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  The Tower |
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Hidden Influences  Death |
External Influences  The Hierophant |
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The Present  3 of Wands |
Suggestion  Ace of Wands |
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The Past  9 of Swords |
The Outcome  6 of Cups |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
9 of Swords
One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation.
Reversed Meaning:
Imprisonment, suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame, bad vibes, negativity, evil thoughts, despair.
3 of Wands
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.
Reversed Meaning:
The end of troubles, suspension or cessation of adversity, toil and disappointment.
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.
Upright Meaning:
End, destruction, loss, failure, terminus, conclusion, completion, closure, resolution, outcome, annihilation, downfall, rebirth.
The Tower
Lightning strikes the top of a Tower, knocking the crown off the top. Reminiscent of the Tower of Babel, two figures fall from grace.
Reversed Meaning:
Oppression, imprisonment, trap, tyranny, hardship, torment, persecution, coercion.
The Hierophant
Seated on his throne, the Pope symbolises the male understanding of the spiritual workings of the world and traditional values. Two monks flank him on either side.
Upright Meaning:
Tradition, custom, light, truth, marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude, mercy, inspiration, understanding, spiritual awareness.
Ace of Wands
A hand reaching out from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club.
Reversed Meaning:
Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, to perish also a certain clouded joy.
A sign of birth.
6 of Cups
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Upright Meaning:
Remembrances, looking back, as on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct.