Greeje from the Netherlands shared a really cool spread with me this week and now I'm sharing with you. Obviously, she used the Deck of 1000 Spreads to create it. And she also used an INCREDIBLE looking trimmed Osho Zen. She calls it the Hill of Sand spread and it's about what helps and hinders you in reaching your goal.
One of the hardest parts of creating spreads is making shapes and symmetry and sense out of your spread positions. This is a conversation for another time, but beyond just making a pretty shape is considering the interrelationships between all the spread positions. And Greetje's done that EXPERTLY here.
Get a load of that What You Can't Change/Action/What You Can Change arc she's fashioned above the "heart" of the spread (your goals and how you and others impact them.) Follow that arc down to What To Use In The Future and you have a "story within a story" where those four cards interrelate to show a thread or path or subplot that's going on in the reading. Take that arc backwards to What To Leave In The Past and you have another thread of action that further shows the connection between what to use and what to leave.
If I'm confusing you here, ignore me. It's a pretty advanced technique of both spreadcrafting and interpreting that brings added dimension to your readings. If you're fairly new to tarot or if your head is about to explode, you'll give great readings without understanding...haha. But I like to point this stuff out to put bugs in peoples' ears so they can take their readings to the next level. I'll do an entire post on it in the future sometime.
Another one of these bugs is the color connections these cards are making with the Deck of 1000 Spreads. We talked about using color as a reading technique here and here. So I won't go into it again. But look at the salamander tails on the Answer card, the whole What You Can't Change duo, the purple with the plums in What to Leave in the Past...I mean, it's just all over this reading. And using color to help a reading brings an entirely new dimension to your interpretations—more information to use in your interpretations.
So, Greetje, if you're listening, this is MASTERWORK of spreadcrafting. Sure, she could have laid everything out in a line, but it would be a LONG line of cards...haha. And this is just so beautiful and well thought out and manageable. I'm just very impressed. I wish I had created this spread. :)