Decision Spread
Difficulty: Easy
This simple but highly useful spread calls for a question to be asked in this format:
'What happens if I do (X), and what happens if I do not do (X)?'
Please note that it should not be viewed as a decision between two different options, but about whether a single option should be exercised or not. A second option would call for a separate reading.
Card #7 is the significator, the overall theme of the query.
Cards #3, #1, & #5 represent the chronological sequence of events that occurs if the reader chooses to do (X).
Cards #4, #2, & #6 represent the chronological sequence of events that unfolds if the reader chooses not to do (X).
Your Decision Tarot Reading with the Book of Thoth
The Significator The Emperor |
Outcome if you do it: | ||
 Prince of Swords |
 Prince of Cups |
 The Tower |
|
| Outcome if you don't do it: | |||
 Death |
 9 of Cups |
 4 of Swords |
|
The Emperor
Aries
War, conquest, victory, strife, ambition, originality, over-weening confidence and megalomania, quarrelsomeness, energy, vigour, stubbornness, impracticability, rashness, ill- temper.
Outcome if you do it:
Prince of Swords
Aquarius
This card represents the airy part of Air. This chariot is drawn by winged children, looking and leaping irresponsibly in any direction that takes their fancy; they are not reined, but perfectly Capricious. The chariot consequently is easy enough to move, but quite unable to progress in any definite direction except by accident. This is a perfect picture of the Mind.
The operation of his logical mental processes has reduced the Air, which is his element, to many diverse geometrical patterns, but in these there is no real plan; they are demonstrations of the powers of the Mind without definite purpose. In his right hand is a lifted sword wherewith to create, but in his left hand a sickle, so that what he creates he instantly destroys. A person thus symbolised is purely intellectual. He is full of ideas and designs which tumble over each other. He is a mass of fine ideals unrelated to practical effort. He has all the apparatus of Thought in the highest degree, intensely clever, admirably rational, but unstable of purpose, and in reality indifferent even to his own ideas, as knowing that any one of them is just as good as any other. He reduces everything to unreality by removing its substance and transmuting it to an ideal world of ratiocination which is purely formal and out of relation to any facts, even those upon which it is based.
Prince of Cups
Scorpio
The Prince of Cups represents the airy part of Water. On the one hand, elasticity, volatility, hydrostatic equilibrium; on the other hand, the catalytic faculty and the energy of steam. He is a warrior partly clad in armour, which seems, however, rather a growth than a covering. His helmet is surmounted by an eagle, and his chariot, which resembles a shell, is also drawn by an eagle. His wings are tenuous, almost of gas. This is a reference to his power of volatilisation understood in the spiritual sense. The whole symbolism of this card is exceedingly complicated, for Scorpio is the most mysterious of the Signs, and the manifested portion of it symbolised by the eagle is in reality the least important part of his nature.
The moral characteristics of the person pictured in this card are subtlety, secret violence, and craft. He is intensely secret, an artist in all his ways. On the surface he appears calm and imperturbable, but this is a mask of the most intense passion. He is on the surface susceptible to external influences, but he accepts them only to transmute them to the advantage of his secret designs. He is thus completely without conscience in the ordinary sense of the word, and is therefore usually distrusted by his neighbours. They feel they do not, and can never, understand him. Thus, he inspires unreasonable fear. He is in fact perfectly ruthless. He cares intensely for power, wisdom, and his own aims.
The Tower
Mars
Quarrel, combat, danger, ruin, destruction of plans, sudden death, escape from prison.
Outcome if you do not do it:
Death
Scorpio
Transformation, change, voluntary or involuntary, in either case logical development of existing conditions, yet perhaps sudden and unexpected. Apparent death or destruction, but such interpretation is illusion.
9 of Cups
Jupiter in Pisces – Happiness
The Number Nine, Yesod, in the suit of Water, restores the stability lost by the excursions of Netzach and Hod from the Middle Pillar. It is also the number of the Moon, thus strengthening the idea of Water.
In this card is the pageant of the culmination and perfection of the original force of Water. In the symbol are nine cups perfectly arranged in a square; all are filled and overflowing with Water. It is the most complete and most beneficent aspect of the force of Water.
4 of Swords
Jupiter in Libra – Truce
Chesed refers to Jupiter who rules in Libra in this decanate. The sum of these symbols is therefore without opposition; hence the card proclaims the idea of authority in the intellectual world. It is the establishment of dogma, and law concerning it. It represents a refuge from mental chaos, chosen in an arbitrary manner. It argues for convention.
The hilts of the four Swords are at the corner of a St. Andrew's cross. Their shape suggests fixation and rigidity. Their points are sheathed – in a rather large rose of forty-nine petals representing social harmony. Here, too, is compromise.
Minds too indolent or too cowardly to think out their own problems hail joyfully this policy of appeasement. As always, the Four is the term; as in this case there is no true justification for repose, its disturbance by the Five holds no promise of advance; its static shams go pell-mell into the melting-pot; the issue is mere mess, usually signalised by foetid stench. But it has to be done!
