A spread is just a set of questions laid out in order. Each position asks something, and the card that lands there answers it. Once you see spreads that way, you can read any spread — and design your own.
Reading Cards Together
In a spread, read each card with the four layers, then look at the whole. Do the cards share a colour, a direction, a mood? Is there a figure in one card that seems to be looking at another? Is one card clearly the odd one out? The story between the cards is often more useful than any single card.
Keep the first reading of a spread short: one sentence per position, then one sentence for the whole. You can always go deeper. A spread you can summarise is a spread you understood.
Everyday Spreads
These four cover most situations. Lay the cards left to right unless the spread says otherwise.
- ✦Three-card check-in: 1 Where I've been · 2 Where I am · 3 What's next if I keep going
- ✦Decision (two paths): 1 The heart of the choice · 2 Path A · 3 Path B · 4 What I need to remember either way
- ✦Stuck spread: 1 What's blocking me · 2 What I'm not seeing · 3 One step I can take this week
- ✦Relationship: 1 What I bring · 2 What they bring (as I experience it) · 3 What lives between us · 4 What would help
Cycle Spreads You Come Back To
Cycle spreads are the ones that build a practice. Do the same spread on the same day each week or each moon, keep the photos or notes, and compare. Patterns appear over months that you'd never see in a single reading.
- ✦Weekly (Sunday): 1 Theme of the week · 2 What to lean into · 3 What to watch for
- ✦New moon: 1 What's ending · 2 What's beginning · 3 What I'm planting · 4 What will help it grow · 5 What to let go of
- ✦Full moon: 1 What has come to light · 2 What I'm proud of · 3 What I'm ready to release
- ✦Five-card cross: centre = the situation, left = the past, right = the near future, top = what's helping, bottom = what's in the way
The practice · 15 minutes
Your First Three-Card Reading
- 1Choose a real, current situation and write a clear open question about it.
- 2Shuffle and lay out three cards: Where I've been · Where I am · What's next if I keep going.
- 3Give each card one sentence using the four layers.
- 4Now look across all three: shared colours, direction of movement, a card that doesn't fit. Write one sentence for the whole spread.
- 5Ask: what is one thing I will do differently because of this reading? Write it down.
- 6Photograph the spread or log it so you can look back at it in a month.
Coming back to it: Pick one cycle spread — weekly or new moon — and commit to it for three cycles. After the third, lay out your notes side by side and look for a card or theme that repeats.
Journal prompts
- “What story did the three cards tell together that none told alone?”
- “Which position surprised me most?”
- “Which cycle spread will I commit to, and on what day?”
Saved privately on this device. Come back tomorrow and log it again.
Check Your Understanding
3 quick questions. Retake it any time.
1. What is a spread, in the simplest terms?
2. When reading a spread, what should you look for beyond each single card?
3. Why do cycle spreads build a stronger practice?
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