Pyramid Spread
The pyramid spread is a cartomancy protocol that lays out the cards in a triangle, generally six or ten cards, with a broadened base and a single apex. The structure allows you to read the evolution of a situation from its foundations to its outcome.
Origin and etymology
The pyramid spread draws on the Egyptian symbolism that 19th-century French esotericists, following Court de Gebelin (1781) and Etteilla, attributed to the tarot. The triangular form references the pyramids of Giza, the Pythagorean tetractys, and traditional symbolic hierarchies. The protocol in its modern form spread in 20th-century French cartomancy manuals, notably with Paul Marteau in Le Tarot de Marseille (1949). The six-card pyramid (three at the base, two in the middle, one at the apex) is the most common version. Ten-card versions exist, modeled on the Pythagorean tetractys.
Evolution and tradition
Several traditions coexist. The classical six-card version reads the base as the initial situation, the middle as steps or influences, and the apex as the resolution. The ten-card tetractys version (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) integrates Pythagorean numerical correspondences: the One at the top, duality below, and so on. The inverted pyramid, rarer, places the apex at the bottom and the base at the top to read an unfolding from a single point. Some cartomancers link the pyramid spread to questions of growth, projects or personal evolution, whereas the cross spread is more often used to shed light on a specific decision.
Practical use
You formulate your question, shuffle the deck, then draw the prescribed number of cards starting with the base. Reading then moves gradually up to the apex, cross-reading the cards vertically (lines of evolution) and horizontally (successive states). On Tarotoui, the pyramid spread is available in a six-card version, with a position-by-position interpretive grid. It suits questions of evolution over time: a career project, personal transformation, the stages of a relationship. It works just as well with the Tarot de Marseille as with the Rider-Waite.
Going further
Linking the pyramid spread to ancient Egypt is a symbolic reading, not a historical fact: the ancient Egyptians did not practice cartomancy in the modern sense. Note also that the pyramid spread is sometimes confused with the fan or tree spread. The specificity of the pyramid is its ascending structure and its single apex. For short questions, this spread may seem oversized.