People ask for guidance when what they want is for somebody to decide for them, and that is not a failing, it is what tiredness sounds like once it has been carrying a question for a few weeks. A tarot spread for guidance cannot decide for you, and we would rather say so in the first line, but it can do something nearly as useful, which is take a question that has been going round in your head since spring and narrow it to one thing you could do before the end of the day.
The version below has three positions, and every one of them is about you. There is no seat for what other people think, no seat for how it turns out, and no seat for whether you deserve the thing you are asking about. Three cards, ten minutes, and a step small enough to keep.
The three positions of a tarot spread for guidance
The first card is what you are standing in. Not the story you tell about the situation but the situation itself, as you would describe it to a friend who had asked how things were and actually wanted to know. Most guidance questions get asked from inside a description that is a few months out of date, and this seat is where the description gets brought up to date.
The second card is what you keep not looking at. Every question that has lasted more than a couple of weeks has a part that gets skipped each time it comes round, usually because looking at it would make the answer obvious and the answer is inconvenient. This card is dealt straight into that gap, and it is the seat most worth writing down.
The third card is your next step, and it is read as small as possible. A card in this seat is not telling you to move house or end something; it is pointing at the one phone call, the one sentence, the one envelope that the whole question has been standing behind. If the step you read off it would take longer than an afternoon, you have read it too big.
A five card version for your own deck
If you are dealing at your own kitchen table and three feels thin, add two seats between the second card and the third: what I am afraid the answer is, and what would help. The fear seat matters because guidance questions are very often fear questions in a nicer coat, and naming the thing you are braced for takes most of the charge out of it. The help seat is the practical one, the friend, the appointment, the piece of information you have been avoiding asking for.
Say all five seats out loud before you turn anything over, because a seat named afterward will quietly bend itself around whatever card has landed in it.
What guidance from a card actually is
It is not instruction. A deck has no opinion about your life and no access to the parts of it you left out of the question, so what a tarot spread for guidance actually gives you is closer to a good friend’s habit of noticing what you skipped. The Hermit turns up in this layout more than almost any other card, and it is rarely telling anyone to withdraw; it is usually pointing out that the answer was found some time ago and has been waiting for the person to stop asking.
The picture we would give it is the list on the fridge with eleven things on it and nothing crossed off. Guidance does not add a twelfth line. It picks one, and it is nearly always one you already knew.
When this spread is the right size
Use it when the question is about your own direction and has been open for a while: whether to stay in the city, what to do about the course you keep not finishing, how to handle the friend who has gone quiet. Use one card when you only need a nudge for the day, and the decision spread when there are two definite options and you are stuck between them rather than lost in general.
If you are new to reading for yourself, how to read your own tarot cards covers the habits that make a layout like this work, and most of them are about the question rather than the deck.
Start the guidance spread
The app does not carry this layout under its own name, so deal it at the three card spread, which will name the seats past, present and future. Write your question as what is my next step, read the first two cards as what you are standing in and what you keep not looking at, and read the third as the step it is pointing toward rather than as anything that is going to happen.
Whatever the cards show you, the next step was always going to be yours to take, and it is smaller than the question made it look.
Questions people ask
Can a tarot spread tell me what to do?
It cannot decide for you, and a spread that seems to is reading your own hope back to you. What it can do is narrow a question that has been open for weeks to one step you could take before the end of the day, and that is usually the thing the question was really asking for.
What is the difference between a guidance spread and a decision spread?
A guidance spread is for being lost in general, when you know something needs to change and cannot see where to start. A decision spread is for being stuck between two named options. If you can write both choices down in a sentence each, you want the decision spread; if you cannot, start here.
What if the next step card makes no sense?
Read it smaller. The seat is not asking for a life change, it is pointing at one phone call, one sentence or one envelope, and a card that seems too big for the question is usually being read at the wrong scale. If it still means nothing, go and read that card’s page properly before you decide the draw was a dud.