A. E. Waite · 1910 · six rows of seven cards
Historic 42-Card Tarot Spread: Waite’s 1910 Method
A faithful interactive version of Waite’s large general reading: forty-two Tarot cards arranged in six rows of seven and read from right to left.
Draw Waite’s 42-card Tarot spread
Before you draw
Use this as a broad survey when one narrow question would leave too much out. Name a period or life area, then let the six rows build one sequence.
- Add context, not a yes-or-no question. Example: “What should I understand about the next three months of my work and home life?”
- Draw once and read the rows in order from 1 to 6. Within every row, begin with the card on the right and move left.
- Read the connected answer first. Then open only the rows or individual cards you need to examine more closely.
Waite documents six rows and the right-to-left reading order, but he does not assign a separate subject to each row. The row names below are modern TarotCards24 reading guides, not historical fixed positions.
Waite assigns the Magician to a male querent and the High Priestess to a female querent. That wording reflects 1910. Choose either card only if it is useful to you; the modern default uses no fixed significator.
1. Opening conditions · 7
The situation as it stands: background, recent causes and the conditions entering the reading.
2. Forces already in motion · 7
Influences already operating: people, habits, resources and constraints that have momentum now.
3. Near development · 7
The next phase if the present course continues; this is a conditional development, not a promise.
4. Material and relational field · 7
Practical life and relationships: where the wider pattern becomes visible in actions, resources and contact with others.
5. Pressure and turning points · 7
Conflicts, pressure and decisions that may redirect the sequence or expose what cannot continue unchanged.
6. Concluding tendency · 7
The overall tendency after the previous five rows are considered together; read it as direction, not fixed destiny.
The numbers show the reading sequence. A reversed card changes that card’s meaning; it does not reverse the direction of the row.
No cards have been drawn yet.
Your connected 42-card reading
Selected card
How Waite’s 42-card method works
- Shuffle the full pack and allow upright and reversed cards.
- Deal forty-two cards into six packets of seven.
- Re-form them as seven packets of six, then make one row from seven top cards, two rows from the next fourteen, and three rows from the remaining twenty-one.
- Read every row from right to left, from the top row to the bottom row.
- Treat the result as a broad survey of current conditions, not a fixed destiny.
Primary source
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part III, §VIII, 1910; scanned pages 319–321.
Waite’s 42-card Tarot spread: frequently asked questions
Is this the Celtic Cross?
No. Waite documents it separately as a larger method for a general reading.
Why are there six rows?
Waite’s procedure redistributes six packets of seven and produces six horizontal rows of seven cards.
Which direction should I read?
Waite instructs the reader to read each row from right to left, beginning with the top row.
Must I choose a significator?
No. The historical text gives a gendered convention, but this implementation makes it optional.
Can I use Grand Etteilla 1857?
Not in this exact method. This page preserves Waite’s documented procedure and uses Rider–Waite–Smith cards.