What stays and what goes: a five-card end-of-month reading

This reading is done on the last day of the month or the first of the next, with the notes from the previous four weeks open on the table. Without that material it's just another spread; with it, it becomes a review.

The five positions, in a row: what defined the month, what is closing, what continues, what is beginning, and what needs attention in the coming weeks. You turn them in that order and read them in pairs before reading them as a whole.

The position of what is closing is the one worth working through slowly. Something usually appears that you already knew was ending but hadn't named: a routine that stopped working, an arrangement with someone, a way of organising yourself. Naming it out loud and writing it down closes more than any decision.

Before interpreting anything, look at the distribution of suits. Five cards with three Pentacles describe a month tipped towards the material and the practical. Two or more Major Arcana signal there has been movement underneath and not just day-to-day management. That first overall read takes thirty seconds and frames everything else.

Done month after month, the series is the interesting part. The position of what needs attention almost always reappears the following month in the position of what defined the month, and checking that in your journal is more instructive than any individual interpretation.

Don't use it to set goals. If you finish with a list of resolutions, you have swapped the review for a planning session, and planning is done better without cards. What this reading leaves you with is a description of the month in words you didn't have on the 30th.