Not a spread per se, but still a reading

[Diana]

I thought I'd share with you how I'm using the Tarot cards at the moment for gaining insight into my questionings.

It's not really a spread per se. What I do is, I take all the Major Arcana, all 22 of them, and without any need for shuffling, I look at each one in turn. I just look at them closely and observe whether they illicit any strong feelings or emotions. Those that do evoke strong stirrings, that make my heart beat a bit faster, I put in a "to keep" file. The others, that illicit little emotion of feelings at the time of the "reading", I put in the "discard" pile.

I repeat the process again with the cards in the "to keep" file. And those that illicit the least emotion out of those that I retained previously, I put in the "discard" pile. And I repeat the process until I only have in the "to keep" file, those cards that cause deep stirrings. Sometimes there's only one, sometimes there are two or three. But never more than three up to now (but this is not a rule. It just happens that I've never had more than three left).

Then those that I have retained, are those I use for understanding more about my question and what is really behind it. To try and uncover what needs to be revealed to me in order to progress on my path.

I only use the Major Arcana, because I'm of the Tarot of Marseille tradition. Although I love and respect the minors (in the TdM tradition they are sometimes called the Honours), like for most Tarot readers in the French speaking world (and they use mostly the TdM), the Majors are largely sufficient and complete.

I don't know whether this method would work if one is asking a specific question in a fortune telling kind of way, i.e. the kind of question like "Will I get the job I applied for", or "does John still love me". But it works beautifully for me when I ask the Tarot "what do I need to know today", or "am I seeing the big picture in this problem I am facing or am I ignoring some part of it" or other kind of questions of that kind.

[Charlie Brown]

That seems like a great way to use the cards for doing self-examination type stuff. I like to use oracle decks sometimes for things like that. Or, at least, things like that give some kind of excuse/reason to use my oracle decks.

[Night Shade]

What a great idea. It seems like a good way to assess where you are emotionally - where you're blocked, and where you need to rein your emotions in a bit.