I have had readers who threw long, winding rows of cards that overlapped like fish scales, yet the readings yielded little clarity. The three-card spread is more concise and versatile than it sometimes gets credit for. Don't get me wrong, large multi-card spreads can be very useful if executed with purpose and skill. They are flashy and seem to allow permission for long-winded pontification, but often less is more.
If you play majors only in a three-card layout, you will see one set of 9,240 possible permutations. Include the suites, and you have 456,456 different combinations that can land for any given reading. With it, you can craft a reading that lifts barriers of conditioning and assumption. (Let’s not forget playing cards with 132,600 P)
The three-card can be read in-line like a story. It can be read for the recollection of the past, appreciation of the present, and engagement with the future. You can try to get fancy with yes/no, odd one out, etc. In other words, there is no need to limit your creativity for the sake of offending tarot’s sacred specter. Try it, you will see if it works or not for you.
Most commonly, you will encounter it as past-present-future. It is an ingenious starting place because these things sound familiar and common, as if we know what they are. Upon close inspection, however, they bend and blend very easily. They can take you in any direction and they appear and dissolve as they wish. Below, I will make statements about these things as if this is what they really are. It may be why we are required by many agencies to list the tarot reading activity as entertainment. Fine by me.
We project our future best when we know where we are coming from and understand where we are. From that place, we can cast an idea forward to be considered. The future is the continuation of the arc created by those two potential-knowns: the past and the present. I say potential-knowns because we often have not examined the past and present for what they really are. Glazed assumptions of norms betray real insight. The tarot shakes that up with randomness and what-ifs that push us into the critical examination process.
Anyone who has invested the time and effort into personal recapitulation work or counseling can tell you that the past is much more than what we habitually or conveniently remember it to be. How you perceive your effect on, or roll in, past events impresses you more than anyone else, and it continues to do that in whatever form you recall it to be. To step outside the box of these structured compartments and consider how multifaceted every situation is, is vital to unlocking a more-accurate anamnesis of any given situation.
These things aren't always pleasant, and they should not be forced. Counseling is an excellent supplement to this endeavor. Still, ultimately, it's about establishing and increasing communication with your memories, and nobody can do more work in the realm of your past than you can.
We create the present with our focus. This moment is stuffed with way more information than we can ever take in and process. Our experience is generated from where our attention is. Tarot is a tool that assists us in transporting our focus out of chronic patterns and into new perspectives. With a fresh perspective, a beginner's mind, the bandwidth of input about a situation is expanded.
So, three cards: past-present-future, okay, but what does that mean? All stories have a beginning, middle, and end. We can also say that beginnings aren't origins because things happen before them, and endings aren't final because things happen after them. I prefer the client's question to suggest the nature of the temporality if it is relevant or otherwise applicable. We can take that rule more loosely as a sequence appropriate to the issue we are inquiring about.
We make an allegorical story, also known as a story. When overlayed onto the question, aspects of it may help us see its qualities in the circumstance that were not obvious before.
For example, a client asked, "What do I need to know about this situation?
The Fool, Magician, and Judgement appear from my 1963 Grimmaud Marseille.
--A person uses the trumpet like a walking stick. Someone shows him it is actually a trumpet. Impressionable ones looking on think that he turned a stick into a trumpet. Next week they'll be saying he turns cats into humans.
Using this story as a template, we can propose that the situation may not be what it appears to be. The trumpet was never a stick. Something is not being used or done in the manner it was designed for. Other people may be very impressed but not really know how it works, and because of that, they can get quite far off track proportionally.--
As the client goes about their business and the situation they inquired about unfolds, their observation will have an additional dimensional layer because of what the cards suggested. As a result, they break away from the pack with their thinking on this subject and notice what others are not keen to spot. They are in a position to see what they needed to know about the situation, just like they asked.
Was this a past-present-future reading? It's essential to refrain from limiting beforehand what can be a great reading by over-defining the structure. We are looking for what we can use to free the question from its bindings. We're not trying to fit it into further confinement.
When you take a boat to get to the other side of the river, you leave it at the shore. The sequence will come alive. See what that new perspective does for you. The cards have spoken. Do what it was you intended to do once you arrived on that shore. It's on you!
