A position is a question you ask one card. That is the whole idea. It is worth saying plainly, because it explains why the same card means different things in different places on the table.

Five

The natural step up. A common arrangement: the situation, what is behind it, what is coming, what you control, what you do not. Enough to separate cause from consequence without burying you.

Seven

Seven allows structure. Two cards for one side of a decision, two for the other, three for the ground they both stand on. This is where you start reading in groups instead of card by card, which is the real skill the big layouts teach.

Ten

The ten-card layouts, Celtic Cross among them, are the deep end. Genuinely useful for a tangled situation you have not managed to put into words. Also where beginners drown, because ten cards will produce a story no matter how little you understand them.

If you use one, read it in blocks. Core pair first. Then the timeline. Then the cards about other people. Then the outcome. Never left to right.

Picking a size

Match the number of cards to how much you already know about the situation. Big spreads on vague questions make impressive nonsense. Five cards on a sharpened question beat ten on “my life” every time.

Making your own

Inventing a layout is legitimate and often better than borrowing one, since you know what you are actually asking. Two rules. Write down what each position asks before you draw. And keep the count to a number you can hold in your head, which for most people is smaller than they think.