This in-depth eight-card layout shows various aspects of your personal journey. It is good for exploring generalised personal questions, but can also be used to explore relationships if the couple is viewed as a whole.
This spread progresses through eight stages similar to the tarot deck's Major Arcana, beginning with birth and the realm of fertility. After birth comes the initial growth which leads to a period of adaptation, change, and re-balancing oneself. Once the process has grown enough, security comes into focus, as it is necessary to protect what has been earned. After this, once again growth is important, but concerning the mind and creativitity this time, leading to another phase of personal changes. Finally upon completion of the journey, the rewards become evident, and beyond that, one's spiritual development level will have noticeably risen.
| Matters of Completion, Rewards and Luck.  2 of Swords |
|||||
Matters of Change and Metamorphosis. 10 of Wands |
Matters of Inner Strength and Spiritual Guidance. King of Swords |
||||
Matters of Learning, Art and Creativity. 2 of Cups |
Matters of Beginnings, fertility and birth. 3 of Pentacles |
||||
Matters of Protection and Defense. 6 of Swords |
Matters of Growth, Flow and Energy. 8 of Swords |
||||
Matters of Changes, Polarities and Balance. Queen of Pentacles |
|||||
Matters of Beginnings, fertility and birth.
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.
Upright Meaning:
Artifice, trade, skilled labour; regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
A woman, blindfolded and bound, with the swords of the card around her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary endurance than of irretrievable bondage.
Upright Meaning:
Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny, sickness, having one's hands tied, insanity.
The face suggests that of a dark, intelligent woman, who has the quality of greatness. She contemplates her pentacle, using it as a tool of skrying and divination.
Upright Meaning:
Opulence, generosity, magnificence, liberty, meditation, divination, intelligence, dignity, potence, grand, important, majestic.
A ferryman delivering passengers to the further shore. The course is smooth, and seeing that the freight is light, as the workload is not beyond his ability.
Upright Meaning:
Journey by water, route, way, envoy, commissionary, expedient, travelling, a short trip.
A youth and maiden are pledging the love of one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card.
Reversed Meaning:
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and – as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination – that desire by which Nature is sanctified.
A man oppressed by the weight of the ten staves which he is carrying.
Reversed Meaning:
Oppression, difficulties, intrigues, heavy-handedness, bad luck.
A hoodwinked female figure balances two swords upon her shoulders.
Reversed Meaning:
Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty, treason, back-stabbing.
He sits in judgement, holding the unsheathed sword. He recalls the conventional symbol of justice in the Major Arcana, and he may represent this virtue, but he is rather the power of life and death.
Reversed Meaning:
Cruelty, perversity, barbarity, perfidy, bad intentions, a sharp tongue, insulting, insecurity, arrogance.