Tarot has been a part of Barbara Moore's personal and professional lives for nearly twenty years. Right from the start, tarot intrigued her with its marvelous blending of mythology, psychology, art, history, mystery, and magic. She has studied under...
One of my very favorite spreads is the Life Spread developed and taught by Josephine Ellershaw. Josephine wrote the Easy Tarot Handbook and Easy Tarot Reading (which will be available fall 2011). Both books are wonderful, but you will probably, at this point in your practice, find Easy Tarot Reading to be more useful. It presents detailed instructions for readings, as well as sample readings. Josephine teaches using the Life Spread, along with another spread called the Anchor, which uses only the Major Arcana. This is most useful if you have two decks, so you can have both the Life Spread and the Anchor on the table at the same time. However, I've found that, especially for beginners, using just the Life Spread is quite useful and less overwhelming.
Beyond the key card, number 21, and the key cards for the groupings of home, career, personal, love, and future, there are no fixed meanings for the positions. The key cards for the groupings are the ones on top of the other three: 1, 5, 9, 13, Beyond the key card, number 21, and the key cards for the groupings of home, career, personal, love, and future, there are no fixed meanings for the positions. The key cards for the groupings are the ones on top of the other three: 1, 5, 9, 13, and 17. These cards represent the most important influences in the grouping and should be used as the core that ties the other three cards together.
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The one-card, three-card, Celtic Cross, and Life spreads should keep you busy for quite a while. Between all of them, with perhaps a little tweaking, you should be able to find a spread to answer any question. If you simply don't care for any of these—if they don't suit your purposes or you just want to try some new spreads—there are plenty of good books about spreads available, such as Teresa Michelsen's Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads and Sylvia Abraham's How to Use Tarot Spreads. And if you can wait until 2012, you can get Tarot Spreads for Beginners, the sequel to this book. In addition, the companion books that come with decks usually have several spreads that can work with any deck. And don't forget to check online. Tarot authors (such as Mary K. Greer—http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/04/05
/the-hidden-influences-spread/), tarot blogs, and tarot forums often have spreads available.
Now that we've looked at the cards, their meanings, interpretation techniques, and spreads, maybe we should watch over the shoulder of a reader and see one way all of this can be put together.
