This in-depth eight-card layout shows various aspects of your personal journey. It is good for exploring generalised personal questions, but can also be used to explore relationships if the couple is viewed as a whole.
This spread progresses through eight stages similar to the tarot deck's Major Arcana, beginning with birth and the realm of fertility. After birth comes the initial growth which leads to a period of adaptation, change, and re-balancing oneself. Once the process has grown enough, security comes into focus, as it is necessary to protect what has been earned. After this, once again growth is important, but concerning the mind and creativitity this time, leading to another phase of personal changes. Finally upon completion of the journey, the rewards become evident, and beyond that, one's spiritual development level will have noticeably risen.
| Matters of Completion, Rewards and Luck.  9 of Pentacles |
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Matters of Change and Metamorphosis. 5 of Swords |
Matters of Inner Strength and Spiritual Guidance. The Tower |
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Matters of Learning, Art and Creativity. Queen of Swords |
Matters of Beginnings, fertility and birth. 5 of Wands |
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Matters of Protection and Defense. Knight of Cups |
Matters of Growth, Flow and Energy. Page of Pentacles |
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Matters of Changes, Polarities and Balance. 4 of Swords |
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Matters of Beginnings, fertility and birth.
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.
A youthful figure, looking intently at the pentacle which hovers over his raised hands. He moves slowly, unaware of his surroundings.
Reversed Meaning:
Prodigality, dissipation, liberality, squandering luxury, bad news, misspending, waste, throw away, deplete, flush down the toilet.
The effigy of a knight in the attitude of prayer, at full length upon his tomb.
Upright Meaning:
Vigilance, retreat, solitude, hermit's repose, exile, tomb and coffin. It is these last that have suggested the design.
Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to those higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterise this card. He too is a dreamer, but the images of the side of sense haunt him in his vision.
Reversed Meaning:
Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.
Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair the left hand is extended, the arm raised her countenance is severe but chastened; it suggests familiarity with sorrow. She is a bitter, unmerciful oppressor of those who fall under her reign.
Upright Meaning:
Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation, lack of empathy.
A disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures. Their swords lie upon the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder, and a third sword is in his right hand, point to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.
Upright Meaning:
Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, disdain, notoriety.
A woman with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a luxurious manorial house. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being.
Reversed Meaning:
Roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith, insecurity, egotism, immodesty, self-centeredness, vanity, narcissism.
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.