Someone asked what system I'm actually using when I read. The short answer: the method I was taught and mentored under comes from the Golden Dawn tradition — the Western esoteric tradition — where astrology, Qabalah, numerology, and hermeticism all correspond inside the cards. Here's how that works in practice.
Choosing the lens
For a larger reading — a Celtic cross, a Seven Sisters, whatever fits the question — I'll first separate the deck into three piles, each representing a realm, or lens, through which to explore the question. One pile might be a hoped-for future or outcome; another, karma and truth — your actions and the changes you're creating in the world. The querent and I decide which lens fits what they want to explore, and that becomes the significator the spread runs off. Any question can be seen through any of those lenses: a relationship question isn't only about cups; it might be better read through the actions you're taking, or through the truth you need to understand.
My go-to three-card spreads
Several three-card spreads do a lot of work for me:
- Me / Situation / Advice — the one I do every morning, and for most clients. The first card is
- Strength / Weakness / Opportunity.
- Asset / Opportunity / Timing (or Environment).
I'll also pull just a few positions of the Celtic cross — say positions three, four, and seven, or three, four, and ten — and read them as a mini spread, since the Celtic cross is full of three-card relationships. For the tenth card, the outcome, I usually prompt for a fine detail, because the raw outcome card tends to point in the right direction but read too vaguely on its own.
The framework behind the cards
A few keys I'm always reading through:
The major arcana are big lifelong lessons. Picture each as a line slowly rising across your life; when one turns up, that energy is strongly developing for the day.
The suits and their elements. Wands are fire — spirit, passion, desire (and career as the spirited work of growing something). Cups are water — the heart, emotion, intuition, the subconscious. Swords are air — the mind, communication, clear and critical and true thinking. Pentacles are earth — the physical world, work, money, assets, health, and the home.
The court cards carry their suit's elements: Pages are earth, Knights are air, Queens are water, Kings are fire. (Some traditions swap the King and Knight as fire and air; in what I was taught, it's this way.)
The numbers. One is the singularity; two is polarity; three is creation and creativity (the creator, then the couple, then the offspring); four is stability; five is the modifications and changes a thing must go through — often felt as loss, and for wands, brought on through competition; six is harmony restored after that disruption; eight is power, two fours together — and in the swords, thoughts driven down into your past and history, a grounded foundation; nine is initiation and consequence — the Hermit is a nine — the point just before completion, where what you've learned changes you, sometimes for good.
Reversals I read as blocked energy, or as not perceiving a situation properly — not as the opposite of the upright card.
A personal note
This is more or less the arc that brought me here. I had a passion I consumed myself with — reading endlessly, talking to Masons, Golden Dawn members, people in the SRIA — until I had the knowledge I needed. Then it took me quitting a job and changing careers to give myself the opportunity to follow my heart. That's the Ace of Wands kind of timing: when the ground is right, the chance to follow your heart finally appears.