The three-card line
Three positions: what is, what stands in the way, what to try. Read as a move rather than an outcome.
Three cards in a row. Most people know this spread as past, present and future. Here the third card is read as a move, not an outcome: the spread organizes thinking about a question, and a card describes a way of standing in it, never what will happen.
The positions below are this site's own names. The card means the same thing in any position; the position says where it sits in the question.
The positions
- 1
What is
- 2
What stands in the way
- 3
What to try
- 1. What is
- What is true about the situation right now, as the card shows it?
- 2. What stands in the way
- What holds the situation where it is?
- 3. What to try
- What move does the card describe, and what is its question for you?
A worked example
Example readings. The people are invented and the cards were chosen to teach.
Nia, invented.
I am three years into a job I am good at and bored by. What am I not seeing?
Cards chosen to teach: The Magician (what is), Four of Pentacles (what stands in the way), The Fool (what to try). Three cards from the records, placed to show how a position changes what a card says.
Reader: What is: the Magician. Four tools lie on his table and he never goes to fetch a fifth. Skill and resources are the card's words, and the thing people miss is that nothing on the card is missing. Three years in, that is your table: everything you need to do this job is already on it, which is also why it bores you.
Reader: What stands in the way: the Four of Pentacles. Its words are security and saving, and the figure holds what it has with both hands. The card does not call that wrong. It names the hand that will not open: the salary, the standing, the known. The question is what the hand is holding so tightly that it cannot pick up anything else.
Nia: So I am the one holding on.
Reader: The card shows holding. Whether to open the hand is yours. What to try: the Fool. One foot already over the edge, eyes on the sky, a small bundle of what he carries. Beginnings and trust are his words. He does not jump off the Magician's table; he steps, with what he can carry. The spread ends on his question: what would you start if the step were all that was asked?