The Crossing

On the table with your tarot

Draw a current, then lay out your spread. The current sets the lens, and your tarot cards still carry the meaning.

Or draw one for a week, a month or a season, and look back when it ends.

Four threads of a life

Every card belongs to one thread: one part of a life that grows at its own pace.

• Heart: feeling, love, private meaning
• Hands: work, craft, the body, money
• Hearth: family, friends, belonging
• Horizon: the wider world

Opposite threads sit at opposite corners: Heart with Horizon, and Hands with Hearth. That’s why a crossing borrows its opposite’s colour.

Six heights, on a spiral

Each thread grows through six heights, like a tree: Root, Shoot, Trunk, Branch, Canopy and Seed. They turn between asserting yourself and joining something larger.

After Seed the thread comes back to Root on a wider turn, so it’s a spiral, not a ladder with a top.

A height belongs to one thread of one matter, today. It never measures a person.

Dwelling and crossing

Every height has two cards. The dwelling card is the stage lived well, with its shadow. The crossing is the moment of outgrowing it, and it leads to the next height.

Reading the pips

Six pips stand at the foot of every card, Root at the bottom. The lit pip is the card’s height. A crossing lights its pip on the upper half, because it’s on its way up.