The second Path spread is a seven-level design that yields insight to achieve a high level of personal and spiritual growth. The roots of the tree, shown in the first two cards, suggest what you need to learn and where the challenge lies. Growing upward, the next two cards are about the forces that guide you and what will help boost your growth. The next two cards show the lower branches of the tree, which provide warnings about what you need to let go of in order to maximise your progress. Finally at the top of the tree, we come to the outcome, showing where this growth process will ultimately lead.
The End Result
 2 of Swords |
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Warnings You Should Heed
 Strength |
That Which You Should Let Pass
 Death |
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What Powers Will Help You
 2 of Cups |
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Your Guiding Card
 2 of Pentacles |
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What You Need to Learn
 The Devil |
The Challenges Before You
 King of Swords |
What You Need to Learn
The devil holds the lovers, Adam and Eve in chains. This card represents the fall of man.
Reversed Meaning:
Evil, weakness, pettiness, vehemence, betrayal, deception, prison, small-mindedness, trifling.
He sits in judgement, holding the unsheathed sword. He recalls the conventional symbol of justice in the Major Arcana, and he may represent this virtue, but he is rather the power of life and death.
Reversed Meaning:
Cruelty, perversity, barbarity, perfidy, bad intentions, a sharp tongue, insulting, insecurity, arrogance.
A dancing young man has a pentacle in either hand, and they are joined by the lemniscate, the sign of eternity.
Reversed Meaning:
Enforced gaiety, simulated enjoyment, literal sense, handwriting, composition, exchanging letters.
A youth and maiden are pledging the love of one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card.
Upright Meaning:
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and – as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination – that desire which Nature is sanctified.
A woman holds a young lion at bay with her female strength of grace. She is crowned by the lemniscate as the Magician is, revealing herself as his counterpart.
Reversed Meaning:
Manipulation, despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, disgrace, deception, trickery, lies, cheap tactics, malevolence.
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.
Reversed Meaning:
Inertia, sleep, lethargy, hope destroyed, depression, sloth, misery, undoing, ruin, subjugation.
A hoodwinked female figure balances two swords upon her shoulders.
Reversed Meaning:
Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty, treason, back-stabbing.