AUTHOR’S NOTE: I know there is an oxymoron in there somewhere (almost-but-not-quite Pink Floyd’s “random precision”), but bear with me. General readings are not usually noted for their situational exactness, so I’m taking this “outside the box.”

When clients come to me for a reading they are usually experiencing some kind of distress, so I prefer using a larger spread like the Celtic Cross so I have plenty of “rocks to turn over” to see what is going on in their subconscious. But at the moment I’m preparing to do readings for two friends who have never had one before, so I’m going to employ a slightly different approach. They are both curious but not yet convinced, so I’ll use a five-card “situational” spread to avoid overloading them with details.

Although I don’t want to know it in advance, they will ideally have a specific question or subject they want to explore, and this spread will show them what the current situation is; why it is that way; how they might deal with it; what kind of response they can expect; and how it should work out in the end. But in the event they don’t have a topic of interest in mind and just want an open-ended “life reading,” I will tell them that the abbreviated forecast could still propose a unique situation that they haven’t considered, and the narrative will take off from there once we get a fix on what it might be.

These readings usually embrace one of several “functional dimensions.” The most obvious one is some form of “situational awareness” with circumstantial implications, followed by the more particular areas of “decision-making,” “problem-solving,” “conflict-resolution,” “crisis-management,” “interpersonal affairs” involving relationships of all sorts, “health-and-happiness” concerns, “career, business and financial issues,” and – in a slightly broader, cross-cutting sense – “external conditions or influences.”

I will analyze the one that stands out as the primary target of increased “situational precision” according to the elemental nature of the cards pulled: Wands or Fire for ambitions, initiatives and opportunities; Cups or Water for emotional, familial, ethical and spiritual themes; Swords or Air for ideas, insights and inspirations; and Pentacles or Earth for practical, physical and instinctual considerations of all types. Additional information will come from other standard aspects of interpretation to produce a comprehensive picture of the matter at hand.