Another Celtic Cross Spread

I have noticed that in my Celtic Cross readings, the Past & Future cards aren’t that useful, since I usually read it to work on someone’s problems. I have never had any real use of these cards… so I made up my own spread without them.

1. Present / The current situation
2. Obstacle – the main problem that must be dealt with now
3. Feelings – what’s going on on the emotional side
4. Spiritually – what’s going on on the spiritual side
5. Causes – the roots of the question
6. Consequences
7. Advice – an advice from Tarot
8. External factors that cannot be influenced by the querent
9. Hopes and fears
10. Synthesis / overall outcome – what would the answer be with only one card

I replaced the “past” and “future” cards by “Feelings” and “Spirit”, which explore two different sides of the question regarding the querent.

What do you think of it ? I haven’t tried it yet, however I think it could be useful at times.

Enjoy, and let me know if you liked it !

A Grand Lenormand tutorial

Recently, I discovered the Astro Mythological Lenormand deck. As I was first attracted by its wonderful symbols and pictures everywhere, I started doing some readings with it. However, it was pretty hard to gather data about it from the Internet. Curiously, english tutorials about Lenormand were kinda lacking… (the Astro Mythological one, not the small deck which has tons of tutorials ’round there) So I hope this brief introduction from a Grand-Lenormand amateur will help you.

Why The Grand Lenormand?

Why would you learn the Grand Lenormand Deck? Some people think it’s too hard for them, while others would answer they don’t need it or Tarot is enough. Let me give you my opinion: this Deck is not really more powerful than Tarot. You can do pretty much with Tarot alone. However, you would miss an opportunity to use a very specialized tool : while I wouldn’t use it for philosophical / spiritual questions, it seems to be very useful and accurate when you need precise answers to concrete, everyday problems. It can give a fairly detailed view of what’s going to happen to a person, or what is the relationship between Anna and Max, or what would happen if you sold your house and left your job to organize a huge trip all around the world.

The cards

Basically, the Grand Lenormand Deck (also called the Astro Mythological Lenormand Deck) contains 54 cards: 52 “classic” playing card games and 2 cards representing a male and a female querent. They can be divided in 5 categories :

• The Conquest of the Golden Fleece, which represents Business.
• The Trojan War, representing the Right of the Strong over the Weak.
• Hermetic Knowledge (basically alchemy stuff), which represents Marriage, and more generally relations between people.
• The Zodiac Cards, representing an amount of Time.
• The Unexpected.

Here’s a link showing where each card can be found.

Here’s how each card looks like :

As you can see, it has a lot of data on it (and that’s what repelling most people). However, as a starter, you should focus mainly on 3 elements : the Main Picture, the Left Picture and the Right Picture. You’ll have to focus on the meaning of one of these images depending on the position of the card in your readings. All the other elements are miscellaneous symbols contributing to the card’s meaning, but you’ll have the occasion to learn these afterwards, I guess. I’ll add some useful links for you at the end of this.

So now, to the main topic : the reading itself.

A standard reading

Here’s how I do it, with my most basic spread :

• Think of a question that follow these rules. You should focus on it for the next 3 steps, it’s very important if you want to have a nice reading.
• Shuffle your cards.
• Cut your deck with your left hand (some people care about that).
• Take 5 cards with your left hand, and put them on a line. You can draw only 3 of them for a faster reading, or with more for a more detailed one, but I strongly advise to use an odd number of cards to have a central theme (this is important).

If you have no “querent” card in this reading :

All the blue zones are significant in this reading.

• Read the center picture of the central card. This should be the main message the reading conveys. You can also use the flowers/constellations/letters/geomantic figures for a deeper meaning.
• Interpret the symbols and left pictures of the cards at the left of the central one. These tell about the querent’s intellect and morality.
• Interpret the symbols and right pictures of the cards at the right of the central one. These speak of the querent’s desires, dreams and goals.

The querent card

The Querent card in the reading.

