You lay your first full Celtic Cross, and ten cards look back at you. Each one makes sense on its own, but together they feel like a crowd. What you need now is not more meanings but an order to read them in.

Five passes

Read a Celtic Cross in five passes, each one short. You never hold all ten cards in your head at once; you hold one pair, then the next.

• Glance. Look at the whole layout for a moment. Notice what stands out before you read anything.
• The cross. Read 1 and 2, the core tension; then 4 and 6, the movement in time; then 3 and 5, the root and the crown.
• The staff. From the bottom up: 7 and 8, you and your surroundings; then 9 and 10, your hopes and fears and the direction.
• Connect. Compare the crown (5) with the direction (10), and find the thread that runs through the pairs.
• One sentence. Answer the question in one sentence, with one step you can take.

The method is the same for every question. What changes is which pair turns out to carry the reading.