# Your daily reading, explained

This page describes what actually happens when you get a reading —
no code, no jargon you haven't already agreed to. If you just want to
know "what am I looking at", start here.

## The one-time setup: telling it who you are

Before you can get a personal reading, you tell it a few things about
your birth, once:

- the **date** and **time** you were born, and which time zone that
  clock time was in
- **where** you were born (latitude/longitude)

That's it. This information never changes and is only used to work out
exactly where the planets were, and which zodiac sign was rising, at the
moment you were born — your **natal chart**. Everything else the app
does is compared against that one fixed reference point.

## What happens every day

Each day, the app does two independent things and then combines them:

1. **It looks at the sky right now** and compares it to your natal
   chart from step one — this tells you what's changing today,
   relative to your own personal baseline (not a generic horoscope).
2. **It shuffles a tarot deck**, using today's date as the shuffle
   "seed". This means: if you check your reading three times on the
   same day, you get the exact same 10 cards, in the same order, every
   time — it only changes when the date changes. There's no randomness
   involved beyond that; today's date fully determines today's spread.

## The three parts of a reading

### 1. Your natal chart

A snapshot of the sky at the moment you were born: where the Sun,
Moon, and each planet were, which zodiac sign was rising on the
eastern horizon at that moment (your **Ascendant**), and which of the
12 astrological "houses" each planet falls into as a result. Think of
this as your personal baseline — it doesn't change day to day, and
every other part of the reading is measured against it.

### 2. Today's sky (your "transits")

Where the Sun, Moon, and planets are positioned *today*, plus:

- the current **Moon phase** (New, Waxing Crescent, Full, and so on)
- any **aspects** — meaningful angles formed between where a planet is
  today and where a planet sat in your natal chart. For example, "the
  Sun is opposite your natal Moon today" is one aspect. These are the
  traditional signals astrologers use to say a day is emotionally
  charged, a good day for decisions, a day of tension, etc. Not every
  day has aspects; some days are quiet.

Each planet's position today is also placed into one of *your* 12
houses (not a fresh chart for right now) — that's the standard way
astrologers read "what house is this transit happening in for me".

### 3. Your tarot spread (the Celtic Cross)

A classic 10-card tarot layout, drawn from the 22 Major Arcana cards
(The Fool, The Magician, and so on through The World). Each of the 10
positions asks a different question about your day or situation — for
example, "what covers you right now", "what crosses/challenges you",
"your hopes and fears", "the likely outcome". Every card can land
**upright** or **reversed**, which traditionally shades or inverts its
meaning. The order and meanings of the 10 positions, and the meaning
of each card, come from A. E. Waite's original 1911 description of the
spread — the same source most modern tarot decks trace back to.

## How "big" is today?

Not every day is equally eventful astrologically. A separate,
optional step can look at today's aspects (part 2, above) and works
out an overall **significance level** for the day — Quiet, Notable,
Significant, or Major — based on which planets are involved, how exact
the angle is, and whether it touches your Sun or Moon (the two most
personally weighted points in a chart). On a genuinely Major day, it
also calls out the single most important thing happening, as a hint
that it's worth paying closer attention to your tarot spread that day
rather than treating it as routine. Quiet days still get a full
reading — this step only adds a "pay attention today" flag, it never
removes anything.

## What a day's reading actually gives you

Put together, one day's reading contains: your natal chart (for
reference), today's sky and how it's speaking to your chart, how
significant today is overall, and your 10-card Celtic Cross spread for
the day. Right now these sit side by side — the astrology tells you
*how eventful* today is and *where* to pay attention, and the tarot
spread gives you the actual guidance to sit with. They don't yet get
woven into a single narrative (e.g. a spread explained *in light of*
today's significant transit) — that combined storytelling is the next
piece to build, not something you get today.

*(This page, like that piece, is still a work in progress — expect it
to grow as the reading itself does.)*
