The Astrological Spread

One card per house covers a whole life at once, so it is at its best for a general look at where you stand, or for a birthday reading, and less useful for one sharp question.

It is also the spread that sits closest to the way I work. When I read, my chart is open beside me. Every reading I write is laid on the Celtic Cross, but this spread puts both of my languages on one table: a chart wheel, with a card sitting in each house.

Where it comes from

Anthony Louis gives it as the Horoscope Spread in his book Tarot Plain and Simple, and calls it "a favorite among astrologers." The idea of dealing tarot cards into the twelve houses is older. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn had a long divination method called the Opening of the Key, and one of its stages deals the cards out across the twelve houses. That was the whole deck dealt into twelve packs. I have not found who first laid the simple version.

The layout

Lay the cards like a birth chart. Card 1 goes at nine o'clock, on the left, where the Ascendant sits in a chart. Then go anticlockwise: card 2 just below it, card 4 at the bottom, card 7 on the right at three o'clock, card 10 at the top, and card 12 just above where you started. If you use a thirteenth card, it goes in the middle.

1. The First House. You. Your sense of yourself, the way you meet the world, your body and your energy.

2. The Second House. Money and possessions, what you value, and what you believe you are worth.

3. The Third House. Communication, everyday learning, brothers and sisters, neighbours, short trips.

4. The Fourth House. Home, family and roots. The private ground you stand on.

5. The Fifth House. Creativity, pleasure, romance, children and play.

6. The Sixth House. Daily work, routines, habits, and looking after your health.

7. The Seventh House. Partnerships. Marriage, close one to one relationships, and the people you make agreements with.

8. The Eighth House. Shared money and resources, deep change, endings and rebirth, intimacy.

9. The Ninth House. Beliefs, higher learning, long distance travel, philosophy and the law.

10. The Tenth House. Career, reputation, ambition, your public face.

11. The Eleventh House. Friends, groups, community, and your hopes for the future.

12. The Twelfth House. What is hidden. Solitude, retreat, the unconscious, the things you do not show.

13. The Centre (optional). The overall theme, the one card that sums up the circle.

How to read it

Thirteen cards is a lot to take in, so read the wheel in stages.

First look at the whole circle. Count the Majors and note which houses they land in, because those parts of life are carrying the large themes right now. Notice any suit gathering in one area of the wheel.

Then read the houses in opposite pairs. In a chart, each house faces its partner across the wheel: 1 and 7 (you and the other person), 2 and 8 (what is yours and what is shared), 3 and 9 (the near and the far), 4 and 10 (home and career), 5 and 11 (personal pleasure and the wider group), 6 and 12 (the daily round and the hidden life). Six pairs are far easier to hold in your head than twelve single cards.

Leave the centre card until last, and read it as the sentence that sums up the wheel.

The house decides how a reversed card reads. In the twelfth a reversal is very often turned inward, and in the second it is often too much or too little. The heavy cards stay a mirror wherever they land.

If you know your birth chart, put it beside the cards and notice which card lands in the house that holds your Sun. That is where the cards and the chart start talking to each other.

A sample reading

A general reading, laid to see where things stand. The thirteen cards are the ones in the sample spread above.

Five Majors out of thirteen, so a great deal is moving, and two of them sit on the line between the first and seventh houses. Both the self and the closest partnership are being reshaped.

The first and seventh. The Star is a woman kneeling at a pool under a great star, pouring water into the pool and onto the land: hope returning after a hard stretch. Opposite her, Justice sits with sword and scales. Balance is being asked of the partnership, perhaps through an agreement being settled.

The second and eighth. The Ten of Wands is a man bent under ten heavy branches, carrying far too much for what comes back. Opposite him is Death, the armoured skeleton on a white horse. In the house of shared resources, it is a mirror held up to an arrangement that has run its course, and the load in the second house lightens as it ends.

The fourth and tenth. The Three of Swords is a heart pierced by three swords under rain clouds. Reversed in the house of home, I read it as turned inward: an old family hurt carried quietly. Opposite, the King of Swords sits with his sword upright, all judgement. Reversed in the house of career, I read him as too much: all head at work, hard on others and harder on yourself. The same Swords energy is held in at home and pushed out at work.

The third and ninth. The Ace of Swords, a hand from a cloud holding an upright sword, is a conversation that cuts through. The Six of Swords, a ferryman poling his boat towards the calmer shore, is travel or a change of outlook. That clear conversation may be what begins to ease the Three of Swords.

The fifth and eleventh. The Page of Wands studies his staff like a brand new idea, and the Knight of Wands sits on a rearing horse, ready to go. A new creative interest, and friends keen to drag you into an adventure.

The sixth and twelfth. The Nine of Wands is a man with a bandaged head leaning on his staff: weary, guarded, keeping going. Opposite him is the Tower, struck by lightning, two figures falling. Reversed, I read it as turned inward, and like every heavy card it is a mirror: it shows a structure in the inner life coming down where nobody else can see it. The guarded daily round is the outside of that change.

The centre card is the World, a dancer inside a wreath. A cycle completing. Across the whole wheel, a chapter is closing through Death and the Tower, so the Star in the first house has room to shine.

Variations

1. The year ahead. Lay twelve cards in the same circle, or in a row, with one card for each month. Start with January, or with your birthday month and run the year from there. A centre card can stand for the year as a whole.

2. The question in the centre. Anthony Louis also describes a version, which he says some readers prefer, in which a centre card stands for the core question and the twelve houses surround it.

Try it yourself

If you know your birth chart, find the house your Sun is in. Lay the twelve cards and read that house first, then the card opposite it across the wheel.

If you do not know your chart yet, read the first and seventh houses, you and the person closest to you, and ask whether the two cards agree.

Write the pair down as one sentence before you read anything else.

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