A three card spread can be used in many ways …  past, present, future; desires, obstacles, aids; the high road, the low road, the middle path.

Draw three cards and keep an open heart.

YOU DREW THREE CARDS:

Five of Pentacles

Coins: Obtaining. Providing for yourself. Establishing a comfort zone. Taking risks with resources. Think of the thoughts and feelings you experience when you buy a lottery ticket.

Five: Challenging yourself. A monkey wrench. Things don’t go as expected and you’re challenged to grow. Or you may be deliberately challenging yourself.

Two mendicants in a snowstorm pass a lighted casement. Divinatory Meanings: It foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated – that is, destitution – or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers – wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonised. Reversed: Disorder, chaos, ruin, discord, profligacy.

A destitute couple pass under a lighted window. The unfortunates in outer darkness have not yet realized the inner light. Note that the Fives of each suit are negative cards. Divinatory Meaning: Material trouble, loneliness, destitution, spiritual impoverishment. Could mean unemployment, loss of home. Dark night of the soul. Reversed: Money regained, new employment, good companionship, new interest in business or spiritual matters.

The Pentacles deal with money, finance, business, prosperity and security.

Five of Pentacles: Ruin, financial collapse.

In the heart of stability a new interest is opening connected to a spiritual, planetary, or cosmic dimension. The negative dimension can be a reversal of fortune, a bad doctor, a descent into drugs or alcohol, a venal financial advisor, a swindler, an unscrupulous industrialist, a stock exchange crash, or nervous depression.

 

Strength

Strength. Inner strength. Fortitude and resoluteness. Avoidance of distraction and temptation.

This signifies the need to face new developments with courage, fortitude and moral fiber. The card implies setbacks and difficulties to overcome. You will need an inner strength and resources to overcome these adversities. Reversed: You will not be able to overcome your obstacles due to your lack of moral and spiritual strength.

Creative Beginning, New Energy

Justice. Equity, rightness, probity, executive. Reversed: Law in all departments, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.

The Justice card is about bringing balance and harmony into our lives and what happens when we don’t.

 

The Pope

Spiritual wisdom and authority. Orthodoxy. Petitioning another for help, or someone is petitioning you. A person who deserves respect and, at the same time, wariness.

Marriage alliance, captivity, servitude; by another account, mercy and goodness; inspiration; the man to whom the Querent has recourse. Reversed: Society, good understanding, concord, over-kindness, weakness.

The Heirophant is the link between God and man — the high priest on earth. His are the ways of tradition. He is our spiritual guide who transcends the material world.

 

The master of the sacred mysteries wears the triple crown of a pope, signifying the creative, formative, and material worlds. He holds a sceptre terminating in a triple cross. At his feet are crossed keys, a gold one for solar energy and a silver one for the unseen forces of the moon. The two tonsured priests kneeling before him again indicate duality, for one garment is decorated with the white lilies of spiritual thought and the other with the red roses of desire. He may represent the Pope, but more likely the idea of a pontiff who is master to the masses. He is the ruling power of external religion, whereas the High Priestess teaches only in secret to initiates. Divinatory Meaning: Preference for the outer forms of religion. The need to conform, to be socially approved. Reversed: Unconventionality, unorthodoxy, openness to new ideas in any field. Danger of becoming superstitious. Can be the card of the inventor as well as the crackpot.

This card speaks of a spiritual rather than a worldly power and authority. The priest offers wisdom and rational knowledge, creative intelligence and inspiring perceptions. You are gaining insight and a stable understanding of your life and surroundings. This knowledge is not necessarily a religious one, but rather a profound and sensible understanding. The High Priest in this card may symbolize an influential friend, adviser or teacher. Reversed: Beware of lies and misleading information.