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 Wheel of Fortune |
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Hidden Influences  Knight of Cups |
External Influences  8 of Wands |
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The Present  2 of Pentacles |
Suggestion  3 of Cups |
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The Past  6 of Cups |
The Outcome  7 of Pentacles |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
6 of Cups
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Reversed Meaning:
The future, renewal, that which will come to pass presently.
2 of Pentacles
A dancing young man has a pentacle in either hand, and they are joined by the lemniscate, the sign of eternity.
Reversed Meaning:
Enforced gaiety, simulated enjoyment, literal sense, handwriting, composition, exchanging letters.
Knight of Cups
Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to those higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterise this card. He too is a dreamer, but the images of the side of sense haunt him in his vision.
Reversed Meaning:
Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.
The Wheel of Fortune
The Sphinx sits atop a wheel in the sky, symbolic of the wisdom of fate. Other Egyptian characters ride the wheel as it turns, which is surrounded by four cherubs who serve as the guardians of Heaven.
Upright Meaning:
Destiny, success, elevation, luck, felicity, well-being, bliss, euphoria, fun times, good luck, fruition, godsend.
8 of Wands
The card represents motion through the immovable – a flight of wands through an open country; but they draw to the term of their course. That which they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold.
Upright Meaning:
Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity, swiftness, a messenger; great haste, great hope, speed towards an end which promises assured felicity; generally, that which is on the move; the arrows of love.
3 of Cups
Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.
Upright Meaning:
The conclusion of the matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing.
7 of Pentacles
A young man, leaning on his staff, looks intently at seven pentacles attached to a clump of greenery on his right; one would say that these were his treasures and that his heart was there.
Reversed Meaning:
Somebody trying to borrow money and the anxiety that this spawns; altercation, quarrels, haggle, bad deal, rip-off, pestering, entice, con, beguile, coax, bait and switch.