Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot card combinations

Read each card on its own first, then ask what changes when they sit together. Often one card names the subject and the other sets its tone: the Ten of Pentacles says the question is about family money, and the card beside it says whether that money is secure, contested or about to change hands. When a Major Arcana card sits next to a Minor, the Major usually names the larger force and the Minor shows where it lands in daily life.

A pair can fall four ways: both upright, the first card reversed, the second card reversed, or both reversed. A reversed card is read here the way most modern readers use it: its energy is blocked, delayed, turned inward or overdone. One reversed card in a pair tends to show where the trouble sits. With both cards reversed, the whole theme is usually held back, and the reading becomes a question of what is in the way.

The Golden Dawn method weighs neighbouring cards by element. Cards of the same element strengthen each other. Fire and Air support each other, as do Water and Earth. Fire and Water weaken each other, as do Air and Earth, and the remaining pairs are neutral. A card's element comes from its suit, or for a Major Arcana card from its astrological attribution. Each pair page shows the result in its facts box.

Some readers add the numbers of the cards in a spread and reduce the total to a Major Arcana card, called the quintessence, which names the theme underneath. For a pair, the Fool counts as 0 and the World as 21, and pip cards count from Ace (1) to Ten. Court cards have no number, so a pair that includes one has no quintessence.

Cards lying next to each other in a spread read as one phrase. In a line of cards, the one on the left often reads as the cause or the earlier stage and the one on the right as what follows. In a set layout such as the Celtic Cross, each position adds its own frame, so a pair in the past and present positions tells a different story from the same pair as obstacle and outcome. The pair readings cover both cards in either order; the spread decides which one leads.

When a reader takes a significator from one deck and lays the spread from another, the significator's own card can turn up in the spread. A card paired with itself doubles its theme. Upright twice, the card's meaning is the main message of the reading. Reversed twice, its difficulty is the main message. One copy upright and one reversed shows the querent caught between the card's gift and its shadow.