The Horseshoe spread is a tarot layout of 7 cards, used for practical guidance on a situation and its likely resolution. It is a classic seven-card spread that walks a situation from its roots to its probable end.
How it is laid out
In this arrangement the reader deals seven cards laid in an arc: past, present, hidden influences, obstacles, the attitudes of others, the best course of action, and the likely outcome.
Tarot spreads are conventions of interpretation rather than fixed rules: each fixes a set of positions, and the card that falls in a position is read in the light of what that position is held to mean. Some layouts, such as the Celtic Cross, are long established in the twentieth-century reading tradition; others, including several themed modern spreads, are more recent inventions. The Horseshoe spread is described here as one such interpretive framework within that tradition.