Categorizing Tarot Spreads

[TheLoracular]

This is something I wrote up about a month ago and posted elsewhere but it didn't get feedback which left me a little sad.  So let me try it here.  What does everyone think about Types of Tarot Spreads?  Do yours all fall into one of these categories?  Is there another I should add? 

Relationship-Based Readings
About 80% of the time, tarot readers are asked about relationships, especially romantic relationships. Relationships with people at work or in the family or friendship circle are pretty popular too. I feel like a psychoteric approach is best when it comes to using the tarot to talk about our relationships with people. Psychoterica (as a subset of esoterica) is basically the messy but beautiful realm of thoughts-feelings-beliefs we have about ourselves, other people, and society. I draw on a lot of pop psychology and self-help ideas (which are just as esoteric as astrology, alchemy, and the hermetic Qabalah in my opinion) when it comes to talking about tarot and relationships.


Self-Development Readings
Relationship readings are really about You+Them; self-development readings are about you in the past, present, and future. It can be argued that esoteric tarot from Etteila forward has been about spiritual self-development (what I call mysticism) and continued that path until the late 1960s-early 1970s when psychological thought began to pour into the mainstream and created the modern tarot renaissance. Self-Development Readings are probably the overall most useful and empowering kind of tarot to learn and the learning process never ever stops. In the truth of statements like "As Above, So Below" and "You can't really love someone until you love yourself", self-development readings are a way of becoming the person who will be able to maintain the kind of relationships we want to maintain- and walking away from the ones that are toxic.


Problem-Solving
Problem-Solving spreads are intended to help with immediate challenges and obstacles. If self-development is about healing the past and transforming the present to create a better future, then problem-solving is figuring out what your current assets are and how to apply them to satisfy an immediate want or need.


Forecasting
Just curious about what tomorrow or next week or next year might be like based on either the current situation or as a potential outcome of an action you are considering? Forecast readings help with this. They are divination or fortune-telling in the truest sense of those terms. I strongly believe that free will makes fate too uncertain to predict 90% of the time. Making a forecast and then taking actions based on it to increase or decrease the likelihood can be extremely rewarding, however.


Creative
Want help writing a story or need some inspiration for a new drawing or another kind of project? Creative readings are intended to help trigger your imagination and give a sense of direction for what to design or make.

[AJ-ish/Sharyn]

I agree, it helps to have a focus for spreads. I learned a lot about what works best for me by analyzing these

over the years http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=203788

 

Designing spreads can help us clarify, like doing a reading out loud. 

I'd done lots of readings for myself and others, by thought, and typing... but doing my first by voice reading was a life changer...we can think a lot faster than we can talk, and speaking my first out loud reading... well it was a real lesson. And I gave  myself an F grade!

[Gardener]

Hello @TheLoracular, I have also been thinking about making up spreads lately.  I have a couple that I use regularly, which are sort of all-purpose problem solvers.  For example, my victim (querent) asks - how can I get along better with my boss, or - is my sister going to marry that creep, or - will my son have a good hockey season, or - can I run a full marathon this fall?  Just general, what does the future hold for us.  It's not strictly divination, because most of the spread will focus on the development of the situation and the feelings about the situation, with only one card for outcome, and that's typically pretty vague.  I steer my querent towards rather vague questions, I suppose, since I would say I predict trends or likelihoods rather than specific outcomes.

 

Sometimes I'm really wrong, too!  I had a friend ask about her upcoming visit with her (estranged) mother for Christmas and I gave her a rather boring reading about taking care to keep her boundaries up, and how her mother isn't the boss of her.  Probably more of my own opinions than any wisdom from Tarot.  Then as it turns out she missed her flight and didn't see her mom.  Didn't see that coming!  Oh well.

 

Anyway, I don't know if you'll find this list helpful, but it is the list of categories from 365 Tarot Spreads:

 

• Love and Romance
• Money and Career
• Health and Well-Being
• Home and Family
• Personal Growth
• Astrology and the Zodiac
• Multicultural Holidays
• Rituals and Occult Studies
• Grief and Moving Forward
• Spirituality

 

I see the above list leaves out the category of creativity, which I think is a great and essential category.  In a couple weeks, I'm about to take a writing class which will teach me how to write stories using tarot spreads to set up the scenes.  I'll let you know if there are any good spreads from that class!

 

[Rupicapra]

What category would be e.g. New Moon Spreads with positions like what to let go, what to start, and so on fall under? Would that be self-development? I think I'd call it more "mundane questions". Similar questions like "what do I need to know about this and that?" or "what can I do to get a better job" - I'm not sure if they'd be self-development or more mundane advice. 

[LogicalHue]

I've been trying to come up with concise reading/spread categories (and failing) lately. For me at this moment its about how do different decks work with different kinds of readings and how do different kinds of topics work with different styles. For topic categories I only have things like: advice, follow up, no specific topic in mind, and about/for someone else. The other element is how the cards were drawn; 3 cards, lost man, a spread, etc. There's also things like, is it a review of something you already know or is it about the future?

 

Looking at your categories, I'd say I mostly do self-development and problem solving, with the occasional forecasting. Though often I do a sort of "for this coming week" reading on the weekends which involves some forecasting, but I think of it more as advice for the coming week. This is what I mean with failing to be concise, there's always overlap.

[katrinka]

I do mostly predictive, questions about the past, and present moment things that are occurring at a distance or otherwise hidden. Occasionally I'll do lost objects and probably a few others that I can't recall at present. 

99% of the time I use all-purpose spreads for these: lines, boxes, pyramids and tableaus. Occasionally I'll experiment with a spread from an old book if it looks interesting, but those aren't my go-to.

Edited December 30, 2020 by katrinka

[AJ-ish/Sharyn]

oh yes...how they are laid out brings an added creativity to my readings too, thanks for bring that up. 

I'm crap at laying out a line of cards and telling the story. 

[Guest]

 

Over time I have cultivated a preference for lines, squares and stars. These are all quite loose and can, therefore, be adapted with ease to multiple contexts and circumstances, e.g. bottom for the past, one side for the partner, and so on. 
 

As an event oriented and predictive reader, I have found a small pool of tirages work best. It allows one an opportunity to study what works and refine appropriately. 

 

I do use the Astrological Wheel and the tirage en croix frequently. The former is good for an opening spread, as it identifies key areas and can be read very quickly. The latter is the best yes/no spread imho. Otherwise I do have one for looking for love (designed by Teresa Michelsen), the Consequence spread and Basil Ivan Rakoczi‘s Coven of Thirteen is brilliant.