How iYarrow reads a spread
How this deck is read
Where this deck comes from
Give this question to the cards.
Name it. Pick one card or three. The plates stay when you ask a follow-up.
Where this deck comes from
Playing-card tarot is older. The deck iYarrow uses is the Rider–Waite–Smith set published in 1909: Arthur Edward Waite wrote the meanings; Pamela Colman Smith drew every plate, including the pip cards that older decks left almost blank.
Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot(1910) is public domain. Smith’s plates are public domain. That is why we can show them and key the reading to Waite’s own words. We do not use later copyrighted decks.
How a draw works here
The draw is for this question, not a tap in the browser. You pick one card (this question) or three (past, present, future). Reversals are on unless you turn them off: a reversed plate is the same card, read in the blocked or inward sense Waite gives it.
The draw is free. The written reading uses the same credit pool as a hexagram reading. Follow-up chat does not shuffle again.
The vocabulary
Seventy-eight plates. Twenty-two majors for the large turns. Fifty-six minors for work, feeling, thought, and means — four suits.
Major Arcana
The Fool through The World. Scene-change cards: a threshold, a fall, a star after the tower.
Minor Arcana
Ace through ten, then Page, Knight, Queen, King, in each suit. The texture of the week, not the myth of a life.
- Wands · 權杖 — Will, heat, work that wants to start.
- Cups · 聖杯 — Feeling, bond, what you cannot spreadsheet.
- Swords · 寶劍 — Thought, cut, the decision that hurts because it is clear.
- Pentacles · 星幣 — Body, money, the ground under the plan.
Spreads we ship
One card: the whole question in a single plate. Three cards: where this came from, what is true now, where it is leaning. We do not ship a Celtic Cross in v1.
Four doors, two kinds of stuck
A question of this moment is 卜卦 or 塔羅. The shape of a life is 紫微 or a Western natal. None of them writes the others.
| Ask | Tarot | I Ching | Zi Wei | Western natal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of stuck | This decision | This decision | This life | This life |
| What you bring | A question | A question | Birth date and hour | Birth date, time, place |
| What is drawn | Shuffled plates | A hexagram from the moment | Twelve palaces | Planets in houses |
| Enters 卜卦? | No | It is 卜卦 | Calibrates tone only | No |
How iYarrow reads a spread
The cards are facts of the draw. The model does not invent a plate. Each card is looked up in a keyed Waite corpus (upright or reversed). One language-model pass writes the reading in plain words against that lookup and your question.
This is counsel, not a verdict from the sky. It is not medical, legal, or financial advice. It will not name a death or a disaster.
Fair questions
Is this a daily card?
No. It is not the card you pull with coffee in the morning. You ask a real question; the deck is shuffled once for that thread.
Is tarot the same as a hexagram?
No. Same kind of stuck — a decision in front of you — two methods. A hexagram is cast from the moment you ask. A tarot spread is shuffled. Neither enters the other.
Why Rider–Waite–Smith?
The 1909 plates and Waite’s 1910 book are public domain, so the art and the keyed meanings can sit in the open. Later decks we cannot ship.
Does a reversed card mean bad luck?
No. It is the same card, read as blocked, inward, or delayed — the sense Waite gives that plate reversed.
Do I have to believe it?
No. Many people use it as a structured pause: three pictures that force the question into the open. Keep what helps.