If you have a “querent” card representing a person of the same gender, it is the central card, so you should interpret the reading accordingly. If it depicts a person of the opposite gender, then it’s someone that is pretty important to the querent’s life.

Additional data

Here are some websites that should be giving you some additional insight regarding this deck :

A website listing tables of cards meanings

A blog containing an english translation of cards meanings

A nice website about Geomancy

Even more data about Geomancy

Some data about Constellations

And… that’s all !

Please be indulgent, this tutorial is still evolving… Hope that helped !

Improved I Ching Tarot Spread

Lately, I have been playing a bit with I Ching, an ancient chinese divination method, which was performed using 3 identical coins (in its simplest form). As a Tarot amateur, I started wondering, “Is there any way to perform I Ching with tarot cards instead of coins?”. I started thinking of it, and I created this method that not only creates the I Ching hexagram needed, but also provides additional Tarot data to answer a specific question.

Be careful though : I consider this spread to be a pretty complicated one :

• It gives you both a hexagram and up to 12 Tarot cards to understand
• You need some basic knowledge on how to do an I Ching reading
• You need pretty good knowledge about Tarot.

It is not suited for beginners, and I believe it is even more complicated than the Celtic Cross spread (which full interpretation is always complex, no matter what you say), so keep it for big questions where you need an accurate answer. My first reading using this spread gave me 7 pages of data and took me hours to understand! (I’m no expert though, even if I’m not a beginner anymore I believe)

With that said, let me explain how it works.

The I Ching reading

Building the Hexagram

First of all, draw 6 cards, one for each line of the final Hexagram. As in any I Ching reading, you build the hexagram from the base to the top, the same way you would build a building. Here’s how you determine the line corresponding to a card :

• For a Major arcana :
  • if the card number is odd, then the line is young yang
  • if the card number is even, then the line is young yin
  • if the card number ends with 1, then the line is old yang
  • if the card number ends with 0, or if the card is the Fool, then the line is old yin
• For Minors :
  • For wands : young yang
  • For cups : young yin
  • For swords : old yang
  • For Pentacles : old yin

Yin/Yang	Major: card number’s unit digit	suit	Symbol
old yin	0 / The Fool	Pentacles	—x—
young yang	3, 5, 7, 9	Wands	——–
young yin	2, 4, 6, 8	Cups	—  —
old yang	1	Swords	—o—

Once this is done, you have your main hexagram.

Moving lines

Draw one card for each moving line. It will help you understand them.

The green cards should only be drawn if the corresponding line is changing (old yin or old yang).

Interpretation

From now on, everything looks like a classic I Ching reading :

• Look for the present hexagram in the book.
• Read the part in the book for each changing line. This spread also provides an additional card for each moving line, to help you understand its context and how it applies to you.
• Apply the moving lines and look for the transformed hexagram in the book, it represents how things will evolve.

The Tarot reading

As you can see on this picture, this spread has 3 “rows”. How to read the Tarot from this is pretty simple.

• The bottom line (containing cards 1 and 4) represents the querent’s past.
• The middle line (with cards 2 and 5) represents the querent’s present.
• The upper line (with cards 3 and 6) is the querent’s future.

That’s it ! I will add a practical example of a reading I did (of myself) when I have enough time.

I hope you’ll like this method. Feel free to comment to give me any feedback/suggestion/question, and tell me if this works !

Pyramid 6-card Spread

This spread is specifically designed if you got a particularly unclear Past/Present/Future reading. It shows new elements to analyze the situation and, hopefully, understand everything. Also, it’s very special to draw : each card is the sum of these directly below.

1. Past
2. Present
3. Future
4. = Card 1 + Card 2. This explains why things happened this way.
5. = Card 2 + Card 3. This represents the consequences of the events currently happening.
6. = Card 4 + Card 5. This is the summary of the reading (which card you would draw if you had to draw only one).

