So I realized today that I haven’t made any spreads either for a bit, but a question came up that got me into the groove for just that. After all, ‘hobbies’ sound like so much fluff, but they’re where we put a lot of emotional energy, not to mention time and money. A lot of times, we just don’t have the ability to pick professions that really express who we are but our hobbies are something else, and a lot of feelings of the self can be tied up with them. So why not a spread?
This is as much for something you’re considering getting into (since that can be a considerable investment of all three of the above) or something you’ve done for a while and maybe it’s just not feeling as good anymore. Or even a reflection on a new area of a hobby you’re considering going into: you’ve always done watercolor but you’re considering venturing into oil paints, etc.
1. Why do you do it?
This may seem a silly question but in some ways it’s the most important: why are you interested in this? And sometimes, after we’ve done something for long enough or when we’re questioning our involvement (or proposed involvement) we can use a little space for reflection on that.
2. What does it give you?
Whether it’s peace (meditation), flexibilty (yoga), new clothes (sewing), mental exercise (chess)... whatever! What does this hobby give you that you don’t get elsewhere?
3. What does it cost you?
As mentioned, everything you pour yourself into has a cost but this card is to help you see the things you may not have considered or to reinforce the realization of what you know is true but might be lying to yourself about.
4. What are your hopes?
While hobbies are something you do for ‘fun’, there’s always some sort of desire at the heart of them. Whether it’s to make that cosplay you’ve been dreaming about, being able to sell a painting, having a booth at an artist’s alley, or even just having your friend/parent/loved one tell you that you did a good job. This card is a reflection on that.
5. What are your fears?
Similarly, there are always things we worry about with a hobby: will it cost too much, will people think I’m weird for being into _____, what if I never get better at it? This card is a reflection on those fears.
6. Final Advice
This is where the cards can tell us something we should know that doesn’t necessarily fit into the other categories. This can be a warning, reassurance, or even a fresh new idea of where to take the hobby.
Anyway, folks, hope you enjoy and find this one useful!
So we ALL know that when a card keeps coming up or keeps popping out of the deck or just hounds you through multiple readings, there’s a reason for it. The cards are great for intuition as much because of how subtle they can be as much as because they can bang you on the head with a hammer. But sometimes, even if we get the POINT, it’s hard to figure out what to DO with it.
Thus this spread.
This is one of the very few I’ve ever made with a preselected card, but in this case, well, it’s not like the card itself is going to help you figure itself out so... it gets placed in the center there, almost like a significator. In some ways, we’re doing a reading FOR the card FOR us.
1. Why does it keep popping up? What’s underneath the various mentions that you keep getting of this card? What’s the underlying reasons why this energy is so important to you at this time?
2. What is helping you understand this energy. So while you’re trying to work through this, what forces are going to help you with that?
3. What you keep missing about this energy. What, quite literally, is flying over your head. After all, you’re a smart reader and you’re trying to listen but we’ve all got blindspots...
4. What’s blocking you from understanding this energy. Sometimes there are specific things that are getting in your way, either internally or externally. Enter this card.
5. Why do you need this energy? If there’s a specific event or trial or situation that’s going to be coming up in this particular sphere, this is where the cards are going to tell you about it.
6. What good will this do you? This is more of a ‘in the long run’ card, and it’s kind of the reminder that all of your hard work does have a pay off. This may be about a trial to come or something that you’ll be better equipped to handle later or even something that this energy is just a part of.
So. This one’s a bit of a doozy and it’s going to show off my roots as a giant fantasy nerd more than a little, because this spread is directly based off of a book series I’ve loved since I was tiny: The Belgariad by David Eddings. While most people would point to Tolkien as their basic high fantasy roots, mine are planted firmly in the Belgariad, as are a lot of what makes me who I am and the life I’ve ended up leading. That I’d use it for the basis of a spread is almost a foregone conclusion given how much these books have been there for me at different points in my life.
But to avoid the dread cousin of 10-paragraphs-on-the-farmer’s-market from foodie blogs, I’m just going to get into the meat and potatoes.
This spread is for anyone who’s considering a quest or who might already feel like they’re ON one. Each place on the spread is marked with the name of a character in the books, specifically their role in the ‘Prophecy’ that plays a central role in the plot. To sum up how that works: these folks (or forces) need to be in place for the quest to be successful. If they’re court cards, they’re almost certainly going to be specific people: if they’re not, they CAN be people, but they can also be advice for how to deal with what you come to along the way. Trust your gut, as always.
