How to Read Tarot Cards for Beginners: 7 Simple Steps

To read tarot cards as a beginner, ask one open question, shuffle, and lay out one or three cards. Look at each picture and say what you see before you open a book. Then add the card's traditional meaning and link the cards into a short story about your question. That is a real reading, and you can do it tonight with any 78-card deck. Tarot readers say the cards speak most clearly when the question is honest and the picture gets to talk first.

Looking for a deck rather than a lesson? Our tarot card collection is where the decks live. This page teaches you to read them.

🔮 How do you read tarot cards? 7 simple steps

1. Settle in. Sit somewhere quiet with your deck. Take three slow breaths and let the day go quiet.
2. Ask an open question. Try "What do I need to understand about work this week?" A yes-or-no question like "Will I get the job?" gives a picture little to say.
3. Shuffle and cut. Shuffle until it feels finished. Then cut the deck into three piles and stack them back in any order.
4. Lay out your cards. Start with one card. When that feels easy, lay three in a row, left to right.
5. Read the picture first. Who is in the card? What are they doing? What is the weather like? Say it out loud.
6. Add the meaning. The suit tells you the subject and the number tells you the stage. Look up anything that still puzzles you in our tarot card meaning finder.
7. Tell the story and write it down. Join the cards into one or two sentences that answer your question. Note the date, the cards and that sentence in a journal.

A sample three-card reading

Say your question is "What do I need to know about starting my new job?" You lay three cards as the situation, what helps, what to let go.

• Ace of Wands (the situation). A hand holds a sprouting stick. A new start, full of drive.
• The Star (what helps). A woman pours water under a starry night sky. Hope, patience and a calm heart.
• Five of Cups (what to let go). A cloaked figure mourns three spilled cups while two still stand behind them. Old disappointment.

The story: this job is a real fresh start. Hope will carry you further than worry. And the last role that let you down is worth leaving behind, because two full cups are still waiting. Three cards, one clear message, and no book needed until the very end.

✨ What is in a tarot deck?

A standard tarot deck has 78 cards in two families. The 22 Major Arcana are the big picture cards, such as the Fool, the Lovers, Death and the Sun. Tradition reads them as the large chapters of a life. When one turns up, the theme is bigger than this week.

The other 56 cards are the Minor Arcana. They come in four suits of 14: Ace to Ten, then a Page, Knight, Queen and King. These are the everyday cards. Each suit is linked with an element and an area of life: Wands with fire and action, Cups with water and feelings, Swords with air and thoughts, Pentacles with earth and the material world.

So you never have to memorise 78 separate meanings. Read the suit for the subject and the number for the stage, and most of the deck explains itself.

Court cards are people or moods. A Page is curious and new. A Knight charges in. A Queen holds the suit with care, and a King holds it with authority. The Major Arcana carry their meaning in their pictures: the Fool steps towards a cliff edge with a small dog, and Death rides past a rising sun, an ending that clears the way. Once those feel familiar, our guide to planetary correspondences in tarot adds the next layer.

How many cards should a beginner pull?

Start with one. A single card a day teaches you the deck faster than anything else, because you meet each card on its own. Move to three cards when one feels easy. Three is the classic beginner spread: past, present, future, or mind, body, spirit.

Larger spreads add detail, not certainty. The famous Celtic Cross uses ten cards and is best saved for when the deck feels like old friends. When you are ready, our five tarot spreads for self-discovery take you from two cards to nine.

🌙 How do you shuffle tarot cards?

Any way that keeps the cards safe. Tarot cards are larger than playing cards, so most readers shuffle overhand: hold the deck in one hand and drop small packets into the other. You can also spread the cards face down on a table and swirl them with both palms. A brand-new deck is stiff for a week or two, so be gentle and skip the bridge-style riffle.

When do you stop? Readers say you stop when it feels done. Some knock once on the top of the deck to clear it, then cut into three piles. If a card jumps out while you shuffle, many readers treat it as part of the answer.

What do reversed tarot cards mean?

A reversed card lands upside down. In tarot tradition it keeps its upright meaning but softens, blocks or turns it inward. A reversed Sun is still the Sun, just behind a cloud. A reversed Ace of Cups can be a feeling you have not said out loud yet.

You can ignore reversals entirely while you learn. Turn every card upright for your first months. When you want them, swirl the cards on the table or turn half the deck around before you shuffle, and upside-down cards will start to appear naturally.

How do you read tarot card combinations?

Once you lay out three or more cards, look at the spread as a whole before you read each card. Four quick patterns tell you a lot:

• Lots of Major Arcana means a big life theme is moving.
• One suit taking over shows where the energy sits. Three Swords cards point to an overthinking week. Three Pentacles cards point to money or home.
• Repeated numbers echo each other. Two Aces are two fresh starts. Two Fives say the friction comes from more than one direction.
• Court cards often stand for people in your story, or the part of you that needs to show up.

Then let neighbouring cards colour each other. The Sun beside the Three of Cups is joy shared with friends. The Sun beside the Eight of Pentacles is pride in good, steady work. Same Sun, different story.

Can you read tarot cards for yourself?

