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 5 of Pentacles |
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It Deals with This Page of Swords |
Do NOT Do This 4 of Pentacles |
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It Leads to This 4 of Wands |
It Deals with This
A lithe, active figure holds a sword upright in both hands, while in the act of power walking. He is passing over rugged land, and about his way the clouds are collocated wildly. He is alert and lithe, looking this way and that, as if an expected enemy might appear at any moment.
Reversed Meaning:
Unforeseen difficulties, unprepared state, surprises, sickness.
A crowned figure, having a pentacle over his crown, clasps another with hands and arms; two pentacles are under his feet. He clings to what he has.
Upright Meaning:
Possessiveness, desperation, obsession, gift, legacy, inheritance, materialism.
Two injured people in a snow storm pass a well-lit church.
Upright Meaning:
Material trouble, poverty, destitution, abjection, love without money, debt, famine, hardship, concordance, affinities, distress, bankruptcy.
From the four great staves planted in the foreground there is a great garland suspended; two female figures uplift nosegays; at their side is a bridge over a moat, leading to an old manorial house.
Reversed Meaning:
Prosperity, increase, felicity, beauty, embellishment.