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
King of Pentacles![]() |
6 of Cups![]() |
10 of Pentacles![]() |
Page of Wands![]() |
8 of Pentacles![]() |
5 of Swords![]() |
Page of Pentacles![]() |
The Hermit![]() |
The Chamber![]() |
Card 1: King of Pentacles
A portrait of Anton LaVey, (1930–1997), founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible. Anyone else would be Blasphemy.
You choose who you look up to. If you look up to a musician who does every drug in the book and dies at 25 your results may vary, from admiring the lives of men and women who have changed the world, lived happy and died old.
Card 2: 6 of Cups
I have no clue what I was thinking on this one. No clue, but if this card comes into play, remember to watch the horizon.
Card 3: 10 of Pentacles
The tree of life doesn't play out flawlessly like it does in the diagrams. It's actually far more distorted than that. Don't mistake the map for the territory and follow books blindly.
Card 4: Page of Wands
If you're going to use a pool stick, first be sure that you aren't one of the balls.
Card 5: 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 6: 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 7: Page of Pentacles
An homage to Arthur Edward Waite, Aleister Crowley and George Sprague, the three revolutionary authors of Tarot systems that inspired this deck. Also, a very bad pun, apologies.
Life demands study, not worship. Study your problems, don't just pray for them to go away.
Card 8: The Hermit
4:00 – Card 5
Male, Air, Virgo.
A card of loneliness, disconnection and solitude. Also, a card of hope – If you have half of something it means the other half is out there somewhere. It may be far away, you may have to wade through the nastiest slums to find it, but when you do it's brilliant.
Card 9: 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.