Tarot Spreads Guide is written and maintained by Elena Marsh. It is a one-person independent project: the same person researches, writes, edits, and publishes every page here. There is no staff directory and no freelance pool, because there are none.
Why this site exists
Most tarot material online falls into two camps. One is the keyword list: "The Fool means new beginnings," repeated across hundreds of pages until the words stop carrying information. The other is the prediction service, where the cards are sold as a way to know what happens next. Neither helps someone who actually wants to learn to read.
This site tries to be a third thing: structured study notes. The imagery of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck is treated as a vocabulary, and spreads are treated as grammar — the part that tells you what job a card is doing in a given position. That framing is why the card pages spend more words on how the card behaves in a spread than on a list of adjectives.
How the content is researched and written
Card notes start from the images themselves. Describing what is drawn — who is standing where, what they are doing, what is in the background — has to come before naming a meaning, or the meaning is just borrowed. The primary source is the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith drawings by Pamela Colman Smith, which are in the public domain and are used on this site from Wikimedia Commons scans. The secondary source is A. E. Waite's own commentary, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, which is also out of copyright.
Where living teaching traditions disagree — whether reversals should be read at all, how court cards map onto people, whether a spread position describes a fact or only a question — the pages say so and explain the trade-off, rather than picking one school and presenting it as settled. Folk practice disagrees with itself; pretending otherwise would make the pages less useful, not more authoritative.
Spread pages are written as instructions someone can follow at a table: what question the layout suits, what each position is asking, what to do when a reading goes flat, and when the spread is the wrong tool for the question. The "when not to use this" note is deliberate — a layout described only by its strengths is an advertisement, not a method.
What this site does not claim
The author does not claim to be psychic, certified, initiated, or affiliated with any tarot school, order, or church. There is no lineage and no credential to display, and none will be invented for this page.
Nothing here predicts the future. Tarot on this site is presented as education, culture, entertainment, and self-reflection. It is not a medical, legal, or financial tool, and the pages say so where it matters. If a page ever reads like a promise about an outcome, the disclaimer is the governing text.
Corrections
Corrections are welcome and are the main reason the contact address exists. If a card meaning is unclear, a spread instruction is easy to misuse, or a factual note about the deck or its history is wrong, write to likuieeg@gmail.com with the page URL and the sentence.
When something is fixed, the page's last-updated date changes so the edit is visible. Reported errors get a reply. If the report turns out to be mistaken, the reply will say that too, with the reasoning.
Editorial independence
This site is supported by display advertising served by Google. Advertisers have no input into what gets written, which decks are discussed, or which spreads are recommended. The site does not accept sponsored posts, paid links, guest posts, or product placements.
Ads are selected by Google's systems, not by this site. An ad appearing next to a page is not an endorsement — of the advertiser, the product, or the claim in the ad — and should not be read as the author's opinion. See the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy for how advertising on this site works.