Okay, so I wanted to talk a bit about figuring out those 3-card Tarot spreads. It wasn’t something I got right away, let me tell you.
When I first started with Tarot, like years ago, I stuck mostly to single card pulls. Easy enough, right? One card, one message, boom. But pretty quickly, I felt like I was missing something bigger, you know? Like getting just one word when you need a whole sentence. So, I decided I needed to tackle multiple cards together.
Getting Started with Three Cards
I figured three cards was the next logical step. Not too overwhelming like those big ten-card spreads, but more detailed than just one. Seemed simple. Lay down three cards. Past, Present, Future. Or Situation, Action, Outcome. Loads of basic layouts use three cards.
But here’s the thing: actually reading them together? That was tough at first. I’d lay them out, and my brain would just see three separate meanings. I’d look up Card A, look up Card B, look up Card C. Then I’d just kinda stare at them, trying to mush the definitions together. It felt clunky, disconnected.
I remember spending evenings just pulling three cards over and over. I grabbed an old notebook and started writing down every combination I pulled.
- Card 1: What I thought it meant alone.
- Card 2: What I thought it meant alone.
- Card 3: What I thought it meant alone.
- Then a big blank space where I tried to force them into a story.
Honestly, a lot of those early notes are just question marks or frustrated scribbles. It wasn’t clicking.
The Shift in Thinking
The change happened gradually. It wasn’t one big lightbulb moment. It was more like, after pulling hundreds of these damn combinations, I started noticing patterns. I stopped thinking about them as three totally separate things and started seeing them as a flow, like a little movie playing out.
I realized the card in the middle often felt like the bridge or the main event, heavily influenced by the card before it and setting the stage for the card after it. It wasn’t just Card A + Card B + Card C. It was more like Card A leads to Card B which results in Card C. Or Card B is the core issue, because of Card A, and pointing towards Card C.
I also started paying attention to repeating numbers or suits. Like, getting two Cups and a Sword felt different than three Wands. It’s common sense, maybe, but it took practice to really feel that difference in the reading itself. Someone mentioned once that the number three itself often points to some kind of shift or change happening. I kept that in the back of my mind, and yeah, sometimes when a Three popped up in a 3-card spread, especially cards like the Three of Swords or even the Three of Wands, it did feel like things were definitely moving, sometimes uncomfortably so.
My Process Now
So now, when I pull three cards, I don’t immediately jump to the book meanings. I take a breath. I look at the pictures. I see how they visually connect or contrast. Which way are the figures looking? What’s the overall energy – heavy, light, active, stuck?
My basic steps, if you can call them that, are usually:
- Lay out the cards.
- Get a first impression – just gut feeling based on the images and suits.
- Consider the position meanings (if I’m using a specific layout like Past/Present/Future).
- Look at the flow – how does Card 1 seem to influence Card 2? How does Card 2 lead to Card 3?
- Notice any strong connections – repeating numbers, dominant suits, Major Arcana cards yelling for attention.
- Then I might blend in the traditional meanings, but more as seasoning, not the whole meal.
It’s still a practice, always. Some days the story jumps right out, clear as day. Other days, it’s still a bit murky and I have to sit with it. But focusing on the combination, the interaction, rather than just three isolated definitions – that’s what really changed the game for me. It took time and lots of messy notebook pages, but yeah, that’s how I got my head around reading three cards together.
