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 Moon |
The Star |
The Sorcerer |
The Emperor |
The Fool |
Balance |
The Swamp |
The Lovers |
The Empress |
Card 1: The Moon
Tranquillity, calm, beauty, and for some reason I never understood, lobster. Don't ask me, blame antiquity.
Card 2: The Star
AKA The Star in traditional Tarot.
In this case it's Perseus slaying Medusa, a homage to Marqueste's sculpture.
Crowley explained every man and woman is a star. Astrologically, we all effect the fates with our rises and falls. We also congregate into bodies which are no mere illusion, but powerful forces in time. Other people have power over you, but you too have power over them.
Card 3: The Sorcerer
AKA The Magician in traditional Tarot.
The sort of guy who knows, wills, dares and keeps his mouth shut.
Card 4: The Emperor
In this case King Sargon of Akkad. A great ruler in his own time rarely even makes the history books in ours.
Card 5: The Fool
6:00 – Card 0
Male, Water, Pisces.
Ignorance is a trait of the most basic. To let the currents of time and fate dictate one's actions completely, to seek the lowest, easiest path will lead one downwards. One's hunger will destroy what's beautiful, resulting in the squandering of things put to better use.
Card 6: 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 7: 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 8: The Lovers
9:00 – Card 6
Male, Air, Sagittarius.
Ceration is the alchemical act of adding a liquid to the substance while heated, yielding a softer substance with a wax-like texture. Not to be confused with alchemical union, but an important step toward it.
Card 9: The Empress
Regime change in action, it happens more in the sewers than the senates. One goes out, another comes in.
