The Path #1 is laid out in a grid utilising two columns and three rows.
The first of the three rows shows rational or intellectual thoughts concerning the question. The second row is concerned with emotional attitudes, meaning feelings. The bottom row represents your posture or stance, meaning how you project yourself outwardly, to the world.
The left column shows how you currently think, feel, and act regarding your concern. The right column suggests advice on how to change your attitudes on these three levels to provide the most beneficial outcome. The trick is to compare and contrast the two columns, which gives hints as to what the cards mean and how to make changes, small or large.

| Current | The Significator![]() 9 of Swords |
Suggested | |
| Thought | ![]() 7 of Swords |
![]() 8 of Swords |
|
| Emotion | ![]() 10 of Wands |
![]() Knight of Wands |
|
| Posture | ![]() King of Wands |
![]() 5 of Wands |
The Significator
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.
Upright Meaning:
Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair, nightmares, worry, tension, extreme anxiety, obsession.
A man in the act of carrying away five swords hastily; missing two which remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand. He is a thief.
Upright Meaning:
Good advice, counsel, instruction, attempt, wish, hope, confidence, bravery, a dirty job that needs to get done.
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.
A man oppressed by the weight of the ten staves which he is carrying.
Upright Meaning:
Fortune, gain, success, false-seeming, disguise, perfidy. The rods that he carries may be bad news to the place he brings them. Success is stultified if the Nine of Swords follows.
A man on a journey, armed with a short wand, and although armoured it is not on an errand of war. He is passing mounds or pyramids. The motion of the horse is a key to the character of its rider, suggesting his mission.
Reversed Meaning:
Rupture, division, interruption, discord.
The nature to which this card is attributed is dark, ardent, lithe, animated, impassioned, noble. The King uplifts a flowering wand, and wears what is called a cap of maintenance beneath his crown. He bears the symbol of the lion, which is emblazoned on the back of his throne.
Upright Meaning:
Dark man, friendly, countryman, generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected heritage to fall in before very long.
A posse of youths, who are brandishing staves, as if in sport or strife. It is mimic warfare.
Upright Meaning:
Imitation, as, for example, sham fight, strenuous competition, struggle, the search for fame and fortune, gold, gain, opulence.