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 Cups |
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Hidden Influences  3 of Cups |
External Influences  The Tower |
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The Present  The World |
Suggestion  Page of Wands |
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The Past  9 of Wands |
The Outcome  4 of Wands |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
9 of Wands
The figure leans upon his staff and has an expectant look, as if awaiting an enemy. Behind are eight other staves – erect, in orderly disposition, like a palisade.
Reversed Meaning:
Obstacles, adversity, calamity, troubles.
The World
A nude, dancing female holding two batons, symbolic of Mother Earth and Mother Nature. She is encircled by a wreath and surrounded by the cherubs who are the guardians of Heaven and Earth.
Upright Meaning:
Assured success, courage, honour, glory, vitality, life, energy, vigour, zest, pep, fervour, passion, animation, existence, reality.
3 of Cups
Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.
Upright Meaning:
The conclusion of the matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing.
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.
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.
Upright Meaning:
Misery, calamity, deception, ruin, catastrophe, distress, adversity, disaster, discord, falling apart, going all to pieces, injury.
Page of Wands
A young man stands in the act of proclamation. He is unknown but faithful, and his tidings are strange.
Reversed Meaning:
Anecdotes, announcements, bad news. Also, indecision and the anxiety which accompanies it.
4 of Wands
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.
Upright Meaning:
Country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest – home, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace, and the perfected work of these.