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.