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  10 of Swords |
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Hidden Influences  3 of Wands |
External Influences  King of Pentacles |
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The Present  4 of Swords |
Suggestion  The Hermit |
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The Past  The Sun |
The Outcome  Knight of Cups |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
The Sun
A nude child rides a white pony in the foreground. Behind him the sun boldly enlightens the world, acting as a source of life and role model to several sun flowers.
Upright Meaning:
Material happiness, good marriage, contentment, blessings, lucky break, opportunity, praise, magnificence, brilliance, miracle.
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.
3 of Wands
A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
Reversed Meaning:
The end of troubles, suspension or cessation of adversity, toil and disappointment.
10 of Swords
A murder victim, pierced by ten swords showing the act of excessive force.
Upright Meaning:
Pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death, but the feeling of utter victimisation and hopelessness.
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.
Reversed Meaning:
Vice, weakness, ugliness, perversity, corruption, peril, bullheadedness, defiance, unruliness.
The Hermit
An old man with a walking stick holds up a lantern to enlighten his path.
Reversed Meaning:
Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, phobia, treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption, betrayal.
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.