How to Read Tarot Card Combinations

Josephine Ellershaw is well known for her approach to tarot. In Easy Tarot,   she helped tens of thousands of beginners learn to read the cards. In Easy Tarot Reading, she helped readers of all levels up their game and give better readings. Now, with Easy Tarot Combinations, she again helps us unravel the useful information that arises when cards work together.

Through the years, books have included specific card combinations that we just memorized or learned to recognize. Josephine eliminated the need for memorization and instead teaches us to see the influences between cards so that we can read any combination with confidence.

Here are just a few of the aspects you will learn about.

Suit Element:  Suits present, dominant, or even by their absence, can help highlight
a particular area of life. Dominance of a suit is usually one of the earliest things we
learn to look for in our readings and can help point you in the right direction or keep
things on track.

Flow:  Flow can help to provide an overview of how events will unfold over the given
timeframe for the reading (six months, for example), how fast or slow certain
matters may occur when interacting with other cards, or blockages that may be
evident due to the influence or appearance of certain cards.

Polarity (Type):  Most cards can be viewed as having both a good and shadow side,
which can be dependent upon the influence of surrounding cards but, in the
context of reading a combination, can generally be divided into three camps of
positive, negative, or neutral. This can be helpful as a first impression or when
needing to break something down if the reading isn’t making sense. All cards are
influenced by those surrounding but the cards listed as neutral can be more reliant
upon, and affected by, the impact of others following in deciding which way they
fall.

Multiple Numbers:  Multiple numbers appearing in a spread can also offer
additional insight into a theme. Although I have provided all of them I tend to find
the most significant ones I use are the Aces, Fives, Sevens, Nines, and Tens.

Similar and Supporting Cards:  One of the easiest ways to work with combinations
is to look for cards that have a similar or overlapping meaning to reinforce that
interpretation in the reading.

Opposing or Contradictory Cards:  Can often show circumstances working
against one another and, as the name suggests, may show opposing forces in a
situation. These types of indications tend to reflect a choppy flow or seem as
though the previous card is running straight into a brick wall of the card following it,
so it can show opposition or challenges with upcoming events.