Deck of 1000 Spreads—New Spreadcrafting Tool

Sulis said:

Ooh, this is new to me, never heard of this before... Carla, could you tell us what you think of it here?

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Here are some extracts from my review:

I first read about this spreadcrafting tool months ago at AT, and thought the idea imminently practical. It's such a simple and obvious idea, it's surprising no one's taken the initiative to produce and publish something like this already. Well done to Tierney for doing it! The concept behind this set is simplicity itself: a set of oversized cards which serve as markers for a tarot spread. They underlie the cards in a spread, showing the name of each card position. Why would anyone need such a thing? Several reasons: 1) it saves the hassle of drawing out an original spread on a bit of paper and then having to refer to it repeatedly during the reading to remind yourself what the cards stand for, 2) it saves the embarrassment of forgetting a card position during a live reading (which does happen, particularly if you're doing many readings back to back and each person gets a different spread--trust me, you never want to be saying, 'Oh, did we say this card was Finances or Relationships?' The looks you get, oh dear!), 3) it saves you having to tell the querent over and over what the card stands for (if you do that sort of thing). And 4) if you're learning a new spread you've found elsewhere, it saves you having to refer to the screen, book or your notes repeatedly as you try it out. It's just a handy dandy little idea. ...

A couple of things I noticed right away about using this system:

1) Selecting card positions with aid of the Deck of 1000 Spreads set encourages me to throw in more card positions than I normally would. This is not necessarily a good thing to me. It's like how you take more M & Ms from a big bowl of them than you would from a small pack. You just do it because they're there, not because you need that many. Rather than looking through the deck selecting card positions that sound good, I believe it would be best to decide what card positions you want, and then find those in the pack. It's a subtle difference, but gives you more control over making the spread you actually want rather than having a sprawling layout based on things that you threw in because they sounded good when you saw them.

2) I am highly verbal and the giant white lettering at the top distracts me greatly from the tarot cards themselves. The card position becomes more important than the card. I decided to solve that by sliding the tarot card up to cover the heading, and if I need the label as a memory aid (the entire purpose of the set after all, at least as I see it), then I can always slide it down for a quick peek. ...

Verdict: Deck of 1000 Spreads is a great idea and a really handy tool for tarot readers, as long as you stay in control of it and don't let it control you. If you can deal with all your cards having gigantic, multi-coloured borders, I suggest you give it a try. It is not a tool I will use on a regular basis, but it's there if I need it, and that's great! Thanks to the deck creator for bringing us such a useful thing.

(I go into more detail with some images as well in my full review.)

I've been using mine for a couple weeks now. At first I couldn't get a handle on it. I didn't like the idea of pulling cards for specific already predetermined positions of regular spreads. Then I tried randomly shuffling and drawing like I would a normal spread with the Tarot. And that was a bust too.....I got too many of one color and not enough of another. Topics and Influences far outweigh Outcomes. So I put it away for a week or so. Then for some reason pulled it out again today. There's been an issue going on in my life for quite some time and trying to get a handle on it has proved difficult and traditional spreads and trying to make my own spread just wasn't working this time. So what I did was this: I went through the Deck of 1000 spreads and just started pulling out every card that would relate in some way to the issue I am having. Past, present, future, everything. I ended up with half the deck. Every question I wanted answered about it, every position I was curious about. Then I shuffled just those cards, and shuffled my Tarot deck and laid them side by side. Then I started pulling cards in pairs off the top of both decks. Lay down a position card, then lay down a Tarot card on top of it. I also had my journal out and was recording the position, the tarot card drawn and my initial thoughts on the meanings. Then I would put the next pair next to it and read all four cards together. I realized I would soon run out of room, so the third pair I laid on top of the middle of the first two cards and read all six cards together. Then I started laying the next pairs next to those and then laying the next ones on top of those, the way you build a wall out of bricks. So every pair put down related to two other pairs it was on top of or beside. I ended up getting a REALLY well studied read on this particular issue. Everything I could possibly want to know about it. Yes it ended up being a HUGE amount of cards, but i've never been so satisfied with a reading. There would never be a way to do this without a lot of back and forth to a book and a lot of confusion without this deck. I'm excited to do it again. It just felt so thorough, like I now know everything I need to know to start fixing the problem.

