Tarot Spreads for Clarity: 6 Spreads that Help You Understand Yourself and Your Circumstances

Sometimes we lack clarity because we don’t have enough information. Or we have too much. Or information is all tangled up, and we can’t see the wood for the trees. We may also mistake assumptions for facts, project past experiences onto the present, see only what we hope to see, or succumb to confirmation bias.

Tarot spreads for clarity help with understanding confusing situations, questioning assumptions, and considering the next step. The six spreads in this article use the psychological approach of the Enlightenment Tarot to help you understand yourself and your circumstances.

Instead of asking, “What will happen?” psychological Tarot readings ask, “What is happening within me?” and “How does that which happens within me bring about what I experience?”

Psychological Tarot readings trace the querent’s challenges back to inner patterns, e.g., weaknesses. Think of it as karmic forensics. For instance, a Tarot reading can trace a relationship problem back to a lack of empathy.

Karma does not mean punishment or unavoidable fate. It describes the relationship between (inner) causes and (external) consequences.

We will now show you six spreads for clarity. At the end of the article, we will also show you a meditation with the Reason card that can boost reason, foresight, and clarity.

The examples use the Enlightenment Tarot’s psychological card titles, such as Emperor/Reason. For background, read about the psychological framework of the Enlightenment Tarot.

For a reference to the cards used in these spreads, explore our overview of all 78 Tarot cards and their psychological meanings.

Which Tarot Spread Should You Use?

1. The One-Card Clarity Spread

Think of your adversity. If possible, formulate a question, such as: Why am I lonely?

Relax and involve your subconsciousness. Just as your subconscious sometimes produces a dream to send a message your way, it will pick a card that embodies that message.

Shuffle the deck until you feel like stopping. Cut it in two piles. In which pile is the card? Pick the pile in which you feel the card resides and set aside the other pile. Cut the pile you picked. Repeat until you have only a couple of cards left. Then pull one card from the remaining cards and turn it over. Make sure to turn it to the right or left rather than end over end, so you preserve its upright or reversed orientation.

If the card is upright, it shows you a faculty of consciousness or a person (a court card) that could help you overcome your challenge. If it is reversed, the adversity you experience may have come about because you used the respective faculty of consciousness unconstructively or you failed to use it. In case of a court card, a person helped bring about your challenge – consciously or unconsciously. In case of the latter, identify the person and ask the person to help you with your challenge or refrain from causing you trouble.

For instance, an upright Emperor/Reason card may indicate that reason and foresight could help you overcome your challenge. A reversed Emperor/Reason card may show that a lack of reason and foresight may have contributed to your challenge.

2. The Three-Card Clarity Spread

Think of the adversity you experience, shuffle the deck until you feel like stopping, and draw three cards.

Arrange them in a row from left to right:

1. Cause: The card on the left represents the cause of your challenge.
2. Means: The card in the middle stands for the means or agent that brought about the challenge.
3. Result: The card on the right signifies the effect, appearance, or result of your challenge.

In the following example, the cause card is an inauspicious Attention card, the means card is an inauspicious Suggestion card, and the result card is the Adversity card. The result represents the querent’s challenge.

In this case, lack of attention or attention to negativity contributed to the querent’s challenge. Negative suggestions, like catastrophizing, are the means that produced adversity.

3. The Head and Heart Spread for Clarity

Some decisions become difficult because the head and heart pull us in different directions.

Think of the adversity you experience and shuffle the cards until you feel like stopping. Draw four cards.

1. Head: The first card indicates what your head says and wants to do. The head (reason) is concerned with facts, truth, consequences, practicality, and what is sensible.
2. Heart: The second card tells you what your heart (love) would say or do. This takes kindness and empathy into consideration.
3. Conflict: The third card represents the conflict or tension between the head and heart.
4. Resolution: The fourth card suggests how to resolve the head-heart conflict.

Mind, there are two types of conflicts:
Misunderstandings and conflicts of interest. The head and heart speak a different language. As an independent party, try to resolve the misunderstanding between your head and heart.

In case of a conflict of interest (the head wants something reasonable and the heart wants something wonderful), initiate a negotiation. Rather than taking a side, stay with both perspectives and look for a third possibility. Carl Jung described this process as the transcendent function.

For example, your head may want a safe job while your heart wants a fulfilling one. A possible resolution could be a fulfilling side hustle.

4. The Fact, Assumption, and Fear Spread for Clarity

This spread helps reveal facts, assumptions, and the fears behind assumptions.

Think of your adversity, shuffle the cards until you feel like stopping, and pull three cards.

1. Facts to examine: The first card indicates facts that you know and that you may have overlooked. Mind the difference between facts and truth. Facts are objective. Truth is subjective and depends on context. The same fact can become different truths in different contexts, like a religious and scientific context.
2. Assumption: The second card represents what you are assuming.
3. Fear or emotional influence: The third card stands for the reason why you made the assumption. For instance, worry may have led you to jump to a conclusion.

It may turn out that a worry disguised itself as a fact. Or an assumption may have produced an emotional reaction that clouded your judgement.

For example, a friend has not replied to your message (the fact). “She is angry with me” is an assumption. Fear of rejection may have caused the assumption.

5. The Two-Paths Tarot Spread for Clarity

This spread helps you gain clarity when you have to make a choice.
There are three types of choices:

• A choice between two good options
• A choice between two bad options
• A choice between two ambiguous options

If you face more than two options, compare them in pairs to help narrow your shortlist.

