The Crossing

The challenge laid straight over the heart of the matter.

What this position asks

What is standing in your way?

This card goes down sideways, right across the first one. Waite wrote: "This crosses him. It shews the nature of the obstacles in the matter." He added that if it is a favourable card, "the opposing forces will not be serious, or it may indicate that something good in itself will not be productive of good in the particular connexion."

I picture a gate across a farm track. You can see the paddock on the other side, and the gate is what you have to open, climb or walk around to get there. Some gates are chained shut. Some only need a push.

That second half matters. Comfort holds you in place as well as any wall does, and a happy card in the Crossing is often the thing that makes change hard to choose.

How cards behave here

A Major Arcana card crossing you says the obstacle is bigger than this one question. It is a lesson that will keep turning up in other parts of your life until you meet it.

A Minor card says the obstacle is practical and close. Cups across the Present mean feelings are in the way. Wands mean impatience, burnout or competing ambitions. Swords mean worry, argument, or a decision you keep putting off. Pentacles mean money, time, health or some other hard limit.

A court card here is most often a part of you pushing against the rest, the side of you that does not want what the rest of you is asking for. It can also be a real person standing in your way, and the rest of the spread usually shows which.

A reversed card here is the obstacle through the usual lenses: blocked, turned inward, too much or too little, or delayed. Turned inward is often the most useful reading in this position. The struggle is happening in your own head, and nobody around you can see it.

Upright or reversed when it lies sideways

A card on its side does not look upright or reversed, so here is how I handle it. The crossing card is read the way it was chosen, the same as every other card in the spread. Laying it sideways changes its place and nothing else.

In the spreads I send you, a reversed crossing card has its top pointing to the right, an upright one to the left, and the caption underneath says "(R)".

Two other conventions are in use. Some readers always read the crossing card upright, because the position already carries the difficulty. Others go by which way the top points once the card is on its side. I stay with the way it was drawn.

Its partner: the Present

These two are one reading. The Present is the situation. The Crossing is the friction.

Say the Ace of Cups sits in the Present: a new feeling, a new love, a heart opening. With the Four of Swords across it, the obstacle is exhaustion, and you need rest before you can take anything new in. With the Nine of Swords across it, the figure sitting up in bed with head in hands, the obstacle is worry, the kind that keeps you from trusting what has arrived.

A few examples

The Seven of Swords crossing you: a figure slipping away with an armful of swords. Someone is not playing straight here. Check the shortcuts, including your own.

The Knight of Wands reversed crossing you: the drive is there and it keeps misfiring. Too much haste, or a start that stalls every time it gets going.

The Moon crossing you: you cannot see the path clearly. The obstacle is uncertainty. Move slowly, and check what you think you see before you commit.

When this position speaks

Card 2 tells you where to spend your effort. Once you can name what is crossing you, it usually shrinks to a size you can deal with.

What is the gate across your track, and have you tried the latch?

If you would like the Celtic Cross read against your own chart, my readings are here.