I guess FallynRain's experience and mine demonstrate how adaptable the system is -- from buttoned down control to exuberant improvisation -- the Deck of 1000 Spreads can handle it!

Carla said:

I guess FallynRain's experience and mine demonstrate how adaptable the system is -- from buttoned down control to exuberant improvisation -- the Deck of 1000 Spreads can handle it!

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lol, wow, it did come off as exuberant didn't it. ....it was just so.....exciting. lol I didn't read your review until after I'd written what i'd written and then I was like.....oh....oops. I just grabbed ALL the m&m's out of the bag and just shoved them all in my mouth at once! But it was fun and it was worth it! lol and i'm not one bit ashamed. but I can see your points.

FallynRaiyn said:

lol, wow, it did come off as exuberant didn't it. ....it was just so.....exciting. lol I didn't read your review until after I'd written what i'd written and then I was like.....oh....oops. I just grabbed ALL the m&m's out of the bag and just shoved them all in my mouth at once! But it was fun and it was worth it! lol and i'm not one bit ashamed. but I can see your points.

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Hey, I've been known to eat a whole bag of M&Ms. No problem!

I really like the idea of this deck. If I find it at a good price I'll definitely snap it up. I find spread creation difficult so it might be fun to explore angles with this deck.

Great review, Carla! I've heard the "distraction" thing a few times. And the color thing a couple of times...I did that to make learning spreadcrafting easier for beginners, though from what I'm hearing and seeing, I'm not sure how many beginners are actually buying the deck. It seems to be appealing to a more savvy audience.

BUT I LOVE your adaptation. Can I put that on my site? That's such a good idea! And I'd love to put a link to your review there, too, if that's ok.

And I laughed when you said you'd never use the Card of the Day card. I have no excuses for that...you're right.

FallynRaiyn, can I put up that suggestion on my site, too. I especially like the part when you randomly chose from JUST the cards you wanted in your spread. That's so smart.

It really is a crap shoot when you divine a spread. I do it most days on my blog...or at least randomly choose two or three cards to make a combo position. It works most days, but not all.

I kind of like going forward with some of the awkward spreads you get from random draws...sometimes they work better in a reading than they appear when you first draw them, but I get how it's really a crap shoot. Anyway, I'd love to share your technique and credit you for it.

schmedrake said:

Great review, Carla! I've heard the "distraction" thing a few times. And the color thing a couple of times...I did that to make learning spreadcrafting easier for beginners, though from what I'm hearing and seeing, I'm not sure how many beginners are actually buying the deck. It seems to be appealing to a more savvy audience.

BUT I LOVE your adaptation. Can I put that on my site? That's such a good idea! And I'd love to put a link to your review there, too, if that's ok.

And I laughed when you said you'd never use the Card of the Day card. I have no excuses for that...you're right.

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I'd be honoured for you to do whatever you wish with my review. Thanks! (I'm even now constructing a chart formation spread such as you illustrate in Fig 16 in your book.)

schmedrake said:

FallynRaiyn, can I put up that suggestion on my site, too. I especially like the part when you randomly chose from JUST the cards you wanted in your spread. That's so smart.

It really is a crap shoot when you divine a spread. I do it most days on my blog...or at least randomly choose two or three cards to make a combo position. It works most days, but not all.

I kind of like going forward with some of the awkward spreads you get from random draws...sometimes they work better in a reading than they appear when you first draw them, but I get how it's really a crap shoot. Anyway, I'd love to share your technique and credit you for it.

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yes, that's fine. I just wish i could figure out how to explain what I did a little better, cause reading it over it seems really confusing. I ended up using all the cards I pulled, not just a few randomly out of it. And yes, it took forever, and was rather unwieldy, but I've been experimenting with the technique and have refined a little better how to read such a huge number of cards. I stacked them right on top of each other, the same way you'd build a wall with blocks, making a pyramid and keep adding cards on top of the middle of two cards until you reach the pinnacle and then start again at the bottom of the pinnacle. Too hard to show in text, i'd have to make a video I think. But it worked very well if you have the time.