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 Cups |
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The Future Outcome (To be read in tandem with the card to the left) 8 of Cups |
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Challenges Which May Arise for You The Hierophant |
Challenges Which May Arise for Your Lover 4 of Swords |
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Desires in Relation to Your Question 6 of Swords |
Your Lover's Desires Knight of Cups |
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Nature of Your Issue Queen of Wands |
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Your Lover's Current Position The Fool |
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The Current State of Things The Hanged Man |
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The Current State of Things
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.
A watchdog warns a foolish youth that he is about to carelessly walk off a cliff. The Fool seems totally ignorant of his surrounding and the danger he is in.
Upright Meaning:
Folly, mania, extravagance, delirium, frenzy, intoxication, bewrayment, going nuts, inexperience, pettiness, immaturity, idiocy.
Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King of Wands, though she is more charismatic.
Upright Meaning:
A dark woman, countrywoman, friendly, chaste, loving, honourable. If the card beside her signifies a man, she is well disposed towards him; if a woman, she is interested in you. Also indicates love of money, or a certain success in business.
A ferryman delivering passengers to the further shore. The course is smooth, and seeing that the freight is light, as the workload is not beyond his ability.
Reversed Meaning:
Declaration, confession, publicity; possibly a proposal of love.
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.
Seated on his throne, the Pope symbolises the male understanding of the spiritual workings of the world and traditional values. Two monks flank him on either side.
Reversed Meaning:
Society, concord, overkindness, weakness, doormat, misinterpretation, misunderstanding.
The effigy of a knight in the attitude of prayer, at full length upon his tomb.
Reversed Meaning:
Wise administration, circumspection, economy, avarice, precaution, testament.
He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea; on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping.
Upright Meaning:
Fair man, man of business, law, or divinity; responsible, disposed to oblige the Querent; also equity, art and science, including those who profess science, law and art; creative intelligence.
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
Reversed Meaning:
Great joy, happiness, feasting, jubilee.