3 Sample Readings - 3-card Past, Present, Future - a 7-card Horseshoe - and the 10-card Celtic Cross
Updated: 2 days ago
I use the cards to help trigger insight through their archetypal images, the relationships among the cards, and the patterns that emerge when they appear together. Tarot itself has existed for roughly six centuries, and over generations, readers, occultists, artists, and scholars have developed, compared, challenged, and passed along an enormous body of symbolic interpretation.
The specifically divinatory tradition came later, but it too has a long history. That history matters to me. Not every Tarot reader is a charlatan, just as not every practitioner of any field is equally serious or capable. Many people have approached these cards thoughtfully, studied how particular images and combinations affect interpretation, compared experiences with other readers, and added to a tradition that has survived because people kept finding meaning in it.
I do not claim that six centuries of use proves that Tarot predicts the future. What it does mean is that I am not working with a random collection of pictures. I work with a symbolic system that generations of people have observed, interpreted, discussed, and refined. I combine that inherited symbolism with intuition, pattern recognition, common sense, and my own experience when I look at what the cards may be showing about a situation
How I Approach a Reading
My Live Zoom readings are a flat $35, with no time limit. I don't charge by the minute because I don't want a clock dictating how long it takes us to understand what is actually going on. We talk about your situation first—what happened, what you are thinking about, what is bothering you, what you are trying to decide, and what you really want to understand.
Sometimes that conversation is the most important part of the reading. Talking through a situation can help you process it, see something you had missed, or discover that the question you thought you wanted to ask is no longer the question that matters. You may even gain enough clarity through the conversation that you decide you don't need the cards at all. That is perfectly fine with me. The point is not to sell you a Tarot reading. The point is to help you understand the situation.
When we do use the Tarot, I use the cards to stimulate insight through their archetypal images, symbolism, relationships, and how the cards interact with one another. A card does not exist by itself. Its meaning changes according to the question, its position in the spread, the cards surrounding it, and the larger pattern that begins to emerge.
Those images also have a long human history. Tarot cards themselves have been in use for roughly six centuries, and the later divinatory and occult traditions surrounding them have been developed, discussed, compared, and passed from one generation of readers to another. That matters. Not every Tarot reader is a charlatan, and serious practitioners have spent generations studying the cards, comparing interpretations, sharing experiences with other readers, and building an accumulated body of symbolic knowledge.
Six centuries of use does not mean that Tarot has been scientifically proven to predict an unavoidable future. That is not how I approach it anyway. What it does mean is that I am not simply looking at a random collection of pictures and inventing meanings on the spot. I work with a symbolic system that generations of people have contemplated and interpreted. I combine that inherited symbolism with intuition, pattern recognition, common sense, experience, and what you have told me about your situation.
If you don't have the money or time for a live Zoom meeting, you can simply ask me a question. I offer a $5 written reading, and I give that question the same serious consideration, attention, intuition, and experience I would in a live reading. The lower price doesn't mean I take your situation less seriously.
The difference is the conversation. With a written reading, you decide what you want to ask, give me the background I need to understand the situation, and I read the cards around that question. With a live reading, we have time to explore what is happening together before we decide what the cards actually need to be asked.
Sometimes the question beneath the question matters most.
The examples below show how I work with three traditional Tarot spreads: the 3-card Past, Present, Future reading, the 7-card Horseshoe, and the 10-card Celtic Cross.
What do I need to understand about where this situation has come from, what is shaping it now, and what direction it is most likely to take next?
3-card Past–Present–Future:
Six of Swords — Upright
Four of Cups — Reversed
The Sun — Upright
What I am seeing: Six of Swords brings transition, passage, and recovery forward from what came before. Thought begins moving away from turmoil toward a more manageable condition. Transition, distance, perspective, or gradual recovery is underway. This matters through what changes in choices, behavior, circumstances, and consequences.
Movement occurs, but the instruments of prior conflict travel with them. The measure is what changes in actual choices, behavior, circumstances, and consequences. Four of Cups reversed puts renewed interest, restlessness, and missed opportunity directly into what is happening now. This matters because it shows changes in choices, behavior, circumstances, and consequences. Four of Cups reversed shows renewed interest, restlessness, and missed opportunity creating friction in how the situation is being handled.
The Sun opens a developing possibility around clarity, vitality, and success. Something becomes easier to see and live openly. Clarity, confidence, vitality, truth, freedom, or success increase as concealment diminishes. This matters because it changes choices, behavior, circumstances, and consequences. You can see something plainly and live it directly. The card favors openness, vitality, recognition, and the relief that comes when ambiguity no longer dominates. A radiant sun, child, horse, sunflowers, and open banner create one of the clearest images of vitality and unguarded illumination. The Sun is a direction, not a guarantee.
