Horse Shoe Spread
Difficulty: Easy
The Horse Shoe is an old classic tarot spread. It is more advanced than the 3-card reading, yet simpler than most other spreads. It is a versatile method that can be used for most queries, though there are other spreads which would go into more depth. Like the simple Past, Present, and Future spread, it contains these cards in positions 1, 2, and 7, but also has 4 other cards that help the reader understand how to deal with the Future better. The cards are to be read as follows:
- The Past: This card represents past events that are affecting the question.
- The Present: This card represents the current state or immediately approaching influence.
- Hidden Influences: Things that you may not be aware of, or barely be aware of.
- Obstacles: This is the challenge. Obstacles might be avoided, or you may have to deal with them.
- External Influences: Attitudes and thoughts about this situation from people around the querent.
- Suggestions: Recommended course of action.
- The Final Outcome: This card represents what would happen if the suggestion is followed.
Your Horse Shoe Reading
Obstacle  8 of Cups |
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Hidden Influences  The Emperor |
External Influences  Justice |
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The Present  6 of Cups |
Suggestion  Queen of Cups |
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The Past  9 of Wands |
The Outcome  10 of Wands |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
9 of Wands
The figure leans upon his staff and has an expectant look, as if awaiting an enemy. Behind are eight other staves - erect, in orderly disposition, like a palisade.
Divinatory Meaning:
The card signifies strength in opposition. If attacked, the person will meet an onslaught boldly; and his build shews, that he may prove a formidable antagonist. With this main significance there are all its possible adjuncts - delay, suspension, adjournment.
The Present Card represents the current state or immediately approaching influence.
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.
Hidden Influences - Things that you may not be aware of, or barely be aware of.
The Emperor
He has a form of the Crux ansata for his sceptre and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch - commanding, stately, seated on a throne, the arms of which axe fronted by ram heads. He is executive and realization, the power of this world, here clothed with the highest of its natural attributes. He is occasionally represented as seated on a cubic stone, which, however, confuses some of the issues. He is the virile power, to which the Empress responds, and in this sense is he who seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains virgo intacta.
It should be understood that this card and that of the Empress do not precisely represent the condition of married life, though this state is implied. On the surface, as I have indicated, they stand for mundane royalty, uplifted on the seats of the mighty; but above this there is the suggestion of another presence. They signify also - and the male figure especially - the higher kingship, occupying the intellectual throne. Hereof is the lordship of thought rather than of the animal world. Both personalities, after their own manner, are full of strange experience, but theirs is not consciously the wisdom which draws from a higher world. The Emperor has been described as (a) will in its embodied form, but this is only one of its applications, and (b) as an expression of virtualities contained in the Absolute Being - but this is fantasy.
Reversed Meaning:
Benevolence, compassion, credit; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity.
Obstacle - This is the challenge.
8 of Cups
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
Divinatory Meaning:
The card speaks for itself on the surface, but other readings are entirely antithetical - giving joy, mildness, timidity, honour, modesty. In practice, it is usually found that the card shews the decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence - either for good or evil.
External Influences - Attitudes about this situation from people around 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.
Suggestion - The recommended course of action.
Queen of Cups
Beautiful, fair, dreamy - as one who sees visions in a cup. This is, however, only one of her aspects; she sees, but she also acts, and her activity feeds her dream.
Reversed Meaning:
The accounts vary; good woman; otherwise, distinguished woman but one not to be trusted; perverse woman; vice, dishonour, depravity.
The Outcome - What will happen if the suggestion is followed.
10 of Wands
A man oppressed by the weight of the ten staves which he is carrying.
Divinatory Meaning:
A card of many significances, and some of the readings cannot be harmonized. I set aside that which connects it with honour and good faith. The chief meaning is oppression simply, but it is also fortune, gain, any kind of success, and then it is the oppression of these things. It is also a card of false-seeming, disguise, perfidy. The place which the figure is approaching may suffer from the rods that he carries. Success is stultified if the Nine of Swords follows, and if it is a question of a lawsuit, there will be certain loss.
