Tarot Spread: What's Good?
A spread for feeling the golden glow of the 3 of Wands
How would you interpret my own spread featuring Arthur Wang’s Ephemere? I feel like it’s pointing to all the wonderful friends and community members who have been helping make my latest Kickstarter a success by sharing it far and wide!
The 3 of Wands offers growth and expansion along with progress and success. The combination of expansive 3 and vibrant Wands makes for a powerful impact.
It’s a particularly wonderful card to see for business-owners or those pursuing passion projects. But expansion for the sake of expansion is a virus. And the 3 of Wands is not viral. It’s Virtue. That’s the esoteric title attributed to the card in the Thoth Tarot and Golden Dawn system, and it’s important to understanding the card and how it works.
There’s something important in the titling of the 3 of Wands as Virtue. What a word. It signals morality and goodness, but it’s a life force as well. It’s a critical component to good leadership and moral authority (not in the sense of dominant morality but of authorities with strong morals). It can be so often hard to see, in others but also in ourselves.
Yet goodness should shine bright like the sun that influences this card in astrological tarot. Astrologically, it’s the Sun shining on Aries. That means headstrong and confident leadership but also aligned and purposeful and authentic leadership. It’s the Emepror (Aries) and the Sun (the Sun) together: joyous and simply good leadership.
So for this spread, I wanted to focus on “what’s good.” It’s a casual phrase, a way of asking how someone is or seeking updates in their life. It’s a way of checking in. But it’s also a serious question. Check in with yourself. What is good in life? Where can you find goodness? And how can you take responsibility for bringing more of that into being?
That’s what makes for great leadership, for the energetic (but healthy and helpful) expansion of enterprise and energy. Create and inspire and ignite action in others with the 3 of Wands. But do it for good, not just to get your bag.
As with many previous tarot spreads and oracle card layouts based on the minor arcana, this one uses symbolism from Pamela Colman Smith’s iconic imagery used for the 1909 Rider Tarot by Arthur E. Waite. This helps provide a layout design, but it also grounds the reading in a familiar visual. You can also use it as a kind of key to seeing where you’re most focused when you look at the card.
Ships: What’s good?
Perch: How have I helped make it so?
Sunrise: What’s waiting for my next move?
Golden waves: How is that move likely to turn out?
Inner fire: What will help me know when to take it?
Want help creating your own layouts?
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And if you’re curious about the astrology of tarot, I have a course for that!