I'm sharing this here because, in my humble opinion, the spread below is one of the most useful ones taught by Ana Cortez in her Playing Card Oracles book. It is designed for the PCO method, but I suppose it can be used with any tarot or oracle deck.
This layout is useful when you need to understand what are the influences surrounding a person or situation in the present.
“The Lost Man Spread is a good layout when you want to get a feel for surrounding influences, for the ambient environment of a particular person or concern. […] After deciding who or what your question is about, simply assign it a card in your own mind, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, then spread the deck out and find it. Once you have found your ‘lost’ card, look to see where it put itself, that is to say, observe which cards it likes for company. With the Lost Man, you get a candid camera picture of your concern in its natural habitat. Cards closest to the card assigned represent the strongest influences. Cards further away have a correspondingly weaker influence.”
(From: The Playing Card Oracles, p. 171-174)
Interesting, isn't it? I use this spread a lot, and I also enjoy using it to practise card combinations.
I will try to post more reading using it here from now on! Let me know what you think!