@Rachelcat I just looked at your images and thought “what a lovely deck”! And then I remembered I have a copy of, which I haven’t looked at in years. Thank you for reminding me of it again. I like your deck interview too. Let us know how you get on with it? For myself, I drew this combo the other day and delight in how literal the deck can be even with its supposedly esoteric undertone. I’m working on a book, which the publisher asked me to revise. My question was “What do I need to consider as I work on the revisions?” I included the base card this time, as I often do in Tarot readings, as the underlying theme and energy of the reading. And lo and behold - it shows a book. The card titled Thoughts/Gedanken is an important image for me. It quotes an almost identically themed image in my book, which shows a fish in the position of the third eye. I read the whole card combo as I need to be committed to my intuition, my way of thinking and writing (my originality), and the way poetic thought/ knowledge works in its own mysterious ways (it cannot be forced). — The cards are a nice way of confirming how synchronicity works.

There seems to be a trend these days towards using fewer and fewer cards in a 'reading.' When you take a reading down to one card only, you must riff off that one card only. It doesn't matter whether you use traditional meanings or intuitive meanings, unless you are incredibly psychically skilled, you have only that one card to go on. It's fine, in my opinion, to pull one card a day to meditate on, for yourself, but if somebody comes to you for a reading and you only pull one card? What do you say to them, unless you truly do have psychic skills? It can provide a topic, but how can you progress the reading if they aren't in front of you to discuss the card and fit it into their own life situation? I think cards do their best work when they can create a 'conversation' between themselves. If you limit them to only one keyword, yes, they will sometimes hit a mark. But most of the time? If a person comes to you for a reading to help them with a real-life situation, and you pull Death? Okay, Death means something in their life is gone and won't return. But what has gone? That's where you need more cards. Will this ending be beneficial to them? Did they desire this end, or are they upset by it? Is this ending happening now, or is it a future or a past event? Is it something the querent can influence or work with, or is it a done deal? What happens next? And etc. Death is a dramatic card as well. Let's say, instead of Death, you pull the Queen of Wands. What do you say to the querent, if that's the only card you've got, and won't be pulling any more? One card can act as a beginning to a reading, if you establish a conversation with the querent. But if you want the reading to be helpful and not just guesswork, I think you need more cards, and more card positions. One-card readings may seem simple in concept, but I fear they prove to be anything but, in practice.

I think the main thing here is whether or not these readings prove to be relevant and accurate for the client. I’m not saying they aren’t, I’m just saying that I have come across people who are great at storytelling but not great at predicting the future or correctly reading the past/present. I have also come across some experienced tarot readers that are excellent at all those things, but they are not as common imo. Yes and no. If you’re a traditional reader, then you can view the card as the present and make skilled deductions about the past and the future, but unless you have some psychic skills, there would always be an element of speculation. In those cases it makes way more sense to me to just pull two more cards. I don’t think it’s wise to try and answer several different things with one card. When a psychic reader does that, they’re relying on much more than the one card, so it becomes a whole other story.