gypsy tarot (not for the faint of heart)

tarotgimp

this one got me in a lil bit of trouble earlier but I thought i would post it anyhow as it is probably one of my most favorite spreads

step 1. separate all 22 cards of the Major arcana from the 56 cards of the minor arcana and shuffle the minors.

step 2. deal off the first 20 into a pile and combine with the 22 cards of the major arcana.

step 3. put aside the remaining 36 cards and shuffle the 42 card pack consisting of all 22 majors and the 20 minor arcana cards that you just dealt

now here's where it gets a lil bit tricky....

step 4. after shuffling the deck you want to make piles of 7 cards starting at the top deal cards 1 by 1 into a pile untill you have dealt a 7 card pile(after you have 7 in the top pile move down and so on) so you end up with 6 piles of seven cards (these are placed on the right side of the table, altar, floor wherever you tend to read your tarot from)

step 5. after you have set up a column consisting of 6 piles, starting from the top pile and turn over each card going from right to left. when you are finished you should end up with 6 rows of 7 cards (42 total) and should look somewhat similar to the diagram below

did i say step 4 was the tricky part? this is where it really gets heavy the rest is up to you...the reader

the spread is then read as follows....

7,6,5,4,3,2,1 -past influences
14,13,12,11,10,9,8 -present influences
21,20,19,18,17,16,15 -outside influences
28,27,26,25,24,23,22 -immediate future influences
35,34,33,32,31,30,29 -possibilities for the future
42,41,40,39,38,37,36 -future results and outcome

generally i only use this spread when i really want a deep understanding of a situation as it is very involved (usually takes me a good hour to even get a basic picture) good luck to all. any and all (constructive) comments are most welcome and appreciated in advance. take care

tarot gimp

-blessed be

tarotgimp

whoops forgot to cite the source...this one's from the tarot workbook by nevil drury (thunder bay press, 2004)

rwcarter

Over and above the sheer number of cards, my main concern about this spread is its predominance of Majors. Were I to use this spread, I'd deal out the top 42 cards without weighting them towards the Majors. If all (or most) of the majors then appeared, I'd know the situation was heavier or more serious than I might otherwise have thought.

I also probably wouldn't try to interpret every card in the spread, but I would look for trends (does one Minor suit predominate? is there a numerical run of cards? are there clumps of either Minor suits or Majors? etc.).

But if you've gotten good results with it as is, I think that's great.

Rodney

tarotgimp

rwcarter said:
Over and above the sheer number of cards, my main concern about this spread is its predominance of Majors. Were I to use this spread, I'd deal out the top 42 cards without weighting them towards the Majors. If all (or most) of the majors then appeared, I'd know the situation was heavier or more serious than I might otherwise have thought.

I also probably wouldn't try to interpret every card in the spread, but I would look for trends (does one Minor suit predominate? is there a numerical run of cards? are there clumps of either Minor suits or Majors? etc.).

But if you've gotten good results with it as is, I think that's great.

Rodney

i think it's more about the position of each major card as opposed to the predominance of majors in this case due to the fact that all of the major cards are used in this particular spread. For instance you might worry more about The Tower comming up in a future position rather than a past position where it has allready happend and you've either recovered from it or are still dealing with it's influence at a lesser extent. I might mention you make a very good point on the trends idea though, I usually do the same when begining to read this spread as it helps make things a little less daunting and helps to bring light to what would otherwise be a very confusing spread to interpret

thanx for your input rodney very insightfull as i've never had a chance to discuss this particular spread with anyone else i must say you've excited my brain

tarot gimp

-blessed be

rwcarter

tarotgimp said:
i think it's more about the position of each major card as opposed to the predominance of majors in this case due to the fact that all of the major cards are used in this particular spread.

I understand where you're coming from, but I still think the spread is weighted too heavily toward the Majors by including them all in every spread. If one were to only use the first 42 cards off the top of the deck regardless of what they were, it's quite likely that not all of the Majors would appear.

tarotgimp said:
For instance you might worry more about The Tower comming up in a future position rather than a past position where it has allready happend and you've either recovered from it or are still dealing with it's influence at a lesser extent.

Continuing with your example of the Tower, by including all of the Majors in every reading, the Tower is going to appear in every reading. But does it need to? I would suggest that it (and every other Major) doesn't need to appear in every reading. And by selecting the first 42 cards regardless of what they are, only those Majors that need to show up in the reading will. Those that don't won't.

tarotgimp said:
I might mention you make a very good point on the trends idea though, I usually do the same when begining to read this spread as it helps make things a little less daunting and helps to bring light to what would otherwise be a very confusing spread to interpret

Without looking for trends, it would take me a whole day to interpret this spread card by card, and I've been working with the Tarot since 1992. I would get bogged down in the meaning of each card and the elemental interactions of each triad (both horizontal and vertical) and determining which card(s) were strongest by their proximity to other cards. There's a lot that could be examined in a 42 card spread!

tarotgimp said:
thanx for your input rodney very insightfull as i've never had a chance to discuss this particular spread with anyone else i must say you've excited my brain

You're quite welcome. I think it's a good spread, although I don't think it's one I'd use often. As I've been known to say on AT, folks should take what makes sense and leave behind what doesn't. Including all the Majors doesn't make sense to me, so I'd change that but still use the spread. Including all the Majors does make sense to you though. That's another good thing about tarot. There's no "wrong" way to do it as long as whatever way you're doing it feels right to you.

