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 Prince of Cups |
External Influences Ace of Wands |
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Significator Princess of Swords |
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How it Will Succeed The Magus |
How it Will Not Succeed 5 of Disks |
Princess of Swords
The Princess of Swords represents the earthy part of Air, the fixation of the volatile. She brings about the materialisation of Idea. She represents the influence of Heaven upon Earth. She represents to some extent the anger of the Gods, and she appears helmed, with serpent-haired Medusa for her crest. She stands in front of a barren altar as if to avenge its profanation, and she stabs downward with her sword. The heaven and the clouds, which are her home, seem angry.
The character of the Princess is stern and revengeful. Her logic is destructive. She is firm and aggressive, with great practical wisdom and subtlety in material things. She shews great cleverness and dexterity in the management of practical affairs, especially where they are of a controversial nature. She is very adroit in the settlement of controversies.
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.
Ace of Wands
The Root of Fire
This card represents the essence of the element of Fire in its inception. It is a solar-phallic outburst of flame from which spring lightnings in every direction. These flames are Yods, arranged in the form of the Tree of Life.
It is the primordial Energy of the Divine manifesting in Matter, at so early a stage that it is not yet definitely formulated as Will.
5 of Disks
Mercury in Taurus – Worry
The Number Five, Geburah, in the suit of Earth, shows the disruption of the Elements, just as in the other suits. This is emphasised by the rule of Mercury in Taurus, types of energy which are opposed. It needs a very powerful Mercury to upset Taurus; so, the natural meaning is Intelligence applied to Labour.
The symbol represents five disks in the form of the inverted Pentagram, instability in the very foundations of Matter. The effect is that of an earthquake. They are, however, representative of the five Tattvas; these hold together, on a very low plane, an organism which would otherwise disrupt completely. The background is an angry, ugly red with yellow markings. The general effect is one of intense strain; yet the symbol implies long-continued inaction.
The Magus
Mercury
Skill, wisdom, adroitness, elasticity, craft, cunning, deceit, theft. Sometimes occult wisdom or power, sometimes a quick impulse, a brain-wave. It may imply messages, business transactions, the interference of learning or intelligence with the matter in hand.
