An oracle card spread is a way of laying out more than one card, where each place in the layout asks its own question. The three spreads most people start with are one card, three cards and a larger spread of five or more. Below you find each one, with the five-card Light Architect and the other spreads from the booklet of the Sacred Signs Oracle Deck.
Our booklet puts it plainly: “There’s no need to use a specific set of outlines on how to read your cards, since you are the master and expert when it comes to the unique being you are.” Use the spreads below as a start, and change them when your own layout comes up.
Before you lay a spread
Clear your mind and shuffle loosely while you hold your question lightly. Some people spread the cards out in one hand and feel with the other which card feels different, warmer or lit up. Others divide the deck into stacks and take the top card. If a card jumps out while you shuffle, our booklet says to read it: it is a strong message. Set it aside and read it after the spread.
The one-card spread
One card is the simplest reading and often the clearest. Draw a card for the day, or for one situation, feeling or question. Questions from our booklet that work well:
- What do I need to be aware of today?
- What should I be reflecting on about myself right now?
- What can I take and learn from the current difficulty?
- Why am I feeling stuck in this?
Ask from your own perspective. “What do I need to get closure on this?” gives you something to work with. “Why did they do that?” usually does not.
The three-card spread
Three cards in a row is a layout many readers use. Two ways to read the places:
- Situation, challenge, next step: where you are, what is in the way and what you can do now.
- What to release, what to keep, what to invite: a spread that suits the end of a cycle, such as the days around the winter solstice.
Look at each card on its own first. Then look at the three together: what do they say as a group that none says alone?
The five-card Light Architect
The Light Architect is one of the spreads in our booklet, made for designing your destiny. Lay five cards in the pattern shown in the booklet. All five relate to your destiny, which in the words of the booklet “isn’t just a future thing, it is in the here and now!” Take time with each card, then with the whole pattern. Feel, interpret and sit with what comes up.
More spreads from the booklet
- Contract insight: the Contracts card (44) in the centre. Card 1 asks in what area you have unknown or subconscious contracts to break, card 2 what you need to restore sovereignty.
- Aspect integration: the Integration card (39) in the centre, with four or more cards around it for the aspects to integrate.
- Blueprint update and weaving: the Universal Blueprint card (62) in the centre. You add cards one at a time in a pattern you feel coming up, and you can add stones, twigs or sand. When the pattern feels complete, take a photo and keep it as the background of your phone for a while.
The booklet that comes with the deck shows each layout. It is also available on its own as a pdf in English, and in other languages under books.
New to the deck? Start with starting with the Sacred Signs Oracle Deck. Everything about oracle cards is on oracle cards: what they are and how to start.
Sacred Signs has always been about giving and receiving in freedom. The Universal Signs library is open to everyone, and the donation page explains how gifts keep it going.
