Man, I was chasing shortcuts again. I know better, but last winter, I was absolutely swamped with personal stuff and trying to keep up with my regular readings. My mind was fried, seriously fried. I kept seeing these things pop up online—a “Tarot Combination Calculator.” Specifically, the 3-Card layout one. It sounded like pure lazy nonsense, but I was desperate for something to just give me a quick answer without having to drag out the whole cloth, light the candles, and actually think about the nuances.
I figured, what the hell. I typed in some garbage query and landed on this tool. The pitch was always the same: it takes the definitions of the three cards you input, smashes them together, and spits out a combined meaning. Supposedly, it would give you the “real” interpretation, saving you all that mental work. Sounded like a dream for someone running on three hours of sleep, right?
The Practice Run: Hitting the ‘Calculate’ Button
The first few times, I was almost hoping it would work. I mean, wouldn’t that be sweet? Just toss in the cards and go. I didn’t use a live spread; I just grabbed three cards I knew were tricky together—a nightmare trio, frankly. I input the:
- The Moon (Reversed)
- The 7 of Swords
- The Devil
I hit the button, waiting for something profound. I was waiting for the software to tell me, “Dude, you are lying to yourself and walking directly into a major trap that you built yourself.” You know, the rough, direct truth the cards usually hit you with. Instead, I got this incredibly bland, generalized sentence. Something like, “Clarity is coming after a period of self-delusion, but be aware of deceitful actions and avoid material bondage.”
I stared at the screen. It was pure word-salad. It wasn’t wrong, exactly, but it missed the entire horrifying story those three cards tell when they are sitting right next to each other. The calculator just took the keywords—Deceit, Release, Bondage—and tied them up with a neat little bow. It gave me the dictionary definition, not the gut punch.
Ditching the Algorithm and Going Back to Basics
I tried it three more times that night with different combinations, and every time, it was the same deal. Generic, safe, and completely useless for actual, practical life advice. It was then I realized the biggest flaw in all these digital “calculators”: they can’t see the flow and the weight of the cards.
So I gave up on the screen. I pulled out my deck and laid those three original cards down again—The Moon (Rx), 7 of Swords, and The Devil. I stopped trying to mash up the definitions and started reading the story, which is what we are all supposed to be doing anyway. This is what I saw, and this is the true process:
- The Moon (Rx) in Position 1: This is where the story starts. It’s not just “clarity.” It’s the painful, sudden realization that all my fears and paranoia were totally unfounded. The fog is lifting, and it’s almost blinding me. I’m finally seeing the truth.
- The 7 of Swords in Position 2 (The Action): This card immediately following the realization changes everything. The action I’m taking is sneaky, evasive, and I’m cutting corners. I’m not confronting the problems I just got clarity on; I’m stealing away with what I think I need and running from the rest.
- The Devil in Position 3 (The Outcome/Warning): This isn’t just “bondage.” Because I chose the sneaky way out (7 of Swords) after gaining the painful truth (Moon Rx), the ultimate outcome is that I am dragging myself right back into the chains I was trying to escape. I’m trading one form of mental torture for a darker, self-imposed trap.
See the difference? The calculator gave me a fortune cookie: “Be careful.” My actual reading gave me a harsh punch in the mouth: “The realization you just had will be wasted because you’ll cheat your way out of the work, and you’ll end up worse off than when you started.” That’s actionable. That’s real. That’s the story.
The Final Word on Trustworthiness
Is the Tarot Combination Calculator 3 Cards trustworthy? Absolutely not. It is a terrible crutch. It’s not a secret algorithm that only knows the true power of the spread. It’s just a keyword merger. It can’t feel the difference between the 7 of Swords being about running away from a job or running away from a debt. It can’t tell the emotional temperature of the Moon’s fear. It just processes text.
What I learned is that the only way to read your results is to ditch the calculator entirely and simply trust the visual narrative. You have to look at those three cards and pretend they are characters in a silent movie, acting out the plot one frame at a time. The first card sets the scene, the second card is the drama, and the third card is the resolution. Stop trying to find some digital shortcut to the truth. The truth lives in the messy, human process of pattern recognition, not in some cold piece of software.
