The Tree of Life Spread is read in three rows: Spirit over Mind over Body; and three columns: Challenges and Obstacles on the left, Strengths and Resources on the right, and Current Realities in the middle. The tenth position, at the base, represents an overview or theme for the entire reading.
Half of the cards in this reading are Major Arcana, archetypal symbols denoting Cosmic realities or universal laws. Three are reversed, indicating unrealized potentials or matters beyond your awareness. The upright two indicate Cosmic forces of which you are aware and with which you must cope.
Your overview card is Nameless One reversed, signifying an unknown potential, an initiation that exists as an unmanifest possibility, something you can do, but there is no indication whether you will or not.
Above it, in the position denoting current reality on the material plane (health, wealth, occupation, physical substance) is Renewer reversed, again an unmanifest potential for regeneration and a new beginning, if you act in such a way as to make it happen.
The other reversed Trump, Thinker, denoting error, fear, and false belief, is at the upper right-hand corner, representing an untapped resource, an unused tool (your rational mind) which, if correctly used, could bring you spiritual growth and creative fulfillment.
Emotional factors are preventing you from grasping the way out of your stalemate. You are on a developmental plateau, held back in your spiritual growth by emotional reactions, fears, and trivial concerns. Your rational mind is held in chains of emotion and illusions of duality. You try to make everything black and white in a world full of rainbows.
Breaking out of that stalled spiritual development would improve things for you materially, as well. You need to be growing, for the growth itself and for what it will empower you to attain. The major obstacle inhibiting you is that false belief in either/or, black and white, good and evil. Such oversimplifications are lazy habits of minds unwilling to examine reality and think for themselves.
Cards on each level in this reading link to the other levels. Resolving physical issues will help bring an emotional crisis to an end, and that could impel you off that developmental plateau and into the spiritual growth that will bring increase and improvement on the material plane.
The remaining two Major Arcana, upright, flank the center section, the mental/emotional level. Changer on the right says that you possess the power to achieve a creative solution to the troubles brought upon you by your own past acts, symbolized by Donor on the left. Balance is a keynote of each of these cards. The Donor speaks of Karmic balance, what you earn you are given, whether you want it or not. The balance spoken of in the Changer is the Flow, only the empty cup can be filled — to receive, you must “make room” by giving.
