Game Plan Spread
Difficulty: Easy
When a person has a certain plan in mind, this simple five-card spread presents a choice, hinting at what action or attitude should be taken for their plan to succeed, and what should be avoided to help the plan work out for the best.
The initial card is laid in the centre of the layout, the significator. The following four cards are laid out clockwise around the significator.
In this spread, the second card is about what drives the reader, but also says they are not fully conscious of this, perhaps even completely unaware of it. It provides a hint as to the reason they strive for their goal.
The third card uncovers what others think of the reader and their goals. The reader may or may not be aware of this. Sometimes other people factor into the plans (and sometimes they don't).
The fourth card suggests what not to do. If things are permitted to go down this path, the plan will collapse.
The fifth card is a hint as to how to make this plan work out favourably. The idea this card presents should be followed to make the plan successful. It is the differences between Cards #4 & #5 that should be noted, as the differences provide important clues.
Your Game Plan Tarot Reading with the Book of Thoth
Unconscious Drive 5 of Cups |
External Influences 8 of Cups |
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Significator Knight of Cups |
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How it Will Succeed The Priestess |
How it Will Not Succeed Prince of Cups |
Knight of Cups
Pisces
The Knight of Cups represents the fiery part of Water, the swift passionate attack of rain and springs; more intimately, Water's power of solution. He is clothed in black armour furnished with bright wings which, together with the leaping attitude of his white charger, indicates that he represents the most active aspect of Water. In his right hand he bears a cup from which issues a crab, the cardinal sign of Water, for aggressiveness. His totem is the peacock, for one of the stigmata of water in its most active form is brilliance. There is here also some reference to the phenomena of fluorescence.
The characteristics of the person signified by this card are nevertheless mostly passive, in accordance with the Zodiacal attribution. He is graceful, dilettante, with the qualities of Venus, or a weak Jupiter. He is amiable in a passive way. He is quick to respond to attraction, and easily becomes enthusiastic under such stimulus; but he is not very enduring. He is exceedingly sensitive to external in fluence, but with no material depth in his character.
5 of Cups
Mars in Scorpio – Disappointment
This card is ruled by Geburah in the suit of Water. Geburah being fiery, there is a natural antipathy. Hence arises the idea of disturbance, just when least expected, in a time of ease. The attribution is also to Mars in Scorpio, which is his own house; and Mars is the manifestation on the lowest plane of Geburah, while Scorpio, in its worst aspect, suggests the putrefying power of Water.
Yet the powerful male influences do not show actual decay, only the beginning of destruction; hence, the anticipated pleasure is frustrated. The Lotuses have their petals torn by fiery winds; the sea is arid and stagnant, a dead sea, like a 'chott' in North Africa. No water flows into the cups. Moreover, these cups are arranged in the form of an inverted pentagram, symbolising the triumph of matter over spirit.
8 of Cups
Saturn in Pisces – Indolence
Lotuses droop for lack of sun and rain, and the soil is poison to them; only two of the stems show blossoms at all. The cups are shallow, old and broken. They are arranged in three rows; of these the upper row of three is quite empty. Water trickles from the two flowers into the two central cups, and they drip into the two lowest without filling them. The background of the card shows pools, or lagoons, in very extensive country, incapable of cultivation; only disease and miasma tic poison can flourish in those vast Bad Lands. The water is dark and muddy. On the horizon is a pallid, yellowish light, weighed down by leaden clouds of indigo.
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 Priestess
The Moon
Pure, exalted and gracious influence enters the matter. Hence, change, alternation, increase and decrease, fluctuation. There is, however, a liability to be led away by enthusiasm; one may become 'moon-struck' unless careful balance is maintained.
