This is a specified relationship spread that uses nine cards to analyse where a romantic relationship is at and where it is headed. The first card shows where it is at now, and can be considered the significator. The second and third cards determine where your partner stands and how it relates to where you are at personally.
Above the stem, the three-card base of the layout, a cup forms. Cards #4 and #5 show each person's desires, meaning what they want to get out of this coupling. Above this, Cards #6 and #7 show the challenge that this pairing presents to each individual. The final two cards at the top form the rim of the cup, symbolic of the taste of the relationship to each person, which shows how things will turn out on each side.
The Future Outcome (To be read in tandem with the card to the right) King of Wands |
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The Future Outcome (To be read in tandem with the card to the left) 9 of Wands |
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Challenges Which May Arise for You 7 of Wands |
Challenges Which May Arise for Your Lover The Empress |
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Desires in Relation to Your Question The Hanged Man |
Your Lover's Desires Knight of Cups |
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Nature of Your Issue The High Priestess |
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Your Lover's Current Position 9 of Cups |
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The Current State of Things 5 of Cups |
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The Current State of Things
A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding.
Upright Meaning:
It is a card of loss, but something remains over; three have been taken, but two are left; it is a card of inheritance, patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations.
A goodly personage has feasted to his heart's content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him, seeming to indicate that the future is also assured. The picture offers the material side only, but there are other aspects.
Reversed Meaning:
Truth, loyalty, liberty; but with some mistakes, imperfections, or miscalculations.
Crowned by the moon, the High Priestess is seated between two pillars, one black and the other white. She holds the Tora scroll and the secret wisdom of the world's creation.
Reversed Meaning:
Passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit, surface knowledge, ego, shallowness, superficiality.
A man hangs upside down from the Tau cross. This is a card of self-sacrifice and enlightenment.
Reversed Meaning:
Selfishness, the crowd, politics, corruption, self-deception, misunderstanding, ignorance, denseness, blindness.
Graceful, and 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.
Upright Meaning:
Arrival, approach – sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanour, invitation, incitement.
A young man on a craggy eminence brandishing a staff; six other staves are raised towards him from below.
Upright Meaning:
Valour, discussion, wordy strife, negotiations, war of trade, barter, competition. It is further a card of success, for the combatant is on the top and his enemies may be unable to reach him.
Seated on her throne, the Empress holds up the golden sceptre. She represents the archetypal female.
Upright Meaning:
Fertility, pregnancy, motherly instincts, fruitfulness, compassion, diplomacy, public rejoicings, jubilation.
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.
Reversed Meaning:
Good-natured, but severe; austere, yet tolerant.
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.