Tarot spreads: from one card to the Celtic Cross

What a tarot spread does

Cards on their own are vocabulary. The spread is the grammar that turns them into a sentence. The Tower in a position called "what to avoid" says something very different from The Tower in a position called "what is already happening", and deciding those positions before you turn a card is what keeps a reading honest. You cannot reshuffle the meaning of a slot after you have seen what landed there.

Spreads also set the scale of a reading. One card is a glance, three cards a conversation, ten cards a full consultation. Picking the smallest spread that can answer your question is a skill in itself, and it is the most common thing beginners get wrong.

How to choose a tarot spread

Match the spread to the question, not to how serious the question feels. A big life decision often reads more clearly in three cards than in ten, because each card has room to matter.

The one-card spread

One card is the spread every reader uses most. Draw it in the morning with a question such as "What do I need to pay attention to today?", and look at it again at night. It is how most people learn the deck, because you meet each card in the context of a real day. Our daily tarot card does this for you, with one card seeded by the date, and our yes or no tarot tool uses one card to answer a closed question.

The 3 card tarot spread, and eight ways to lay it

Three cards are the workhorse of tarot: enough to show a relationship between ideas, few enough to read in five minutes. The classic is past, present and future, read left to right as a story. But the three positions can be anything, and changing them changes the question. Lay the cards in a row and read the middle card as the heart of the matter, with the outer two leaning on it.

The most common mistake with three cards is reading them as three separate fortunes. Read the line as a sentence instead. If the past is the Five of Cups, the present the Six of Cups and the future the Ace of Cups, the story is grief turning into tenderness turning into new love, and the suit alone tells you this is about the heart.

The Celtic Cross tarot spread, position by position

The Celtic Cross is the most famous spread in tarot. Waite published it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1910 as "an ancient Celtic method", though there is no evidence it is older than the Golden Dawn. It lays six cards in a cross on the left and four in a vertical staff on the right, and it rewards patience: read it once quickly for the story, then position by position.

Position numbering varies a little between books, especially for cards 5 and 6. This is the order we use in the free draw above.

How to read the Celtic Cross as one story

Ten meanings in a row is not a reading. After you have read each position, look at the pairs. Card 1 and card 2 are the core tension. Cards 3 and 5, below and above, are what you stand on and what you reach for. Cards 4 and 6, left and right, are the movement from past to future. Then compare card 7, you, with card 10, the outcome: if they disagree, the outcome card is often telling you what changes if you do.

Card 9, hopes and fears, is the one readers most often skip and should not. A hope and a fear are frequently the same thing: wanting a relationship to become serious and being afraid that it will. When the card in that slot feels confusing, ask whether it is both.

• ✦Count the major arcana. Four or more in ten cards marks a turning point.
• ✦Count the suits. A missing element is a blind spot in the situation.
• ✦Read card 10 last and lightly. It is a likely direction, not a sentence.
• ✦Sum up the whole cross in two sentences before you close the reading.

The five-card spread and the horseshoe

Between three and ten cards there are two useful middle sizes. A five-card spread adds causes and advice to the time line: what led here, where you stand, what is coming, what is in the way and what to do. It is the spread Soulether's full readings use, because it is large enough to tell a story and small enough that each card stays legible.

The seven-card horseshoe is laid in a gentle arc and read left to right: the past, the present, hidden influences, obstacles, the attitudes of others, what you should do, and the likely outcome. It is a good bridge to the Celtic Cross, since it uses many of the same positions without the crossing card.

Tarot spreads for love and relationships

Relationship spreads put the two people side by side. The simplest is three cards: you, them and the connection between you. For someone single, a better question is about readiness: what you bring, what holds love back and where to look. Our love tarot reading lays both for free. Whatever the spread, avoid positions such as "what he is secretly thinking", which ask the cards to stand in for a conversation.

How to make your own tarot spread

The best spreads are often the ones you write. Start with the question, then break it into three to five smaller questions you would want answered, and give each one a position. Write the positions down before you shuffle. A good position is open-ended ("what would help") rather than predictive ("will it work"), and no two positions should ask the same thing in different words.

1. 1.Write your main question in one sentence.
2. 2.List what you would need to know to act on it.
3. 3.Turn each item into a position and give it a number.
4. 4.Choose a shape, a row, a cross or a circle, so the layout is memorable.
5. 5.Read it, then note which position told you the most and keep the spread if it worked.

Common mistakes with tarot spreads

Most bad readings come from the spread, not the cards. Using ten cards for a simple question buries the answer. Deciding what a position means after seeing the card turns the reading into wishful thinking. Laying a second spread because the first one said something unwelcome teaches you nothing. And reading every card as a separate prediction misses the story the cards tell together, which is the whole point of laying more than one.

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