Cult of Tarot Forum

For this month's Tarot Reading Circle I have chosen a spread from "The Book of Maps" by Benebell Wen. It's the companion book to her brilliant Spirit Keeper's Tarot, but this spread will work with any tarot deck. The description is Benebell's:

Seeing the Unseen Spread
When you are feeling lost, anxious or indecisive about a specific matter, present the questions to the cards to reveal what you haven't been seeing clearly.

Choose a significator for the center. Benebell suggests The Seeker from her deck, which would correspond most closely to "The Fool" in any other deck. Seems appropriate!

Cards 1 and 2: These cards reveal the influential energies beside you.

Cards 3, 4, and 5: These cards reveal the root causes or underlying sources that lead you to the crossroads. These are the issues to address first before full clarity can be attained.

Card 6: the forecast, outcome or divine answer.

Sound fun? Please join us. Just reply here and I will assign partners on the 9th, get it all started, and we can all give this a go!

Dates:

• Respond here to sign up by March 08.

• Partners assigned March 09.

• Readings posted by March 25.

• Feedback posted by March 30.

A note about feedback: it's a very important part of this exercise so do your best to be as generous with it as your reader was with your reading.

I hope you'll join us. Reading circles are a great way to try out new things and work with others for some honest and helpful feedback.

Are you interested but not sure how reading groups and circles work? Click here for more info.

sounds interesting, but i get the feeling i don’t really understand this spread so could you explain, or give me some guidance on what kind of question this spread attempts to answer?
i get confused because several different words are used: anxious, lost, indecisive and then energies, root causes, crossroads, issues and full clarity/ divine answer.... so which is it? this a recurring problem for me, personally, it is not meant to criticize the spread, but due to my adhd i tend to give each word equal weight which causes my mind to shortcircuit
so while the title of this spread: seeing the unseen really appeals to me, i cannot ‘see’ what exactly this spread is supposed to reveal

My understanding is that it's for situations in which the sitter feels confused and/or out of control. It attempts to show what is missing from the sitter's understanding to that they can see the situation more clearly.

At least that's how I read it.

I've been trying to figure out if I have anything that I could parse into a question for this spread, and I think I found something, so I'm in!

stronglove wrote: ↑04 Mar 2020, 23:44 sounds interesting, but i get the feeling i don’t really understand this spread so could you explain, or give me some guidance on what kind of question this spread attempts to answer?
i get confused because several different words are used: anxious, lost, indecisive and then energies, root causes, crossroads, issues and full clarity/ divine answer.... so which is it? this a recurring problem for me, personally, it is not meant to criticize the spread, but due to my adhd i tend to give each word equal weight which causes my mind to shortcircuit
so while the title of this spread: seeing the unseen really appeals to me, i cannot ‘see’ what exactly this spread is supposed to reveal

I understand.
The thing about Benebell's spreads is she sets up a good structure but leaves a lot of room within that structure to allow for the reader's intuition and style to flourish.

Yes she offers a lot of words, choose the one(s) that apply.

So for example, for the question she says:

When you are feeling lost, anxious or indecisive about a specific matter, present the questions to the cards to reveal what you haven't been seeing clearly.

Just pick one. Lost, or anxious, or indecisive. Or just something in that general "family" like Charlie Brown suggested, confused and/or out of control, for example. So it isn't necessarily a specific question, just an area of life where you are feeling Lost, or anxious, or...etc.
For example, "I'm feeling anxious about money" or "I'm confused about the direction of my art" or something like that.

As far as the reading goes, read cards 1 and 2 looking for influential energies. The cards should work together to reveal something to you about influences on the topic. Note what you interpret from these combined cards. Then move to the next set.

Cards 3, 4 and 5 will reveal the issues that are causing this anxiety or confusion. You may see 3 separate issues. or maybe they work together to show you a single cause. It may reveal what is not obvious. Note that down and move to

card 6 - "the forecast, outcome or divine answer." Just pick whichever of those makes the most sense to you. Again, it's just to give you some choices but general idea is the same across all three.

I think if it works right, reading the first 2 cards will open the door to the next 3 cards and all together those cards will open the door to the last, Card 6.

That's why, I think, it helps to note what you are seeing before you move from one set to the next set of cards.


I think this about more than just finding an answer though. It's also like CB says, about finding the unseen influences and causes that underlie the situation.



Does that help a little?

This sounds like a really interesting idea, I'd love to have a try! I have only read for one other person (thanks Kare!) so it's great to have the opportunity to learn.

Fellow ADHDer here- that clarification was really helpful so thanks Stronglove for asking and for all the people who took time to explain! (:

Joan Marie wrote: ↑05 Mar 2020, 11:58
Does that help a little?

yes, a lot actually, thanks. it helped me discover where and why i got stuck. it is that 6th card that got me confused. because, when the aim is to see the unseen, i would think that the first 5 cards would be the answer, they reveal possible influences and underlying factors/ causes that i might not be aware of. but then the 6th card would be ‘the outcome of the outcome’ and i have no idea what that might possibly represent. does that make any sense?
maybe i should just skip that 6th card
it would be fun to ‘get back in the game’ and do a proper spread. lately i tend to just draw a few cards and say: tell me a story (usually with the marseille) or: what do i need to know? (rws or thoth) the only spread i use is my personal 4 card ADHD spread, maybe we can use that for a reading circle in the future

Wow... it's sounds like a big project to me. I may not get the whole idea but am trying to find out. I am IN for this !

I know I'm late for signing up... but got room for one more?

iMoodyCrab wrote: ↑09 Mar 2020, 07:35 I know I'm late for signing up... but got room for one more?

You're fine. I'm just setting up partners now.

Thanks for joining!