I've been offering services for Steem/SBD for almost as long as I have an account on Steemit, but it mostly spread by word of mouth, and before a couple of days ago it was mostly limited to the Russian community. I am talking about the Russian-English translation service that I've been offering. People even started joking that if you have a text to translate, you should talk to @xanoxt, since he "translates for food".

Anyhow, translation service is something that brought me the SBD that I have, because my posts got past $1 mark only what, four times? Still, that probably makes me one of the most heavy users of SBD as far as receiving payments for services rendered goes. And now that there is Peerhub marketplace, I am going to expand the list of stuff that I do for Steem Dollars with Tarot Readings. And to kick things off I am offering to do 5 free readings. How to get one of them? I'll describe it in the end, but now let me talk about my favorite original spread.

Knight at the Crossroads Spread

When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
----- Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy

Ending up in the dark forest is quite a trope, and happens often to the protagonists. However, only Italian ones get to have a tour of Inferno & beyond with even older poets. For example in Russian folk tales there is usually a guiding stone that offers directions. They are often quite grim like this:
If you go to the right — you'll loose your horse;
If you go to the left — you'll loose your life;
If you go forwards — you'll loose both…
There is an opinion, that those words are a metaphor about different strategies in life, and why the forwards way is the best. In all the folk tales it is always the best. But that is the idea behind this spread. First, you choose the "the protagonist". I usually place the sixteen court cards as shown on the picture, and let the querent (person for whom the reading is done) to chose one of them. It doesn't really matter how that choice is made, but since I am using the elemental dignities, it might modify the meaning of the cards. Next thing is to pause a bit, and do some thinking about the problem at hand.

My view of Tarot readings

The problem with people, who want to have a reading made, is that they usually have only vague ideas about what they want, why they want it, and how to go about doing that and the like. Well, most of the time, they do know that they have a problem, but usually the questions are something like: "I want a lot of money", or "I want to get married, will that happen?", or stuff like that. Keeping your thoughts amorphous like that is usually why the problem exists in the first place.

For the reading to have any meaning at all, it is my duty to turn that amprphous blob into something more concrete. First of all, is that a good question needs to have some timing attached. "I want to have a lot of money in the next half year", is still a bad question, but at least it includes the timing. But I like people to get to that point, when they are sure of the means they plan on getting those money with, etc. I don't really need to be told about all that detail, but I need the querent to have solid idea behind their wants. A lot of times, after some minutes of talking about stuff the reading becomes unnecessary, which is also a great result, in my book! Another common reason to consult a tarot reader, astrologer, or other diviner is to push the responsibility outside of themselves and onto someone else. If that is the reason it is actually quite easy to tell, and unless I can change that I don't do the reading. As they say here in Russia: "You can bring the horse to the river, but you can not make it drink."

That is, I can spread the cards and give you advice based on what they say, but if you do not act, that means we've just wasted a bit of time from our lives, and I prefer to waste my time conciously, if I chose to do that at all. ;-) And now back to the spread.

The crossroads

Now, that you've learned about my thougts on what is a good way to formulate the query, we are ready to talk about the way stone. Basicly, you have some plans, and maybe a desired outcome, or just different questions, that you plan to concentrate on, and would like to know which one might be the best target of your efforts.

As an example I am going to talk about the reading I did prior to making this post. I want to stabilize my financial situation before the end of the year, I chose the Prince of Disks to represent me, and the following things to associate with left, forward and right directions, and then I place the cards around, starting from left to right, one card at a time, and two cards total for any direction.

For the left, I went with "Going to work abroad", there is this offer, that while somewhat unlikely got me into thinking about doing that. Oh, by the way, if you are looking for massage therapist, give me a ping. ;)

The central path was, "Concentrate on Steemit", that is writing, translation and whatever else I might come up with. The right path was computer & crypto related, but depends on outside circumstances.

Now that the writings on the stone are clear, the cards are shuffled, and spread around. I do three cards from let to right, and another three for the outer circle, but it doesn't matter. The cards closest to the significator, that is protagonist are the near future, perhaps challenges to overcome. They are the immediate short term outcomes, and might be good, might be bad. The real thing that is more important are the outside cards. Let us take a look at my example spread. First of all, I have "Lust" for my work abroad card, "Moon" for Steemit, and 7 of Scepetres for that last path.

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Lets see, how that pertains to my situation:

• Lust — I've been selling myself a bit short, and thus my fortunes were a bit on the low side, with much more effort for low returns, if any. There was a bit of laziness on my part also. I should bring that side into balance, and thinking about work abroad seems to be the right direction, since it brings some nice energy and vitality with it.

• Moon — Well, nothing is certain short term, and based on my experience so far, as well as the current situation, it isn't something that I can rely on for short term. But during the night with all the fears, there is always a narrow path, that one should persist on, for even during the darkest night, dawn comes at some point.

• 7 of Scepetres "Valor" — that last part is rife with obstacles, but they are actually something that is good. And here I should talk on the interaction between Prince if Disks, and minor arcana. Court cards combine two energies, on of their suit, and another of their type, with Knights being fire, Queens — water, Princes — air, and Princesses — earth of their respective suits. I haven't seen anything on court and minor interaction, but on how the rules on elemental interactions are interpreted by me, the interaction is okay.

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The outcomes are as follows:

• 6 of Disks "Success" — Well, this is pretty self explanatory, and the dignities make this card a bit better. Going abroad will likely bring financial sucess, as well as making all my previous efforts "come to fruitition".


• 6 of Scepetres "Victory" — well, this tells me, that I should up my game as far as Steemit is concerned. The competition is fierce, but the results would be great if I work and become better. Those lazyish posts with some photos and story aren't cutting it, but if I can continue to consistently do stuff like this post? Like the efforts in various projects I am part of? The results would be great. I'll see how it goes in late December, and I will write a post about how it went. :) That is the only way to track the results, and become better at readings.


• Magician — Well, that looks like I'll be able to have amazing outcomes. Magician also stands for Mercury, the signifier of information and comerce. I'll probably have to dust of my coding skills, and learn trading. That is exactly what this path is about, and I was planning to do that anyway. Good to see that my thoughts are likely to pay off.

Now that I have the ways clear, here comes the fun part. This is a "smart spread" meaning that if there is any question that can be answered by one card, it is possible to have a time out at any point in the reading to ask a question that would clarify one of those paths. And that is what I've done.

And to close the spread I pull one card that is some sort of advice, general energies concerning the whoe thing. In this particular case that was 10 of Sceptres, that is I should be careful not to take much more than I can bear. I mean I am sleeping much less than I should since joining Steemit, and if I am not careful it might overwhelm me. And it is a bit overwhelming.

And now for the fun part, that you probably all waited for. I am going to give you simple steps to follow to get your free reading. I think that having clear rules makes everyone's life easier, right?

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Free readings

So you want to have a free reading? Thats cool! Please follow those steps, and I'll choose five of you to do a reading for.

1. Upvote and Resteem this post. This one is given, right?
2. Be ready to be interactive with me. Rocket chat DM, or telegram message to get us on the same page. My time zone is UTC+8 for foreseeable future.
3. Think about your question. That would save us some time, but be prepared that the preliminary part might take us some time, if you don't.
4. I would appreciate if you would write about the experience, but just trusting me on PeerHub is okay. I would give preference to those who would rather write about it.
5. ?????
6. PROFIT! :-D

Well, thats it. If you have a more specific question, we could do another spread, but well, I'd prefer to do this one for this free giveaway.

Some time soon you can expect my translation of @getonthetrain's post about that weird sect of Russian old believers skoptsy — the religion based self multilators. Ta ta for now!