Where it comes from. A. E. Waite gave this method in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), taking it from an older French one, the Oracles of Julia Orsini. He meant it for the general course of things, "when no definite question is asked", so there is no question here.
How the cards are laid. The pack is shuffled with some cards turned upside down, and you cut it. Forty-two cards are dealt into packets, gathered into piles and shuffled again, to make six rows of seven.
One story, in six parts. The rows are read one after another, each from card 1 at the right. Waite gives the rows no meanings of his own; on this site each row stands for one part of the matter:
Reading the cards. Read each card in the light of the cards beside it. The trumps (marked in gold) are the strong forces; a card upside down ("reversed") has its own meaning, which Waite gives too.
The card for you. One more card stands for you: the Magician for a man, the High Priestess for a woman, as Waite gives it. It is not read as part of the story.
Then. Your reading goes one row at a time, then the whole story. If something stays unclear, the thirty-five cards left over make a Next Reading.
What this is. Waite's continuation of the first reading: when something stays unclear, the thirty-five cards left over are shuffled again, cut, and dealt into six rows of 7, 6, 5, 4, 2 and 11 cards.
Each row answers one part of the matter. They come one at a time, from the top, each read from the left:
A card's place within its row has no meaning of its own: read the row's cards together, in the light of what it stands for. The fifth softens the hard cards before it; the sixth is read alongside the others to explain them. After the sixth comes the whole story.