Tarot readings and birth charts: what is different?
Sortes offers tarot spreads and three chart systems: Ziwei, Western, and Vedic. What each one uses, what it shows, and when to use which.
Tarot answers a question
A tarot reading starts with your question and your story, and it draws cards for that moment. It is situational: the same question asked next month, with a different story, can give a different spread, because the situation has changed. Tarot is the right tool when you have a decision, a relationship, or a project in front of you and want a fresh angle on it.
Charts map a birth moment
A birth chart starts with a birth date, time, and place, and it calculates positions: planets in signs and houses for Western and Vedic charts, and stars in palaces for Ziwei charts. It is structural: the chart does not change with your question, because it describes the sky at one moment. Charts are the right tool when you want a longer view of patterns, strengths, and timing, rather than advice on one decision.
Sortes calculates charts for free. Interpretation costs one credit per system, with the first interpretation per system free. Ziwei, Western, and Vedic charts each use different methods, so their language differs, and the same birth moment can be described in three different vocabularies.
Privacy, in one paragraph
For charts, Sortes calculates positions and stores only those positions, signs, and palaces. It does not store your raw birth date, time, or place in the database, and it never sends raw birth data to an AI prompt. The AI interpretation receives only positions, signs, houses, and stars, plus your question or focus. For tarot, raw intake data is deleted after 30 days.
A chart calculation also uses a longitude correction, not a full timezone database: the correction is four minutes per degree between your longitude and the nearest fifteen-degree meridian, so a birth time near a double-hour or house boundary may fall on either side. That limit is shown on the charts page itself.
Which one to use
Use a tarot spread when you have a specific question and want to act soon. Use a chart when you want to understand a pattern that keeps repeating, or to compare how three traditions describe the same birth moment. Use both when a decision sits inside a longer pattern: the chart shows the pattern, and the spread shows the next step inside it.
Readings in Sortes are for reflection and perspective only. They are never guaranteed predictions, and they never replace professional advice.