All spreadsSecrets and the unconscious

Understanding Yourself

Thirteen cards as a mandala: you at the centre, around you twelve sides of your life — gift, wound, repetition, flight, desire, shadow, resource and this year's lesson.

Take it for a broad self-portrait with no particular trigger, not an acute crisis already under way.

Cards
13
Minutes
20
Reversals
On
AI reading
4 credits
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Lay out this spread

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How to read it

The central card is you now; keep it in view the whole time, since the rest are read in relation to it. Go round from the top card clockwise without lingering: the first pass should be quick, to see the overall pattern. Then return to the three cards that touched you most and take them apart in detail. Always compare opposite cards through the centre: gift and wound, desire and prohibition, shadow and resource lie across from each other and always explain each other. The last card of the circle says who you are becoming, not who you ought to be.

Positions

  1. Who you are now

    Your actual condition in this period of life, with no summings-up and no plans.

  2. Who you think you are

    The self-image you believe in and defend against other people's corrections.

  3. How you are seen

    How those close to you perceive you, including what they keep quiet about.

  4. Your gift

    The ability you have by nature and hardly ever put to use.

  5. Your wound

    The old pain that still decides how you react to people.

  6. What you repeat

    The scenario you play out again and again with different people.

  7. What you flee

    What you have avoided for years by changing cities, jobs or company.

  8. What you want

    The real desire beneath all the proper goals and reasonable explanations.

  9. What blocks the admission

    Why you will not let yourself name that desire aloud, even alone.

  10. Your shadow

    The part of you that you despise in others and deny in yourself.

  11. Your resource

    The support that holds you through hard periods, even unnoticed.

  12. This year's lesson

    What this particular period teaches and what repeats if the lesson is missed.

  13. Who you are becoming

    The direction in which you are changing now, if you resist nothing.

More spreads: Secrets and the unconscious