The Three Pyramids Spread
Difficulty: Complicated
Basically, there is the main pyramid in the centre, and two smaller pyramids on each side. One is inverted.
Positions 1 & 3 represent where the reader comes from, or what has made them/shaped them on the various levels. Can be from environment, upbringing, schooling, etc. A look at the past, but with more objectivity than is usually given when using tarot cards.
Positions 4 & 5 represent who the reader is right now. May or may not make pleasant reading, but hey, this is what this is about, right?
Position 6 represents who the reader could be. Again, it might or might not look good, but a person can learn from that and change who they are accordingly. (This is a bit like how Scrooge did things in 'A Christmas Carol'.)
Positions 7 & 8 are the reader's strengths. This is the light they have, which can be bought to the forefront. What carries the person should not be hidden or unacknowledged.
Position 9 represents what should be given to oneself or created within.
Position 10 & 11 represent personal areas for development or weaknesses. Again, might not make good reading, but if someone looks at their strengths first, they will be able to see a balance is there and can choose to focus on one side or the other. This is where a person could really see how their shadow side comes into play.
Position 12 represents what the reader should be offering externally, or what they can bring to their world or to others who inhabit that world.
Your Three Pyramids Reading
Strength #1 |
Strength #2 |
 |
Exhibit |
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Nurture This |
Potential |
Infirmity #1 |
Infirmity #2 |
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Now #1 |
Now #2 |
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Base (past) #1 |
Base (past) #2 |
Base (past) #3 |
1: Base #1
The figure calls for no special description – the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull's head should be noted as a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is represented throughout as engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, typifying the correspondence of the four elements in human nature and that by which they may be governed. In many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers. I have not invented the substitution of pentacles and I have no special cause to sustain in respect of the alternative. But the consensus of divinatory meanings is on the side of some change, because the cards do not happen to deal especially with questions of money.
Divinatory Meaning:
Valour, realising intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, sometimes mathematical gifts and attainments of this kind; success in these paths.
2: Base #2
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.
3: Base #3
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.
4: Where you are now #1
He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea; on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping. The implicit is that the Sign of the Cup naturally refers to water, which appears in all the court cards.
Reversed Meaning:
Dishonest, double-dealing man; roguery, exaction, injustice, vice, scandal, pillage, considerable loss.
5: Where you are now #2
A winged angel, with the sign of the sun upon his forehead and on his breast the square and triangle of the septenary. I speak of him in the masculine sense, but the figure is neither male nor female. It is held to be pouring the essences of life from chalice to chalice. It has one foot upon the earth and one upon waters, thus illustrating the nature of the essences. A direct path goes up to certain heights on the verge of the horizon, and above there is a great light, through which a crown is seen vaguely. Hereof is some part of the Secret of Eternal Life, as it is possible to man in his incarnation. All the conventional emblems are renounced herein.
So also are the conventional meanings, which refer to changes in the seasons, perpetual movement of life and even the combination of ideas. It is, moreover, untrue to say that the figure symbolises the genius of the sun, though it is the analogy of solar light, realised in the third part of our human triplicity. It is called Temperance fantastically, because, when the rule of it obtains in our consciousness, it tempers, combines and harmonises the psychic and material natures. Under that rule we know in our rational part something of whence we came and whither we are going.
Divinatory Meaning:
Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation.
6: Your potential
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind.
Divinatory Meaning:
Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration.
7: Strength #1
He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but they are not those of the Temple which is guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a sceptre terminating in the triple cross, and with his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign which is called that of esotericism, distinguishing between the manifest and concealed part of doctrine. It is noticeable in this connexion that the High Priestess makes no sign. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two priestly ministers in albs kneel before him. He has been usually called the Pope, which is a particular application of the more general office that he symbolises. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the High Priestess is the prevailing genius of the esoteric, withdrawn power. The proper meanings of this card have suffered woeful admixture from nearly all hands. Grand Orient says truly that the Hierophant is the power of the keys, exoteric orthodox doctrine, and the outer side of the life which leads to the doctrine; but he is certainly not the prince of occult doctrine, as another commentator has suggested.
He is rather the summa totius theologiae, when it has passed into the utmost rigidity of expression; but he symbolises also all things that are righteous and sacred on the manifest side. As such, he is the channel of grace belonging to the world of institution as distinct from that of Nature, and he is the leader of salvation for the human race at large. He is the order and the head of the recognised hierarchy, which is the reflection of another and greater hierarchic order; but it may so happen that the pontiff forgets the significance of this his symbolic state and acts as if he contained within his proper measures all that his sign signifies or his symbol seeks to shew forth. He is not, as it has been thought, philosophy – except on the theological side; he is not inspiration; and he is not religion, although he is a mode of its expression.
Reversed Meaning:
Society, good understanding, concord, overkindness, weakness.
8: Strength #2
One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation.
Divinatory Meaning:
Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair.
9: Nurture this
A hand issues from a cloud, grasping as word, the point of which is encircled by a crown.
Divinatory Meaning:
Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest, triumph of force. It is a card of great force, in love as well as in hatred. The crown may carry a much higher significance than comes usually within the sphere of fortune-telling.
10: Weakness #1
The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end.
There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance. The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest.
Divinatory Meaning:
End, mortality, destruction, corruption also, for a man, the loss of a benefactor for a woman, many contrarieties; for a maid, failure of marriage projects.
11: Weakness #2
The waters are beneath, and thereon are water-lilies; the hand issues from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup; the dew of water is falling on all sides. It is an intimation of that which may lie behind the Lesser Arcana.
Divinatory Meaning:
House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.
12: Behavior to exhibit
The face suggests that of a dark woman, whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.
Divinatory Meaning:
Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.
