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
4 of Cups![]() |
Ace of Swords![]() |
The Moon![]() |
Knight of Swords![]() |
Page of Swords![]() |
The Norn![]() |
6 of Swords![]() |
5 of Swords![]() |
The Emperor![]() |
Card 1: 4 of Cups
When you order people to do something, be certain that your orders are clear.
Card 2: Ace of Swords
'At the east of the garden of Eden he placed the Angel and a flaming sword that turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life'. –Genesis 3:24
Card 3: The Moon
Tranquillity, calm, beauty, and for some reason I never understood, lobster. Don't ask me, blame antiquity.
Card 4: Knight of Swords
The guillotine is the most effective method of killing ever invented. You can poison or shock or stab or shoot people but nothing is so certain to cause death as severing their head. Amazing how fast the world forgot that.
Card 5: Page of Swords
Chaos is dangerous to both belligerents. If you have all the arms and all the thorns in the world, you're just as much a danger to yourself if you don't keep track of them.
Card 6: The Norn
2:00 – Card 10
AKA The Wheel of Fortune in traditional Tarot. Female, Air, Gemini.
Symbolic of fate, and what is fate but change? Everything changes in time; change is the only constant. What one cannot control one must predict, and act in accordance with. Opposition to the inevitable yields only pain.
Card 7: 6 of Swords
Something has to make the rain come down. It got up there but once there's enough of it, it falls back to Earth. It's not enough just to let it happen, if you want to understand you have to observe.
Card 8: 5 of Swords
An homage to Bosch and Bruegel, and a card symbolic of victory to the well-armed and pain to the unprepared or unwilling to defend.
Card 9: The Emperor
In this case King Sargon of Akkad. A great ruler in his own time rarely even makes the history books in ours.