My five card spread for advice from the Tarot on making decision is quick and easy to read – even for beginners! If you have a Tarot deck, pull out your cards (and your booklet, if needed) and get started.
Five Card Spread, One Question
Crafting your question is the first step. You want to use this five card spread when:
- choosing between two options or
- deciding whether or not to do one thing.
For example:
- “Should I continue on my current path of study, or switch to accounting instead?”
- “I can do X or Y, which will be better for me in the long run?”
- “Should I move away or stay where I am?”
The Five Card Spread Positions
Background
The card in the background position of the five card spread tells you the real root of this problem or issue you are dealing with. As a consultant, this helps me see if the client is leaving anything out or if the root of the issue isn’t what the client believes it is.
One client asked if she should take a job being offered or go on to grad school. The Background card was the Three of Swords, which suggested something emotional was the real root of the problem. Sure enough, her current boyfriend was pressuring her to stay and go to grad school instead of moving cross-country. With this in mind, the reading’s choice cards became clear, submit to the boyfriend’s desires or pursue her dream job.
Current Status
Before making any decision, it is good to know exactly where you are at this point in time. In a relationship reading I received a very clear indication that the client was not ready to settle down and needed to get out and meet people, date around and widen their horizons before marrying. Acknowledging this was a huge step for the client, who was being pressured by their family to marry young.
The Choices
Heaven & Earth Tarot
Each card denotes what the likely result will be for that choice, assuming nothing else changes. I’ve found the Tarot is generally blunt in these five card spread positions. In the reading above, with the client pressured to marry young, the choice to marry was The Tower, a clear indication that this path would be life-altering to the extreme. The second choice, which was to not marry and continue on with their career, was the Three of Hearts, suggesting a break with his family over this issue. What a choice to make!
Read each individual choice card in the five card spread in light of the previous Background and Current Situation cards. When the choice is a difficult one, the progression of the cards together usually leads the client to a better understanding of each choice.
A side note to potential Tarot consultants or when working with a professional: make sure the consultant presents the choices honestly and without weight on one or the other. It isn’t the place of the reader to tell the client which to choose but to let them make their own decision. About three-quarters of the time, the client chooses an option that surprises me. Or they will come up with an alternative that they hadn’t thought of themself.
The Advice: What to Consider
Modern Witch Tarot
The final card in this five card spread is something that the Tarot wants the client to take into consideration when making a decision. Sometimes it just gives general advice such as “get help from a professional” or “take your time to decide, there’s no rush.” At other times the advice adds more weight to one choice or the other.
For the client who wanted to choose between her boyfriend and grad school or taking her dream job, the card in this position was the Five of Cups. This card is about being focused on what you’ve lost instead of what you still have and need to move on. This resonated with her for personal reasons and helped her make the choice to go to grad school. Discussing her choice with the company that made the job offer, they offered her summer internships which ended in her working for the company remotely after she graduated! (She broke up with her boyfriend before then.)
Conclusion
Feel free to alter the meanings of the positions in this five card spread. Sometimes I change the Choice cards to show the pros and cons of a decision. The key is to set the positions in mind before you mix the cards and lay them out. I don’t know why it works, but it does. When reading for myself I sometimes get sloppy and, when looking at the spread, realize that I didn’t articulate the positions well enough and the reading is confused.
Do you read Tarot? How will you use this spread? Don’t read Tarot? Ask for a reading today!
What Clients are Saying about Sophrosyne Tarot
I was advised to ask open-ended questions instead of predictive questions which I thought was helpful because I never would have known if it weren’t for the reader. The reader provided the reading along with some advice too so the entire reading was very thorough and explained in an understandable manner.
Everything said was accurate and helpful for me to identify my flaws in order to grow as a person. I have learned a lot about tarot and what it does to help me.
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