AUTHOR’S NOTE This essay has been in the “pending” queue for a while now and I’ve moved on from where I was when I wrote it to explore other topics, but I think it’s still worth posting.

It seems that I can’t push even one page further into my renewed study of James Ricklef’s Tarot Reading Explained without picking up another compelling insight that furthers my own thinking and writing. I didn’t know quite what to do with this one in my personal system of interpretation, so “here goes nothing.”

This time it’s the idea that the progression of the cards in a three-card spread will either “expand” or “contract” (which apparently means that the situation will either unfold in due time or collapse into itself and remain developmentally stunted). Putting it in my own words, the matter in question will either proceed apace and the cards will reflect staying abreast of it while it matures, or they will encourage withdrawing if there appears to be no meaningful growth in sight. (The closest I’ve come to this terminology in the past was using the expressions “advance” and “retreat.”) The challenge for the reader lies in being able to make a reliable judgment on-the-fly.

This analysis requires approaching the spread as “inclusive” rather than reading it strictly card-by-card in small, easily-digestible bites. Is the overall flow of circumstances it suggests unimpeded, closing in on a definitive answer, or is there “back-flow” (i.e. resistance) that might pool in the shallows and stagnate, becoming useless for making headway in the matter?

This aligns with my own technique of performing a “gestalt” overview of the entire population to assess the “lay of the land” before embarking on a point-by-point examination (I liken it to an isometric map with peaks and valleys), but I typically reserve it for larger spreads like the Celtic Cross. The goal is similar: to look for preliminary evidence of extraordinary incentive or abnormal latency, both of which warrant meticulous scrutiny in the linear walk-through that follows.

There are many tools for doing this overview: preponderance or absence of features (suit, number, rank, etc); commonality of inherent nature across several cards; conspicuous cards in sensitive positions; numerous sympathetic or antithetical clusters in localized areas; a lengthy run of favorable or unfavorable cards; an abundance of reversals; a conclusion card that is grossly misaligned with the rest of the testimony; even a scramble of wildly disassociated cards that suggest confusion, to name a few. It’s all about identifiable flow or counter-flow that imprints the reading with a particular character.

A seasoned reader can figure out very quickly whether anything of unusual significance is going on in a spread. This allows extracting any insights the client may have about what it all means before venturing unilaterally into speculative guesswork. I never pass up an opportunity to tap into this source of subjective wisdom since I think every face-to-face session should be a dialogue and not a monologue. I don’t profess to be an oracle, I “just read the cards” without editorializing too much. Sometimes it’s the equivalent of the gambler’s gloating “Read ’em and weep” that emerges, although I’m never that cruel about it; other times there is nothing to criticize about the tale told by the cartomantic narrative.