Astrological Spread (part 1)

The astrological spread can be seen as the Tarot equivalent of a general grand tableau with the Petit Lenormand. Both of them allow to asses the different life areas of a consultant.

As this particular spread is quite long to describe, I will give in this post the theory on how I use it. There will be another post with a complete example.

Except for the adjective ‘astrological’ in the name, there is absolutely no need to know anything about astrology to interpret it. From astrology, the term houses has been retained, but in the spread, the twelve cards can be seen as just placeholders for certain specific domains in the life of the consultant.

I am sure that any kind of cards could be used for this spread, but personally, I always use the Tarot de Marseille, and I always start by laying out twelve cards from the major arcana. Then I can proceed in two different ways. Either we are at the beginning of a consultation and I will quickly go through the different life areas to identify which of these areas we should focus on, and I will explore these later with additional spreads. Or sometimes, I will add 12 or 24 cards from the minor arcana, 1 or 2 per house, and give a more detailed reading, for instance for a consultation by email.

Here is how I lay out the cards, counterclockwise, starting with le leftmost.

Houses

The houses are defined as follow.

House 1: here, we find the consultant, how others see him. It describes the condition he is in, his possibilities, his intentions, his motives, his behavior.

House 2: The financial situation. We find the personal finances and possessions excluding his property, his monetary gains and spending, his resources.

House 3: The house of siblings. This is everyday’s life, including siblings, friends, neighbors, … except for the significant other, who has their own house. It is also the house of communications in general and lower level studies (up to just before university).

House 4: This house is about the consultant’s home life and the property or properties he owns. It is also the house of the father and ancestors.

House 5: This is the house of pleasure, sentimental life, creativity and pleasurable activities such as hobbies and vacations. This house is also about the consultant’s children, esp. the 1st one if he/she has several.

House 6: The house of sickness, illness and health related ups and downs. This is also the house of everyday’s constraints.

House 7: Social life and associations. This is the house of the consultant’s spouse or lover, anyone in the consultant’s environment who is not part of his family. It is also the home of the 2nd child.

House 8: The house of deep transformations and endings; it also concerns long term treatments and health issues. This house is also the home of other people’s money, the money that you do not currently own, such as loans, mortgages, heritages…

House 9: Here you will find the travels you plan to make, spirituality and religion. It also concerns higher level studies (university level) and the 3rd child.

House 10: This is the house describing your career and work environment in general, including your boss. It is also the house of the mother.

House 11: Here we find hopes, wishes and future projects. It is also the house of friends and social networks.

House 12: This is where you find trials and misfortunes the consultant could endure.

Derived houses

One of the very interesting features of the astrological wheel, is that we can look not only at the consultant’s general situation, but we can “turn” the spread counterclockwise and make any house the first one. We can then consider this house to be the first house, and from this obtain information about all its related houses.

This has two very important implications. First, we can quickly look at the situation of someone else. If the consultant, for instance, is asking about the spouse’s work, we can consider house 7, the house of the significant other as derived house 1, and find their work in house 4 (10th house from house 7).

The second implication, even more important, is house 11, where we find hopes and future projects. If we turn the spread and consider house 11 as the 1st house, we would be mapping all the areas of the consultant toward where he is headed. For instance, if we want to look at his money, which is in house 2, we will look at house 12, the 2nd house from house 11, to see where his financial situation is headed.

Themes

Even if each house by itself has its own domain and can give useful information, the reading we would deliver to the consultant would be very disjointed if we were to interpret house by house.

Regrouping houses per theme area will allow us to give a reading which is much better flowing. Here I’m going to enumerate the most important ones.

For relationships and the consultant in general, we start with cards 1 and 7. If the consultant is in a relation, card 7 will give information about that person. If the consultant is single, card 7 will talk about potential suitors. Houses 4 and 10 will show respectively how each partner feels at home with each other. Finally, deriving from house 11, we will look at cards 11 and 5 (1st and 7th cards from house 11), and quickly look at cards 2 and 8 (4th and 10th from house 11), to look at the evolution and future prospects of the relationship.

For finances, we have card 2 for possessions and card 8 for money we owe. We should look at the balance between them and contrast them, to have an idea of the consultant’s strengths and weaknesses. Next, we look the same houses derived from house 11 for their evolution, that would be respectively house 12 and house 6 (2nd and 8th from house 11).

For work, we have mostly card 1 describing the consultant’s abilities and house 10 for the professional domain. We can look also at house 6 for everyday’s constraints, the grunt work, and eventual employees working for us. Then we can do the same with the derived houses, houses 11 and 8 (1st and 10th cards from house 11).

For health, card 1, as a general card for the consultant, will talk about his vitality and overall condition, card 6 about sickness, and card 8 about treatment and long term issues. Then, for evolution, we can look at cards 11, 4 and 6 (1st, 6th and 8th, when we derive from house 11).

For the children, we can derive the spread respectively from card 5, 7 or 9 depending on the child we’re looking at (1st, 2nd or 3rd).

Following this, we can look at card 3 for communications and siblings, card 9 for travel, and card 12 for what should be avoided, as it talks about trials and misfortune.