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  6 of Pentacles |
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Hidden Influences  6 of Swords |
External Influences  10 of Pentacles |
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The Present  King of Pentacles |
Suggestion  3 of Wands |
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The Past  2 of Swords |
The Outcome  3 of Pentacles |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
2 of Swords
A hoodwinked female figure balances two swords upon her shoulders.
Reversed Meaning:
Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty, treason, back-stabbing.
King of Pentacles
His face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but stubborn. The bull's head is a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, signifying the four elements of nature and the spirit which governs them. This suit is sometimes represented as coins or disks, and is symbolic of money and material goods or services.
Reversed Meaning:
Vice, weakness, ugliness, perversity, corruption, peril, bullheadedness, defiance, unruliness.
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.
6 of Pentacles
A person in the guise of a merchant weighs money in a pair of scales and distributes it to the needy and distressed. It is a testimony to his own success in life, as well as to his goodness of heart.
Reversed Meaning:
Desire, cupidity, envy, jealousy, illusion, resentment, rivalry, grudge.
10 of Pentacles
A man and woman beneath an archway which gives entrance to a house. They are accompanied by a child, who admires two dogs accosting an old man sitting on the porch. The child is petting one of them.
Reversed Meaning:
Chance, loss, robbery, risk, danger, hindrance, emergency, villain, struggle, dilemma, nuisance, mischief, fiend.
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.
3 of Pentacles
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.