How a Decan Tarot reading is written, and which line you can check.
Three kinds of sentence appear in a reading here, and they are not the same kind of thing. The card's meaning is fixed text, the same for everyone who draws that card. The sky line is computed from an ephemeris at the minute you read, and can be checked against any other ephemeris. The fuller reading, which is written only when you ask for one, is generated by a language model from the cards on the table and your question, under rules you can read. Seventy-eight fixed meanings, one computed line, and no generated sentence until you ask for one.
- 78cards
- 24spreads
- 36decans
- The Sun, now☉ 1.8° Libra, Two of Swords
The seventy-eight cards each carry two paragraphs written for this site: what is in the picture, and what the card has meant since Waite described it in 1910. Position and orientation choose between them; nothing is invented per reading.
Where the Sun, the Moon and the five classical planets are, to the degree, at the minute you read, and which numbered card owns that degree by Book T. One line, or none: when nothing is on your card the reading says nothing about the sky.
The fuller reading, four to six paragraphs, written by a model only when you ask for one: bought under a reading, or, while it is free, sent with a reading you keep. It is given the cards, the positions, what you said you saw, the computed sky lines and your question, and nothing else.
What is never generated
The sky line, the card meanings and the spread positions. The model is not asked whether Venus is on your card; the ephemeris says whether it is, and the model is told to use that fact in its own words and to add no astrology that is not in it: no other planets, signs, houses, aspects, retrogrades or dates. Its instructions also say, verbatim, never give a date except one already in the facts, never predict an outcome as certain, and never claim a track record or that the cards know. The questions it will not lay a spread for.
Why the fence is there
Software that answers any question in a warm voice is the thing tarot readers distrust about it. A 2026 study of twelve practitioners who use AI in their own practice found them reaching for it to settle ambiguity and then noticing its habit of agreeing with them. This site's answer is to keep the model away from the two sentences that carry facts, and to let it write only the part a reader would write: what these cards, in these positions, with what you noticed, might mean for the question you asked.
The check
The one sentence you can verify is the one no model wrote. If a reading says the Sun is on the Nine of Pentacles until 12 September, any ephemeris will show the Sun at 10° to 20° of Virgo on those dates. Where the Sun is today, computed on the server so it is the same for everyone who looks. Who rules each decan · How a reading goes · Draw a card.