The seven-card Horse Shoe is a convenient, basic layout that can be used to answer different types of questions, especially concerning questions where insight would be helpful. Like several other spreads, it has cards representing the past, present, and future.
The pinnacle of the Horse Shoe, looking like the top of the mountain, shows the obstacle or challenge that needs to be addressed and overcome. Card #6 suggests a course of action to meet this challenge. The final card shows the outcome or future, should this advice be followed.
Other clues are provided in Cards #3 and #5, which indicate hidden or outside influences that come into play, affecting the journey to your goal.
Obstacle  The High Priestess |
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Hidden Influences  8 of Cups |
External Influences  7 of Wands |
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The Present  9 of Cups |
Suggestion  8 of Swords |
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The Past  Ace of Wands |
The Outcome  Ace of Swords |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
Ace of Wands
A hand reaching out from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club.
Upright Meaning:
Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance.
9 of Cups
A goodly personage has feasted to his heart's content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him, seeming to indicate that the future is also assured. The picture offers the material side only, but there are other aspects.
Upright Meaning:
Concord, contentment, physical ,; also, victory, success, advantage; satisfaction for the Querent or person for whom the consultation is made.
8 of Cups
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
Upright Meaning:
Giving joy, mildness, timidity, honour, modesty; the decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence.
The High Priestess
Crowned by the moon, the High Priestess is seated between two pillars, one black and the other white. She holds the Tora scroll and the secret wisdom of the world's creation.
Reversed Meaning:
Passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit, surface knowledge, ego, shallowness, superficiality.
7 of Wands
A young man on a craggy eminence brandishing a staff; six other staves are raised towards him from below.
Reversed Meaning:
Perplexity, embarrassments, anxiety. It is also a caution against indecision.
8 of Swords
A woman, blindfolded and bound, with the swords of the card around her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary endurance than of irretrievable bondage.
Reversed Meaning:
Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery, unforeseen disaster, entrapment, bondage.
Ace of Swords
A hand reaches out from a cloud, grasping a sword, the point of which is encircled by a crown.
Reversed Meaning:
Conception, childbirth, augmentation, multiplicity, creativity.