In my last article, I described the technique I use to read a basic three cards reading. This minimal spread can be used as a building block for many others, and can also be extended easily as I’m going to explain concretely in this article.
There are of course several ways to extend this spread with more cards, and I’ll show here a few that can serve as basics to your own practice. Of course, there are certainly much more ways of doing it, imagination and what could be useful to each one of us being the limit.
3 cards first.
Let’s take first a simple example and read the three cards. Then I will extend it with a few techniques to see how it can be done. I will keep the interpretations short, for sake of simplicity. Also, when using few cards, I tend to read with only the trumps.
Not long ago, a woman asked me “why my relationship so bad? I do not know what to do anymore!”
Le Pendu, La Lune, Le Fou.
Because you bark at each other like these dogs, and nobody does anything to change a thing.
If we look at the line, it looks symmetrical around the Moon, with one dog becoming this Hangman and the other becoming the Fool. So, thy discuss without even listening to each other, one remains on their position and the other prefers to leave the discussion. In short, discussions without any resolution.
Adding cards to where people are looking.
A first technique that can be used is to add cards on the left and right when they contain people looking outside of the basic three cards spread, to have an idea of what they are looking at and what is happening there.
If we take our example, the fool is walking to the right, and we add an additional card there. We get the hermit. This is significant and can change some of our conclusions. While we still see the same discussions going nowhere and one of the partners still inflexible and not ready to move on, the other is not really running away anymore. He is leaving the discussion to start thinking about what is happening and the causes, trying to illuminate the situation alone in his corner.
Do and don’t.
The first time I saw using these two positions was in Rachel Pollack’s 78 degrees of wisdom. I do not know where that practice originated, but I like to do it the exact same way I saw Camelia Elias doing it.
We add two cards of advice to the three cards spread, one on top giving advice on what to do, and one at the bottom to give advice on what not to do. What is important is to read the two cards together, usually the contrast in between the two will be the significant factor.
Here, we get Le Soleil for what she should do, and Justice for what not to do. Immediately, we can see that this couple is lacking warmth, wherever we look, the rigor of Justice showing what not to do, and the advice to warm up the relationship as the sun is showing. There is a point when discussions become too much to bear, when trying to reconcile the two partners become more important than the cold aspect of trying to be always right.
Making a pyramid.
Another way to extend our spread would be to use the three cards as a base to a pyramid, where each level in the pyramid would explain what is the interaction between the cards in the level below it. For a small pyramid like this one, I usually use the trumps only, but I am sure interesting results would be obtained when using the pips for the additional cards.
So what’s going on here? One who stays on their position (the hanged man) and would want to organize the discussions according to their agenda (the empress), probably to address the darker problems of the relationship ( the moon). The other is ready to compromise for a time (temperance) and then prefers to abandon the discussion (the fool). And so, between this empress and temperance, we see this moon becoming the tower, and they’re reaching a crisis.
We can of course turn the pyramid upside down, to try to give some advice … the tower shows that it is really time to burst the abscess, both suffocate in relationship. To avoid the explosion it would be necessary to do as the empress and temperance do: raise the level of the discussion (the Empress seems to have wings behind her, just as temperance). Empress and temperance look at each other. One seems to tell the other to feel a little more responsible, and the other to put a little water in their wine. In short, to arrive at a debate between responsible adults, where everyone is ready to compromise.
In front of all these points of contention that the moon shows, all these problems of the relationship that must rise to the surface, the hanged man and the fool certainly show that a less rigid behavior is necessary.
Conclusion.
These are just a few ideas on how a basic spread could be extended, depending on the question and each one’s affinities. I am certain more possibilities are there, I wanted to show in this article a few pointers.
Of course, the same techniques could certainly be used with Lenormand or other oracles.
Deck: Jean Noblet stenciled edition, restored by JC Flornoy.
