Tarot Elements Vision Spread

The Tarot Elements Vision Spread is a new way to approach Goal Setting. It incorporates Life Coaching models and techniques, the Tarot and some innovative Tarot reading techniques too. It’s a pro-active way to look at your future because it helps you achieve your goals and not just dream about them.

A marvellous marriage of models

I recently translated two very effective NLP and Life Coaching models, the Logical Levels and Grow Model, into two very revealing and insightful tarot spreads, the Logical Levels Tarot Spread, and the Grow Model Tarot Spread. This new spread, the Tarot Elements Vision Spread, is a marriage of those two models. Those of you who tried those spreads will recognise their parts in this new spread and be immediately comfortable with it. For those of you less familiar with them, do check them out. They’re very insightful, providing deep answers to general and specific questions and stand alone in their own right.

So what’s in the Vision Spread?

Containing the most telling and pro-active elements of both models, the positions, or levels in the Vision Spread are:

1. Vision
2. Goals
3. Actions
4. Beliefs
5. Identity

Let’s take a closer look at those levels and see what they mean within the Vision Spread.

Vision

This is your dream, the very thing you want to achieve. In the Tarot Elements Vision Spread, it’s the sum total of your Goals; a single Major Arcana card that encompasses your individual Goals into one Vision.

Goals

Based on the Four Elements, these are the individual areas that make up your Vision. Each card selected represents an area to fulfil, helping you to achieve your Vision by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable Goals.

Actions

Denotes what actions you need to take in order to achieve your Goals. Negative cards here can be taken as obstacles in your way that you need to overcome in order to reach your Goals, or they can been seen as you taking on, and fulfilling an action you wouldn’t normally see yourself doing, not consciously at least.

Beliefs

These represent your conscious or subconscious beliefs that you hold about your Vision or Goals; whether you have an attitude of lack, self-sabotage, denial, self-belief, confidence etc.

Identity

This represents You in relation to your Vision, where you are, how you currently visualise yourself and your Vision. This card may also show some indication of the Vision.

Identifying your Vision and defining your Goals

Knowing what is it you want to achieve is a great help. So is having a good working knowledge of the Tarot because from it, you’re going to select your Goals and Vision. Let me explain.

The Grow Model Spread tells you about your goal(s). In this spread, we’re actively going to select them from the deck. The reason we’re going to do this is simply visual. Being able to see your goals makes them familiar to you and therefore, in your mind (and in reality) they will be easier to reach.

Choosing your Vision and Goals cards

The mechanics of this are quite simple – separate the Major Arcana from the rest of your tarot deck. You’re going to select one Major Arcana card, an archetypal card, to represent your Vision. Think about this selection very carefully because it will make a huge difference to the rest of the reading, and consequently, to achieving your Vision – you don’t want to be aiming for the wrong thing!

You also need to be sure about what deck you want to use. For a reading I did with this spread, I used the Legacy of the Divine as I love the card I thought about for my Vision, the Empress. When I went to look at the reading using another deck, I didn’t care much for the Empress card in that deck and so I chose the Magician. There were many repeating cards in the two readings, but ultimately, I was given a different direction to head in – was it the wrong one for me? Choose your Vision card carefully, and use a deck you totally resonate with. You’ll be working closely with your Vision Card so choose one that is aesthetically pleasing and sings to your soul.

Using the Four Elements to define your goals

The second part of the process is selecting your Goals cards. Choose one from each suit and element:

1. Fire – Wands
2. Water – Cups
3. Air – Swords
4. Earth – Pentacles

Choosing a card from each element and suit allows you to define your Goals precisely. Your Goals are the parts that make up your Vision. By breaking your Vision down into four parts, you’re seeing the make-up of your dream, the actual parts you need to achieve, individually. Using the Four Elements like this allows you to get in touch with your Goals more deeply, and provides a way to bring balance to your Goals.

Evoking the Four Elements even unconsciously brings forth their power within you, animating them through your Goals and ultimately yourself. For a more pro-active approach familiarise yourself with them through the Five Senses and other means such as meditation and ritual.

When you’re choosing your Goals, make sure you think about what they are and what they mean to you. You will then be able to resonate with the appropriate tarot card that represents your Goal, to you. Remember, this has to feel right to you, on an instinctual level. If you’re doing this with a friend, make sure you listen to your own intuition about what cards are right for you.

