SAMPLE TAROT SPREAD WITH CROSS LAYOUT

ON CLINICAL PSYCH FROM 1/30/25

Context:

This is a reading I’m doing for myself about whether I should pursue a PhD in clinical psychology, as opposed to the vaguely academic career I’d previously imagined. I’ve always been interested in the mind, and like the idea of doing clinical work, but am worried that grad programs may be too competitive or that the field itself may be too (to quote William James) “medical materialist” for my sensibilities. Also, this would mean turning away from the more purely intellectual fields I’m interested in (like philosophy, economics, and math, all of which would lead only to an unstable career in academia) for a more material career. Still, despite these concerns, most of me feels that this is the right path and I’m relatively set on it (certainly set enough that a tarot reading wouldn’t independently dissuade me). I’m doing this reading less for insight about whether I should and more to investigate where these worries about the choice are coming from.

I’m doing the spread with my own deck that I made freshman year, so the symbolic interpretations are unique. The images are imbedded next to their analysis.

“Her”: inverted 10 of swords
“Cross”: 5 of wands
“below”: queen of cups
“behind”: 3 of swords
“above”: inverted queen of swords
“ahead”: the hierophant

Inverted 10 of swords/This is her:

Frankly and instinctively, this is one of my least favorite cards in the deck. The swords are all about intellectualism and rationalism, and they are not a happy suit—almost every card has a generally negative meaning. This makes sense to me, since tarot leans into the less rational sides of the mind: I think of the excess negativity of the swords as balancing out our modern preference for intellectualism and rationality. 10s are culmination cards, and the deck tells us that the culmination of the path of swords is betrayal, ruin, and collapse: it’s Dante in exile, Socrates in court, Lenin dying in bed. However, when it’s inverted, it’s meaning is simply survival. Survival by choosing traversing the intellectual path and then, at its ultimate moment, at the consequences for your insight, refusing to see it through and choosing instead to survive.

My instinctual response to this card is repulsion, and I initially thought it was the spread telling me to reconsider my choice, that I was taking the cowards way out by choosing clinical psych over a research field. However, the 10 of swords overall is a “rock and a hard place” sort of card, and this is me. I am the 10 of swords, I’m already at this point of intellectual ruin (or at least can clearly see it ahead). The fact that I am choosing survival over the ruin of adjunct teaching and intellectual masturbation is a choice I’ve already made. Plus, I need to remind myself that the card isn’t a value judgement. Survival is simply what it is, and this card doesn’t offer the choice between martyrdom and survival, but between survival and ruin. There’s no glory in that.

(Coming back to this after having finished the spread: I think you can also view this through the lens of swords as a “truth” suit, where this card suggests that a single-minded but successful pursuit of the truth will lead only to ruin at the attempt to share those radical truths—and all truths are radical—to a wider audience. “Nobody likes an Existentialist” sort of thing. Is turning away from that path of truth good? I don’t know, but I do know/deeply believe that the path of truth-teller is so narrow in the post-post-modern age as to be untraversable and I feel fairly comfortable choosing survival over it. Still, this is a moral question to reckon with, and I’m not getting rid of it this easily)

5 of wands/this crosses her:

My deck’s five of wands is about mostly-friendly disagreement between friends, ego v.s. ego style. Inverted, it’s the opposite: peace but also conflict avoidance. In the cross position, the card is about the tension between the two paths. Fives are a conflict card, the adolescent of a suit, but they’re a good clean constructive kind of conflict, like adolescence. You grow from a five. They aren’t deceptive, and wands are similarly straightforward: passion, ambition, drive. The disagreement of a 5 of wands is more like sparring, with innuendo and more clever wordplay than cutting remarks, learning how to balance passion with charisma and enjoyment. Likewise, the absence of this sort of disagreement is peaceful, but that peace is stopping potential development of character and ideas.

I think this card gets at what is really my primary worry with psychology: that I’ll be corralled into a research atmosphere where hippie shit like belief in God or free will or the soul are reviled, not debated. Psychology, more than any other discipline, has had to push itself away from idealism with its former metaphysics of psychoanalysis and religion, and perhaps their repulsion is warranted—but I know that I want open discussion on those topics, and my main worry is that I won’t find it, or will be dismissed as childish or uneducated for being “irrational.”

To quickly rewind and look at the part of the picture I’ve uncovered, I see that I’ve made the intellectual’s choice toward survival, but am worried that that means I’m sacrificing the free intellectual discussion that I prize.

Queen of cups/this is from below her:

Queens are the epitome of a mature feminine person who exemplifies the suit, and cups (hearts in a standard deck) are the water signs, the emotional side of a person. My queen of cups consoles a crying friend, while suggesting gently that they see a therapist. While some queens of cups focus more on straightforward nurture, my deck emphasizes the boundary setting a healthy woman has to maintain—rather than indulging a needy friend to keep them dependent on you and satisfy a woman’s natural (?) desire to be needed, you help them stand on their own. I’ve been blessed with parents who I see as mature and who have rarely been overbearing, which has seriously impacted the person I’ve grown into, so the childhood-informed base I get to work with is an upright queen of cups. I see this as a good sign for clinical psychology, where emotional boundaries are invaluable, although the application to the 5 of wands isn’t immediately standing out. I might come back to this one once more of the picture is revealed.

