Spread: Putting Honey to Work
A teaspoon of honey also helps the medicine go down
As we enter the final week of the Kickstarter campaign for the Apothecary Spirits Oracle, a collaboration between artist Eric Maille, herbalist Michael Anthony, and me as coordinator/head diviner and designer, I thought it might help “sweeten the deal” to share with you all one of the spreads that we include in the robust and helpful guidebook along with each deck. Actually, you’ll be getting three for the price of one.
The guidebook includes three all-purpose spreads that I created based on inspiration from the natural world, but in addition to those three spreads, we also have a “Putting the Tools to Work” spread that can be adapted for each of the herbalist’s tools.
While the Apothecary Spirits Oracle features a variety of plants and mushrooms used in herbalism (52 with the current stretch goals we’ve hit as of this writing), we wanted to introduce a different aspect of the apothecary, tools used to help work with the herbs themselves. After all, most of us probably don’t just walk up to a bush and sniff it and say that’s all there is to herbalism. Ingredients require manipulation. The 10 herbalist’s tools offer insight on specific actions, hence spreads for “Putting the Tools to Work.”
These spreads are helpful when a tool comes up in your reading and you want to add a deeper layer to the reading. But you can also use them whenever you want guidance on bringing the tool’s relevant actions.
So How Do You Put the Tools to Work?
Each of the 10 tools has three action keywords or phrases, so you essentially get spreads you can use for understanding 30 different actions. That’s a lot of valuable guidance!
The core of the Putting the Tools to Work spread is a five-card cross.
The central card is your tool, which serves as a focus point and reminder of what you’re trying to do. The card positions to either side of center are associated with that tool, and their questions are keyed to the relevant keyword/action chosen. The card positions above and below, however, are the same for all the tools as they are part of the supportive function of the tools as tools designed to help heal by working ingredients together.
As with most spreads I create, you can read each of the cards independently as a response to the question for that position, but you should also look at all the cards as a coherent whole. There’s one story there about what can be done.
Putting Honey to Work
One of my favorite tools in the Apothecary Spirits Oracle is Honey. Yes, it’s an ingredient in the sense that it’s edible and has its own valuable properties, but it can serve a particular function or set of functions when brought into a recipe or remedy. That is how something like Honey can speak to actions.
The keywords that we chose for Honey include making palatable, amelioration, and enticement, so you can put Honey to work when you want to make things more palatable to you (or others), improve something overall, or attract others to your way of thinking. Which will you want to try first?
For this spread, place Honey as the central card in a five-card cross. Then draw four cards in the order listed below.
X. Honey
1 & 2. Primary Ingredients
3. What will this process help heal?
4. What will help support the process in small doses?
Making Palatable
1. What medicine has been difficult for me to swallow?
2. What will help me appreciate it?
Amelioration
1. What part of life could use some sweetening?
2. What will help enhance it?
Enticement
1. What am I ready to bring into my life?
2. What can I offer to attract it more easily?
Want help creating your own layouts?
You’ve got options! Join the semester of tarot and take advantage of office hours, where we can talk through your ideas and how best to ask the questions that matter most and create a custom signature layout for you.
Can’t wait for the next semester to start? Sign up for my intensive fundamentals course for new and experienced readers, Read Tarot like a Nerd, where we get into the heart of asking questions that matter, along with a dozen or two other valuable topics to take your tarot readings beyond the basics. Or check out my Saturday seminars, including past recordings of Reading the Big Picture and Getting Intentional, which will help you create your own spreads.
And if you’re curious about the astrology of tarot, I have a course for that!