A small guide to tarot~ink

Bring one real thing

A conversation you keep replaying, a decision that won't settle, or a good week you'd like to stay with. You don't need to know the cards. This guide walks through a reading and what happens after it.

IAsking

Ask the way you'd say it

Write the question as you would say it to a friend. "What makes this job so hard to leave?" gives the cards more to work with than "career?", and the reading can talk about your actual situation instead of tarot in general.

Pick a spread for the room you want. One card keeps it small, three give a past, present and future. A plain daily pull with no question is fine, too.

Reading with your own cards? Lay them out, take a photo with Scan Your Spread, check the cards it found, and the reading starts from your table.

IIYour deck

Your deck, as you left it

A hand-stacked pile of clay tarot cards with a few cards sticking out, and three cards fanned beside it — A deck that has been handled, not a fresh shuffle every time.

Each deck keeps the order you left it in. Between readings the cards you drew go back in, and the deck is shuffled the way a person shuffles: a few overhand passes and a cut. Some cards stay close together, so now and then one comes back.

Nothing about you or your question decides which cards come up. When a card does come back, and it connects to what you're asking, your reader may point it out. Most readings won't mention it at all.

Prefer a fresh shuffle every time? Turn off Keep My Deck's Order in Reading Preferences, next to reversed cards.

IIITalking it through

The reading is a conversation

Three blank clay cards in a row, and one card sliding off the top of the deck toward them — One more card, from the rest of the deck.

When the reading ends, keep going. Ask what a card means for you, add a detail you left out, or say when something doesn't fit. Pushing back makes the next answer better.

Want more? Draw one to three clarifier cards with your next question. They come from the rest of the deck, as they would on a table, so a card never shows up twice in one reading.

IVWhat carries over

Your words, kept for the next reading

An open clay notebook with a sage ribbon bookmark, a rose pebble in the fold and a tarot card tucked between the pages — What you shared can help a later reading on the same subject.

After a reading, the situation you described is kept in your own words: the people you named, the plan you were weighing, how it went. A later reading about the same thing can build on it, so you don't have to explain from the start.

Only what helps the question comes in. A reading that builds on an earlier one says so underneath, with that reading's question and date, and you can open it from there.

Your Journal shows your readings by day, the cards that keep showing up, and a recap for each finished month. Each card page covers what a card can mean when it keeps coming back.

VThreads

Keep one question open

Two clay tarot cards standing apart, joined by one rose cord tied around them — One sentence, in your words, that stays open until life moves.

Some questions don't settle in one sitting. At the end of a reading you may be offered one sentence about what's still open:

After a reading

Keep this thread open?
You're weighing whether this corporate job gives you real breathing room or costs you the ambition you still want to pursue.

Edit it until it sounds like you, then choose Check in next week for a nudge or When something changes to let it wait. Not now is always fine.

When a later reading picks the thread up, it says so in a rose bar underneath, with your sentence and its date, and asks Did this connection fit? Not really rests that thread for 14 days, and a second Not really stops readings bringing it up.

Closing a thread

I turned down the corporate offer and committed to six more months on the studio.

When a thread comes due, Home asks how it's going: Still open is a complete answer, or tap Something happened and say what in a sentence. If you come back to the same question, a reading can start from what actually happened.

VIYour chart

Your chart, if you want it

A small blank clay sundial with a sage fin and a rose pebble on its top step — Birth details are optional, and so is each perspective.

Add your birth date, time and place, and choose astrology, Human Design, both or neither. Your profile then explains each part in plain words: what your Sun, Moon and Rising are read as, how Human Design describes the way you tend to work and decide, and the terms underneath for anyone who knows them.

A reading brings one of them in only when it helps the question. Take it as a way to reflect, and keep what fits. Turn either off at any time and read with just the cards.

VIIYour choices

You decide what stays

Any reading can be left out. Choose Don't remember this reading in its menu. It stays in your history and never shapes another reading.

Any thread can be removed. Under a reading that builds on it, choose Remove this thread.

Nothing is shared. Friends see what you choose to share, never what your readings keep.

Share only what you're comfortable keeping, and use the same name for a person each time you mention them, so readings about them stay connected.