The Child of Light - otherwise known as the Hero, or our protagonist. AKA, that’s you. You can choose a significator if you like, or if you’re like me, you can see what the cards assign you. If you choose to let the cards talk, the main question that this card answers is ‘why me?’ Because quests aren’t fun things; they take you out of your comforts and more often than not, they involve dangers or one kind of another. So why you? Why now? Why, out of everyone in the world, have these events decided to fall upon your shoulders?
The Sorceress - this card is your emotional guide; if it’s a person, they’re the one who’s going to be looking out for how you feel and what kind of emotional strain this is having on you. If it’s not, it’s the message to take heart from, something to keep close to your chest and always in mind while you’re going through this mess. It’s the piece of advice to remind you why you can keep going even when things look dark.
The Eternal Man - this card is your more physical or practical guide; if it’s a person, they’re the one to take advice from, the one who will more than likely be able to help you come up with strategies to deal with the twists and turns and the guiding hand that’ll keep you straight on the path. If it’s not, it’s the piece of advice to take to heart to keep you steady and true and aware of exactly why you’re doing this in the greater scheme of things.
The Queen of the World - this card is the missing piece, the thing you’re going to need whether you like it or not (though if you’re smart, you’ll realize there’s plenty to appreciate here). If it’s a person, they’re the one who’s going to have what you don’t, or they’ll be there when you can’t be. If it’s not a person, it’s the lynch pin piece that could either win you the day or leave you stranded in a poor position if you happen to ignore this card’s message.
The Man With Two Lives - this card is your grounding card, your down to earth perspective from outside of this whole grand ‘quest’ thing. If it’s a person, it’s the one who’ll remind you of the simple, basic, practical things, and if it’s not, it’s the advice that’ll do the same. The Man with Two Lives is the kind of person to notice that you’re almost out of gas as you’re leaving the rest stop, or the advice you need to hear because you would have missed it with your mind on other, higher goals.
The Dreadful Bear - this card is your protection, who or what is looking out and watching your back. If it’s a person, it’s someone you can trust to look out for you while you’re trying to get shit done. If it’s not, this advice is about the kind of trouble you’re going to find yourself in and how to get out of it. Mostly how to get out of it.
The Guide - despite the name, this is more of a card about help than it is ‘guidance’. Or perhaps it’s the ‘guide’ that takes you through the hedgemaze through the easiest path: by cutting through the bushes. This is the person, or advice, that’s going to grease the wheels for you and help keep your path clear and smooth. They may even help you to cut through the nonsense and save yourself some time and effort. The Guide isn’t necessarily the most morally sound, but he gets the job done.
The Horse Lord - this one’s all about getting you what you need. After all, you can’t go on a quest without your horse, and this card is about what you need to see about getting in order (and what you need to maintain properly) while you’re on your way. If it’s a person, this is a relationship you want to maintain or someone who’ll provide you the means you need. If it’s not, this advice is literally how to make sure that the proverbial ‘horse’ doesn’t drop out from under you.
The Bowman - The Bowman is your Achilles heel, and whether it’s a person or a situation, this card is about advising you how to avoid having it trip you up. Whether it’s a person who preys on your insecurities or a tendency to take on more than you can chew (for example), this card is here to make sure that you don’t actually hoist yourself on your own petard. Heed the Bowman.
The Knight Protector - The Knight Protector is your armor, the advice (or person) covering your weak points specifically, taking care of you and your resources in ways you just can’t. In some senses, it’s a card meant to let you see things from a different angle, make you think a little more about how you’re seeing both yourself and this whole endeavor. Blind spots are usually a lot more visible from outside, after all. See how the Knight Protector’s energy plays with the Queen of the World’s.
The Blind Man - Most of the cards in this spread want to help you, but the Blind Man isn’t really interested in that, even if you need him. This card is about assistance from an unreliable or unmotivated source and how to get what you need from those less friendly to your cause. He is directly opposite from The Man With Two Lives because unlike him, the Blind Man doesn’t necessarily work in ways that make sense to you. The card will give you some understanding in how to get what you need.
