The seven-card Horse Shoe is a convenient, basic layout that can be used to answer different types of questions, especially concerning questions where insight would be helpful. Like several other spreads, it has cards representing the past, present, and future.
The pinnacle of the Horse Shoe, looking like the top of the mountain, shows the obstacle or challenge that needs to be addressed and overcome. Card #6 suggests a course of action to meet this challenge. The final card shows the outcome or future, should this advice be followed.
Other clues are provided in Cards #3 and #5, which indicate hidden or outside influences that come into play, affecting the journey to your goal.
Obstacle  8 of Cups |
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Hidden Influences  The Hanged Man |
External Influences  2 of Cups |
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The Present  Ace of Pentacles |
Suggestion  Death |
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The Past  6 of Swords |
The Outcome  Queen of Wands |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
6 of Swords
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.
Reversed Meaning:
Declaration, confession, publicity; possibly a proposal of love.
Ace of Pentacles
A hand reaching out from a cloud holds up a pentacle.
Upright Meaning:
Perfect contentment, felicity, ecstasy, sharpness, intelligence, a quick wit, gold.
The Hanged Man
A man hangs upside down from the Tau cross. This is a card of self-sacrifice and enlightenment.
Reversed Meaning:
Selfishness, the crowd, politics, corruption, self-deception, misunderstanding, ignorance, denseness, blindness.
8 of Cups
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
Upright Meaning:
Giving joy, mildness, timidity, honour, modesty; the decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence.
2 of Cups
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.
Death
The Grim Reaper rides into town on a pale horse. The king has fallen, and the Pope greets Death with the king's family. The sun sets in the gateway on the horizon.
Reversed Meaning:
Inertia, sleep, lethargy, hope destroyed, depression, sloth, misery, undoing, ruin, subjugation.
Queen of Wands
Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King of Wands, though she is more charismatic.
Reversed Meaning:
Good, economical, obliging, serviceable. Also signifies opposition, jealousy, even deceit and infidelity.