The most important skill in reading Tarot is the ability to connect interpretations.  Anyone can lay out the cards and look up their meaning in a book, but this kind of reading is as helpful to your client as a bowl of fortune cookies.  A good reader will be able to tell the client what each card means in relation to all of the other cards in the pattern.

The basic Celtic Cross layout is a good example.  The choice of the Significator lays the foundation; understanding the next card, the Obstacle, should be related to each card as you go.  Once the reader and the client feel comfortable that they both know what the obstacle cards means, the 3rd card laid must relate both to the Signigficator AND to the Obstacle cards.

It’s not uncommon to lay the 3rd (Achievement) and 4th (Strengths) card together, as they are usually interpreted best in relation to each other.  These two cards must make sense in light of the interpretation of the Significator and Obstacle.  If the reading is going smoothly at this point, you are probably on the right track.  If it’s getting a little sticky, you might need to consider minor meanings for some or all of the cards you have revealed so far.

The 5th card, the Recent Past card, should fit easily into the direction of the reading if you have laid a solid foundation in the first four.  It’s simply nonsensical to try and understand the future without knowing what is really going on right now!  The reader must make sure that the client is comfortable with what is often a completely new way of looking at their life.  The real bulk of the reading is in the first five cards, most of the time.

Each successive card revealed has to relate to all of the other cards that have been laid.  The discussion of card six (Immediate Future) should include a mention of each of the first five cards and how each is affected by the 6th card.  Cards seven through ten are going to be a repeat of this same process.

Card seven, which represents your feelings about the matter, has to relate to the Significator, Achievement, and Strengths, if it is to make any sense at all.  Likewise card eight, Outside Influences, will be strongly linked to the Obstacle and Recent Past cards in the course of a good reading.

The Hopes and Fears card will still probably be a surprise to both reader and client.  This is the moment the whole reading has been building toward, and it’s not at all uncommon to go back to the beginning of the reading from here, to look again at the whole layout in light of this new information.

After all of the other cards have been revealed and reconciled, the Final Tarot Reading Outcome is usually a foregone conclusion.  A surprise at this point means the earlier part of the reading was incomplete.  This tends to leave your client in worse shape then they were before the reading!  Feeling confused and a little empty is not why my clients give me their hard-earned money.

A complete reading includes a complete interpretation.  This way your clients will never have to wonder, “Is that all there is?”