By now you can read a card in a position and see what its neighbours do to it. What is left is the step that turns a page of notes into a reading: saying what the whole thing is about.

Start from the pattern

Before assembling anything, look at the layout as a shape. How many majors. Which suit dominates. Whether the numbers are low or high. Whether the figures face each other or away.

These tell you what kind of situation this is, and they are much harder to argue yourself out of than any single card.

Find the card it is built around

Most spreads have one card the others are commenting on. Usually it sits in the position carrying the most weight. Not always — sometimes it is the card you keep circling back to while reading the others, or the one you have been avoiding.

Name it, then read the rest as its context.

Three sentences

Compress the reading into three sentences someone could act on. What the situation is. What is making it hard. What to do about it.

If you cannot reach three sentences, you have a list of card meanings rather than a reading. And here is the test that matters: would the summary be different if two of the cards had been different? If not, you have written a horoscope.

Leave the loose end in

There is usually one card that will not fit. Resist hammering it into place. Resist ignoring it too. Say it plainly — this part does not connect yet.

Often it is the piece that makes sense a fortnight later, and a reading that admits its own gap is worth more than one where everything lines up.

End with something to do

Whatever else the spread said, finish with an action. Even a small one. Even just something to pay attention to. A reading that describes and never suggests leaves the querent exactly where they started, which is a strange result for twenty minutes of work.