Rodney

tarotgimp

rwcarter said:
Continuing with your example of the Tower, by including all of the Majors in every reading, the Tower is going to appear in every reading. But does it need to? I would suggest that it (and every other Major) doesn't need to appear in every reading. And by selecting the first 42 cards regardless of what they are, only those Majors that need to show up in the reading will. Those that don't won't.
Rodney

correct me if I am wrong in any way but isn't it said that the 22 cards of the major arcana are concidered as archtypes that follow ones journey through life? and if such is true then is it not also possible that those cards could theoretically follow us around at all times and maybe just at varying degrees of intensity? To use another example you may pull the heirophant in one of the future influences positions and later that week do your weekly sunday church thing but (and i don't mean this to sound insulting to anyone in anyway) that doesn't necesarily mean you are truely a devout believer. there are some who attend church mass simply out of habbit(again this is not to say all are of this particular idiom) but it does happen. so given all that said. I agree that having all 22 cards of the majors in one single spread does give it some hefty weight, however, for me it seems necesary...i don't know any thoughts on this?

tarot gimp

-blessed be

rwcarter

tarotgimp said:
correct me if I am wrong in any way but isn't it said that the 22 cards of the major arcana are concidered as archtypes that follow ones journey through life?

Yes, the Major Arcana are considered by many folks to be archetypes that mirror one's journey through life. But as originally presented, the spread isn't a life spread, but a spread to cover some much smaller period of time. In a life spread, I would probably agree that all 22 of the Major Arcana should be included.

But in a spread that covered the course of a month, let's say? I don't know that they all need to be automatically included in such a spread. If they all do show up in the spread to cover that period, then that would highlight the importance of that particular month.

Continuing with the one month time frame, not every month is going to have major things occurring in it. Some months are pretty mundane. And that would be reflected by a predominance of Minor Arcana cards at the expense of the Major Arcana.

tarotgimp said:
and if such is true then is it not also possible that those cards could theoretically follow us around at all times and maybe just at varying degrees of intensity?

I can agree with that too. But isn't is just as easy to note the lesser intensity of the Majors as a group if there are a lot fewer of them in the spread to begin with? For the sake of discussion, let's say that all of the cards were used and only 5 Majors appeared in the spread. While those 5 Majors may play an important part in the spread, the Majors as a group wouldn't be the primary focus because they're only 12% of the cards. If half the Majors appeared, as a group they'd be 26% of the cards. If they weren't the predominant suit, they'd be at least one of the two predominant suits in the reading. So with half or more of the Majors appearing in the spread, the reading begins to talk about larger, more important issues.

tarotgimp said:
I agree that having all 22 cards of the majors in one single spread does give it some hefty weight, however, for me it seems necesary...i don't know any thoughts on this?

If that works for you and makes sense to you, I wholeheartedly agree that you should include all 22 Majors in the spread. But I believe that if the weight is needed for that particular reading then most or all of the Majors will make their way into the spread on their own.

If you've given a lot of thought to the inclusion of all the Majors and it makes sense to you to do so, all I can give you is a :thumbsup:

. I wouldn't even try to change your mind about something that works for you. If you're doing so because that's the way the spread was written, then all I'm trying to say is that there's an alternate way to choose the cards for the spread.

If I were using that spread and saw all 22 Majors, I would want my reaction to be, "WOW! I really need to pay attention to what these cards have to say!" But if I include all the Majors as a matter of course, then I obviously will see them all and my reaction will be, "Eh. They might be significant or they might not."

Rodney

tarotgimp

wow! I think you just seriously blew my mind bro. I don't know how much experience you have in tarot and i don't really care....you are amazingly insightfull and i thank you for all of your great comments. however i think i may need to re-read your last post a few times to take it all in lol. I can't wait till i have something else for you! hope you don't mind a board stalker cuz i think you just got one lol jk

...maybe i'll look to see if you've posted comments related to my favorite deck

...thanx again rodney look forward to chatting with you in the future

tarot gimp

-blessed be

rwcarter

Thanks. I didn't intend to blow your mind, so hopefully that wasn't a bad thing.

I hope that I can expand other people's horizons on this board just like I hope other people here can expand my horizons.

I look forward to seeing you around the boards. (I checked your profile. I don't know if I've said anything about the Archeon, but I believe I gave input to someone's reading with it in the last month or so.)

After you've had a chance to reread what I've written, I'll be interested in hearing what you think about it.

Rodney

tarotgimp

so how do you think you might modify this spread for your personal use? i was thinking(and this seems also like a long mechanical process..atleast to me) maybe instead of initially including the 22 majors to the pack that is shuffled maybe shuffle only the minors dealing 6 and then again shuffling the majors and dealing 1 card for each pile then reshuffling each of the 6 packs before laying them out then that way you would get 1 major card per row/category giving the querent one major archtype in each as a universal theme for the time period...make sense? what would you do?

tarot gimp

-blessed be