You don’t want to surrender your personal authority and let a Tarot spread make a decision for you. The spread shall provide clarity so that you can make a conscious and informed decision.

Think of the adversity you experience and the two choices you face. Shuffle until you feel like stopping. Pull four cards for the first choice or path and four cards for the second choice or path.

Arrange the cards in two rows of four, with one row for each path. Read each row as a SWOT analysis:

1. Strength: What inner resource can support you on this path?
2. Weakness: What inner limitation needs attention?
3. Opportunity: What external possibility could support this choice?
4. Threat: What external obstacle should you prepare for?

Compare the two rows. Which strength is greater? Which path makes better use of your strengths? Which weaknesses and external threats can you handle? Which opportunity is more promising?

6. The Karmic Forensics Clarity Spread

If the one-card pull did not give you enough clarity, use this spread to look deeper into karmic entanglements.

Think of the adversity you experience and shuffle until you feel like stopping. Pull five cards.

1. Situation: The first card indicates what is happening. It may also reveal an aspect of your adversity that you have overlooked or misunderstood.
2. Perception: The second card represents how you perceive the adversity. Your perception may differ from what is actually happening.
3. Inner pattern: The third card stands for an inner weakness that contributes to the adversity. It may point to a fear, desire, belief, assumption, or faculty of consciousness that you use unconstructively or that you fail to use.
4. Choices and actions: The fourth card symbolizes how the inner pattern may have influenced choices and actions that contributed to your present circumstances. This is the karmic link between the inner cause and the outer consequence.
5. Next step: The fifth card suggests something you can do to overcome your adversity. It may show a faculty of consciousness you need to strengthen or use more constructively.

Once you understand how an inner weakness contributed to your choices and how those choices led to your circumstances, you know what you need to change to break the inner pattern that produces adversity. Make at least one change, however small, to gain momentum.

Ask the Right Question

You can improve the quality of a psychological Tarot reading by asking the right question. The Emperor/Reason card helps with that. This is how it goes:

1. Look at the Reason card for five minutes.
2. Close your eyes and imagine filling your aura and body with a brilliant red light.
3. Superimpose the image of the Reason card onto your aura and body.
4. Formulate a question.
5. Make the question more specific.
6. Make the question even more specific.
7. Continue until you cannot make it more specific.

For instance, the first question may be: Why am I lonely?
A more precise question may be: Why don’t I have a lover?
An even more precise question may be: Why do my romances last only six months?
And an even more precise one: Why do I always break up over jealousy?

Yes-or-no questions can increase the focus even more.

Avoid Pulling Cards Until You Get the Answer You Want

An uncomfortable card tempts you to pull another one.

Then another.

Then a clarification card for the clarification card.

If a card puzzles or annoys you, work with it. You can meditate with it as shown above.

If it annoys you, consider that this card pushes one of your buttons. You want to understand that button and defuse it.

The major arcana, like those of the Marseilles and Rider-Waite decks, show the positive uses of faculties of consciousness. For instance, the Reason card shows a constructive use of reason. An unconstructive use would be rationalization: using reasoning to defend cherished ideas.

The symbolic and archetypal images of Tarot cards circumvent intellectual resistance. They speak directly to subconsciousness. Subconsciousness responds by revealing a hidden pattern. For instance, subconsciousness may give you a thought, an image, connect dots, or send a dream your way to clarify an inner pattern.

Why Tarot Spreads Can Create Clarity

Sometimes subconsciousness wants to tell us something. But subconsciousness doesn’t speak English, French, or Chinese. It speaks the language of consciousness, which is pictorial. But dreams are ambitious, and we need to interpret them.

In a psychological Tarot reading, subconsciousness chooses a card that embodies its message. The picture of the Tarot card speaks to the left side of the brain. The psychological titles of the Enlightenment Tarot speak to the right side of the brain. Thus, Tarot cards synchronize the two brain hemispheres. This produces inspiration.

A challenge that existed only as vague thoughts and feelings presents itself now in the form of a titled picture. This externalizes an internal pattern and creates psychological distance. You can examine the image, question your interpretation, consider alternatives, and notice associations that might not have appeared before.

A Psychological Clarity Tool/Meditation with the Reason Card

You can increase clarity by meditating on the Reason card. This is how it goes:

1. Look at the Reason card for five minutes.
2. Close your eyes and imagine filling your aura and body with a brilliant red light.
3. Superimpose the image of the Reason card onto your aura and body.
4. Feel how the image turns into a force, the force of reason.
5. Feel the effect of the force of reason on your body-mind system. Feel it strengthening foresight, clarity, and sensibility.
6. Think of a challenge for which you want clarity.
7. Ask the emperor in the picture a question and wait for his answer.
8. Try out what the emperor suggests.

Use this tool whenever you need clarity. You can do this in a few seconds, meaning anytime and anywhere.

Continue Your Tarot Practice

Would you like to work with the cards shown in this article? Explore the Enlightenment Tarot deck and its psychological card titles.

Subscribe and receive your free psychological Tarot reading guide. After you subscribe and confirm your email address, you will receive an email with a download link to the guide.

For more psychological tools like this, visit our sister site: www.archetypalimagetherapy.com

The author of this article used AI to assist with research and drafting.