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
8 of Pentacles![]() |
The Empress![]() |
2 of Cups![]() |
The Beast![]() |
Ace of Swords![]() |
Knight of Wands![]() |
8 of Cups![]() |
4 of Pentacles![]() |
The Swamp![]() |
Card 1: 8 of Pentacles
Things grow from other dead things. Don't overlook them for their dark origins, and don't dismiss the dead as a total erasure of what was.
Card 2: The Empress
Regime change in action, it happens more in the sewers than the senates. One goes out, another comes in.
Card 3: 2 of Cups
And two for my homies. Never forget past orthodoxies, past people or past events. Those who don't know their history aren't doomed to repeat it, they're doomed to fail history class and look like idiots. One feels no shame in repeating something they never saw in the first place, but stupidity is the greatest sin.
Card 4: The Beast
3:00 – Card 7
AKA Judgement or The Angel in traditional Tarot. Female, Air, Aries.
Birth, gain and success. To eat the apple and learn mastery of life and death. To nurse and grow strong. To win. These are all steps toward the goal but not the goal itself, to mistake the method for the achievement will leave one halfway there.
Card 5: 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 6: Knight of Wands
Read 'The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha', preferably the edition with illustrations by Gustav Dore. At the very least see the play 'Man of La Mancha'.
Mock what lunatics you may, but at some point you've been the fool too, and fools, whatever else they are, are also the best dreamers.
Card 7: 8 of Cups
D cups in this case. Don't be ashamed to enjoy your vices, and never regret the sins you enjoy.
Card 8: 4 of Pentacles
It doesn't always come out the way you wanted. That doesn't mean you can't still enjoy it.
Card 9: 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.