There are a huge range of tarot spreads available for use by people who read the cards. Spreads are important to a successful reading because they help to give a proper interpretation to the cards that are drawn and how they relate to each other.
The tarot spreads that are most common fall into a number of categories. These include: relationship spreads, love life spreads, work and career spreads, decision making spreads and personal growth spreads. Spreads are important because they give the reader something to focus on. The true meaning of the reading can present itself more easily and be interpreted by the reader more easily too.
Other popular tarot spreads include spreads that are designed to focus on things such as holidays, finances, health, fact finding and spreads that can answer questions about pets. Other spreads have been developed to help with specific questions or specific groups of people such as writers and artists. Spreads are also designed to look into people’s past lives and their karmic influence. Whatever the cards can be asked, there is a spread available.
Aside from the category based element of tarot spreads they are also arranged using different numbers of tarot cards and shapes.
The most popular number of cards for small tarot card spreads is three, five and nine. Three card spreads are very popular with beginners. They give the reader something to work with without overcomplicating things. The Celtic cross shape spread is one of the most common tarot shape spreads. It is easy to remember the shape of it and gives the reader plenty of scope to understand what the cards are saying as accurately as possible.
There is a huge number of available spreads that have been devised that can be used by any reader. Many readers develop or adapt their own spreads in order to meet the needs of a particular client and question. But the most popular tarot spreads have been and probably always will be based around love and relationship issues. Having said that jobs and career runs a close second in popularity and there are almost as many published spreads for these popular issues.
In the area of love and relationships alone it is possible to find hundreds of different possible layouts for the cards. The choice of tarot spread will depend on the type of reading that is planned and how much time is available for the reading. For this reason there are many spreads that utilize as few as three cards. Most experienced readers prefer spreads with nine or more cards as this allows meanings to interact more fully and give a fuller and more complex answer to the question that is being asked.
Rachel Ann works for the psychic & metaphysical arena and is a reiki master.