My patented Patience spread

When the universe gave me a present in the form of a virginal IJJ deck, still in its cellophane wrapper (see intro in new members forum!) I also came up with the following original spread, that works equally well for card-based meditations or client-centred readings.

Shuffle the cards 5 times (1 for each element, and 1 for "spirit" or "quintessence", the major arcana: kind of like casting a circle "on the hop") ;-))

Lay out cards as you would for playing patience or solitaire: first card face up, then 4 down.

Start next row with card face up on the first face-down card, etc... Hope you get my drift, here ;-))

Play out cards in lines, following ascending or descending order in both Major arcana and pips suits: this may take some time, it takes to hone your solitaire skills as well ;-))

The beauty of this spread seems that it can take as long or as short as the client desires, i.e. you can read one line for a short reading, and if the client wants to go into more depth, play out more lines... In this "game" of Patience, it seems actually advantageous if the cards do not "come out", because then you can continue indefinitely, time permitting! ;-))

Oh wow - that's a really innovative approach to tarot spreads! Thanks for sharing

I'm not quite sure I understand how to read this spread, but I've been on overload adding spreads to my journal so maybe that's why. I've always played solitaire with 7 cards but you said 4, maybe it doesn't matter but I was just wondering. Also do you actually "play" the game with the cards and if so do you just read them across as you move the cards around or how does this work? Also, what if you get stuck, can't move anymore cards? Or is that the point, that's the end of the reading? Sorry for all the questions but this seemed really interesting and I wanted to give it a try. Thanks

I am confused with this as well. Can you maybe show a more visual of how this works?

Thanks for your interest, everybody; yes, I felt concerned it seemed a tad confusing without the visuals, which I would have no idea how to supply ;-P

(1) It involves 5 rows, not four (one for each suit and one for the trumps).

(2) Turn up the 1st card of each row only; start each row with the next card in, so you get gradually diminishing rows, with only the first card turned up, as in a game of patience/solitaire: going down 5-4-3-2-1...does that make it clearer?

(3) Then you just kind of "play" it as you would a game of patience/solitaire; you can choose whether to make the columns (suits or trumps) ascend or descend in numerical order, as you wish.

(4) When you get a straight line of upturned cards, horizontally, you can "read" it, as a kind of "story".

(5) Unlike patience/solitaire, you actually want some cards to stay face down, to give the querent an option to either stop there, with the first reading, or continue indefinitely, until you have (maybe) used all the cards up. Wish I could give a demo! ;-))

P.S. I find it also quite good for a kind of meditative, "solitary"-type reading, when no specific question is involved ;-))