Comic Strip Spread
Difficulty: Easy
Note: This spread works best with decks like the Diary of a Broken Soul or Surrealist Tarot because they display scenes rather than pips and do not use reversals.
The Comic Strip Spread is a simple nine-card chronological spread that looks like a page of a comic book. This method should be used to get a glimpse of the future as it would pan out naturally. It may be insightful to use this spread in coordination with biorhythms. The spread is easy to read as a storyboard, just like a comic strip.
The main subject is apparent in the first card, while the story plays out through the following tarot cards.
It is important to pay particular attention to the cards and the relationships with their neighbours. Notice which directions the cards are facing, and how they interact.
Your Comic Strip Reading
7 of Pentacles |
3 of Cups |
4 of Pentacles |
Page of Cups |
7 of Cups |
Justice |
10 of Wands |
2 of Wands |
6 of Cups |
Card 1: 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.
Divinatory Meaning:
These are exceedingly contradictory; in the main, it is a card of money, business, barter; but one reading gives altercation, quarrels – and another innocence, ingenuity, purgation.
Card 2: 3 of Cups
Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.
Divinatory Meaning:
The conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing.
Card 3: 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 holds to that which he has.
Divinatory Meaning:
The surety of possessions, cleaving to that which one has, gift, legacy, inheritance.
Card 4: Page of Cups
A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form.
Divinatory Meaning:
Fair young man, one impelled to render service and with whom the Querent will be connected; a studious youth; news, message; application, reflection, meditation; also, these things directed to business.
Card 5: 7 of Cups
Strange chalices of vision, but the images are more especially those of the fantastic spirit.
Reversed Meaning:
Desire, will, determination, project.
Card 6: Justice
The figure is seated between pillars, like the High Priestess, and on this account it seems desirable to indicate that the moral principle which deals unto every man according to his works – while, of course, it is in strict analogy with higher things; – differs in its essence from the spiritual justice which is involved in the idea of election. The latter belongs to a mysterious order of Providence, in virtue of which it is possible for certain men to conceive the idea of dedication to the highest things. The operation of this is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have no canon of criticism or ground of explanation concerning it. It is analogous to the possession of the fairy gifts and the high gifts and the gracious gifts of the poet: we have them or have not, and their presence is as much a mystery as their absence. The law of Justice is not however involved by either alternative. In conclusion, the pillars of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess into another.
Divinatory Meaning:
Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law.
Card 7: 10 of Wands
A man oppressed by the weight of the ten staves which he is carrying.
Reversed Meaning:
Contrarieties, difficulties, intrigues, and their analogies.
Card 8: 2 of Wands
A tall man looks from a battlemented roof over sea and shore; he holds a globe in his right hand, while a staff in his left rests on the battlement; another is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lily should be noticed on the left side.
Reversed Meaning:
Surprise, wonder, enchantment, emotion, trouble, fear.
Card 9: 6 of Cups
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Divinatory Meaning:
A card of the past and of memories, looking back, as – for example, – 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.
