Tarot for Storytelling The final workshop
The Compass Spread Spreads to create with
Pull the Compass Spread for the story you most want to tell. Write a sentence for each position, and one for the heart the two crossing cards make together.
Then write one final sentence, the throughline, that answers: what is this story for? Whom does it serve? Keep this. It’s the beginning of your practice.
The spread is built on the compass of Will’s book, Which Way Is North.
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Lay out the compass
The cardinal directions of the inner world of a scene. At the center, two cards cross; their intertwined meaning together becomes the heart. Find each card you drew, or let the deck lay the whole spread.
A sentence for each direction
Let the directions open up new questions. What does the moment look like? Smell like? Sound like?
About this workshop
A free workshop from the final lesson of Tarot for Storytelling, Will Cady’s video course on reading tarot cards as the elements stories are made of. The Compass Spread comes from his book Which Way Is North and lays out the directions of a single scene, so a writer can explore it from every side.
“This is a spread based upon the compass of my book, ‘Which Way Is North’.”
“It starts with the heart. Two cards that are crossing each other to cocreate and imply each other. Like a yin and a yang. An inhale and an exhale.”
“These are the cardinal directions of the inner world of a scene. The north, south, east and west of a moment. Use this spread to go deep into one scene to explore it more fully.”
Will Cady, from the final lesson of Tarot for Storytelling
Keep your pages
Your work stays in this browser until you clear it. To keep it anywhere else, save a copy. Later workshops return to what you write here.
A free workshop from Tarot for Storytelling
Ten video lessons with Will Cady, a workshop after each one, and the maps behind the deck. Founding price $111 for the first students.
Hear when enrollment opensCard art by Pamela Colman Smith from the Rider-Waite deck, 1909, in the public domain.