Celtic cross tarot spread
The Celtic cross is a ten card spread, and the best known layout in tarot. Six cards form a cross and four stand in a column beside it. A. E. Waite set out a version of it in 1910. It suits a big question with a history, and it takes longer to read than most.
What each card means in this spread
- The heart of it. The situation as it stands, the card everything else refers back to.
- What crosses it. The help or the obstacle lying right across the question, laid over the first card.
- Below. The root: what this is built on, often from some time ago.
- Behind. What is passing out of the picture and losing its hold.
- Above. Your aim or the best you could hope for here.
- Ahead. What comes into the picture next, in the near term.
- You. How you are approaching this, as distinct from how you would like to.
- Around you. The people and the setting: how they influence the question.
- Hopes and fears. What you hope and what you dread here, which are often the same thing seen from two sides.
- Where it tends to go. The direction if things carry on as they are, read together with the other nine.
When to use it
Use it for a question that has been around for a while and has several people or causes in it. It is too much for a small question. With ten cards you can find something to fit almost anything, so keep it for when you can sit with it for half an hour.
Readers lay the cross in slightly different orders. Waite's own text numbers the positions differently from many modern books, so don't be thrown if a friend's version differs. What matters is that you decide what each place means before you turn the cards over.
Questions that suit this spread
- What do I need to understand about where this relationship has got to?
- What is really going on in this long dispute with my family?
- What is this period of my working life about?
A worked example
This is a draw made the way the form makes one, for the question: "What do I need to understand about where this relationship has got to?"
- The heart of it: Seven of Swords. The Seven of Swords tiptoes away carrying blades from a camp. It is the card of strategy, secrecy and acting alone, sometimes sneakily. It asks whether you, or someone else, are being fully honest.
- What crosses it: Eight of Pentacles, reversed. Reversed, perfectionism or losing interest. Find the meaning in the work again.
- Below: Nine of Pentacles. The Nine of Pentacles stands in a lush garden with a falcon on her glove. It is the card of independence and the comfort earned through your own effort.
- Behind: Death. In tarot this card is about endings that clear space, not a literal end. It marks a chapter closing so another can open: a habit, a role or a phase you have outgrown. Allowing the change is usually easier than delaying it.
- Above: Nine of Cups. The Nine of Cups sits proudly in front of a row of cups: the classic wish card. It stands for contentment and enjoying what you have built.
- Ahead: The Tower. The Tower is struck by lightning: a sudden change that shakes false foundations. It is the card of truths arriving all at once and of structures that weren't solid falling away. Hard as it feels, what remains is real, and you can rebuild on firmer ground.
- You: Queen of Pentacles. The Queen of Pentacles sits in a blooming garden, a coin in her lap. She is practical care: making a home comfortable, managing resources wisely and looking after people in down-to-earth ways.
- Around you: Two of Cups. The Two of Cups shows two people exchanging cups as equals. It is the card of connection that gives and receives in balance: a partnership, a friendship or a romance built on mutual respect.
- Hopes and fears: Wheel of Fortune, reversed. Reversed, it suggests resisting a change already under way, or feeling stuck in a repeating pattern. What feels like bad timing may be a cycle closing.
- Where it tends to go: Two of Wands, reversed. Write down where you want to be, then pick the first step.
How to read it
Read in pairs, because that's where a Celtic cross becomes useful. The first and second cards are the problem. The third and the fifth set what is under the question against what you are aiming for, and a mismatch there is often the real story. The fourth and the sixth show what is leaving and what is arriving.
Then read the column from the bottom up. It moves from you, through the people around you and what you hope or fear, to where this tends to go. Count the Major Arcana cards before you finish: if there are many, the question is bigger than the people in it.
The cards are read in the same words as our card pages, from the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition. Each draw comes from a hash of the day and your question, so asking the same thing on the same day gives the same cards.