The Celtic Cross Spread — Part IV: Putting it all together

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

In this, the final installment of the series on how to read the Celtic Cross (you can find Part I, Part II and Part III here), I look at the cross and the staff combined and give my sense of the overall narrative of the layout.

First, the interlinking of the two elements of cross and staff. Here, I’m wanting to get a better idea of how the cards are ‘talking to each other’, both within each element and across them. Now that all the cards are in front of us, we can examine the weighting of suit and arcana:

– Wands: 4
– Cups: 0
– Swords: 2
– Pentacles: 1
– Minor arcana: 7 (including court cards)
– Court cards: 2 (Kings)
– Major arcana: 3

At its core, the reading is about creativity emanating from the fiery nature of soul (the predominance of Wands) and it isn’t just working on a day-to-day level, but at a level that’s concerned with the soul’s development (because of the presence of three major arcana cards). Another way of saying this is that the reading is concerned with the process of individuation. The fact that there are no Cups cards doesn’t mean that there is no emotion involved: It is simply that the primary focus is on creativity, and the application of mental processes with regards to that (the two Swords cards).

There is one Pentacles card, and for me this gives its presence greater impact — it sounds one clear note, which works in a collaborative way with the Wands and Swords. Given a) the significant oomph created by the Wands, and b) the presence of two comparatively constructive Swords cards — both of which serve to temper and channel the flow of Wands energy — the Two of Pentacles is fitting because of its emphasis on balance. I take the number two to refer to the two predominant suits in the reading and the need to weigh each one against the other, and to the dance between minor and major arcana, where the outer/day-to-day works alongside the inner/evolutionary.

Therefore, I would sum up the theme as one of creativity with discernment. And this discernment is necessary: If we see the progression of the cards in the staff as a birthing process (which I explored at some length last week), look at the potency of the three major arcana cards that feed into the King of Wands, and, in turn, the rite of passage that the King goes through before embodying the archetype of the High Priestess. If this doesn’t call for discernment, then little else does.

This idea of individuation is also borne out by the fact that, now we are looking at the cards together, every card without exception has one central figure. What’s more, all of them, barring The High Priestess, are male: The High Priestess has her work cut out for her if she is to maintain that state of balance initiated by the Two of Pentacles in the recent past. Given the power of The High Priestess archetype, however, and given her position here as the consummation of past, present and future factors, I believe that she can, indeed, hold her own when it comes to harmonising yin and yang. She is a deeply feminine figure.

Another thing strikes me when I look at the cards collectively, and The High Priestess in particular: The High Priestess does not cut as desexualised a figure as she does in other readings. Last week, I pointed out the flesh-and-blood feel of the three masculine cards in the staff, and contrasted the blue of the priestess. However, I am now drawn to the halved pomegranates on the fabric behind her. In their outer casings, I see reflected the crescent moon at her feet. What first appears when we meet The High Priestess is her lunar nature — watery, intuitive, ethereal. But when the priestess, like the pomegranates, are broken open, there is the flesh: red, corporeal, a collection of seeds from which new life can be birthed. The pomegranates are distinctly vulva-like. How does this fit with the more traditional notion of The High Priestess, given that it is usually The Empress who is more physically present, more fecund? Like The Hierophant card, does she embody two approaches, both sacred and profane? Is she the vestal virgin, embodying at different times both a state of celibacy and sacred sexuality? I think, perhaps, her story hasn’t been fully heard at times — after all, it is part of the lot of The High Priestess that she is often misunderstood.

When my eye moves back to the cross, I now see the Wands cards ‘wrapping’ around the core of the reading, which for some reason feels to me like a wrapping around a metaphorical heart — the Four of Swords. What this tells me is that the reading is concerned with energy that can be experienced viscerally, but in order both to contain and work with it constructively, there needs to be a point of stillness at the centre of things (in this case, at the client’s centre) and the willingness to surrender to it rather than ignoring it or running at it full-tilt.

Two other thoughts as they arise:

The stone moon in the King of Swords takes animate form in The High Priestess. Extending this idea further, I then ask myself is the priestess the butterfly carved in stone alongside the moon, now also incarnated?

The blue of the King of Swords’ gown deepens in The High Priestess, where it becomes more watery than airy. Although there are no cups, emotions are brought in indirectly. The High Priestess clothes herself in feeling, in sensation. She is sensate. She works with her emotions, which are linked to her intuition. They are the barometer with which she gauges the hidden world that she occupies.

Finally, when working with a client I will often sum up by going through the cards, one by one, giving voice to a narrative that they build up collectively. The narrative that comes to me with these cards is as follows:

There was, in the recent past, a period or event defined by an active quest for balance (Two of Pentacles). This triggered, or enabled, a release of creative energy, which might have seemed threatening enough for the client to meet it with some resistance (Seven of Wands). Currently, however, the client is being encouraged to allow whatever it is that is seeking expression to emerge without a fight (Four of Swords). They are in the process of letting something go in order to make space for the arrival of something new (Three of Wands). This is not done unthinkingly — and in fact the client has substantial analytical capabilities at their disposal (King of Swords) if they choose to work with active awareness. In the near future, it might seem that they are encountering something all too familiar that they need to resist, but if they use what they have and remain centred, they will see that it is not a call to arms, but rather an opportunity for greater alignment (Nine of Wands). The client has substantial creative abilities (King of Wands), and the environment (The Hierophant) is calling for them to choose how to apply them in a way that is constructive and responsible. There might be some fears about how they are going to be received (Justice), but these fears are commensurate with the understanding that this is nothing less than the birth of an inner sight that is, at its heart, deeply feminine (no matter the gender of the client). It is a calling to become authentically powerful (The High Priestess).

What a reading indeed!