How do you read tarot cards together instead of one at a time?

You read the cards together by writing one sentence for the whole spread: where the figures look, how the card beside each one changes that line, and how many of the 22 Major Arcana are in the row. Arthur Edward Waite, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), says that meanings are reduced, accentuated, or sometimes almost reversed by their place in a sequence. Each card's keyword comes after that sentence, as a check you can hold against a fact.

See a doctor, a lawyer, a tax professional, or a therapist when the decision belongs to them. The sentence is a reflection on the question you wrote down.

How do you turn a tarot spread into one sentence?

Name the positions first, then write one line a friend could repeat. Three-card spreads and the Celtic Cross is where the choice of layout belongs. This page starts once those positions already have names.

Waite describes two ways of joining the 22 Trumps Major. One is their printed numerical order. The other is a fortuitous combination: shuffling, cutting, and dealing. He says Grand Orient's Manual of Cartomancy offers illustrative readings of cards arranged that second way. A spread on the table is that dealt combination, and the sentence follows the order you dealt.

Waite records that MacGregor Mathers, in a pamphlet on the Tarot, built those 22 trumps, in numerical order, into what Mathers called a "connected sentence," a moral thesis on the human will. Waite rejects that sentence as the message of the cards. Leave the cards in the dealt order, and let the position names carry the grammar.

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith and published in 1909, is the pack Waite describes. He says its Minor Arcana are the first in modern times to be accompanied by pictures in addition to the pips, and that pictured suit cards existed earlier as well.

Where is each figure in the tarot row looking?

After the position names, write the direction on each card: toward the left-hand card, toward the right-hand card, out toward you, or into that card's own background. The link clause follows the face. When you see the back, the link follows the scene that figure is watching inside the card, and the card on the side of the back is the scene behind him.

Waite's Three of Wands shows a calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. The ships sit inside his picture, so the clause is that outward look, and the card on the side of his back is the scene behind him. His Two of Wands shows a tall man looking from a battlemented roof over sea and shore. Side by side, the two echo: both figures attend a distance over water, and the sentence can say that once.

A contrast is the turn in the same sentence. One figure looks into the next card while the neighbor looks into a private background. Name both directions, then the turn. Reading a single card from the picture covers posture and scene on one card. Here those directions become the joins.

Waite's Celtic diagram uses a face for placement: the Significator faces left, the card of what is behind goes on the side he looks away from, and what is before goes on the side he faces. That rule for one layout is in why two readers give different answers. The direction here is the one printed on each dealt card.

How does the neighboring tarot card change the line?

Write the neighbor before you close the line on the middle card. Waite's Queen of Wands states the rule in his divinatory list: "If the card beside her signifies a man, she is well disposed towards him; if a woman, she is interested in the Querent." Querent is his name for the person asking. The neighbor belongs in the sentence.

His additional list for the Lesser Arcana, which he says has little connection with the pictorial designs and often disagrees with the earlier meanings, keeps the same habit. There the Ten of Pentacles represents house or dwelling and derives its value from other cards. The Nine of Pentacles is "Prompt fulfilment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards." Read that nine as a timing gloss on the line the neighbors already earned, and name a date or a meeting you can check. The ten's dwelling line waits on those neighbors.

This site follows that sequence rule for the one sentence, because Waite says a meaning is reduced, accentuated, or sometimes almost reversed by its place in a sequence, and the Queen of Wands line waits on the card beside her. Another common approach writes a full keyword paragraph for each card alone and adds a one-line summary after the list. The sequence sentence can name a beside-relationship those separate paragraphs leave unstated.

A repeated suit, or a repeated number, is its own pattern. What the four suits represent and how a two-options spread compares patterns already cover it. Mention a repeated suit in one clause if you see one, then return to gaze and neighbors.

How many Major Arcana cards change the tone of a spread?

Count the trumps before you choose the tone. A 78-card pack has 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. Three-card combinations from that pack number 78 × 77 × 76 / 6 = 76,076. Combinations with two trumps number (22 × 21 / 2) × 56 = 12,936. Combinations with three trumps number 22 × 21 × 20 / 6 = 1,540. Together that is 14,476 of 76,076. When two or three trumps appear, put the count in the first clause.

Use the count this way. Zero trumps: the sentence is the scene-to-scene link among the pictured minor cards. One trump: that trump names the theme, and the minor pictures supply the scene. Two or three trumps: the sentence stays on the theme those trumps share for this question, and any minor card is the concrete detail inside it. The 22 Major Arcana lists the trumps. The count only sets the register: "one of these three is a trump, so that card is the theme and the other two are the scene."

What steps keep a combined tarot reading tied to your question?

Keep the question, including the options and the time range, on the top line. Under it, list each card with its position and whether it sits upright. Then write the trump count, the direction of each figure, and the neighbor clause. The last line is the one sentence.

Under the sentence, add one keyword check per card from the book you are using. When the keyword and the sentence pull apart, keep the sentence as the reading you will use this week, and keep the keyword as the alternate. Name the fact that would fit each one: a date, a person, a clause, or a meeting. Waite's "almost reversed" means the sequence turning a meaning's emphasis. An upside-down card is a separate mark, covered in reversed cards.

A personal reading stores the question, the positions, and that sentence in one written report. Pricing shows what the report costs and what it includes. To hold the dealt order and the sentence together, open a personal reading from the question on the top line.

FAQ

How do you read tarot cards together instead of one at a time?

Write one sentence from where the figures look, how the neighboring card changes the line, and how many of the 22 Major Arcana are in the row. Add each card's keyword after that sentence.

Should you sort the Major Arcana into numerical order?

Leave the cards in the order dealt. Waite records Mathers's "connected sentence" for the 22 trumps in numerical order and rejects that sentence as the message of the cards.

What if the figures look in different directions?

Name each direction. That contrast is the turn in the sentence, and the trump count still sets the tone.

Where do repeated suits fit?

Name a repeated suit in one clause, then return to gaze, neighbors, and the trump count. Suit patterns and number patterns already have their own pages.