A single card, drawn for one question
One card, for one question. The whole pack is shuffled and the top card taken.
One card leaves nowhere for the reading to wander. There is no neighbouring position to soften, redirect or repeat it; the card meets the question on its own.
A short reading is not necessarily a thin one. The same seventy-eight cards are shuffled in the same way; only the amount asked of the deck changes.
The full pack is shuffled by a simulated riffle — ten riffles, with cuts and turns between them — and the top card is taken.
Drawing one card for a question is common practice, but its earlier history remains uncertain.
No first publication has been identified for this layout
Tarot divination is documented from Etteilla onward, and Waite published the Celtic Cross, but the modern accounts consulted for these layouts repeat eighteenth- or nineteenth-century attributions without citing a book, date or page. Waite's two published methods do not include this layout. The position meanings here are editorial descriptions of what each place asks, not words attributed to an earlier author.