Sword & Shield Spread - GD Derivative

Barleywine

Note: I figured the subject matter and the target audience made this a better fit here than in Tarot Spreads.

I've always been fascinated with the vision of Adam Kadmon (the "Heavenly Man") standing within the Tree of Life looking out, such that his right arm (strong arm, sword arm) aligns with the Pillar of Severity, and his left arm (weak arm, shield arm) aligns with the Pillar of Mercy. I've also been thinking of creating a tarot spread based on this idea without slavishly following the standard Tree of Life layout. The attached spread and supporting system diagrams are the result. The spread has a central column showing the "heart" of the querent's mental/egoic/emotional exposure to the situation; I intend to use a Significator here, so the first ("covering") card reflects the environment of the question; position 2 is the subconsious/unconscious orientation to the matter (past experiences, memories, emotional baggage, etc.); and position 3 is the conscious orientation (aspirations, insights, creative imagination, etc.)

The left side ("Adam's right arm") is the "active" self-assertive extension of the querent's experience of the matter as it unfolds, and the right side ("Adam's left arm") is the "passive" self-protective extension. I stayed with the Golden Dawn major arcana associations (including Strength and Justice) but didn't keep to the sephirotic pillar arrangement in that I placed most of the balanced, even-numbered cards in the "positive" outcome train ("right arm," cards 4, 6, 8, 10, 11 and 12) and most of the unbalanced, odd-numbered cards in the "left arm" negative outcome train (speaking strictly from a numerological, astrological and elemental polarity standpoint); cards 5, 7, 9, 13, 14 and 15. So Jupiter and Mercury-related cards dominate the "positive" column, while Saturn and Mars associations permeate the "negative" one. (An alternate name for this one might be the "Hold 'em or Fold 'em" spread.)

The bottom three positions (cards 2, 8 and 9) form a "pedestal" that is intended to show the underlying foundation of the matter; note that this "Adam" seems to have "feet of clay" in that all of the cards are associated with Earth and Water. The "right foot" would show a "best foot forward" scenario (and I assigned it the more favorable Tens) while the "left foot" shows a possible "false step" (typified by the more challenging Tens).

Many of the positions have sympathetic pairs of trump cards and a population of court and minor cards that express the core philosophy behind the position. The idea is that the reading cards that fall in each of the positions would take on some of the qualities of the "anchor" cards that underlie them in the model (partially shown in the attached photo and fully detailed in the related diagrams).

The spread proper really has only 9 major positions; position 6 shows the immediate advantage to be gained from taking an active, logical stance when dealing with the situation, while positions 10, 11 and 12 provide an elaboration of the longer-term consequences. Positions 7, 13, 14 and 15 offer the same kind of observations for the more intuitive, "passive" orientation. The spread could certainly be read without the additional testimony. The "right arm" would thus show the best result achievable through head-on engagement, while the "left arm" is more cautionary and defensive in tone.

I decided to leave the Trump XXI (World) position out of the arrangement and populate it via the "quintessence" calculation; I did this because there is only one World card and two possible outcome trains, and as a "final outcome" card it should really be available to both. In the "model spread" photo I show it at the top for convenience only.

Aside from any philosophical objections you may have, let me know if you see any errors in correlation between this and the GD paradigm.
 

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Barleywine

I did some more work on the system diagrams to add notation.
 

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Zephyros

Note: I figured the subject matter and the target audience made this a better fit here than in Tarot Spreads.

Quite right, you did well.

Very interesting spread, Barleywine. Only thing I wonder about is your "flipping" of the Adam Kadmon on the Tree of Life. As far as I know the right hand rests on the Pillar of Mercy while the left rests on that of Severity. The reasoning is that Man isn't superimposed onto the Tree, the Tree emanates out from within.

I had some thoughts on the matter myself a few years ago in in this thread, and got some interesting responses. Look, for example, at the frontispiece of Waite's The Holy Kabbalah, a pretty quirky illustration, where the Tree appears to be reversed.

Not that it really matters, especially in the case of a spread.
 

Barleywine

Quite right, you did well.

Very interesting spread, Barleywine. Only thing I wonder about is your "flipping" of the Adam Kadmon on the Tree of Life. As far as I know the right hand rests on the Pillar of Mercy while the left rests on that of Severity. The reasoning is that Man isn't superimposed onto the Tree, the Tree emanates out from within.

I had some thoughts on the matter myself a few years ago in in this thread, and got some interesting responses. Look, for example, at the frontispiece of Waite's The Holy Kabbalah, a pretty quirky illustration, where the Tree appears to be reversed.

Not that it really matters, especially in the case of a spread.

