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 The Lovers |
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It Deals with This 3 of Wands |
Do NOT Do This Ace of Cups |
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It Leads to This 2 of Wands |
It Deals with This
A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
Upright Meaning:
He symbolises established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery; those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, which are sailing over the sea. The card also signifies able co-operation in business, as if the successful merchant prince were looking from his side towards yours with a view to help you.
Atop the waters are water-lilies; the hand reaches out from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup; the dew of water is falling on all sides.
Upright Meaning:
House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.
An angel unifies two lovers which are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Upright Meaning:
A choice, decision, attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome, happiness, fulfilment, romance, variety, pleasure.
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.