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 Fool |
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Hidden Influences  4 of Swords |
External Influences  King of Cups |
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The Present  Temperance |
Suggestion  8 of Pentacles |
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The Past  10 of Cups |
The Outcome  Knight of Cups |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
10 of Cups
Appearance of Cups in a rainbow; it is contemplated in wonder and ecstasy by a man and woman below, evidently husband and wife. His right arm is about her; his left is raised upward; she raises her right arm. The two children dancing near them have not observed the prodigy but are happy after their own manner. There is a home-scene beyond.
Reversed Meaning:
False heart, indignation, violence, deception, in-satiety.
Temperance
An androgenous angel mixes fire and water in the act of performing spiritual alchemy. Her left foot is on land, as her right dips into the sea.
Reversed Meaning:
Religions, the priesthood, disunion, unfortunate combinations, competing interests, intoxication, disillusion.
4 of Swords
The effigy of a knight in the attitude of prayer, at full length upon his tomb.
Reversed Meaning:
Wise administration, circumspection, economy, avarice, precaution, testament.
The Fool
A watchdog warns a foolish youth that he is about to carelessly walk off a cliff. The Fool seems totally ignorant of his surrounding and the danger he is in.
Reversed Meaning:
Negligence, inertia, carelessness, apathy, mistake, trespass, transgression, blunder, failure, bungle.
King of Cups
He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea; on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping.
Reversed Meaning:
Dishonest, double-dealing man; roguery, exaction, injustice, vice, scandal, pillage, considerable loss.
8 of Pentacles
An artist in stone at his work, which he exhibits in the form of trophies.
Reversed Meaning:
Voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury, cunning, sham, intrigue, loan shark, swindle, blackmail, cheat, shakedown, double-deal.
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.