Genealogy spread

A few months ago, I thought of a spread that would show us how we were influenced by our ancestors / family, which errors have a tendency to repeat themselves through the generations ("chains") or why certain things appear in our lives.

I only use majors and court cards to represent the persons to see if similar traits and "chains" appear or if there are "chainbreakers" (persons who are radically different from the rest) in the family.

The minors could maybe used to cover the cards once to see other influences or to clarify things unclear.

The basic spread would have 7 cards, and would look like an inverted pyramid, like this:


where the cards would represent the family as follows:

1 - the querent
2 - the querent's father
3 - the querent's mother
4 - the querent's father's father
5 - the querent's father's mother
6 - the querent's mother's father
7 - the querent's mother's mother

It can be interesting and useful to add a card for each of the siblings, in the same line as the querent's card, as well as a card for family members that have (have had) a particularly important significance to the querent - on the line of the corresponding generation and to the side the person came from, mother's or father's side of the family).

If you like, you can use 2 decks for the two branches of the family, choosing the querent's card from the deck representing the family branch you think he most resembles to. (idem for the siblings)

If more generations are known (like one or more of the gandparent's parents), they can be added too.

The spread has proved quite interesting, so after having tried it a few times, I thought I'd share it with you all and ask for your comments / feedback

Love
Simone

Thanks Simone

That is an interesting one. I have copied it and look forward to trying it out. Will let you know how I get on.

LB

This is excellent - I've never seen one like this before. Thanks for posting it, Simone!

Simone[center said:

4 * 5 *** 6 * 7
2 ***** 3
1[/center]

where the cards would represent the family as follows:

Click to expand...

Simone, thanks for sharing this. I will try this in the next week or so and give you some feeback!

Thank you for your interest!

I really am looking forward to see how you do with the spread; if anything is unclear concerning it, do not hesitate to ask...

Love
Simone

Oh, wow! Simone, you've just connected my two loves in one glorious spread! Of course, if I did cards for all the generations I've discovered, I'd need about 50 decks! I'll try it out and how it comes out!

Peace,

Melvis

Simone I just saw this and am intrigued! Can't wait to try it out! What card might represent the black sheep? Hanged Man? LOL If he shows up for me I'll be sure of it. It would be interesting to add the great grandparents as well, I don't know much about them.

Melvis, WalesWoman,

of course you can add as many generations as you feel is right, it may make "chains" clearer.

I have found out during my trials that the same kind of energies appear along a branch of the family. I have seen one where there seemed to be a streak of healers, interesting I used the Vision Quest for that one, and they all appeared, the Healer, the Shaman, the Medecine Woman etc...

Or in one spread I have seen a family where strong women seemed to always marry weaker men. This is what I mean by "chains".

Now a "black sheep" could appear and be represented by any card; it might be spotted by a card that is radically different in energies from the others -like maybe you have a family history of cups, empress etc, and in the midst of it there is for example a sword card. The black sheep often are chainbreakers too, they behave differently and bring in new energies, beliefs and behaviours in a family and are qualified as black sheep because they are different and there is a certain fear of this difference...

Have fun experimenting, I really am looking forward to your results!

Love
Simone

I tried out that spread and was surprised in some ways and not in others at all. No Hanged Man for me, I drew the Star. what did blow me away was my dad as Knight Cups, I'd have figured sterner stuff for him, but then again it made a lot of sense from something else entirely. My mom showed up as Strength which was not one bit surprising at all, she is all that and more, she makes you want to please her without ever having conscious thought about it.

My grandmothers were King of Pents(paternal) and Queen of Pents(maternal), thought that very interesting. My paternal grandma died when I was 6 or 7, so I don't remember her well at all, but the Pentacles...I came from generations of farmers. My other grandma was Queen Midas, everything she touched turned to gold and she was a Taurus/earth and something else. I used Legends, and this woman stockpiled food and had it stashed everywhere...so she'd never go hungry if we had another Great Depression.

It seemed like the women had the stronger stabolizing cards. I never knew my paternal grandfather, but he was Page Cups, which I thought very interesting seeing that my dad was the Knight. Most of the Cups were on my father's side and they had some definate emotional problems, which according to an aunt who did some family geneology...is very historical, guess we even got our own valley to live in Bavaria, and there is a region called Ober, just for this very crazy family. I'm not sure when they let us out. LOL My mom's dad was the Sun and he definately was that, that's how he made us feel, like a light had come on when he was in a room, a happy glow and always loved, always cheerful and jingling like bells on (it was his key chain).

I did do the great grandparents and interestingly enough the Empress showed up on my dad's side for his mother's father, and Queen Wands for his mother's mother. (She was a strong woman, but homesteading in Nebraska, living in a sod dugout house and missing the old country, became too much for her to bear) His father's father was WOF and his father's mother was Knight of Spears...I have no clue at all what this is, other than I'm guess he took a gamble when they immigrated to the U.S. and changed thier fortunes. I'm guessing that his wife was all for it and one tough cookie too. Seems like I heard a few of her hard core unsentimental sayings while I was growing up.

On my mom's side her father's father was King Cups and father's mother Universe...she definately sounded like it...was in a wheel chair and widowed with several sons to raise and would make them go out an cut a switch and then hand it to her, where she would spin in circles and administer her version of discipline...the end all be all...yikes! Grandpa thought the world of her, with both love, respect and fear I think. I don't remember her at all. But Grandma's mom was Temperance and her father was Chariot. They moved a lot and had 15 kids I think...so I imagine she needed a lot of Temperance to put up with that many. She always seemed very quiet and gentle, and worn out. Can't imagine why! She also was mixed blood, so I think it was a matter of tempering and blending into the white world, when it was not cool at all to be anything but lily white. I would imagine my great grandpa had to use his will to keep all those forces going in the right direction as well or it would have been chaos. Something else, his family background is a bit "unknown", so was most likely balancing his white/brown heredity, so their brood, their children were a mix of colors as well, most with dark skin and hair and others with the red hair and fair skin of the Irish.

So I guess I am hope for the future, but then that sort of makes sense too since I was the the first baby to make it to term and they named me after a Star....Debby Reynolds. What a hoot!

Cool spread, it makes more and more sense to me all the time.

Thanks for this, WalesWoman!

It gave me another level of insight to the spread:

There are not only the "chains", but there is the merging effect too. When we think about our parents and how they are, and analyse our own qualities we have received from them, we can often enough see that we are a (more or less) balanced mixture/merging of both of them.

So I analysed just the "names" of the cards of your spread, and saw something interesting:

On your paternal side, a King and a Page gave a Knight

If I attribute a quotient of "hierarchy" to each one of the suits, the King would be strongest, followed by the Queen, then the Knight, then the Page (according to my own feeling, this might differ for other people's interpretations).

So here, the strength of the king has been "diluted" by the strength of the page to give something intermediate: the knight.

On your maternal side, there are the Queen and the Sun (Sun - fiery, the planet of the Leo sign). Outcome: Strength - interesting: often enough symbolised by a strong woman dominating/taming a Leo !!

So you are the child of the knight and Strength, being the Star.

I personally see the star as the link between the sky or heaven or universe (stars, moon, sun) and earth (and the knight (of cups) being the representative of all earthly emotions).

Have you been the mediator between the two ?

Thanks for sharing and for allowing me this further insight on the spread!

Love
Simone