by SteelWitch
The Tarot is a powerful divination tool. It combines established meanings with a metric buttload of symbols crammed into each card to allow a huge range of interpretation within set guidelines. Each card has numerous nuances that can appear based on arrangement, position, relationship to other cards, or where your eye happens to land first when you flip it. And, even if you are a novice at divination, theres' always a handy little book for you to read which will guide you along the way to interpreting a reading.
We're often advised to perform a divination before working a spell or making an important meditative journey just to see if it's a good idea. Coin flips or yes/no rocks will tell you in no uncertain terms whether or not a spell should be performed, but if you're anything like me you want to know a heck of a lot more about the situation than that, or may even become more determined to cast the spell if a coin tells you “no”. Tarot is a great tool to learn details about a situation and is one that I've seen suggested numerous times. It sounds great in theory, but the standard layouts don't really cover everything you'd want to ask about very well. Sure, you could probably finagle the Celtic Cross into telling you why your money spells are backfiring and what you should do about it, but it's not really designed for that. Why not use a layout specifically designed for your question?
I decided to come up with a standard method for creating custom layouts after a frustrating experience while meditating. I needed to learn more about the situation and the players in it as well as what to do about it as I wasn't particularly interested in assaulting my subconscious without guidance. So, I figured out what I needed to know, broke that down to a set of questions, assigned those questions to cards, built a layout, charged the layout, and did a reading. Then I wrote an article about doing all that to further charge my layout. I'll explain a little more about my situation as we go through the steps below, going light on the actual details of the situation where they do not relate to the spread. A witch has to have some secrets.