As our reading style always evolves, these days I tend to prefer reading the Tarot de Marseille with a complete pack instead of majors and minors separated.
As a consequence, I’m always on the lookout for new techniques and spreads or variations of existing ones, that could fit my objectives.
A while ago, I found on the internet an interesting variation of a three cards reading. There was no attribution made to the creator, so I adapted it to my usage and use it freely.
The idea is very simple, you deal the cards from the top of the deck until a major is selected, and you repeat the operation three times, resulting in three stacks. If no minor precedes a major, this particular pile consists only of the major.
The reading starts first by interpreting the three majors as a normal three cards reading, free style, with no particular position assigned to the cards. When this first task is completed, each stack of minors is then read in turn, the pile drawn before a particular major serves to explain it. Things can become quite complex when a high number of majors form a stack; to keep things simple, I have decided to limit each stack to the last five minors drawn if that pile becomes larger.
This type of reading is certainly well suited to answer to the evolution of a situation, because it will first give with the majors an overview of how things will develop, and next with the minors we will get the why, an explanation on how each step was reached.
As an example on how I proceed, Simon is trying to sell his house and is asking what he can expect.
If we first read the three majors as a one liner (Le Pendu, La Roue de Fortune and Temperance), we could say that nothing will move until some compromising is done.
Effectively, the hanged man shows total suspension, impotence to move. Everything will stay at the same point until some action triggers movement. The crank of the wheel is on the side of temperance, it is up to temperance to start her act of balancing to trigger movement. The wheel is an unstable card, sometimes we go up, sometimes we go down. We might see in this evolution, some periods of movement alternated with some periods where nothing happens. But the only one in these three cards having power over events is temperance, her ability to compromise is what can make things flow.
Looking at the minors, a first observation is that we see quite a few cards with coins, mostly at the end of the spread, which bodes well when trying to sell something: let’s keep it practical, no money, no sale!
In the first pile, we certainly see an opportunity, someone interested with that ace of bâtons, and the cavalier is pursuing it, chasing after money. That 6 d’épées does not bode well, that shows someone abandoning, walking away. And we get to the hanged man, the situation is stuck because a first interested visitor could not meet the offer.
The Valet de Deniers is playing with some coins, there is one in his hand, one on the ground. We can certainly see this as an analogy for these ups and downs of the wheel, as mentioned above, which here represent adjustments of the sale price. Simon can expect to have to drop the sales price in order to find an interested buyer.
The last pile shows a nice progression. Going from 3 to 4 coins represents an increase; temperance is certainly a good negotiator. We can expect some bidding war with the 8 d’épées, but that queen has money. She’s looking a one coin, she keeps something in reserve while discussions happen. We could speculate that the coin she holds is the one she will add to the 3 initial ones. Here we can certainly advise Simon to hold firm, temperance shows a transfer, the sale should certainly happen.
Deck: Tarot de Marseille, by Pablo Roblero.
