Sometimes you run into the wildest spell ideas or tarot spreads, or even the most absurdist ideas. To me, bad tarot or oracle deck spreads are some of the easiest things to critique. They tend to come in a few flavors of failure: all style no substance, or great ideas and horrible execution. The former comes with really cool graphic design or the cards made into an interesting shape. But, they ultimately are unhelpful. Good ideas and horrible execution is just what it says on the tin: a cool idea, but that’s it. This particular spread came up in my friend’s discord server. I think we were all equally baffled by this, and pretty much had the same thing to say about it. But, I got a little froggy and decided to fix it into something usable.

Initial Spread and Problems

Oh man.

Where to even start?

First, it is very weird to have ‘yes / no’ questions in a spread like this with no explanation for how to interpret each card as a yes or a no. Second, why are they only using the major arcana? That’s cutting out a huge portion of the deck! Third, I could not help but feel like this was something closer to a personality test I would read in the Girl’s Life magazines in the 1990s. You could just check of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and then tally up your results, and it would be a lot less work for just about the same amount of new information you’d gain. Fourth, if you come to the conclusion that you need to use this spread…don’t you already have the answer that this spread is supposed to give you?

All in all, I give this a 1/10 stars, only because I can’t technically give it a zero. It’s an interesting concept but utterly awful execution. I would say this is both unusable and useless as a spread.

Solutions and New Spread

This is the spread I ended up finishing. I kept the initial concept: how to address a situation where the querent’s healing power are manifesting either without their permission or doing things that they don’t want. The first image that came to my mind to these this spread off of was the idea of digging up your own grave.

Let’s be real. This is a shadow work spread that is addressing just one specific thing. But, it all ties back to why your powers might be out of your control, and what you have to do in order to bring them back to your command. The final card is a bit of a throwback to Full Metal Alchemist, but also a fundamental truth: you can’t get something from nothing. So, when you go through all of these issues and finally get to the origin of your out-of-control powers, you have to leave something behind in order to gain what you want.

This spread is free for use and reference for all my readers, and I have no issue with people using it or sharing it. The only thing I have issue with is people slapping their name over mine and pretending they put the effort into making it.