This wasn't an innovation of mine, there is an illustration and discussion supporting it somewhere in my library, the underlying idea being that Saturn and Mars are more analogous to the idea of "severity" and the righteous "sword arm" than Jupiter and Venus. Manly P. Hall agrees with you, but Robert Wang touches on my understanding briefly in The Qabalistic Tarot:

"An important part of practical work with the Hermetic Qabalah involves the exercise of the Middle Pillar, where the energies of the Sephiroth are purposely invoked and built up within the individual. In this exercise the Sephiroth are reversed, i.e. Chesed is at the left shoulder, and Geburah is at the right, since they are considered subjectively within the body rather than being viewed from outside it."

This might not nail it, though, since it could be construed as arising from Waite's "quirky" illustration. Waite flips the whole Tree, not just the orientation of the figure within it.

I know I've seen a much more comprehensive analysis and illustration somewhere but can't lay my hands on it. Might have been in Regardie's The Middle Pillar, which it seems I no longer have. If you have it, take a look, I'd be interested to know. Meanwhile, I'll keep looking and post it if I find it. Thanks for the input!
 

Barleywine

I've come pretty close, although it's not the reference I was using when I first encountered this idea back in the early '70s.

In his book Kabbalah and the Golden Dawn, Pat Zelewski has an illustration showing something close to what I described, along with the text of a Golden Dawn paper titled "Adam Kadmon And His Souls," and including the following footnotes:

"This document was originally called "Microcosm-Man" and issued in the Golden Dawn (and was the basis for Israel Regardie's book The Middle Pillar) at the Zealator Adeptus Minor level. It concerns much of the above information in relation to the body of man and different to the above texts as far as format goes but is nevertheless an interesting document that is to a certain extent based on the work of de Leiningen."

"This view of a Tree of Life on both the front and back of Man differs from the Regardie association as given in "The Middle Pillar" and falls in with the diagrams of Westcott as given in his papers "The Tree of Life in the Celestial Heavens Projected as if in a Solid Sphere."

It's still entirely possible Regardie's The Middle Pillar is what I recall.
 

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Barleywine

And here is Regardie's version from The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic, where he is talking about the Middle Pillar exercise. This certainly looks like the illustration I remember.
 

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Samweiss

I think your spread has very interesting idea behind it! But I'm looking at the charts and reading your talkthrough but I'm still having some difficulties wrapping my head around how to read it. It looks a bit complicated. I don't quite see the "flow" of the spread, to put it vaguely. How do you read the multiple cards (positions 13,14,15), for example? It could be that I'm too used to using more "fortune-tellery" spreads and reading style, so maybe that's why it looks complex to me. ;) But anyway, fascinating idea for a spread, I'm definitely going to follow how this turns out. :)
 

Barleywine

I think your spread has very interesting idea behind it! But I'm looking at the charts and reading your talkthrough but I'm still having some difficulties wrapping my head around how to read it. It looks a bit complicated. I don't quite see the "flow" of the spread, to put it vaguely. How do you read the multiple cards (positions 13,14,15), for example? It could be that I'm too used to using more "fortune-tellery" spreads and reading style, so maybe that's why it looks complex to me. ;) But anyway, fascinating idea for a spread, I'm definitely going to follow how this turns out. :)

As John Lennon once wrote: "You might well arsk!" I have a four-page text on suggested ways to read the spread, but I'm reluctant to post it here and just give it to the world since I plan on putting it in my "advanced spreads" publication. I'd be happy to send it to you for your feedback but we can't send attachments by PM. To answer your specific question, the 3-card extensions would be read as a longer-range "story" progressing from the "immediate outcome" card at position #6 or #7, depending on whether an "active" or "passive" stance looks more promising for the querent (that is, which "train" shows the most obvious "success path"). Card #12 or card #15 would show the ultimate consequences of following through on the advice suggested by card #6 or #7. I would envision populating and reading only one of them, and only if more than an immediate outlook is desired.
 

Zephyros

There are many different spreads but also many different kinds of spreads and not all of them can easily be read positionally. For example, the Opening of the Key has no real positions but rather a "method," making the spread more like a long meditation rather than a fortune telli.

Me, I use a kind of Tree of Life spread which is built gradually and doesn't really have set positions or end result. Some spreads have more of a "flow" rather than positions.
 

Barleywine

There are many different spreads but also many different kinds of spreads and not all of them can easily be read positionally. For example, the Opening of the Key has no real positions but rather a "method," making the spread more like a long meditation rather than a fortune telli.

Me, I use a kind of Tree of Life spread which is built gradually and doesn't really have set positions or end result. Some spreads have more of a "flow" rather than positions.

I agree. I see this spread as being read more by "zones" than by individual positions, symbolized by the general location on the figure. Each zone may have a key position, but they're more like "sets" than a fixed progression, kind of like the Tree of Life "pillars" and "worlds."