This in-depth eight-card layout shows various aspects of your personal journey. It is good for exploring generalised personal questions, but can also be used to explore relationships if the couple is viewed as a whole.
This spread progresses through eight stages similar to the tarot deck's Major Arcana, beginning with birth and the realm of fertility. After birth comes the initial growth which leads to a period of adaptation, change, and re-balancing oneself. Once the process has grown enough, security comes into focus, as it is necessary to protect what has been earned. After this, once again growth is important, but concerning the mind and creativitity this time, leading to another phase of personal changes. Finally upon completion of the journey, the rewards become evident, and beyond that, one's spiritual development level will have noticeably risen.
| Matters of Completion, Rewards and Luck.  The Hierophant |
|||||
Matters of Change and Metamorphosis. King of Wands |
Matters of Inner Strength and Spiritual Guidance. The Tower |
||||
Matters of Learning, Art and Creativity. 4 of Wands |
Matters of Beginnings, fertility and birth. The Star |
||||
Matters of Protection and Defense. 6 of Cups |
Matters of Growth, Flow and Energy. Knight of Cups |
||||
Matters of Changes, Polarities and Balance. 5 of Cups |
|||||
Matters of Beginnings, fertility and birth.
Under the stars, a nude woman pours out two vials of water, one onto the land, the other into a pond. Opposite the angel of Temperance, her left foot is on the land, her right on the water.
Reversed Meaning:
Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence, conceit, pomposity, pride, pretention, sterility, inefficiency, vanity.
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.
A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding.
Reversed Meaning:
News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects; marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Upright Meaning:
Remembrances, looking back, as on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct.
From the four great staves planted in the foreground there is a great garland suspended; two female figures uplift nosegays; at their side is a bridge over a moat, leading to an old manorial house.
Upright Meaning:
Country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest – home, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace, and the perfected work of these.
The nature to which this card is attributed is dark, ardent, lithe, animated, impassioned, noble. The King uplifts a flowering wand, and wears what is called a cap of maintenance beneath his crown. He bears the symbol of the lion, which is emblazoned on the back of his throne.
Upright Meaning:
Dark man, friendly, countryman, generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected heritage to fall in before very long.
Seated on his throne, the Pope symbolises the male understanding of the spiritual workings of the world and traditional values. Two monks flank him on either side.
Upright Meaning:
Tradition, custom, light, truth, marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude, mercy, inspiration, understanding, spiritual awareness.
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.