Yes, and most readers begin that way. You already know the whole story, so every card has something real to land on. Two habits keep a self-reading clear. Write your question down before you shuffle. Then pull once and let the answer sit, even if you wish it said something else. Our spreads guide has a section on reading tarot for yourself with more ideas.

🕯️ Your first week with a tarot deck

You do not need to learn tarot all at once. Ten quiet minutes a day for a week gives you a firm start.

• Day 1: Go through the whole deck face up. Sort it into the Major Arcana and the four suits.
• Day 2: Pull one card in the morning. Describe the picture, then guess what it means before you check.
• Day 3: Lay out the Aces side by side and compare them. Repeat with the Tens.
• Day 4: Lay out the 16 court cards. Match each one to someone you know.
• Day 5: Pull one card at night and ask, "What did today teach me?"
• Day 6: Try your first three-card reading, using the seven steps above.
• Day 7: Read your journal back. Notice which cards keep visiting you.

Any notebook works as a tarot journal. Our tarot journaling guide has prompts if a blank page feels daunting.

💎 Which tarot deck should a beginner buy?

Choose a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, or one drawn in its style. Nearly every beginner book describes those pictures, so what you read matches what you see. Save the art deck for your second.

The Smith-Waite Centennial deck is a faithful copy of the 1909 pictures in Pamela Colman Smith's own soft colours. Llewellyn's Classic Tarot, pictured below, keeps the same scenes but redraws them in a sharper, more lifelike style. If you would rather start small, the Astral Gate Tarot deck and guidebook has all 78 cards and a booklet for a gentle price.

Still deciding between tarot and an oracle deck? Our guide to oracle cards vs tarot settles it, and our round-up of the best tarot decks for beginners compares six favourites.

Choosing a piece: tarot prices in New Zealand

Live shop prices, October 2026. Some of these are single copies, so they move quickly.

A first deck starts around NZ$16, and a classic Smith-Waite deck sits around NZ$50 to NZ$100. Everything posts from our Auckland shop, or you can turn the boxes over in your hands at Rivendell in Westfield Manukau.

🧿 Where did tarot come from?

Tarot began as a card game. The earliest records date to the 1440s and 1450s in northern Italy, in cities such as Milan, Venice and Florence. Players used four Italian suits of 14 cards, plus a Fool and 21 picture trumps, in a trick-taking game. Some of the oldest surviving cards were painted for the dukes of Milan, and one deck from about 1440 is now kept at Yale.

Fortune-telling came centuries later. In the 1770s a card reader called Etteilla made the first deck meant for divination. By the 1780s, writers had given the cards a mystical story, and occult interest bloomed through the 1800s. In 1861 the occultist Eliphas Levi coined the names Major and Minor Arcana.

Then, in 1909, came the deck most beginners learn on. The artist Pamela Colman Smith painted it under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite, and Rider printed it in London. It became the first widely published deck with a full scene on every Minor Arcana card, not just a row of cups or swords. That gift from Pamela Colman Smith is why you can read tarot from the pictures today.

☀️ How do you care for a tarot deck?

Tarot cards are printed card stock, so keep them dry and away from cups of tea. A pouch or the original box keeps the deck together and marks it as yours. Many readers also like to clear a deck between readings: knock once on the top, leave it in full moonlight on a windowsill, or rest a piece of clear quartz on it. Our guide to cleansing and charging crystals covers the same moonlight rituals.

Frequently asked questions

Can you teach yourself to read tarot cards?

Yes. Plenty of readers teach themselves with a deck, a guidebook and a notebook. Pull one card a day, describe the picture before you look anything up, and write a line about it. After a month of daily pulls, the cards start to feel like familiar faces, and their messages come more easily.

How long does it take to learn tarot?

You can do a real one-card reading on your first night. Learning the suit-and-number system takes about a week of short practice. Knowing all 78 cards by heart takes longer, and many readers say the deck keeps teaching them new things for years. That slow unfolding is part of the magic.

Does your first tarot deck have to be a gift?

No. Some readers love the old custom of being given a first deck, and it makes a beautiful present. But buying your own is just as traditional now. Choose the deck whose pictures you want to look at every day, because that is the deck you will learn from.

Do all tarot decks have 78 cards?

Nearly all of them: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. A few add extras. The Smith-Waite Centennial deck includes four bonus cards of Pamela Colman Smith's other art, and the Dreams of Gaia Tarot has 81 cards. A deck with far fewer cards and no suits is usually an oracle deck.

Is the Death card bad?

No. In tarot tradition Death is the card of endings and transformation, not a literal death. It often turns up when one chapter is closing so the next can begin. Readers welcome it as a clearing card, much like spring cleaning for the soul.

Sources

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards": the earliest records in northern Italy, the suits, the Fool and 21 trumps, and the trick-taking game.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, "A history of tarot cards": the 78-card structure, suits and elements, Etteilla, Levi and the 1909 deck.
• Yale Library: the Visconti di Modrone deck of about 1440 to 1445, and Pamela Colman Smith.
• U.S. Games Systems, Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot Deck: the 1909 reproduction and its four bonus cards.