Six of Swords shows why the earlier pattern around transition, passage, and recovery still carries weight. Four of Cups reversed is the turning point: the pattern around renewed interest, restlessness, and missed opportunity is where the situation can be met differently now. Feeling and interpretation press against each other here; emotional truth matters, but so does the story the mind is building around it. The Sun opens toward clarity, vitality, and success, but only to the extent that what happens now changes the way the earlier pattern is carried forward. I would read the movement as a change in trajectory, not as fate arriving from outside you.
What do I need to understand about the current state of this relationship, what is complicating it, and what is most likely to influence where it goes next?
7-card Horseshoe:
Six of Cups — Upright
Queen of Swords — Upright
The Moon — Reversed
Two of Cups — Upright
Nine of Wands — Upright
Eight of Cups — Reversed
The Star — Upright
What I am seeing: Six of Cups brings memory, nostalgia, and a return to what came before. Emotional life returns to something familiar, gentle, or remembered. This matters through emotional exchange, reciprocity, attachment, and what is actually being given or withheld. Queen of Swords brings discernment, boundaries, and clear judgment to what is happening now.
I would read this first as a style of relating or responding, with repeated behavior showing how strongly it belongs to the situation. Six of Cups still matters, but Queen of Swords changes what can be done with it now. Memory, nostalgia, and return can keep shaping expectation, while discernment, boundaries, and clear judgment can begin to answer that history differently. Feeling and interpretation press against each other here; emotional truth matters, but so does the story the mind builds around it.
The measure is what the relationship actually does over time—what is communicated, repeated, repaired, respected, or avoided. The Moon reversed adds an undercurrent of lifting confusion, exposed fear, and deception that may not be obvious yet. The Moon reversed places the relationship inside a larger pattern of choice, change, identity, or meaning. The Moon reversed shows confusion lifting, fear exposed, and deception working below the obvious surface, making something previously diffuse easier to name and sort through.
Two of Cups brings mutuality, attraction, and emotional exchange into what must be worked through. Attraction, cooperation, emotional exchange, reconciliation, or partnership becomes possible. The Moon reversed suggests that the pattern of confusion lifting, fear being exposed, and deception is operating beneath the obvious surface. Two of Cups shows how the obstacle can distort, delay, or complicate the way that undercurrent is understood. The Moon reversed broadens the change, while Two of Cups shows how that larger movement is being felt, valued, or emotionally carried. Nine of Wands brings resilience, vigilance, and persistence into the conditions around you.
The situation is tired but prepared, guarded, persistent, and unwilling to abandon what has been built. This matters through desire, initiative, pursuit, conflict, and whether the energy between you is creating movement or pressure. Eight of Cups reversed brings fear of leaving, drifting, and return into the response that remains yours to choose. Eight of Cups reversed makes fear of leaving, drifting, and return the pattern to identify before acting, so you choose your response rather than repeat it automatically.
Nine of Wands describes conditions you do not completely control through resilience, vigilance, and persistence, while Eight of Cups reversed shows where your response has to deal with fear of leaving, drifting, and return. Feeling and desire are moving together, which can create real motivation but can also make emotional investment accelerate action. The Star opens a developing possibility around hope, renewal, and healing. Hope becomes possible again. There is room to recover orientation, trust, openness, inspiration, and a sense of future after difficulty.
After disruption, quiet orientation becomes possible again. Hope here is not denial; it is the capacity to reconnect with meaning after certainty has been stripped away. Openness, replenishment, and restored circulation become the central image. The Star is a direction, not a guarantee. Movement toward hope, renewal, and healing becomes more believable when the quality shown by Eight of Cups reversed is actually used to answer resilience, vigilance, and persistence; otherwise, the older pattern still has room to reassert itself.
Six of Cups and Queen of Swords show how the situation has moved from memory, nostalgia, and return toward discernment, boundaries, and clear judgment. The Moon reversed and Two of Cups show what still needs to be understood or worked through, while Nine of Wands and Eight of Cups reversed separate the pressure around you from the response you can actually choose. That is why The Star has a believable path toward hope, renewal, and healing.
What do I need to understand about the deeper structure of this relationship, the forces shaping it, and the most likely direction it will take if the present pattern continues?
10-card Celtic Cross:
Two of Cups — Upright
Five of Swords — Upright
The Hermit — Upright
Six of Cups — Upright
The Star — Upright
The Moon — Reversed
Queen of Swords — Upright
Nine of Wands — Upright
Eight of Cups — Reversed
The Sun — Upright
What I am seeing: Two of Cups puts mutuality, attraction, and emotional exchange directly into what is happening now. Attraction, cooperation, emotional exchange, reconciliation, or partnership becomes possible. Relationship is shown as reciprocal recognition rather than solitary desire. Five of Swords makes conflict, hollow victory, and humiliation part of what you have to work through. Argument, ego, strategy, defeat, humiliation, or winning at too high a cost may dominate the situation.