How Do you Reach Your Goals?

Now that you’ve selected your Vision and Goals cards, it’s time to do the rest of the reading. Your focus now is the very bottom of the spread, the Identity position. This is where you are now. Imagine standing at the bottom of a hill or tall building. You look up and there are your Goals and your Vision, but you’ve no idea how you’re going to get there. The rest of the reading will help show you the way.

Keep the Major Arcana separated from the deck. Make sure you’ve given the Minor Arcana (including the Court Cards) a good shuffle and while doing that, concentrate on your Goals and Vision. Starting with the Identity position, lay one card there – that’s You. Then two cards above it in the Beliefs level, then the last three in the Actions level.

Notice how the Vision Spread expands as you move up the levels. This allows you to read it in a multi-directional way. From the top of each card is an option to move to two separate cards – moving your focus and allowing you to see where the lower cards, the foundation levels, are affecting your actions.

Always move upwards in the Vision Spread. This is Goal Setting and Achievement, there’s no deep psychology in this reading. The only time you will move backwards, is to look at where you may have gone wrong previously. Your Foundation cards will show you if you’re in alignment, or congruent with your Goals and your Vision. Remember, Life Coaching is about your present and your future, not your past. Keep your eyes moving forward.

Getting the best from the Vision Spread

Once you’ve laid out the remaining cards in your Vision Spread Tarot Reading, you can now begin to interpret your cards. Starting with the Identity position, which represents you, then move up to the next level, Beliefs.

These first three cards form the Foundation of the reading and tell you about your unconscious thoughts about your Vision, how you see them, and yourself. These three cards will be having a huge impact on your success rate and identifying any trouble spots here could prevent a failed mission.

From the Foundation of those three cards are your Action cards. These are the cards that tell you what you need to do in order to successfully reach your Goals. Now, this is real life and not the movies. Some of you will get a negative or less than positive card(s) in this level. As with the Options position in the Grow Model Tarot Spread, you have two choices in how you deal with them.

1. Define a negative option as an obstacle
2. Make the negative card work for you

Remember, this is a pro-active spread – it calls for you to take action and deal with negative cards, making them work for you is a very pro-active move and one I encourage you to explore.

Stepping Stones to Success

If you aren’t used to being so pro-active, in life and in your tarot readings, that’s ok – I have something to help you regardless. It’s called the Stepping Stones to Success Tarot Reading Method. Check out the post I wrote about it for an in-depth look at how to apply them to your Vision Spread reading.

Briefly though, Stepping Stones to Success is a method to read tarot. When you’re stuck in a position and can’t find your way out, or your current situation looks so bad, you’ve no idea how you’re going to reach that rosey outcome card – you use a Stepping Stone, another tarot card to help you on your way. This is an action card, a pro-active way to hop, skip and jump to a better one.

Your Action cards take you to your Goals, the things you need to do to bring you one step closer to them. If you have negative or difficult cards in this level, you can use Stepping Stones to help you to the next level, the one we’re putting all this effort in to reach.

Remember the nice pile of Major Arcana cards sitting patiently on your table? Use them as Stepping Stones to reach your goals. You can use the Minor Arcana if you prefer, or you can reshuffle both piles and use the deck as a whole. My recommendation is that you use the Majors, and I’ll tell you why. They’re the archetypes, the big boys of the tarot. If you need to dig really deep to reach a Goal, an archetypal card is what you need – it has the depth and power to propel you forward.

Example: If one of your Action cards is the 10 of Swords, and the Goal card above it is the 4 of Wands, you could draw a Stepping Stone card to help you get from the 10 to the 4. In my own reading, I drew the Strength card as my Stepping Stone which showed me how to move from the Ruin of the 10 and into the Achievement of the 4.

Embodying the archetypes

There’s also another reason we’re focusing so heavily on the Majors as our guides in this spread – they allow us to embody their archetypal natures and help change and improve our own characters. You can do this a few ways, but what’s very effective is to meditate on the card, journey into it, meet the main character in the card for advice. You can put extra study into these cards, perhaps from different decks to broaden your knowledge and understanding of them to help you align yourself to them.

