Hello beautiful blog readers!
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I am teaching a class on Tarot Spreads on the 20th via Zoom, which to some people might feel really rudimentary. "Of course I can read spreads" they might think. That's true - you probably do have some semblance of understanding how Spreads work if you're doing any tarot reading at all. This class will teach total newbs what they're even looking at in a spread, but it is designed to drive each of us further into that work, bringing about deeper and more nuanced readings.
If someone is reading about the class in good faith, they might alternatively think "Well, I don't really need to know how to design my own spreads". Maybe you don't! That's okay! I would argue though that:
A) it's fun, so why not learn?!
B) learning how to design Spreads will take you deeper into your tarot practice by showing you how to prioritize the messages of the tarot, how to read cards more flexibly, and how to read tarot Spreads better.
This class walks you through all of that and more. This isn't solely a marketing post though, and today I want to offer up THREE kinds of tarot Spreads you can design that will help you learn Spreads, cards and life lessons more deeply and a couple if steps to do each. Know that if you love this post, you’ll probably love the class too, so do consider joining us from 6-9 PM CST on July 20th to go deep on how to read cards together, how spread placements impact the cards and LOTS and LOTS of space, ideas and techniques for designing your own tarot spreads.
Spread Design Option #1: Pop Culture Spreads
If you've been following me for any length of time you know this is one of my "things". I love matching all the things tarot can teach us with the lessons we are learning through art and media whether we realize we're learning them or not. In fact, doing pop culture tarot Spreads can help us with our lifelong Hermit lessons of learning to separate our voice and ideas from those we're constantly taking in. It's a way you can fight consumerist, white supremacist, queerphobic, ableist, sexist and/or fatphobic indoctrination and slowly learn to unravel your own. It's also fun and a good way to learn more about your cards and how they work together!
To design a pop culture based spread (and for the nerds, hipsters and artsy readers among us know that ANY genre or item of art you didn't produce counts, no matter how nerdy, obscure or weird) the easiest thing to do is think about the major tropes or archetypes involved with the piece you’re wanting to encapsulate in a tarot spread design, and use those as your spread placements. My Slasher Film spread is an example of this.
Notice the way I break down each character or symbol into something that can benefit me in my own life to learn about. The secret about art and media is that this is intentional. Entertainment does mirror human experience; tarot loves to take us deeper. The combination of the two can unravel so much about us and our experiences, allowing us to decompress, learn, and move forward. So the other thing to think about when you’re designing this spread is “What do I need to learn or know that relates to this?”
This is just one way to do these spreads - I’ve also designed them around the explicit lessons of the piece and around the story arc of a piece. Archetypes (often seen as tropes in popular media) are often the quickest and easiest way in, but follow your own bliss where this is concerned.
Spread Design Option #2: The Lessons of the Tarot
“Cassandra” you might be saying to yourself, “Isn’t ALL of this about the lessons of the tarot?” and well, yes. Correct. I didn’t know what else to call this design option though! So this is what you got! Essentially this is basing a tarot spread on a tarot card itself. This is a great option when you have a tarot card that you can’t quite grasp or when a card keeps showing up for you. (The latter idea is commonly called a stalker card but I try to avoid that language although I have used it in the past before I really thought it through.) While you’re learning tarot though, it’s a good way to get to know cards better in general, and certainly a great way to learn spreads.
Choose a tarot card you want to design your spread around. List some keywords and symbols that jump out at you from that card, and what they each mean to you. Ta-da! Basically you just made a tarot spread about it! All you have to do now is figure out how to word it in a spread placement. So a Three of Swords spread based on this standard Rider-Waite-Smith card might have the following placements.
The three swords - what’s hurting you
The heart - how you feel about it
The rain - what’s washing away
The clouds - the part that’s hanging over you
These placements incorporate both the emotions of the Three of Swords but did stick to the imagery. Based on keywords it might be a spread more explicitly about heartbreak and release. It might even be a simple three card spread that reads:
What’s causing the heartbreak, really?
How to carve space for pain & healing
What to release
That’s it! This option is pretty straightforward and doable with literally any tarot card.
Spread Design Option #3: Tarot Spreads Based On Quotes or Lyrics
This is an option I learned from numerous tarot books, but most notably Rachel Pollack’s Tarot Wisdom and Barbara Moore’s Tarot Spreads. The basic gist of this design option is to take a quote and disseminate it into a spread. Pretty simple to say but this is definitely the least tangible of these three options, so let’s look at an example. This is a quote by Dolly Parton that says “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
So let’s say you’re going through something and this quote springs into your head. It feels like you need to think about it more deeply, so you sit down to do your tarot spread. The placements for me would look like:
The Way I See It
The Lesson of the Rain
What the Rainbow Will Look Like
Another example is a lyric from another one of my heroes, visionary Jim Henson. This is from The Muppet Movie and is one of my favorite lyrics of all time. “Life’s like a movie/write your own ending/keep believing/keep pretending”. I use a tarot spread based on this quote when I’m just not sure what writing my own ending should look like - either I can’t see what choices I have or I’m struggling to figure out what I want.
My tarot spread then looks like this:
What movie is this? (AKA a general overview of the situation)
What to keep believing
How to keep pretending
What my own ending could be
I usually lay three cards in the last placement, so it’s three on top with those first three placement and then three options for my own ending in the latter.
That’s it from me on this Monday! If you want to support this style of content please come to my classes, buy my books or head to Patreon to support. Otherwise, see you Thursday for my interview with Cathou!
Blessed Be,
Cassandra Snow
