The Celtic Cross is a ten-card tarot spread: a cross of six cards around the matter itself, and a staff of four read upward from you to the outcome. A. E. Waite printed it in 1911 as 'An Ancient Celtic Method of Divination', and it is the most demanding layout in common use as well as the only one on this site with a citable origin. Six of the ten positions carry Waite's own spoken formulas - this covers him, this crosses him, this crowns him - and they are quoted here in his words because the book is public domain. The cross is drawn in its real geometry rather than as a list, because the positions mean what they mean by where they sit.
The draw is random, so your question does not change the cards. Waite's method keeps a question in view so that you hold it steady while reading the positions.
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The Celtic Cross is a ten-card spread: six cards forming a cross around the matter itself, and a staff of four read upward from the querent to the outcome. The positions below are Waite's, from Part III section 2 of The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), where the layout is printed under the title 'An Ancient Celtic Method of Divination'. Positions 1 to 6 carry his own spoken formulas; 7 to 10 he describes rather than names, so those are given in plain words here.
A good card in the crossing position is still an obstruction. The Star landing on position 2 means help or hope arriving in a way that gets in the way - at the wrong moment, or from the wrong person. Waite does not soften this and neither does the reading here.
The outcome is a conclusion, not a headline. Waite's own instruction is that the tenth card is read in the light of the nine beneath it, and that if it is not intelligible against them the spread is laid again from that card. A page that prints position 10 in large type and the rest in small type has inverted the method.
Read the cross before the staff. Positions 1 and 2 are taken together, because the second is laid across the first at a right angle and is defined by it; then 3 and 4, the aim above and the foundation below; then 5 and 6, the influence passing out and the one coming in. Only after those six does the staff begin. Positions 7 to 10 run upward from you, to the people around the matter, to what you hope and fear, to what will come.
Position 10 is read last and never alone. Waite's instruction is explicit: the tenth card is interpreted in the light of the nine beneath it, and if it is not intelligible against them, the spread is laid again with that card as the significator of a fresh reading. Two practical consequences follow. A card in position 2 is an obstruction whatever its usual sense, and cards 5 and 6 sit left and right by this app's convention rather than by Waite's, because he makes their sides depend on the way the significator's figure faces and this deck ships no artwork to face anywhere.
Waite chooses one by the querent's sex and complexion, using a table that runs from very fair to very dark. That is a nineteenth-century racial typology with a technique's name on it, so this app refuses it and records the refusal. Nothing in the spread depends on it - the ten cards carry the reading on their own.
The six short formulas on positions 1 to 6 are, and they are shown as quotations with the citation attached. Positions 7 to 10 are described rather than named in his text, so those carry our prose instead - inventing a formula in his voice would be a fabricated citation.
Yes, and the page says so above the cards. Every press of the button is a fresh shuffle of all 78. If you want a ten-card reading that stays the same when you return to it, the personalised report seeds the identical spread on your own details.
By this app's stated convention, not by Waite's rule. He puts card 5 behind the querent and card 6 before them, and which physical side each goes on depends on the way the significator's figure is facing. This deck ships no card artwork, so there is no figure and no facing; the layout therefore fixes 5 on the left and 6 on the right and says that it is doing so, rather than presenting an arbitrary choice as the source's.
For educational purposes. Astrological interpretations are traditional and not a substitute for professional advice.