Past, present and future

3 cards were drawn from the full deck of seventy-eight. None of them is from the Major Arcana: this is a matter of everyday life, in your own hands.

Cups are the suit of water: feelings, love, relationships and intuition. Many cups mean that the heart is at the centre of the question. Here cups leads with 1 card.

Every card came upright: the energies of the reading flow openly.

Your Personality card, Justice, stands behind the reading as its significator: read every card through your nature as Justice.

The question is about something of its own, so each card is read for its full meaning.

You come to this question torn between options. Look for the cards that favour one path over another, and for the advice card: it usually names what the choice is really about.

Behind this question lies Ace of Pentacles. Its theme, a new beginning in work, money and the body, shaped what is happening now, and part of the answer is in understanding that root.

A hand offers a golden pentacle above a garden gate: a new opportunity, prosperity and solid beginnings.

The Ace of Pentacles is a golden coin offered above a garden gate: a new opportunity in money, work, health or home. It is a seed of real, material prosperity, a job, an investment, a new body practice, and it asks to be planted and tended patiently.

The Ace is the seed of its suit: the pure, undivided force of the element, a gift or opportunity offered from the clouds. Aces begin things. Here it acts in the realm of earth: work, money, health and the material world.

For the heart: a stable, grounded new relationship. At work: a new job, an investment, financial opportunity.

What to do: Take the practical opportunity in front of you and commit to tending it.

A question to carry: What seed of security could you plant this month?

At the heart of the matter now is Nine of Cups. This is the energy you are living with today: a near-fulfilment in matters of the heart. It is the card to act on.

A contented man sits before nine cups arranged behind him: the wish card, satisfaction and pleasure.

The Nine of Cups is the wish card: a contented figure before a row of cups, arms folded with satisfaction. It promises emotional and material fulfilment, pleasure and gratitude. It also asks whether what you wished for is what truly satisfies you, or only what looks good.

The Nine is near-completion: the fullness of the suit, its rewards and its burdens. Here it acts in the realm of water: feeling, love, relationships and intuition.

For the heart: happiness, a wish come true. At work: success, contentment, material comfort.

What to do: Name your wish clearly, and enjoy what you already have while you wait for it.

A question to carry: If one wish came true this year, which would you choose?

Ahead lies King of Swords: authority and command in the mind, and in what must be said. If the present course continues, this is where it leads; the earlier cards show what could change it.

A king holds his sword before a sky of butterflies: intellectual power, authority and truth.

The King of Swords sits in judgement with an upright blade: intellect, authority, fairness and ethical decisions. He thinks before he acts and keeps his word. He may be an adviser, a lawyer or someone in charge, or the objective mind asked of you now.

The King is the suit in command: mastery turned outward, authority, responsibility and leadership. Here it acts in the realm of air: thought, truth, words and conflict.

For the heart: a rational, principled partner. At work: authority, strategy, law.

What to do: Decide by principle, not by mood, and explain your reasons openly.

A question to carry: What would the fairest decision look like here?

Cups lead the reading: things unfold at the pace of feeling, in weeks or months; the season of water is summer.

Missing from the reading: wands (will, ambition, creativity and action). An absent suit means that area is not where the answer lies, or that it is being overlooked.

The people in the reading. King of Swords is a court card: it can stand for a real person in your life, or for a part of yourself. A King can be a mature person in charge, a mentor or an authority, or your own outer mastery: command, responsibility and direction.

How neighbouring cards meet. In the old Golden Dawn method, cards strengthen or weaken their neighbours by element:

• Ace of Pentacles and Nine of Cups: water nourishes earth: feeling and practice support each other.
• Nine of Cups and King of Swords: water and air: neutral; heart and mind must learn each other's language.

From Ace of Pentacles through Nine of Cups to King of Swords, the story moves from a new beginning in work, money and the body, through a near-fulfilment in matters of the heart, towards authority and command in the mind, and in what must be said. The present card is the hinge: change how you live it, and the future card changes with it.

The last card, King of Swords, carries the answer to the question. Its energy is open: if you follow the advice of the reading, it is the likely outcome. Its practical message: authority, strategy, law.

A reading is most useful when you live with it for a while. Some ways to work with these cards:

• Write down the question and each card with its position, and keep the page. Re-read it in a month: the meaning often becomes clear only in hindsight.
• Spend a few minutes with the card that most unsettles you. Its picture often holds the advice you need.
• Choose one practical step from the advice of the reading and do it within a week.
• Take the questions below into a journal, one a day.

• Ace of Pentacles: What seed of security could you plant this month?
• Nine of Cups: If one wish came true this year, which would you choose?
• King of Swords: What would the fairest decision look like here?

The deck of seventy-eight was shuffled for this question and these names, and the cards were the ones chosen from the face-down fan; about a third of the cards in a shuffled deck lie reversed. Card art: the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith (1909, public domain). Interpretations are written for reflection and entertainment.