Tirage En Croix

Spread Notes

This is an old spread that dates back to the 1870s, according to this thread. It's a simple spread that can be quite flexible. The layout and card associations lend themselves nicely to an alchemical framing, with the four arms representing the four classical elements or the four cardinal directions. You could even take this a step further, associating each minor suit with one of the arms, and the major arcana with the central card.

This spread is much simpler and easier to learn than the more commonly-cited Celtic Crossplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigCeltic Cross

Spread Notes

The Celtic Cross spread is considered one of the more traditional tarot spreads still in use today. It's not particularly “ancient” or esoteric, and while it's described in many LWBs and books about reading tarot, it can be a bit complicated for the novice reader. The spread is typically laid with card 2 across card 1; the cards are displayed separately here for easy reading.
spread, and it's older to boot. As we now know, Arthur E. Waite fabricated the majority of his first tarot book out of thin air, and his claims to any ancient tradition are outright lies. Alec Satinplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigAlec Satin

For about two decades, a guy named Alec Satin made a name for himself in online (and offline) tarot communities as a well-read expert on the subjects of both reading tarot, and creating tarot spreads.

In 2015, Alec converted to devout Christianity, deleted his entire tarot website, and appears to have nuked it from the Internet Archive as well. The funny thing is, Alec's position on why he stopped reading tarot falls right in line with my philosophy when it comes to reading tarot:
has some additional notes on this spread that I think are useful for adapting it to specific concerns or needs.

Various equilateral cross layouts change the order of the cards. For the sake of simplicity, the card order is static in this spread.

Card descriptions

The five cards may correspond to a variety of traits:

Basic Spreads

  1. Thesis (what favors the question)
  2. Anithesis (what opposes the question)
  3. Synthesis (where things stand)
  4. Outcome (explained by 1-3)
  5. Quintessence
  1. Subject
  2. Object
  3. Divine (unseen)
  4. Outcome
  5. Quintessence

Relationships

  1. Querent
  2. Other person
  3. Hidden influences
  4. Long-term outcome
  5. Quintessence

Introspection

  1. What you see
  2. What you do
  3. What you feel (and are sensitive to)
  4. What you think
  5. What (who) you are
  • What have I always wanted to know about myself that nobody can tell me?
  1. Where I stand
  2. My tasks
  3. My fears
  4. Which attitude will help me
  5. Potential outcome

The Quintessential Card

This card is not drawn directly from the deck. Instead, it is calculated by adding the values of the other four cards, then further reducing that value by adding the digits, if the value is greater than 21.

Sometimes, the Quintessential card will be one of the other four cards. This can't be laid out with real cards, but it can easily be included when adding new readings to the wicci.

Depending on the reading, you can choose to pull a card normally for this position.

Spread

@onet@

@one@

@onen@

@twot@

@two@

@twon@

@threet@

@three@

@threen@

@fourt@

@four@

@fourn@

@fivet@

@five@

@fiven@