Choosing your first deck
If you are unsure, start with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck or one based closely on it. Its number cards show full scenes rather than simple patterns of cups or swords, so you can read the picture even before you know the meaning. Most books, courses and websites, including this one, describe the cards in its terms.
That said, the best deck is one you enjoy looking at. If a different style draws you in, use it; the structure of the deck is the same. You do not need to be given your first deck as a gift, and you do not need a special cloth or box, though many people like one.
You can also begin without a physical deck. Readings here are shuffled and dealt on screen, with several historical decks to choose from, and if you do have cards you can enter the ones you drew into any spread.
How the 78 cards are organised
A tarot deck has two parts. The Major Arcana are 22 named cards numbered 0 to 21, from The Fool to The World. They deal with large themes and turning points: beginnings, choices, endings, hope, completion. When several appear in a reading, it often suggests the question touches something bigger than the day-to-day.
The Minor Arcana are 56 cards in four suits, like a deck of playing cards with one extra court card in each suit. They describe the ordinary texture of life: work, feelings, conversations, money, effort.
- Wands: fire, energy, ambition, creativity and drive.
- Cups: water, feelings, relationships and intuition.
- Swords: air, thought, words, conflict and decisions.
- Pentacles: earth, money, work, the body and practical matters.
Numbers and court cards
Each suit runs from Ace to Ten, and the numbers follow a rough story. Aces are a seed or an opening. Twos are choice or balance, Threes early growth, Fours stability or standing still. Fives bring difficulty, Sixes recovery or exchange, Sevens a test, Eights movement or effort, Nines a near-completion, and Tens the full cycle, sometimes too full.
Put a number together with a suit and you can often guess a card before you look it up. The Five of Cups is difficulty in feelings: loss or regret. The Eight of Pentacles is effort in practical matters: steady, skilled work. This is why learning the structure saves so much memorising.
Each suit also has four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. They can describe people, including you, or ways of acting. Pages are curious and learning, Knights are in motion and sometimes overdo it, Queens hold the suit's quality inwardly and with care, and Kings direct it outwardly with authority. None of them needs to be read by age or gender.
Your first readings
Start with one card a day. Draw it in the morning, look at the picture, and ask what it might have to say about the day ahead. In the evening, look again and notice whether anything connected. This small habit teaches more than an afternoon with a book.
When one card feels comfortable, move to three: past, present and future, or situation, action and outcome. Three cards are enough to start seeing how cards affect each other without becoming overwhelming. Leave the ten-card Celtic Cross until three-card readings feel natural.
Decide early whether to read reversed cards. Reading everything upright is a perfectly good way to start, and you can switch reversals on or off in your account settings whenever you like.
A learning plan that works
Learning tarot goes best in small, regular steps. Here is a plan using what the site offers, at your own pace.
- Weeks one and two: work through the first unit of the lessons, Foundations, which covers how tarot works, reading a single card and reversals. Each lesson ends with a short quiz.
- Alongside the lessons, spend ten minutes a day on the flashcards. They use spaced repetition: a handful of new cards each session, and cards you know come back less often while those you miss return sooner.
- Weeks three to five: the Major Arcana unit, which follows the trumps as one journey from The Fool to The World. Keep drawing a card of the day.
- Weeks six to eight: the Minor Arcana unit, covering suits and elements, numbers and court cards. This is where the structure above really pays off.
- Then the final unit on reading a spread, and practice readings, where you write what each card says in its position and then compare your words with the written reading, marking each card caught, partly or missed.
Habits that help you grow
- Look before you look it up: describe the picture in your own words first.
- Keep a simple record of your readings and read old ones back now and then.
- Learn a few cards well rather than all 78 badly. Meanings deepen with use.
- Use the card library when you are stuck, but treat written meanings as a starting point, not the final word.
- Be patient with yourself. Most readers take months to feel at ease, and that is normal.