The 7-card Horse Shoe is a convenient basic layout that can be used to answer different types of questions, especially concerning questions where a little insight would be helpful. Like several other spreads, it has cards representing the past, present, and future.
The pinnacle of the Horse Shoe, looking like the top of the mountain, shows the obstacle or challenge that needs to be addressed and overcome. Card #6 suggests a course of action to meet this challenge. The final card shows the outcome or future should you take this advice.
Other clues are provided in Cards #3 and #5, which indicate hidden and outside influences that come into play effecting the journey to your goal.
Obstacle  Death |
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Hidden Influences  The World |
External Influences  The Hanged Man |
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The Present  Ace of Wands |
Suggestion  2 of Pentacles |
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The Past  The Emperor |
The Outcome  10 of Cups |
The Past Card represents past events that are affecting the question.
The Emperor
The Emperor sits on his throne holding his sceptor. He represents a male figure of power and authority.
Upright Meaning:
Authority, stability, power, protection, benevolence, realization a greatness, aid, reason, conviction, willpower.
Ace of Wands
A hand reaching out from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club.
Upright Meaning:
Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance.
The World
A nude, dancing female holding two batons, symbolic of Mother Earth and Mother Nature. She is encircled by a wreath and surrounded by the cherums who are the guardians of Heaven and Earth.
Reversed Meaning:
fixity, stagnation, absence, nullification, dullness, discouragement, false visions, non-existence, lackluster, nullity.
Death
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.
The Hanged Man
A man hangs upside down from the Tau cross. This is a card of self-sacrifice and enlightenment.
Upright Meaning:
Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, augury, prophecy, pause, reflection, ideas, imagination, meditation.
2 of Pentacles
A young man, in the act of dancing, has a pentacle in either hand, and they are joined by the lemniscate, the sign of eternity.
Upright Meaning:
On the one hand it is represented as a card of gaiety, recreation and its connections, which is the subject of the design; but it is read also as news and messages in writing, as obstacles, agitation, trouble, embroilment.
10 of Cups
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.