Anchoring the Vision

One further thing you can do, and I highly recommend this technique for aligning yourself to your Goals Cards and to embody the archetype of your Vision card, is forward visualisation and link association.

In NLP, this technique is called anchoring. At its simplest, when you have a response to certain stimuli, it means you are recalling memories and associated feelings from a past event. The response to the stimuli is a change in behaviour, conscious or unconscious, good or bad.

What you’re seeking to do is use anchoring to your benefit by creating a link association with your Vision and Goals Cards. You do this using visualisation and physical touch.

Using both sides of your brain to anchor your Goals

Take your first Goals Card, your Fire/Wand card and visualise yourself in the image. If you have selected the 6 of Wands for example, then see yourself as the victor on the horse, really see yourself victorious, embrace how wonderful you feel, the cheering crowd, the adoration, the warmth of the sun, the joy in your heart.

When you are embodying your Fire card, squeeze your thumb and middle finger together on your right hand. Say out loud the keyword you associate with that card in a sentence that encompasses your visualisation. For example, say “I am Victorious” For a double effect, include the specific area you have associated the Fire Element to, “I am Victorious in my Career”.

Repeat this process for all of your Goals Cards, making sure you match their qualities with the correct hand. Left brain functions for the practical side of the brain, and right brain functions, ie, the creative side of the brain. Use the following as a guide:

1. Fire and Water are creative, subconscious, intuitive and therefore right brain function. Use your right hand for your Wands and Cups Goals.
2. Air and Earth are logical, conscious, practical and therefore left brain function. Use your left hand for your Swords and Pentacles Goals.

If you set yourself a time frame to achieve your Goals and Vision, then keep anchoring everyday until you have achieved them. Otherwise, anchor your Goals for at least three weeks before you begin to anchor your Vision Card. This is to ensure you have created an associated link in your mind with your Goals.

While there is some debate about how ‘separate’ the actual parts of the brain really are, and how research has over the last 20 years, shown doubt in the ‘left brain/right brain myth’ (as the brain works as a whole even if one side it dominating, it is still being supported by the other side), the benefits of defining your left and right hands for anchoring is still a useful exercise in providing you with clarity and further definition of your Goals.

Anchoring your Vision Card

Anchoring your Vision Card is pretty much the same process, only this time when you squeeze your thumb and middle fingers together, you will now use both hands simultaneously. This is to encorporate both sides of the brain when you’re anchoring and will embody your Vision into your psyche, actively increasing your success rate.

Remember to also say out loud your sentence that incorporates the keyword of your Vision Card with your Vision. For example, my Vision is for business sucess and I chose the Empress as my Vision Card, so while squeezing my thumbs and middle fingers of both hands together, I say “I am a successful business woman”. I visualise myself as being successful, through my Goals Cards and anchoring. I do this everyday and have already made remarkable changes to how I see myself, I’m also experiencing increased business success.

Keeping a record

If you were planning to install a new kitchen, you would have plans drawn, designs, and images of kitchens. You would spend quite a lot of time choosing the right one, the colour, the materials, the cost. You would no doubt have all of this written down. Perhaps you would even make a special folder for it. And so you should – proper planning will help to ensure your success in your project.

Your Goals are no different and the Tarot Elements Vision Spread is your project planner. So, get a nice new folder, print this tutorial out. Write down the cards you draw in your reading. Make actual plans to help you move through the levels, list the actual things you will do in order to reach your Goals. Make a Vision Board with colourful images and writing on that spells out your Vision and most of all, take your Vision Card, your Major Arcana card, and put that on it too. Make it your sigil and embody its archetype. This is your future and your dream, doing all of these things will help to make it a reality.

Wishing you all the very best for your future success.

As with The Stepping Stones to Success Tarot Reading Method, the Tarot Elements Vision Spread was refined during that same wonderful evening of dinner, tarot readings and general chit chat with my very good friend Jules Roberts from Living Tarot. I brought the idea to Jules, a concept and a half completed piece of work, and it was Jules that brought clarity to my Vision. Again, credit must go to her for her insight, lucidity and ingenuity.

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Pro-Active Tarot Reading

• Grow Model Tarot Spread
• Logical Levels Tarot Spread
• Logical Levels Tarot Spread in Action!
• Tarot Elements Vision Spread
• Stepping Stones to Success Tarot Reading Method

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