This easy-to-read four-card layout is one of the most useful of all the spreads. The first card is the significator, and the last shows the outcome, provided that the advice given is followed. The advice is broken down into two cards which can easily be compared and contrasted. Card #2 suggests what to avoid, while #3 shows the path to take.
This spread can also be used to ask about the meaning of a card from a previously executed spread that may have been unclear. In this usage, Card #2 shows what it did not mean, while #3 clarifies the meaning.
DO This 3 of Pentacles |
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It Deals with This 2 of Wands |
Do NOT Do This 3 of Cups |
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It Leads to This 8 of Wands |
It Deals with This
A tall man looks from a battlemented roof over sea and shore, holding a globe in his right hand, while a staff in his left rests on the battlement; another is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lilly are on the left side.
Upright Meaning:
Marriage not possible, riches, fortune, magnificence, surprise, wonder, enchantment, emotion.
Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.
Reversed Meaning:
Expedition, dispatch, achievement, end. It signifies also the side of excess in physical enjoyment, and the pleasures of the senses.
A sculptor at his work in a monastery. Compare the design which illustrates the Eight of Pentacles. The apprentice or amateur therein has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
Reversed Meaning:
Mediocrity, puerility, pettiness, weakness, pathetic-ness, lameness, a quack.
The card represents motion through the immovable – a flight of wands through an open country; but they draw to the term of their course. That which they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold.
Upright Meaning:
Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity, swiftness, a messenger; great haste, great hope, speed towards an end which promises assured felicity; generally, that which is on the move; the arrows of love.