Talisman,
funny you unearth this thread just when I did a three-card spread out of an urge last night - I like big spreads around ten cards or so, but after the last two intuitive rounds with only one card/two cards (the same from different decks), I realized what sh*tloads I could write about a single card, and how much insight I could gain from it, and it made my head buzz to think I'd do a CC and give that much attention to
all ten cards...! It'd give me a headache!
Still, that doesn't mean I won't do a larger spread now and again, I will when I feel like it. It's just that I've come to understand that on my current level, I'm getting very little out of large spreads compared to what's in them. So for now I'll chime right in: three cards are great! I haven't seen anything like the spread I did last night listed here, so I'll add that:
Each card, in my spread, stood for a person. You can cover any sort of relationship triangle with this: a family with mother, father, child; or a triad of lovers with center, older wing, younger wing; or three friends or three co-workers or whoever. You might even want to try three "versions" of yourself: you as a youth, you as an adult, you as an old woman/man (though that might make most sense when you've reached the last stage already). I wanted to focus on the situation/emotional state of each of them, and how they relate to each other or how well they fit together. It was very interesting to try out the three possible pair combinations of cards and see how they complemented each other (or not).
Another possible triplet would be
starting point - way to go - goal.
This one could easily be expanded with some more cards in the middle to represent obstacles, in-between goals or whatever.
Threes rock!
skinofthesoul~