Celtic Cross

The most famous spread in tarot, popularised by A. E. Waite in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1911. Ten cards is a lot of information and the spread rewards structure over free association.

Read it in blocks, not in sequence:

• 1 to 2, the cross: the situation and the thing crossing it. Read these two as a single unit before you look at anything else. This pair usually contains the whole reading in miniature.
• 3 to 4, the axis: what is beneath (root cause, often unconscious) and what is above (your conscious goal or ideal). The gap between them is frequently the problem.
• 5 to 6, time: what is passing out of the situation and what is approaching.
• 7 to 10, the staff: you as you are in this, the environment and other people, your hopes and fears (read as one position, because they are usually the same card's two faces) and the likely outcome.

On the outcome card: it is the outcome of the situation as it currently stands, given everything in positions 1 to 9. It is a projection, not a sentence.