Fair questions, plainly answered.

What is a spread?

The layout the cards are dealt into. Each place in it has a meaning of its own, such as the past or the challenge, and a card is read in the light of where it falls. One card answers quickly. The Celtic Cross, with ten, looks at a question from every side.

How are the cards drawn?

With atmospheric noise. Each shuffle requests random numbers from random.org, which derives them from radio noise in the atmosphere, the same source used for lotteries and scientific draws. If that service is unavailable, the shuffle falls back to the server's cryptographic random number generator, and every reading states which one it has.

Who writes the interpretation?

A language model, given your cards, their positions and your question. The card meanings shown beneath each plate are traditional Rider–Waite and Thoth attributions, held in our own deck data.

What does a reversed card mean?

A card that arrives upside down is reversed, and it is shown that way. It is read as the same card with its energy blocked, turned inward or in excess, not as a bad omen. Every card, including The Fool, has an equal and independent chance of arriving reversed.

What are the small words under each card?

Its traditional correspondences: an element, and often a planet, a sign of the zodiac or a Hebrew letter. They colour how a card is read. You do not need them to follow the reading.

What if I draw a frightening card?

Death, The Tower and the Swords look worse than they read. Death is an ending that makes room, not a death. No card here foretells illness, loss or harm, and the reading will not either.

Is this fortune-telling?

A spread is a mirror, not a window. This is for you to decide. Readings are no substitute for professional advice.

What if my question is about something serious?

Ask it, if it helps to see it written down, but do not let a reading stand in for a person. For health, money or the law, see someone qualified.

If you are in danger from someone, or thinking of harming yourself, please talk to someone now. In Ireland and the UK the Samaritans answer at 116 123, at any hour. In Ireland, Women's Aid answers at 1800 341 900. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists services by country.

What happens to my question?

It is sent, with the cards drawn, to the company that runs the language model, and it is stored here with your reading so that the reading's link keeps working. Anyone who has that link can open it, so share it as you would the question itself.

There are no accounts and no cookies. The web server keeps ordinary access logs for fourteen days. Only the most recent few thousand readings are kept, and older ones are deleted as new ones arrive.