Thoughts on large spreads?

I constantly do 3 card (no positions) with a base card! Recently I decided to do some spreads with positions. I really recommend if you only do tarot spreads in one comfortable way to shake things up a bit! there is a place and a situation for all types of readings!

Each month there is a large spread circle which appears in this forum area here, which is really informal and you post a large spread that you choose with other people also posting theirs. You get a whole month to do it and it doesn't matter if you don't finish it. Doing very large spreads opened up my eyes! It is more of a test of your tarot skills and is more hard work / time consuming but there is a place for all types of spreads. It really gives more on a complex or large topic or question I have found.

Positional spreads are great when you want to look at definite areas of an issue, they can also make things clearer when free hand can be confusing in that area. Large spreads give such insight, great for a complex issue or looking ahead for a period of time.

I believe you can get a lot from a small spread, but have a go with large spreads, I try and do one a month now

You don't need to worry about using up the cards, tarot finds a way to get it's message in each position

Not a big fan of big spreads simply because most of them have very cumbersome card positions and they get overcomplicated.

Having said that, I do like to do a once a year yearly spread with a card per month. Not really a "large" spread as such since essentially it is a sequence of 1 card positions, January, February etc.

What I dislke are those spread positions"what am I thinking? What is going on in my brain? Things I don't know, things I do know, what my mother-in-law thinks of me" etc.

But cumbersomeness in tarot spreads is never good. I think the Celtic Cross is big enough.

Mostly I do three card spreads in answer to questions. Or 5 or occasionally 7. That's enough for me. But I like vague-ish positions. Sometimes I read a three card spread with positions (i.e Past Present Future) or I just read the three of them as a continual narrative slice.

And that one by Kaplain that uses 56 cards of a whole deck (see Encyclopedia of Tarot Vol I)

I get lost in really big ones. The astrological wheel or clock one is usually just a mess for me.

I like the CC though. It's about the max that I can take.


One exception is the Comte de Mellet spread, which I love, and which you can never tell how many cards there will be. It usually amounts to between six and ten cards, but I think I've had as many as 14 and as few as four in a spread. But it's a fun spread, possibly because there isn't really an assigned meaning to the position. I just read them as a chronology.

Thoughts on large spreads

I usually only use 4 or 5 cards. I find that is plenty to get the answer. I will occasionally do the Celtic Cross for something that I want a lot of detail in, or just feel I want to use a large spread. I may use a large spread once or twice a year depending on what I'm doing a reading about. I usually just do the 4 or 5 card though and don't need to do any larger.


Great thread


Brightest Blessings!
BeyondtheVeil

BrownBear

BrownBear said:

Interesting. My experience has been the opposite. When I was beginning with spreads, I needed more cards to get more information. Now that I have more experience, it doesn't take more than four or six cards for me to get a good picture of the situation. Now when I use larger spreads, I find them distracting. It's like I can't see the forest for the trees.

And of course, everyone's mileage will vary.

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I have to agree with you. When doing festivals & events, etc one needs to be able to give a great reading in a short period of time Using lots of cards seems very time consuming when you could just do 3 to 5 cards and use your intuition. I think that is plenty to get a great reading.

Brightest Blessings!
BeyondtheVeil

My main spreads are the 15 cards spread (the one with the alterate outcome), a 13 cards tableau that I came up with, and the Opening of the Key, so you could say that I'm quite in love with large spreads I find it easier for me to just look around for inspiration, especially if im stuck at the beginning, which happens more frequently when I use the 3 cards spread. But this is not to say that I don't use it: quite the opposite, I use it very often, but more because it is very quick and allows me to immediately see the answer than for other factors. However, I am not biased against the readers who use only three cards, e.g. one of my tarot mates only uses this spread and she's great.

3ill.yazi said:

I get lost in really big ones. The astrological wheel or clock one is usually just a mess for me.

I like the CC though. It's about the max that I can take.


One exception is the Comte de Mellet spread, which I love, and which you can never tell how many cards there will be. It usually amounts to between six and ten cards, but I think I've had as many as 14 and as few as four in a spread. But it's a fun spread, possibly because there isn't really an assigned meaning to the position. I just read them as a chronology.

Click to expand...

How to do that spread????

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