So I’ve just moved into a new house and it’s something of an Experience, if you know what I mean. It’s only today that I’ve had SOME room to breath and as you might imagine, it led me to pick up my cards. And of course, the move and everything I’ve still got going on was foremost in my mind. I couldn’t think of a spread that would help me with some of what I was curious about so, as you might expect... I made one of my own!
1. What are you bringing in? Every time you move, there’s both an expectation of what you’re coming to and usually some lingering feeling from where you last were. This card helps you really look at what you’re bringing into this experience.
2. What was left behind? In most cases, where you fill in is where someone else has left and people always leave behind traces of themselves in space. So what’re you walking into? What kind of impression did they leave behind, whether you met them or not?
3. What is the nature of the space itself? What should you keep in mind about the new place? You might have visited before, might even have spent significant time there, but there’s some things that only really reveal themselves once you’re living there.
4. How will the new space affect your world view? What you go home to after work or school or whatever, the place where you spend a decent amount of time, is going to affect you. If it’s violent or if it’s peaceful, these are all things that affect how we live and what how we see the world outside of our homes. So what can you look forward to?
5. How will the new space help you achieve your goals? Moving is a gorram hassle, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell most people that. So if you moved, there was probably a reason. So what is this place going to give you that you need?
6. Advice for acclimating to this new space: This is just the place where the cards can be as blunt or as gentle as they want, give you the advice they feel you need to know.
I did this spread a few minutes before this post and found the whole thing to be VERY helpful so expect pictures and a rundown right after this. As for now? All the best to you and I hope if you decide to or need to use the spread, it’s helpful.
So as I mentioned in another post, I use tarot apps. I am absolutely sure that there are people to whom this is outright blasphemy and others who just think that there’s something missing from the experience that way: there’s no cards in their hands, nothing that they feel they can ‘connect’ with. But here’s my take on the really lovely parts about digital tarot apps and where I think they fit in at least my practice as a reader.
They’re cheap.
I’m not going to even play games here: digital tarot apps go the range from free to roughly 3.99 on the App store (at least for iPhone) and even at almost four bucks, that’s about five times more affordable than a physical deck. Now, there’s some people who’d say ‘you get what you pay for’ but considering that most folks only get to see maybe four or five cards from a deck on advertising or packaging of a deck, it’s a really cheap way to get in to see the cards even if you ARE planning on buying the physical copy. And for those who are on a shoestring budget, it puts the oracle at their fingertips without making them have to cut corners for a 45-50 dollar deck. Because (as of my visit today to a new age shop), even the most basic Rider-Waite was at least 20 bucks.
They’re accessible.
As my 20 minute drive today showed, getting somewhere that sells tarot decks isn’t necessarily the easiest thing. While I lived up in NYC and even on Long Island, finding a new age shop was pretty easy and most of the book stores have a decent selection of decks to choose from. But since I’ve moved down to Virginia, the pickings became much much slimmer. My visit to the local B&N recently was legitimately disappointing; I was there to look for a Thoth deck, one of the most basic, and they didn’t have it. Their section was, maybe, one shelf and most of that was angel oracle decks. And that’s me, someone with a decent amount of time and a car. For folks who are younger or without transportation or without any kind of shop like that anywhere around (or who could face trouble for going to such a place), an app store is just a click away.
They Don’t Take Up Space
As I’m packing up right now, I’m getting a full on lesson on just how much space a tarot collection can take up. And the thing is, I’m lucky enough to have space and all this junk, etc. But I’ve been in places where I haven’t. And that’s just storage. It also takes space to lay them out, and if you’re in a situation where that’s just not possible, it can feel like more of a chore than a ritual to get your reading done. And yes, one box of tarot cards isn’t going to take up much space, no. But how many of us are satisfied by ONE set of cards? Why make folks living in a studio apartment with three roommates or a person living in a college dorm have to give up variety?
They’re Mobile
It sounds stupid to say it out loud, but if your cards are in your phone, then you always have your cards. And you’ll never need a table or a cloth to use it. As much as the ritual is a great part of reading, there are times when you need some guidance and you just don’t have the resources you need. Sometimes, the only space you can find to yourself is in the bathroom for a few moments or in a small guest bedroom or even the back seat of a car.
You Can Connect Just As Well To Them As To a Deck Of Cards
Here’s the one where I figure I’m going to get a few looks but hear me out: we’re told that the way we leave our energy with a deck is handling it, using it, keeping it close to us. I’ve seen books mention sleeping with a deck under your pillow, shuffling continuously, and all manner of other tricks.
