The “Scattershot” Spread: Shotgunning the Tarot Reading
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I sometimes encounter people online who will only read a random cluster of cards with no formal spread positions. I’ve created a few layouts that embrace that kind of neutrality and here is the latest one, although it goes from scattered to structured in three operations. It owes its premise to two-thirds of the First Operation of the Golden Dawn’s “Opening of the Key” method, which deals all of the cards into four elemental sub-packs (Fire-Water-Air-Earth, from right to left), after which a pre-selected Significator card representing the Querent (typically a court card) is located in one of them. This is supposed to identify the area of the life the seeker is most interested in exploring. Then a certain number of cards are counted out from the Significator in the direction the figure on the card is facing: four for the Knights, Queens, and Princes and seven for the Princesses; from these a “story” is crafted.
To emulate the elemental sub-sets in a less rigid way, after removing the court cards from the deck I shuffled the rest of the cards and begin dealing them in a loose, informal scatter until at least one card of each element appeared. The suit cards were obvious: Wands = Fire; Cups = Water; Swords = Air; and Disks = Earth. For nineteen of the trump cards I used the element associated with each card’s astrological correspondence, and for the three non-astrological “Primal Element” trumps I used their signature element.
In the example reading below I came up with four Water cards, three Fire cards, one Air card and one Earth card before the necessary quota was reached. For simplicity of illustration, I didn’t use reversals in any of these steps. Although the elemental “zones” have no significance to the reading, it’s interesting that Water and Fire form a crooked central cross while Air and Earth are outliers. (All cards are from the Thoth Tarot, copyright of US Games Systems, Inc, Stamford, CT.)
Next I chose a court card to serve as my Significator; as usual I selected the Knight of Cups. I shuffled the sixteen cards and dealt them randomly on top of the nine “elemental” cards until that Knight appeared. The elemental friendliness of the base card to the Significator is intended to show whether the environment of the situation will be supportive or obstructive to the Querent’s goals. The nature of the underlying card can also be factored in, but Elemental Dignity is the important consideration. In my example reading the Significator landed on the 5 of Cups, doubling the emphasis of Water but also creating a rather dank atmosphere.
Finally, I removed the pair of cards from the layout and used them in a follow-up spread to create a narrative. Since there were no other cards involved with them in the elemental “master pattern,” I reassembled the rest of the deck, shuffled it and dealt four cards to the right of the Significator in accordance with the established counting protocol. Note that I did not strictly follow the rule “The counting should include the card from which you count” because I like working with an odd number of cards in a line spread. (As an aside, the two originating cards could also be placed in the “Significator” position of other spreads like the Celtic Cross.)
The story it tells is very interesting. The Queen of Swords is my wife’s card, and next Tuesday she will be driving two hours away to have lunch with my sister-in-law, leaving me alone for the day (Hermit). But I won’t be home either; I will be in the local city, first having coffee with my brother and then playing billiards with some friends (Wheel of Fortune). The Prince of Cups could mean that I will be seeing my Scorpio son later in the day, but of course my slightly younger sister-in-law is also a Scorpio and she will be receiving my wife. (The symbolism will work either way.) The 5 of Cups suggests that the weather could be miserable locally, making my drive unpleasant, or it could mean that the coffee will be bad since my billiards group doesn’t wager on the games and won’t be depressing me by winning.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on March 20, 2024.
