Learning about Tarot through the Cards
One of the most difficult things about tarot reading, after you’ve learned the cards themselves, is picking a spread to use for your reading. There are a variety of spreads for Tarot readings and knowing which one is best is not always an intuitive thing, at least not at the start. This article is going to give you some basic guidelines for choosing a spread to use as well as go over what the most common spreads are. Hopefully, after reading this, you’ll have a good starting point for the spread you decide to use for your subjects.
There are many spreads, some of which are extremely complicated. However, I have found that there are three spreads in particular that fit just about any occasion and should be more than enough to get you started. We can dive into more advanced spreads in future articles.
The most basic spread is the Celtic Cross. This is the most commonly used, and quite honestly, will probably be more than good enough for just about any reading that is asking a general question. What I mean by a general question is one such as, “Will I be getting a promotion at work?” This is a common question that people will ask and doesn’t require too much in depth analysis. For questions of these types, a Celtic Cross spread, which consists of laying out ten cards in a certain order, should be more than good enough to answer the subject’s question. You will probably use this spread about 95% of the time.
The next most common spread is the Celtic Block. This spread is actually very similar to the Celtic Cross as the first ten cards are laid out the same way. However, with the Celtic Block spread, you deal out four more cards, 11 through 14, underneath the fist ten that were dealt out. This spread is usually used when a little more information is required. You will begin to build an intuition for when to use this spread. One thing you must understand is that you can’t start with a Celtic Cross and decide to convert it into a Celtic Block. These are two different spreads and you must decide beforehand which one you are going to use.
