A Labyrinthine spread for making friends on the other side.
"But a king should be afraid, Arthur, always...of the enemy waiting everywhere. In the corridors of his castle...on the deer paths of his forest...or in a more tangled forest...in the heart"
Wes þu hal! The fire is blazing in the hearth - but your eye keeps wandering to the flakes of snow settling on the windowpane. What is lurking outside the boundaries of your hall? Are you prepared for a hard winter? And what, in the name of God, is howling in the dark...? Time to check in with the cards.
Study a lot. Take down names and roles mentioned in the literature i.e. we know Arthur has the Knights of the Round Table. Do a meditation and note down any other figures who come up. Use your imagination: even if you make it all up, the images arising from your subconscious will contain lessons about the nature of the Power, if you are doing enough Mysterywork. You could use divination: learn the nature of a court by laying out a pyramid of cards or runes. The rows have one, two, four, eight cards. Each card represents a Power in the Court, underneath the card above. Look at the card and attempt to determine the nature of the power and its personality. Major Arcana represent more influential figures. For each figure, you can also do a reading with the following stations A tarot spread with 5 positions. Card 1 is at the center of a cross, with card 5 at the top and card 4 at the bottom, It is always 1973 in the heart of the Fencraft design team 1. Who is this? 2. Lessons and skills to teach 3. Preferences and Values (“How do I impress them”) 4. Disposition towards you 5. Test, requirement, or skills which must be mastered to advance. Or if you already know the spirit, then choose a card for them in position 1. I like this spread for regular checkins – my ability to hear spoken voice from the other side is poor, but a nice clear spread like this helps communication. I am afraid I am a very perfunctory card-reader – I like direct card positions, for direct replies. Visit often. Be playful and creative. If, at times, it feels like you’re just engaging in an imaginary world in your head – good! Excellent! This kind of imaginative play is how we dip our toes into the Otherworlds, the near shores of the astral. Remember how much of the Landweird is just stories and poems, which we feel in some sense communicates a deeper truth. Your stories are just as valuable.
Like Uther's warring dragons, this is the subconscious and the deep below your foundations - secrets, treasure, sandy soil, a hollow cavern filled with...?
Deeper, older, root, core; more substantial factors supporting the attack on your hall
This is YOU. This is you-in-the-guise-of-the-king, your capacity to be a leader, to create change and have agency, to shape the world around you, and to protect those whom you have responsibility for and meet your duties. Particularly consider your strengths, your reputation, whether you are acting with integrity and power, your ability to be the hub of the wheel.
The King creates the Court, and the Court creates the King - as you read the spread, consider whether you are creating the situation and resources around you, or the situation and resources are reshaping you, or the symbiosis between these options.
What supports you, what you have built upon, what you have under your feet? The site you have chosen for your hall
Protective factors - often by chance or insubstantial. The building of a roof is a lesser decision than choosing a foundation; the roof is just there. It won't keep out Grendel, but it will keep out a rainstorm. Can represent smaller situational factors, the everyday happenstance contributing to situations - or something immediate/smallscale impacting on the situation. "what you have above you" as in, perhaps, a nearby deadline. Look I'm least clear about this one, but a King's Hall needs a roof!
Read with 4. FOUNDATION for the shared theme of "the building around you", and with 1. HIDDEN POOL for an immediate/long term/deep time assessment of your basic situation.
Role of the people you have around you. Consider particularly the people you support/the people who support you, questions of loyalty, dependability and mutuality. These are people who are in the hall with you. It may not be an individual, but the general support other people are providing.
Read with 3. KING to look at the relationship.
The gap which fortune comes through (be it Beowulf the hero, or Grendel the monster). This is a key card in the spread - the factors which allow Grendel into your hall, the choice which by controlling it determine what comes in and stays out of your life. Rotating it might act as a "lock" which changes the whole meaning of the spread; change this one thing, and you change your Court (for better and worse).
The four cards of your Court surround the King like a wheel. Protecting, or trapping? Does the King make the Court, or the Court the King? Are you supporting, and being supported; are you creating situations, or are they creating you? Do you feel safe, or smothered. Are the figures on the cards facing outwards, or inwards; and does that make you feel defended, ignored, scrutinised, attended-to, watched over, worked with, or like there is a gap to escape through (or where the wickedness comes in?). Consider: if you were a different kind of King, would your Court be healthier? If your Court was resourcing you better, could you be a better King?
This is Grendel - the thing that is coming to assault your hall and everything in it. It's lurking out there. It's coming. You know it's out there, but you're safe - for now - inside. And in the dark, it waits for you.
Read alongside 2. GRENDEL'S MOTHER, to look at immediate situations and deeper causes. Read alongside 7. GATEWAY to consider whether and how you are letting it in, and what you could do to shut it out. Read alongside the Court and King to consider to what extent the threat of the Thing is shaping your decisions (and whether you need to do more, or do less). Read a horizontal story from GRENDEL, to GATEWAY, to KING (and sometimes to RETAINER) about the approach of the threat, towards you, its antagonist, or how the gateway acts as a facilitator or mediator.
Wise and long-lived kings have a tendency to be paranoid; when you look at your King and Court cards, and then at your Monster, consider if you might not be overreacting a little, and the sitution is less dire than you fear. Are you, in fact, just hiding inside because you like it...? Remember, all the King can really see are the four cards surrounding him on all sides; the Thing has a single card only, something glimpsed in the distance. Sometimes this means it's the monster, THE monster, the only one, the all-consuming, all-subduing terror that is waiting to devour you; but sometimes that single card indicates vagueness, a shape on the horizon, a fear of the outside created by your self-created confinement in the safest of places. Consider how the cards work together, and the story they tell.
Now is a good time to consider the spread as a whole. If things are insufficiently clear, or you need an extra nudge, or the spread feels incomplete, bring out one more card:
Place between 7. GATEWAY and 3. KING. Beowulf acts as a kind of "solution" card for the spread: this is what you need to do. In the poem, Hrothgar just needs a guy to turn up out of nowhere, who will kill the monster and allow life to return to normal. The Beowulf factor might not be something you have available right now; and it's also outsiderly, not part of your court, not part of the "stuckness" of your situation or capacity; it's the fresh sword-blow that cuts right through and brings the light in, the deus ex machina solution. At the center of the spread, it announces "do this" - and you can consider how it provides an "answer" to other cards in the spread which form a "problem".
Questions relating to the practical and material; matters of protection, stability, resilience, security; spotting threats; etc
1. Hidden Pool - deep, subconscious factors beneath your foundation
2. Grendel's Mother - deep, root causes beneath your monster
3. King - your role (especially wrt agency, resilience, responsibility and mutual support)
4. Foundation - what you have built on
5. Roof - what protects you
6. Retainers - role of close people who support/are supported by you
7. Gateway - the filter or path by the monster comes into your life
8. Thing from the Fen - the problem outside your control that is threatening you
9. Beowulf - solution (deus-ex-machina)
TAROT PRO TIP: it only works if you put what you learned into effect.
Gaeð ā Wyrd swā hīo scel! Fate goes ever as it must!