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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 No first source traced

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. No first publication has been located for either the shape or this list of positions. 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 layout is unsourced, and so is this particular set of seven position meanings. Other sources give different ones. The usual account — a classic European spread of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, sometimes traced to Etteilla — is repeated everywhere without a book, a date or a page behind it, and a search for one in October 2026 turned up nothing citable. That is recorded here rather than passed on, because an attribution everyone repeats and nobody sources is the kind this study declines to make.

Attribution variant unsourced

The layout has no first publication

Tarot divination is documented from Etteilla onward, and Waite publishes the Celtic Cross, but no early source has been located for this layout. SEARCHED AGAIN IN OCTOBER 2026, AND THE SEARCH IS THE FINDING. Each of these layouts is described in the modern literature as long-established — a spread of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, often sent back to Etteilla — and not one of those sources cites a book, a date or a page for any of them. The attribution is repeated between accounts rather than evidenced by any of them. Waite publishes two methods and neither is this one. A repeated assertion is not a source, so the layout stays unsourced: what is recorded here is that the attribution was looked for and not found, which is a different statement from not having looked. Its position meanings are modern editorial descriptions and are not 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 ↗