Two paths: a reading for a decision that has been open for weeks

The work starts before shuffling. Write the two options in your journal, one sentence each, concrete and comparable. "Accept the six-month contract" and "carry on freelancing until June" work. "Change" and "don't change" don't, because the second branch is left empty and the cards falling there will have nothing to describe.

The layout is a V. One card at the bottom centre for the starting point, two rising to the left for the first option and two rising to the right for the second. In each branch, the lower card describes what taking that path involves in the short term and the upper one what sustaining it afterwards will ask of you.

Read the base card first and describe it fully before turning the rest. It usually shows something about the state you are deciding from, and that colours both branches. Deciding from exhaustion and deciding from impulse produce different readings of the same options.

The upper card of each branch is the whole point of this spread. Most decisions get stuck because only the first step gets compared, which is the showy part. What ends up deciding is what staying there six months later demands, and almost nobody looks at that slot without a reminder.

This reading does not choose. If one branch brings the Ten of Pentacles and the other the Tower, the honest reading isn't that one is good and the other disastrous. The Tower describes something falling because it was badly held up, and sometimes that is exactly what's needed. Describe each branch with its two cards, write down both descriptions and leave the decision where it was, with you.

It also doesn't work if your dilemma depends on someone else's answer that hasn't arrived yet. In that case what you read is your own expectation, and it's better to wait until you have the answer.

A sign that it worked: when you finish you can explain to someone else what each option involves using words you didn't have before, even if you still haven't chosen.