To use this spread, start from your Past/Present/Future reading (cards 1, 2 and 3), then sum the cards up as described to get the new cards. No additional random card drawing there, as you simply want deeper understanding of your current data.

Hope it helps. Enjoy!

A Tarot Oui-ja board !

I was getting some data about Oui-ja boards… then an idea came to me. Why not combining Oui-ja and Tarot? This way, you could have an instant answer to the question you have asked! This would be a pretty different way to communicate with spirits, but I do think it worths a try.

And I realized that board. Here it is, freely available for you!

The Oui-ja board rules of use don’t really change with this board, except that you use cards instead of the alphabet. Be careful, though: if you start enumerating cards in a descending order starting from The World down to The Fool, please stop the Oui-ja session at once; the spirit is trying to escape the board here.

I hope some of you guys get to try it one day and send me some feedback!

The Tarot Oui-ja board can be downloaded here.

Enjoy!

Persona 4 Deck on Visual Tarot

I have created a Persona 4 deck to use with Visual Tarot, so you can use them in your readings.

Here’s how they look like:

This is tomorrow’s weather according to my Weather spread.

The deck is available here. Sadly, I have no idea who ripped the pictures, but any credit to them (of course, get in touch with me if you want me to remove this post).

Hope you enjoy it!

Persona 4 belongs to Atlus

Night 5-card Spread

This spread is for people who want to use Tarot as a tool to help them dream correctly (and hopefully reach Lucid Dreaming as I try ?). It allows you to have an insight on how your next night will be. This is particularly focused on how successful you are at dreaming…

If you don’t understand all these acronyms below, I advise you to look there.

Here’s the spread !

1. What will happen before you fall asleep? For the dreamers, it also includes any WILD/MILD/autosuggestion attempts, and daydreaming.
2. What will happen during the first part of the night? I consider it as what’s happening before 4 am (roughly), during your first sleep cycles. For WBTB dreamers, that corresponds to how successful you are regarding dreams before you wake up for your WBTB attempt.
3. What will happen during the second part of the night? That’s what’s happening between 4 and 6 am. For WBTB dreamers, this hints to your waking time before you go back to bed for the real attempt.
4. What will happen at dawn? This includes any time after 6 am, and until you wake up. For dreamers, it is mostly about your WBTB attempt.
5. What will happen after your night? This is also about DILD.

As you can notice, it’s very focused on dreamers… however, I guess it can also be useful for these studying their sleeping patterns, or people working during nights.

Hope you’ll enjoy it!

3-card spreads

Here are the main generic 3-card spreads I use :

Past/ Present / Future

The classic one. Everyone use it, and it works pretty well !

Context / Solution x 2

The last two cards are to be interpreted together here. They’re both explaining the solution. I think it makes the whole interpretation easier.

Context / Solution / Advice

This is an alternative of the Context / Solution 2-card spread. I really like the “Advice” card which can be pretty helpful to understand things !

I’ll keep updating this post as I gain experience with Tarot, so you can check it out from time to time.

Enjoy !

Life 5-card altered spread

Here’s a nice little spread about life. It’s very inspired from this one, except that I have simply added a card at the center that would be the synthesis of everything. This one can be obtained by adding up all other cards’ values.

Here’s the spread :

Enjoy !

Weather Forecast 5-card spread

I’ve been trying to work on my Weather Forecast spread, and I don’t think it’s possible to make something realistic with only 3 cards… The last one, “other stuff card”, is really way too unclear to be understood correctly.

Therefore, here’s an improved version of it, with 5 cards :

For the 2nd card, you have to ask whether the weather is going to be hot or cold according to common sense (hot during summer, cold during winter).

The 5th card is, as usual, a synthesis that you can get by summing up the value of all the arcanas that you drew.

I’m using this spread to test whether the Tarot can forecast weather, and according to my current results, it has an accuracy of more than 70% ! That’s a pretty nice result if you compare it to meteorology.

Enjoy !