How a reading works

A reading here is a structured conversation with pictures. The deck used as reference is the Rider–Waite–Smith tradition: seventy-eight cards, twenty-two majors, four suits of fourteen. Other decks rename, redraw, and sometimes drop reversals. If your deck disagrees with a page, believe your deck’s author and treat our text as one dialect.

The system we are using

• Majors suggest large themes. They are not more “true” than minors. A life can be a pentacle.
• Wands lean toward will and work, cups toward feeling and bond, swords toward thought and conflict, pentacles toward body, money, and place. These are teaching handles, not physics.
• Reversals, when we use them, mean the pressured, blocked, inward, or excessive face of the same card. They are not curses and not “bad cards.”
• Court cards are styles of action. Page studies. Knight moves. Queen sustains. King decides and structures. None of these is a gender and none is a specific person unless the question was about your own conduct.

A first reading for yourself

1. 1Write a question you can act on. “How do I prepare for Thursday’s meeting?” beats “Will they love me?”
2. 2Shuffle in any way that mixes the cards, including clicking the draw button, which shuffles in your browser.
3. 3Lay one card, or three: situation, tension, next honest step.
4. 4Read the picture before the paragraph. Say what you see.
5. 5Read our upright or pressured text as a second opinion, not a judge.
6. 6Write five lines. Name one action. Close the deck or the tab.

This is a mirror with opinions. I can disagree with it and still learn what I was hoping it would say.

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