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  Queen of Wands |
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Hidden Influences  4 of Swords |
External Influences  The World |
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The Present  Queen of Pentacles |
Suggestion  4 of Pentacles |
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The Past  King of Pentacles |
The Outcome  The Tower |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
King of Pentacles
His face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but stubborn. The bull's head is a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, signifying the four elements of nature and the spirit which governs them. This suit is sometimes represented as coins or disks, and is symbolic of money and material goods or services.
Upright Meaning:
Valour, intelligence, business aptitude, mathematical gifts and attainments; success, proficiency, arrival, execution.
Queen of Pentacles
The face suggests that of a dark, intelligent woman, who has the quality of greatness. She contemplates her pentacle, using it as a tool of skrying and divination.
Upright Meaning:
Opulence, generosity, magnificence, liberty, meditation, divination, intelligence, dignity, potence, grand, important, majestic.
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.
Queen of Wands
Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King of Wands, though she is more charismatic.
Upright Meaning:
A dark woman, countrywoman, friendly, chaste, loving, honourable. If the card beside her signifies a man, she is well disposed towards him; if a woman, she is interested in you. Also indicates love of money, or a certain success in business.
The World
A nude, dancing female holding two batons, symbolic of Mother Earth and Mother Nature. She is encircled by a wreath and surrounded by the cherubs who are the guardians of Heaven and Earth.
Reversed Meaning:
fixity, stagnation, absence, nullification, dullness, discouragement, false visions, non-existence, lack-lustre, nullity.
4 of Pentacles
A crowned figure, having a pentacle over his crown, clasps another with hands and arms; two pentacles are under his feet. He clings to what he has.
Upright Meaning:
Possessiveness, desperation, obsession, gift, legacy, inheritance, materialism.
The Tower
Lightning strikes the top of a Tower, knocking the crown off the top. Reminiscent of the Tower of Babel, two figures fall from grace.
Upright Meaning:
Misery, calamity, deception, ruin, catastrophe, distress, adversity, disaster, discord, falling apart, going all to pieces, injury.