and its revelation.
The 4 Faces Method
A method working with the past and future of a relationship.
Janus also has a temple at Rome with double doors, which they call the gates of war; for the temple always stands open in time of war, but is closed when peace has come. The latter was a difficult matter, and it rarely happened, since the realm was always engaged in some war…
Plutarch, Life of King Numa 20.1-2
Nearly 3 in 5 questions you will ever be asked as a Tarot Reader will be with regard to relationships. And whatever your beliefs and feelings may be about the concept of “soul mates” you had better be well-researched in that area and know your own opinion, as it is a phrase you will hear a lot.
In the Four Faces spread, we use the Court Cards and the Minor Cards only to work dynamically with a relationship situation, contemplating both its past and its future in the guise of Janus, the two-faced God who looked into both the past and future.
Shuffle the Court Cards only. Take out two cards face-up, place them several cards-widths distance from each other. These are the two people in relationship.
Take the Minors and shuffle. Place one card either side of the two Court cards, to show the past that each person is bringing to the relationship.
Place one card the other side of the two Court cards to show the future they are moving into through the relationship.
Illus. Four Faces Layout.
Egyptian Soul Spread
A Spread for looking at how the levels of your Soul are arrayed within a Karmic issue.
The ancient Egyptians created a vast architecture of the soul and its passage through the worlds. In the hieroglyphs they coded the nature and quality of twelve levels of the human being, each with its own distinct function and representation. In this spread we imagine that for some questions a Karmic issue is being worked out, and all levels of the soul should be consulted in its resolution.
This spread uses 12 cards, selected from a shuffled deck and arranged in a circle. The twelve positions (in the order you choose to place them) accord with the twelve layers of the soul as given in the table following.
Egyptian Name
Glyph
Qualities
Khat (Kat, Xat, Kab)
Fish
Body
Sahu
Mummy & Seal
Spiritual Body
Ka (Kai)
Upraised hands
Image, Double
Ba (Baie)
Various birds
Spirit-Soul
Khaibt
Fan
Shadow, Aura
Akh (Khu, Khou, Yekh)
Bennu bird
Bright Spirit
Sekhem
Owl
Vital Power
Ren
Kneeling man
Name
Hati
Lion
Whole Heart
Ab
Jar
Will
Tet (Zet)
Upright snake
Soul
Hammemit Radiating sun
Unborn Soul
1. Body: This card shows the physical nature of how my Karmic issue is manifesting in the world of action and the environment. It explains the reason why it is this situation and not another.
2. Spiritual Body. This card shows the spiritual aspect of the situation.
3. Image, Double: This card reflects how I have projected in my imagination the explanation of this situation.
4. Spirit-Soul: Moving up, this card now shows how my spirit-soul must make its transition through the situation.
5. Shadow, Aura: The card in this position shows the issue I am not facing – and must face – to resolve this Karmic knot.
6. Bright Spirit: This shows the positive nature of what can come out of facing this issue.
7. Vital Power: This card shows the resources upon which I should draw to overcome and resolve the Karmic debt or legacy.
8.Name: This is my own identity being formed by engaging with this experience.
9. Whole Heart: The emotional content of the situation – how it is being.
10. Will: The dynamic content of the situation – where it is going.
11. Soul: The sublime mystery above and beneath this passing moment.
12. Unborn Soul: What will be born out of myself in future.
Mistake Spread
A Spread to make the most of your mistakes.
When you make a mistake, whether it is a simple one, a complex one, or a lifetime one, it is sometimes difficult to move on from it. This next method uses our installed “parental voice” to ensure we have opportunity to move on from our mistakes, or work with a Querent to help them move onwards.
It uses a version of the Tarosophy Gated Spreads, which provoke action between a series of gated spreads for the whole reading/experience to unfold. This is a unique method, like most in this book, and can be extremely powerful.
It is a split-spread, so take out the Court Cards, Major Cards and Minor Cards in three different stacks. This method also uses reversals, so ensure you have cards both upright and reversed as you shuffle the stacks.
Take out two cards from the Minors, and lay them next to each other. This represents the nature of your mistake. Spend one day considering this pair of cards – particularly if either or both are reversed.
The following day, take out two Court Cards and place them above the mistake cards. These represent your parental or inner critical voice. Spend a day contemplating what that is telling you about the mistake.
The third day, take a Major Card out and turn it up, and this will divine the action you can take to move on from the mistake.
Do not move on to the next part of this divination until you have taken that action – like the full Gated Spreads, this method is engaged with life.
When you have taken that action, you can now turn over a Major card which will indicate what you have now learnt from working with the mistake.
You can also twist the reading by adding two further Minor cards on top of the two representing the original mistake, to divine how you might now reframe that original action, and two Court Cards on top of the originals to divine the positive aspects of the original self-talk or critical voice.
The Alphabet of Desire Method
A method by which a card is opened for divination by the neither-neither state.
The trance and sigil work of Austin Osman Spare (1886 – 1956) is the inspiration for this method, which takes us deeply into the symbolic language of a card through visualization and automatic writing.
You will need a mirror for this exercise and a particular Tarot card, chosen by yourself for exploration or in answer to a question. You will need a large sheet (or many) of paper and a good pen.
Hold a pen in your dominant hand above the paper. Place the Tarot card in front of the mirror and gaze into the mirror at your own reflection. Keep doing so until you begin to go blurry, and start to
feel as if you don’t recognize your own reflection. On occasion, gaze down at the card and see the colors of the card, contrasting with each other, and imagine that the colors are their opposites and beyond. Where you see red, imagine all that is not red.
You can begin a breathing pattern if you wish at this point, perhaps breathing 4-in, 4-out for a while, then 4-in, hold for 4, 4-out, hold for 4.
Start to see the colors flowing around the card as if they were fluid and running. Now look back at your reflection for a while, and then when you next look at the card, see the individual symbols of the card “coming lose”, floating into the card, floating out of it. Attain a dream-like state.
Look back in the mirror one more time and then drop your eyes to the card and close them, feeling yourself fall into the card as if a dream. Let the colors swirl around you, the symbols float, like the scene in Wizard of Oz as Dorothy goes up the tornado.
Now begin to allow the symbols to arrange themselves as if they were characters in a film, letters and words in a sentence. Allow them to simplify themselves in primal forms, shapes, symbols, stick figures. Begin to draw as you will on the paper with your eyes remaining closed and relaxed. Breathe slowly and deeply throughout.
Whatever you feel willed to draw, draw. Maintain your mind on the symbols, the arising alphabet of desire. When the symbols begin to lose their shape or substance, you can begin to re-orientate to the room and your position until you are ready to open your eyes again.