This pattern becomes visible in communication, assumptions, boundaries, and repeated behavior. Two of Cups brings mutuality, attraction, and emotional exchange, while Five of Swords adds conflict, hollow victory, and humiliation. The question is how much of what Two of Cups offers can still be used while Five of Swords remains active. Feeling and interpretation press against each other here; emotional truth matters, but so does the story the mind builds around it. The measure is what the relationship actually does over time—what is communicated, repeated, repaired, respected, or avoided.
The Hermit places solitude, discernment, and introspection underneath the visible situation. Understanding requires withdrawal, reflection, study, experience, or guidance. The next truth may be visible even if the entire journey isn't known. The Hermit places the relationship inside a larger pattern of choice, change, identity, or meaning. Distance from noise can reveal what constant participation conceals. Solitude is useful when it clarifies; it becomes harmful when it turns into disappearance.
A solitary elder holds a lantern on a height, carrying only the light needed for the next part of the path. Six of Cups brings memory, nostalgia, and a return to what came before. Emotional life returns to something familiar, gentle, or remembered. This matters through emotional exchange, reciprocity, attachment, and what is actually being given or withheld. Six of Cups helps explain what became familiar, while The Hermit shows why that history still has weight now. Six of Cups carries memory, nostalgia, and return forward; The Hermit keeps solitude, discernment, and introspection active underneath the question.
The Hermit broadens the change, while Six of Cups shows how that larger movement is felt, valued, or carried emotionally. The Star shows what you are reaching toward through hope, renewal, and healing. Hope becomes possible again. There is room to recover orientation, trust, openness, inspiration, and a sense of future after difficulty. After disruption, quiet orientation becomes possible again. Hope here is not denial; it is the capacity to reconnect with meaning after certainty has been stripped away. Openness, replenishment, and restored circulation become the central image.
The Moon reversed shows confusion lifting, fear exposed, and deception becoming more established, with fewer competing interpretations and a more definite choice. The Star shows what you are trying to move toward through hope, renewal, and healing, while The Hermit asks whether solitude, discernment, and introspection can actually support that direction. The Moon reversed is where the first believable movement between those two conditions begins to appear. The Queen of Swords shows the stance you bring through discernment, independence, and boundaries. Judgment is sharp, but mature intellect also invites truth.
Nine of Wands brings resilience, vigilance, and persistence into the conditions around you. The situation is tired but prepared, guarded, persistent, and unwilling to abandon what has been built. This matters through desire, initiative, pursuit, conflict, and whether the energy between you is creating movement or pressure. Queen of Swords shows what you can bring to the situation through discernment, independence, and boundaries. Nine of Wands describes what the environment brings back through resilience, vigilance, and persistence. The two do not have to agree for you to keep your judgment intact.
Action and judgment are pressing on each other; momentum matters, but so do evidence, language, timing, and the decision driving the action. Eight of Cups reversed brings fear of leaving, drifting, and returning into what you hope for and what you fear. Eight of Cups reversed shows fear of leaving, drifting, and returning, coloring both what you want to avoid and what you may fear will continue. The Sun opens a developing possibility around clarity, vitality, and success. Something becomes easier to see and live openly.
Clarity, confidence, vitality, truth, freedom, or success increase as concealment diminishes. You can see something plainly and live it directly. The card favors openness, vitality, recognition, and the relief that comes when ambiguity no longer dominates. A radiant sun, child, horse, sunflowers, and open banner create one of the clearest images of vitality and unguarded illumination. Eight of Cups reversed can color how you imagine The Sun, especially through fear of leaving, drifting, and return. The Moon reversed gives you something nearer and more concrete to watch, while The Sun shows the larger direction that becomes plausible if that development continues.
The Sun broadens the change, while Eight of Cups reversed shows how that larger movement is being felt, valued, or emotionally carried. The Sun is a direction, not a guarantee. Movement toward clarity, vitality, and success becomes more believable when the quality shown by The Moon reversed is used to address fear of leaving, drifting, and returning; otherwise, the older pattern still has room to reassert itself. The strongest thread is the movement from mutuality, attraction, and emotional exchange through the pressure of conflict, hollow victory, and humiliation toward the first development shown by The Moon reversed.
Queen of Swords shows what you can bring to that process, while Nine of Wands describes the conditions that may answer back. Eight of Cups reversed can color expectation, but The Sun only becomes persuasive if the earlier movement actually appears in lived reality. That keeps the reading open without making it vague: the cards show a direction, and the intervening choices and conditions decide how much of that direction becomes real.
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