Spreads vs. no-spread spreads: Which one is better?
If you’ve had a tarot reading with me, or taken some of my classes, you’ll already know that my go-to tarot technique is the three-card open spread.
This wasn’t always my go-to technique: I used to swear by positional tarot spreads. The bigger and more complex, the better. I would even make custom spreads for my client work to personalize each session.
But the more my client base grew, the more I had to adapt my tarot practice. I don’t know what triggered the shift, but it seemed like all of a sudden I was getting more clients coming in with longer lists of questions.
I often found myself having to think on my feet during each reading, shifting quickly from one question to another, sometimes without any relation between topics my clients wanted to cover.
It was no longer working for me to create custom spreads in advance: My clients wanted a reader who was adaptable, fluid, and flexible. Going in with one or two big spreads – even if they covered a lot of information – wasn’t working for me anymore.
Spreads can be enriching, but they can also lock you into their positions, leaving little room to go off topic or wander into new questions.
So I started to integrate more no-spread spreads into my work. Reading without set positions relies more on the context of the question rather than the context of pre-determined topics within a spread.
I’ve found that this works best for me and my clients, as it lets them tell me where they want to go within a reading. Some questions have quick answers and others take longer, and being able to lay out a few cards at a time leads to readings that flow wherever in the conversation may take us.
A lot of my foundational work teaches others how to use the three-card method to answer questions. But sometimes my students get curious:
“Is one way better than the other? Should I learn big spreads, too? What should I focus on overall?”
I don’t think it’s a matter of feeling that one has to be better than the other. What you focus on developing as a reader will always depend on what you want to do with tarot and how you want to use it.
Which is why I think it’s good to learn a bit of everything. There is a learning curve to reading with and without positions: Both push you to put cards into specific contexts that can leap away from general meanings. But how that context is built and how those readings are interpreted is different.
No-spread spreads rely on a lot of interplay between cards. They really push you to see patterns and relationships between tarot’s imagery. Spreads can also do this, but their positions can often also be read as standalone messages.
Whatever you choose to focus on first, or next, might depend more on what you want to strengthen as a reader: Do you want to be able to answer any kind of question on the fly? Or do you want to become more confident piecing together a larger reading through a single spread?
Do you want to read for other people who might bring a lot of questions to the table? If so, adapting some no-spread spread techniques might help.
Do you see readers diving into spreads with confidence and you wonder, “How do they make it look so easy?” Then maybe that’s a sign to push yourself with more spreads and spend more time with the context they create.
Again, there is no one answer for everyone here: What you focus on should relate back to what you want to do with tarot, or how you want to push yourself as a reader.
And there’s room for all kinds of techniques within everyone’s skillset as time goes on. There’s no rush to do it all right away.
Until next time,
Liz
p.s. Are you interested in learning how to integrate no-spread spreads into your tarot skillset? You might be interested in checking out Tarot Gateways, a mini-course that teaches you three-card reading methods. Learn more here.
