Decision Spread

 

 

Difficulty: Easy

This simple but highly useful spread calls for a question to be asked in this format:

'What happens if I do (X), and what happens if I do not do (X)?'

Please note that it should not be viewed as a decision between two different options, but about whether a single option should be exercised or not. A second option would call for a separate reading.

Card #7 is the significator, the overall theme of the query.

Cards #3, #1, & #5 represent the chronological sequence of events that occurs if the reader chooses to do (X).

Cards #4, #2, & #6 represent the chronological sequence of events that unfolds if the reader chooses not to do (X).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your Decision Reading

The Significator Knight of Swords	Outcome if you do it:
	10 of Cups	Justice	Page of Wands
	Outcome if you don't do it:
	The Chariot	7 of Wands	4 of Wands

 

 

 

 

Knight of Swords

He is riding in full course, as if scattering his enemies. In the design he is really a prototypical hero of romantic chivalry. He might almost be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart.

Divinatory Meaning:

Skill, bravery, capacity, defence, address, enmity, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. There is therefore a sense in which the card signifies death, but it carries this meaning only in its proximity to other cards of fatality.

 

 

 

Outcome if you do it:

 

 

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.

Divinatory Meaning:

Contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also, perfection of human love and friendship; if with several picture-cards, a person who is taking charge of the Querent's interests; also, the town, village or country inhabited by the Querent.

 

 

 

 

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.

Reversed Meaning:

Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.

 

 

 

 

Page of Wands

In a scene similar to the former, a young man stands in the act of proclamation. He is unknown but faithful, and his tidings are strange.

Divinatory Meaning:

Dark young man, faithful, a lover, an envoy, a postman. Beside a man, he will bear favourable testimony concerning him. A dangerous rival, if followed by the Page of Cups. Has the chief qualities of his suit. He may signify family intelligence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outcome if you do not do it:

 

 

The Chariot

An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword and corresponding, broadly speaking, to the traditional description which I have given in the first part. On the shoulders of the victorious hero are supposed to be the Urim and Thummim. He has led captivity captive; he is conquest on all planes – in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. He has thus replied to the sphinx, and it is on this account that I have accepted the variation of Eliphas Levi; two sphinxes thus draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.

It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (b) that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; (c) that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; (d) that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and (e) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor if she questioned him could he answer. He is not hereditary royalty and he is not priesthood.

Divinatory Meaning:

Succour, providence also war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble.

 

 

 

 

7 of Wands

A young man on a craggy eminence brandishing a staff; six other staves are raised towards him from below.

Reversed Meaning:

Perplexity, embarrassments, anxiety. It is also a caution against indecision.

 

 

 

 

4 of Wands

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.

Reversed Meaning:

They are for once almost on the surface – country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest-home, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace, and the perfected work of these.