10 cards · intermediate
The Celtic Cross spread
The Celtic Cross is the best-known tarot layout in the English-speaking world, and the one many people picture when they think of a reading. Ten cards make two shapes: a small cross of six cards around the centre, and a column of four beside it. The cross looks at the situation itself, what surrounds it, what lies under it and what is moving through it. The column, often called the staff, turns to the person asking: how they stand, the people and pressures around them, what they hope for or dread, and where the whole thing is tending. It suits a question with some weight and some tangle to it, where you want to see the parts as well as the whole.
The layout entered print in A. E. Waite's companion book to the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, The Key to the Tarot, and reached most readers through its illustrated edition, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (dated 1911), under the heading "An Ancient Celtic Method of Divination". Waite says only that it had "been used privately for many years past in England, Scotland and Ireland" and that he did not think it had been published before. There is no evidence that it is ancient or Celtic in any historical sense. Historians of tarot generally suspect it grew out of the card practice of Waite's own occult circle around the turn of the century, but its exact source is unknown.
The positions
- 1
What covers
The heart of the matter: the general atmosphere around the question, the influence in which everything else is working.
- 2
What crosses
Laid across the first card, this shows what complicates or opposes the matter: an obstacle, a tension, or something good that does not help here.
- 3
What crowns
The aim or ideal you hold in this matter, or the best that can be reached as things stand, which has not yet become real.
- 4
What is beneath
The foundation: what has already happened and become part of the situation, the ground the rest stands on.
- 5
What is behind
An influence that has just passed or is passing away now, still felt but losing its hold.
- 6
What is before
An influence that is coming into play, the next current to work on the matter.
- 7
Yourself
Your own position and attitude in the situation: how you are standing in it, which may differ from how you think you are.
- 8
Your house
Your surroundings: the people close to you, your circumstances and the pressures around you that bear on the matter.
- 9
Hopes or fears
What you hope for or fear in this matter. The two are often the same wish seen from opposite sides.
- 10
The outcome
Where the currents shown in the other cards are tending if nothing changes. Waite called it 'what will come'; read it as a direction, not a fixed result.
How to lay and read it
Shuffle while you hold the question in mind. Lay card 1 in the centre and card 2 across it, then card 3 above, card 4 below, card 5 to one side (behind the subject) and card 6 to the other side (before the subject). Cards 7 to 10 go in a column to the right, from the bottom upwards. Read the centre pair first, as the heart of the matter and what complicates it. Then read the cross as a picture of the situation and the staff as a picture of you within it, and finish with card 10, checking it against everything else on the table rather than reading it alone.
Tips
- Read cards 1 and 2 as a pair: the crossing card is not always an enemy, and Waite noted that even a favourable card here can be good in itself but unhelpful in this particular matter.
- Compare card 3 (what crowns) with card 9 (hopes or fears): the gap between the ideal and the worry is often the most useful thing in the reading.
- If card 10 is unclear, Waite suggested laying the spread again with that card as the new centre.
- Count the Major Arcana cards: several of them suggest the question touches something larger than day-to-day circumstances.
Questions that suit this spread
- What do I need to understand about where this project really stands?
- What is shaping my relationship with my family at the moment, and what is my part in it?
- What am I not seeing about the move I am considering?
A note on its history
Waite's original method begins with a significator, a card chosen to represent the person asking (usually a court card picked by age and colouring, in his scheme, though a trump can stand for the matter itself), which is placed face up in the centre and covered by card 1. Most readers today leave it out. Waite also ties cards 5 and 6 to the direction the significator's face is turned: "behind" goes on the side it looks away from and "before" on the side it faces. His diagram has the significator facing left, so this page puts card 6 on the left and card 5 on the right. Many modern books simply put card 5 on the left and card 6 on the right; the meanings are the same either way.
Other spreads
Three-Card Spread (Past, Present, Future)Situation, Action, OutcomeMind, Body, SpiritOne-Card Daily DrawYes or NoRelationship SpreadHorseshoe SpreadCareer Path SpreadTwo Paths (Decision Spread)New Moon IntentionsTwelve Houses SpreadShadow Self Spread