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 World |
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Hidden Influences  3 of Swords |
External Influences  King of Cups |
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The Present  8 of Swords |
Suggestion  8 of Pentacles |
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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.
8 of Swords
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.
Reversed Meaning:
Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery, unforeseen disaster, entrapment, bondage.
3 of Swords
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind.
Upright Meaning:
Removal, absence, sorrow, emotional pain, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, dissolution, a mental breakdown.
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.
Reversed Meaning:
fixity, stagnation, absence, nullification, dullness, discouragement, false visions, non-existence, lack-lustre, nullity.
King of Cups
He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea; on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping.
Upright Meaning:
Fair man, man of business, law, or divinity; responsible, disposed to oblige the Querent; also equity, art and science, including those who profess science, law and art; creative intelligence.
8 of Pentacles
An artist in stone at his work, which he exhibits in the form of trophies.
Reversed Meaning:
Voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury, cunning, sham, intrigue, loan shark, swindle, blackmail, cheat, shakedown, double-deal.
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.