3 of swords/this is behind her:

Appropriately for a spread about academic ambition and conflicts, we have another sword card. Swords are, above being an intellectual path, a path about truth (which, the cards suggest, is rarely present) and the three is past the denial of two and on to grief and loss, when the harsh truth is realized and has to be dealt with.

I see this as straightforwardly being about my acceptance that an academic career doesn’t make sense, no matter how much the ideal version appeals to me. That ideal version is not available, and the inverted 10 of swords shows how I’ve already made the choice toward survival instead of chasing that false ideal. Still, the grief of that truth is the foundation my fears about this path are coming from.

Inverted queen of swords/this is from above her:

Again, queens are the mature feminine, so their inversion is a corruption or an immature version: manipulative, unforgiving, rational to the point of repressing valuable irrationality, the frigid matron or the intellectual woman who has had to sacrifice her positive femininity for respect in her field.

Especially in the “from above” slot, I think this last example bears weight here. Society has impressed upon me the near-ideal of the incomplete intellectual woman, overly rational and materialistic to gain credibility, and that expectation is informing how I see my fears about clinical psychology. I don’t want to become her, but here she is anyway. This card is also especially significant to me because it’s the only card in my deck from a deck that isn’t mine: my senior year of high school, a friend of mine gave me this card when she deconstructed a deck that she had made, saying it was the one that reminded me of her. To see it inverted in this spread feels significant, although mercifully it isn’t in the me slot, it’s only an influence to be aware of.

This card helps put the queen of cups in context. I’m warring between the queen of cups, which drives me toward psychology where my skills and boundaries can be helpful, and the inverted queen of cups, which terrifies me and keeps me reluctant. Often, it seems like the influence from above (from social morality) is the one to lean into and the one from below (from the flesh) is the one to revile, but here they’re inverted. Taken with the 5 of clubs (which for me refers to intellectual sparring), it seems like I need to be especially cautious not to become defensive and closed off about my own ideas—not to lock myself in an ivory tower in an effort to protect lofty ideals.

The hierophant/this is ahead of her:

A hierophant was an ancient Greek priest of the Eleusinian mystery religion, representing tradition, conformity, and belief—all without full knowledge. The hierophant, as the priest, may know the mystery, but he jealously guards it (potentially to hide his own lack of understanding). As a card in the major arcana (the only one in this spread!) it refers to larger issues than the other cards, universal archetypes rather than everyday issues. My card references Ronald Reagan and the Nicaraguan Contras: poor/immoral decision making made in secret and partially because of that secrecy.

This is ominous, and I see much more influence from the inverted queen of swords than the queen of cups in it. Perhaps it represents a version of me who moves forward with the dogma of conventional psychology while secretly holding conflicting true beliefs (the reference to the contras makes me think that those secret motivations would not serve me well). Since the negative influence from above is stronger than that from below (as they often are for people with a strong intellectual or moral base in intellectual or moral matters) I should keep a careful eye on it moving forward. This is really helpful, since the path I mentioned above was one that I had passively seen for myself, but had never laid bare and examined. Now that I have, I see that it isn’t one I want to follow.

Spread as a whole:

abstractly, without moving on to the story yet, I see a moderate emphasis on swords which, as I said, makes sense—intellectual cards for an intellectual issue. Thinking of swords as truth cards also resonates, but the fact that the two “current” ones (the 10 and the queen) are both inverted puts a sour lens on the situation. Optimistically: the 10 is a post-achievement card, its inverse a rejection more of the results than the path, and the queen is only an influence. There are two queens in the spread, and they're the only face cards AND the two influences, which suggests perhaps a focus on feminine values and motivations. The only major arcana card is in the future, which makes me think I should be considering alternative archetypes I might want to aspire toward (perhaps the emperor, whose stability and discipline is similar to the hierophant [both cards in my deck have pyramids on them] but more in line with my true values) rather than mundane ideas.

Finally, overviewing the story laid out: after coming to terms with the implausibility of a purely intellectual career (3 of swords) I’ve chosen survival in a more material profession of psychology (inverted 10 of swords) but am worried that I’ll have to choose between the intellectual discussions I enjoy, and so vetting my true ideas, and conflict avoidance to preserve my respectability and career (sideways 5 of clubs). Two majors factors influencing where I proceed from there are a social expectation of intellectual women overcorrecting to rationality (inverted queen of swords), and an engrained foundation of emotionally healthy boundaries (queen of cups). It seems like the queen of swords passively yields more influence, leading me toward a future where I shroud my true thoughts/moral compass in secrecy in order to conform to expectations of what a female psychologist/scientist/intellectual should be (the hierophant).

This spread is a warning, but it’s not a hopeless one. My fears are not unwarranted, but no material cards (behind, ego, or cross) are truly negative, and I have a positive id foundation to build on. I feel like it’s telling me I’m on the right path, but that it’s one that would be very easy to stray on. Good insight. Good spread.