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
The Devils |
The Sorcerer |
The Swamp |
The Empress |
Balance |
The Moon |
The Chamber |
The Theocrat |
The Sun |
Card 1: The Devils
11:00 – Card 9
AKA The Devil in traditional Tarot. Female, Fire, Capricorn.
Predators, perpetrators, the strong over the weak. They are movers and manipulators of fate, but always at each other’s throats. Time devours its own children and this is the card of that act, for time itself is only a continuum, it's really time's children that devour each other.
Card 2: The Sorcerer
AKA The Magician in traditional Tarot.
The sort of guy who knows, wills, dares and keeps his mouth shut.
Card 3: The Swamp
8:00 – Card 1
AKA Temperance in the traditional Tarot. Male, Earth, Scorpio.
Stagnation, nothing moves, nothing changes. Barriers block every effort to improve or change, not that rock has anywhere to go. The elements and life move around it, grow from it, decay upon it, but it goes nowhere.
Card 4: The Empress
Regime change in action, it happens more in the sewers than the senates. One goes out, another comes in.
Card 5: Balance
AKA Justice in traditional Tarot.
Not the scales of a common religious moralist and no longer a cardinal virtue, but the raw, heartless justice of nature.
Card 6: The Moon
Tranquillity, calm, beauty, and for some reason I never understood, lobster. Don't ask me, blame antiquity.
Card 7: The Chamber
AKA The World in traditional Tarot.
The walls and windows are all bricked up, there appears to be no way out, but you got in somehow, so there must be a way. Have you tried looking behind you? Even if you're trapped forever (As you are in this world) there's likely something fun do while you're here.
Card 8: The Theocrat
1:00 – Card 8
AKA The Hierophant in traditional Tarot. Male, Fire, Taurus.
The master, the controller, the employer. To force one's will upon others and make them work for your own benefits. Not always a cruel thing if it's done right. But it's so rarely done right.
Card 9: The Sun
Damn bright thing always vomiting heat and blinding light onto the populous. The artist of this deck isn't a fan.
