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) 6 of Wands |
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The Future Outcome (To be read in tandem with the card to the left) 2 of Cups |
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Challenges Which May Arise for You 4 of Swords |
Challenges Which May Arise for Your Lover 2 of Wands |
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Desires in Relation to Your Question Knight of Swords |
Your Lover's Desires 3 of Swords |
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Nature of Your Issue The Hierophant |
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Your Lover's Current Position King of Swords |
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The Current State of Things Knight of Wands |
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The Current State of Things
A man on a journey, armed with a short wand, and although armoured it is not on an errand of war. He is passing mounds or pyramids. The motion of the horse is a key to the character of its rider, suggesting his mission.
Upright Meaning:
Departure, absence, flight, emigration. A dark young man, friendly. Change of residence.
He sits in judgement, holding the unsheathed sword. He recalls the conventional symbol of justice in the Major Arcana, and he may represent this virtue, but he is rather the power of life and death.
Reversed Meaning:
Cruelty, perversity, barbarity, perfidy, bad intentions, a sharp tongue, insulting, insecurity, arrogance.
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.
He is riding in full course, as if scattering his enemies. In the design he is really a prototypical hero of romantic chivalry. He might even be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart.
Upright Meaning:
Skill, bravery, capacity, defence, address, enmity, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance.
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind.
Reversed Meaning:
Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion, a storm brewing.
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.
A tall man looks from a battlemented roof over sea and shore; he holds a globe in his right hand, while a staff in his left rests on the battlement; another is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lilly should be noticed on the left side.
Reversed Meaning:
Trouble, fear, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification, trivial disappointments.
A laurelled horseman bears one staff adorned with a laurel crown; footmen with staves are at his side.
Upright Meaning:
A victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King's courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth.
A youth and maiden are pledging the love of one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card.
Reversed Meaning:
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and – as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination – that desire by which Nature is sanctified.