Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Tarot Layouts

The Tarot is a deck of cards that originated over 500 years ago in northern Italy. Although the Tarot was first used in a game called Triumphs, it was quickly adopted as a tool for divination, and popularized by occult societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The early Tarot symbolism was deeply rooted in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, but over the centuries it has grown to incorporate everything from Astrology and Kabbalah to Runes (which predate the Tarot by 1000 years) and the I Ching (which predates the Tarot by 2500 years). Today, the Tarot is far and away the most popular tool for spiritual introspection in the West.

There are so many different kinds of tarot card layouts around that it can be difficult to decide which to learn and which to use. There are two tarot card spreads that we have found to be both effective and easy to use: Celtic Cross and 12 Card. The Celtic Cross, also called the Gnostic Cross, is a type of Tarot reading that gives you a character sketch or personality profile of the person you are reading. The Celtic Cross is like a photograph or stop action picture of a person, a cross section or slice of their life. This type of reading is useful for people, animals or any kind of animate beings but not for situations. The Celtic Cross does not answer specific questions on situations but is a quick and easy way to get a personality profile on someone. Unlike the Celtic Cross, which can only offer a personality profile, the 12 Card layout is suitable for reading people, situations, businesses, financial issues, relationships and other situations involving multiple people.

While the Celtic Cross is a still picture snapshot of a person, the 12 Card is a moving picture that shows past, present and future. This allows you to track cause and effect chains much more effectively. The 12 Card layout is so flexible that you can use multiple-card signifiers to capture complex situations, expand certain portions of the reading to get more detail or move the reading back and forth in time. In fact, the 12 Card reading is so flexible that you can actually track your history back through all your past lives. You can also use the reading to predict the probable outcome of situations, from personal life situations to global ones.

  • Single cards spread
  • 3 cards spread
  • 6 cards spread
  • Crescent spread
  • 7 cards spread
  • The resultant layout
  • Ladder layout
  • Bohemlen layout
  • Pyramid layout
  • Oval layout
  • Year ahead layout
  • The horoscope spread
  • Diagonal cross spread
  • The Celtic cross spread
  • Annual layout
  • Spiritual layout
  • Quest layout
  • Four-layer layout
  • X layout
  • Health layout
  • 7 chakra layout
  • Self-meditation layout
  • Life tree layout
  • Mind-body-soul layout
  • Gypsy layout - 1
  • Gypsy layout - 2

1 comment:

Yuri Romanov said...
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