Powerful One-Card Tarot Spreads

Part 6 by John Gilbert

When questions as a group are difficult for most beginners and even some experts. The Dynamic Elemental Tarot Spreads offer one way of answering When questions efficiently and effectively. The rules are easy to remember:

Rule Number One: Decide which element is expressed by the question. This requires you to have good definitions for the types of things related to each element. If the question is about the client's work, you need to decide if this is an emotional issue (Water) or an intellectual one (Air). It may simply be a work question which you need to assign to either Fire or Earth.

Rule Number Two: Prepare the deck in any way you decide. Draw cards from the deck using the method of your choice. Keep drawing cards and placing them in piles according to their element until you draw a card of the element expressed by the question. This is the last card you'll draw from the deck.

Rule Number Three: The last card drawn is the answer to the question as to when something will happen. It will happen just as soon as the event depicted by the card drawn occurs. Time is irrelevant. When the client does what the card advises him or her to do, the desired event will occur.

Rule Number Four: The cards drawn prior to the final card depict events which will also need to occur, but not necessarily in the order drawn.

Here's an example using the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. My client asked When will find a job? which I took to be a Fire question (career). The cards drawn (by element in the order drawn) were:

Spirit: Hierophant, Tower reversed Water: Six of Cups Fire: Four of Wands reversed (last card)

In the system being used the fours have to do with love and the sixes with balance of the emotions. The Hierophant is Intuition and the reversed Tower is a call to wake up. Reversed Wands refer to intuitive insights. My interpretation was: As soon as you start listening to your intuitive insights, you'll find a job you love. In order to do this you'll need to become less emotional about finding a job - balance your mind, heart and spirit. You'll also need to wake up and listen to your intuition.

The client discussed these issues with me. She agreed she dismisses her intuitive insights as false beliefs and illusions of grandeur. She agreed she's started to panic about a job and she believes this panic has scared off a couple of prospective employers. She asked for help in overcoming her fears and we created an amulet to help keep away these negative feelings of fear and panic. (Yes, the moon was waxing and I broke one of Donald Michael Kraig's suggested rules for amulets. But in his book Don gave us all permission to break the rules.) She also identified the kind of job she'd really like to have. In my experience, knowing what you really want is the first step in attaining it.

This wasn't a one card tarot reading, but it could have been done that way. The first three cards drawn could have been ignored and I could have used only the inverted Four of Wands to answer her question. If she asked for further clarification, I could use the other cards or just the second to last card drawn. This raises an interesting question about how to keep track of both the element and the sequence of the cards.

I do it by laying the cards out in five columns and placing the second card on top of the first so both cards can be identified. You might think of this as setting up five columns of solitaire. I have Spirit on the left followed by Fire, Water, Air and Earth in that order. That works for me. I have no idea what will work best for you. But the good news is you can figure that all out for yourself.

Your assignment this week is to try answering a few When questions using the approach suggested here. Then for extra credit you can create your own method for answering When questions. Next time we'll take a look at some ways of answering How and Why questions. In the meantime, have a great week.

Powerful One Card Tarot Spreads - Part Seven

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