This easy-to-read 4-card layout is one of the most useful of all the spreads. The first card is the significator, and the last shows the outcome, provided you follow the advice given. The advice is broken down into 2 cards which can easily be compared and contrasted. Card #2 tells you what you should avoid, while #3 shows you the path you should take. This spread can also be used to ask about the meaning of a card from a previously executed spread that may have been confusing. In this usage, Card #2 shows what it did not mean, while #3 clarifies the meaning.
DO This 3 of Pentacles |
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It Deals with This 10 of Cups |
Do NOT Do This Ace of Cups |
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It Leads to This 9 of Swords |
It Deals with This
Appearance of Cups in a rainbow; it is contemplated in wonder and ecstacy by a man and woman below, evidently husband and wife. His right arm is about her; his left is raised upward; she raises her right arm. The two children dancing near them have not observed the prodigy but are happy after their own manner. There is a home-scene beyond.
Upright Meaning:
Contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also perfection of human love and friendship; also the town, village or country you live in.
Atop the waters are water-lillies; the hand reaches out from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup; the dew of water is falling on all sides.
Upright Meaning:
House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.
A sculptor at his work in a monastery. Compare the design which illustrates the Eight of Pentacles. The apprentice or amateur therein has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
Upright Meaning:
Artifice, trade, skilled labour; regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
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.