And how many of us do that kind of thing with our phones Every Single Day?
For most of us these days, our phones are our lifeline, they’re our source of information, our connection to the people we love and the greater universe around us. I spend more time with my phone than with my own husband. You want to tell me that my energy isn’t a part of that device?
And no, there’s no physical cards to hold, but those cards exist as data, as energy, literally manipulated by the bioelectricity of our fingers, energy to energy, our energy connecting to show us the cards. It’s so common place, an idea so boiled into our lives that we don’t even think of it as extraordinary but think of it like that, consider this device that we hold in our hands as a connection to the world around us, and the idea of using a phone as part of your divining practice becomes positively logical.
Of course you still need to learn the cards, and the more effort you put in the more you’ll get out of it: simply using a basic spread and going by the pre-written answers isn’t going to give you the best results. But using them like any other deck can be great, especially since a lot of apps include journaling and ‘save’ features to let you track your progress and save your interpretations of the cards for each reading.
So if you don’t have the cash today, or you don’t have the space, or you need something for an on-the-go reading or two, I urge you to give a couple of tarot apps a try. Like I’d mentioned re: the Urban Tarot, the LWB on the app has everything from the paper copy at a fraction of the cost, but most of the apps from The Fool’s Dog are a good value and there’s a huge variety of decks at your fingertips.
Here’s a spread for those us who have trouble stuffing the monsters in the bed and the closet and yes, the trolls in the dungeon. I’m a Capricorn, so as you might expect, I have a terrible tendency of just leading the damn thing around until it drives me nuts and I fall over from exhaustion, so I came up with this spread to try and help.
The Troll - because sometimes we’re honest about what’s bothering us and sometimes we’re not. Sometimes there’s just something hanging over us and we don’t even know WHAT it is making our stomachs clench and our teeth grind. The Troll is the kind of problem that can ruin your day or your week or your month, if you let it. But we’ve got options!
The Exit - sometimes, you get so used to living in the dungeon or wandering around in the dark that you hardly remember what it is to be anything different. Or you get so caught up in trying to do this or that to placate the problem long enough to breath that you lose sight of what to do to fix it. The Exit is what to look for, internally or externally, to actually get yourself ‘out’ of the dungeon.
Escape - because finding the exit is only the first step! Finding your way out of a dungeon isn’t always easy; there’s usually guards or traps or locked doors to weave around or punch through. Here’s what your escape is going to look like, either what you need to look out for or what might help you on your way out.
What’s Next? - the thing about a dungeon is that there’s a whole world outside of it, for good or for ill. This is the card to let you know what you’ve got to look forward to out there. Hopefully, it’s a good thing, but sometimes a little warning can keep you from leaping from out of the pan and into the fire.
Think of this, if you will, as the other side of the Troll in the Dungeon spread: this is the one you use if the problem can be better solved by fighting than escaping. I was inspired, if it isn’t visible enough, by the shape of a fist and I went from there. Between the correlation between the hand as an active force and the various associations for the fingers working out surprisingly well, it should read pretty easily. Or at least I hope so.
1. Pinky Finger - The smallest finger, and the one most likely to go astray or catch on something when you’re throwing a punch. This card is to help you look at where your weak points might be, what you might be exposing in this conflict, and where you ought to be careful.
2. Ring Finger - It’s right there in the name: the ring finger is where a wedding ring goes, the finger that has a vein that goes straight to the heart. This card is how this conflict may affect your relationships, both with the person you’re having a conflict with and otherwise.
3. The Middle Finger - Nothing ‘mystical’ about this one: the middle finger is where the sticking point really is, the thing that really burns your biscuits. Now, while you may ‘know’ what that is, this card is there to make you think about it with a little perspective.
4. The Pointer Finger - There’s what made you really angry and then there’s the GOAL of the conflict, and these two are not necessarily the same thing. This card is where you can get a little insight about where you want to drive towards and what you’re really aiming to get.
5. The Thumb - Throwing a punch with your thumb in the wrong position is a surefire way to end up breaking a bone and causing you more pain than it was worth. The thumb card is there to warn you about what you need to be careful of, the very specific dangers to keep in mind in the midst of the conflict. Where the pinky is your vulnerabilities, the thumb is more about the decisions you want to make while you’re duking it out.
