AUTHOR’S NOTE: Sometimes, when confronting a particularly cryptic tarot reading, I feel like a luckless hunter-gatherer foraging for my supper. There is plenty of sustenance, both large and small, hiding in the bushes but much of it (and occasionally all of it) is impossible to capture.

This is the conundrum posed by the presence of cards in a spread that seem to make absolutely no sense, both in combination and in relation to the question. We go into the reading with high hopes but soon become mired in ambiguity. While some insights poke their heads above the undergrowth and are easily harvested, others seem to burrow into the leaf mold and hunker down, defying discovery. The fact that everything is there for the taking but some of it is just out of reach is what drives impatient readers to pull supplemental “clarifier” cards, a practice that often adds another layer of complexity without clarifying anything at all; they just force us deeper into a fog of confusion.

Rather than confounding the act of gleaning any further, I prefer to simplify it as much as I can by organizing my observations. I do a “gestalt overview” of the whole layout (I generally deal all of the cards face up) and try to spot any “heavy hitters” (either singly or in obvious patterns) upon which I might anchor the reading. Then, as I go through the cards one-by-one I try to hang the rest of them on these main themes in a way that illuminates their contribution to the overall narrative. I think of it as a “spider-web” of significance in which all of the outlying strands vibrate at the central “hub” symbolized by the high-profile card or cards they feed. We are the spider in the middle and the details we are trying to corral are the struggling flies that fetch up in the peripheral network; our metaphorical task is to reel them in and suck them dry (or perhaps, like Bob Dylan”s Casanova, we are just “poisoning them with words”).

Another way I parse the cards during my “big-picture” scrutiny of the spread is according to preponderance or absence by rank, element, suit and number. For example, it there is a sizable population of court cards, I explore whether the situation involves a large cast of characters, or whether the querent is plagued by a surfeit of potentially-conflicting temperaments, attitudes and behaviors. If there are no court cards, it can suggest a quiet time of little social interference or psychological turmoil. I closely examine the cards that are present, give a passing nod to those groups that aren’t represented, and move on to the next category. In this way the snapshot of prevailing circumstances is brought into focus in a manner that is substantially organic.

I think the key take-away from this discussion is in fact to keep things as “organic” as possible. Trying to force-fit our preconceptions onto cards that just won’t bear the weight is a recipe for failure. We should embrace anything about the issue that engages us most powerfully or speaks most eloquently to our storyteller’s sensibilities as a way to begin sorting out the important features from those that are secondary to the account. This systematic culling is crucial to the art of spread delineation because it assists the most relevant points in rising to the surface while still enlisting less-prominent undercurrents in affirming their testimony. It comes down to a matter of remaining sensitive and suggestible, keeping our “feelers” out for any subtle shifts or twists in the plot as we progress through its narration, and – once they are identified – any clearly sympathetic complexes or clusters of cards that bolster our awareness.

You’ll note that I haven’t said a word about “intuition” in any of this; I think it’s a poor substitute for knowledge and experience in deciphering particularly difficult spreads because we can become so desperate for comprehension that we begin creating imaginary conclusions out of whole cloth, potentially damaging our professional credibility. I would rather trust my well-honed native instincts before throwing myself open to pure conjecture of the visionary kind. “Winging it” may be more charismatic and inspirational, but it isn’t nearly as well-grounded in observable spread dynamics.