What is this woman doing?

Ronia said:

...The spread (as much as it could be call a spread) looked like a tree - one line going from up to down, then from it different branches...

Click to expand...

There is a 78-card Kabbalah "Tree of Life" spread in the book _Power Tarot_ by MacGregor and Vega. Basically, 1 card is the significator, then 7 cards go on each of the ten Sephiroth, then the remaining 7 cards are read as a Daat pack. (I barely know any Kabbalah, so I'm not going to be able to explain details.)

Other than that, Rachel Pollack has a "Work Cycle" spread in her book _78 Degrees of Wisdom_. It can potentially go to 78 cards.

I agree with Sheri that the woman in the photo seems to be doing a Horoscope spread. I'm guessing that the uneven distribution in the houses is probably due to clarification cards. I'm noticing that she also has several of the cards criss-crossed on top of each other, again suggesting that she is doing some kind of free-form clarification.

For that matter, the whole thing could be a free-form spontaneous conversation between her and the cards!

I checked the link and there was no diagram, just text describing a similar layout called the "Horary Spread" which seems very much like a Year Wheel spread with different positions and more cards.

12 piles of cards in a circle, counter-clockwise from the east form the houses.

The cards in the piles are used to perform that part of the reading.

Here's the link: http://supertarot.co.uk/astrology/spread.htm

I am not up to speed on astrology so I can't provide more details into that now. Even without the astrology, this spread could work if someone wanted a year look ahead or something like that... 12 piles, 12 months. The extra cards in the 12 piles could form a reading for that month of the year. I've done that type of spread lots of times with good results. It is cool watching something coming up moving around the wheel as time passes.

Sheri

I agree with Sheri that it looks like some kind of astrological spread. In fact it reminds me of some of my play with the cards in an attempt to associate them with the houses, zodiac, planets, etc. It could be a reading of a special sort, say done on one's birth chart or once a year on their solar return, something like that.

It's easy to dismiss such a thing as unreadable if you don't know what she's doing, after all it does appear impossibly complex. But she may very well be doing a valid and readable spread. The only one who needs to understand is the person using it.

That actually looks very interesting, I might try it some day, when the toddlers aren't tramping about.

It looks very organic and freeform, as if she has sections of inquiry or time or areas of life, and looking at the whole thing in a holistic way. Like how jaj put it as a conversation. And then as others have said, laying additional cards for clarification.

It made my brains tingle, I may try it sooner than later! I'll share here if I do.


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Thoughts on Ronia's reading by the Gypsy woman, she might not have felt any compulsion to read every single cards, only that caught her eye/drew her intuition! with the branches being about different topics, only referencing specific cards if needed. Hmm, it's pretty cool, whatever it was!