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The horseshoe

Seven cards in an arc

Seven cards in an arc, from what is past on the left to the outcome on the right, with the querent and those around them in the middle.

  • Cards 7
  • Laid In a fixed shape
  • Where it comes from First publication unknown

Ask something and deal this spread

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7 cards, in the order they are laid.

Reading the shape

Seven cards form an arc between the spare three-card row and the fuller Celtic Cross. The spread can separate the querent, the people around them and the matter itself while remaining easy to hold in mind.

It circulates in many forms, with different meanings assigned to the seven places. The first publication of either the shape or this list of positions has not been identified. What appears here is one common horseshoe, not a claim to be the only one.

How it is laid

Shuffle, then lay seven cards in an arc from left to right, the fourth at the top of the curve.

What each place asks

  1. The past What the matter has come out of.
  2. The present Where it stands now.
  3. What is hidden What is in play and has not been said aloud, by the querent or by anybody else.
  4. The querent The person asking, as they stand in this matter rather than in general.
  5. Those around them How other people bear on it — their interests, not their opinions.
  6. What would help What the querent can actually do, as distinct from what they would like to happen.
  7. Where it is heading The outcome the present course is producing, which is not the same as a fixed fate.

Where it comes from

The horseshoe circulates in several forms. Accounts that trace it to Etteilla or to eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Europe do not give a book, date or page.

Attribution variant unsourced

No first publication has been identified for this layout

Tarot divination is documented from Etteilla onward, and Waite published the Celtic Cross, but the modern accounts consulted for these layouts repeat eighteenth- or nineteenth-century attributions without citing a book, date or page. Waite's two published methods do not include this layout. The position meanings here are editorial descriptions of what each place asks, not words attributed to an earlier author.

Sources (1)
  1. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot , Illustrated edition, William Rider & Son, 1922 — Part III, §§6–8

    Cited for contrast. Waite publishes two methods and neither is this one. His alternative method deals forty-two cards into six packets of seven with no positional meanings, and he recommends it when no definite question is asked.

    Read at wikisource.org ↗