A New Look at Waite's "Celtic Cross"

I want to provide my thoughts here of Waite's Celtic Cross spread. The spread is effectively a compound of two smaller spreads each with their own cosmological models If we apply the cosmologies of each section to them, we can get a great deal more out of them.

The first is the "sun-wheel" portion which includes six cards plus the significator. This section is a compound of Plato's three elements of the human and the three aspects of past/present/future, along with a card opposing action in the present. Thus we can read the cards quite differently:

Crown: Sovereign need, breakthroughs, what is NEEDED, divine gifts.
Before: past action.
after: Next steps
Now: What you are doing now
Opposition: What is keeping you from doing what you need to right now.
below: What sustains you or alternately the problem. May be what must be endured. Ancestral elements would fit here too.

In short we have rulership/necessity, past/present/future action and its opposition to that action, and finally the sustaining principle.

Now for the vertical column of four cards, these map to the four worlds of Kabbalah at the present moment:

10: Kether: The most abstract element of the situation
9: B'riah: The images of power
8: Forgotten images of power, dreams, what others can see.
7: Assiah: What can be/is being done now.

Now, as in Kabbalistic thought, things emenate downward from Kether, we also get these cards descending downward towards Assiah. Thus they also represent steps towards and arriving at a final answer to the solution (i.e. cards 7-10 are the road from the present to the final answer).

Feedback? Comments?

Thank you for the new approach! I have not tried using the Celtic Cross before, but I think this will give me more to get a hold of! It's almost like the light bulb over a character's head.

One other implication of this is you could use each sub-spread as a full spread.

I.e. one ends up with a six-card spread plus a four card spread.

So, I want to ask a question....

I can do a quick four-worlds spread (cards 7-10 above)
I can do a quick sun-wheel spread (the first part)
Or I can do both (Waite's "Celtic Cross")

einhverfr,

On first glance, I really like this! It might even get me to use a Celtic Cross again.

As with most things, I'll need to take it for a test drive to see how it handles, but on paper it looks like a winner.

Thanks for sharing your "New Look"! BTW, that's what I'm going to call it when I add it to my spreads collection - einhverfr's New Look at the Celtic Cross Spread.

Rodney

Celtic Cross is my favorite. I'm roaming in my head right now to my own CC readings. This layout always makes me think of a NYT Crossword puzzle -- each clue leads to the next through the theme. There is often two stories in each CC; the mundane and the spiritual.

Thanks for giving the brain a jog. Going to see how this works with past spreads where the result is a known.

Yet one more aspect of this is that such an understanding can show a great deal more linkage between the positions and get rid of the need to use reversed cards.

einhverfr said:

Yet one more aspect of this is that such an understanding can show a great deal more linkage between the positions and get rid of the need to use reversed cards.

Click to expand...

Ah! You will never, ever get rid of my need for reversed cards -- I'm too old for this kind of thought lol