Tarot for Beginners: How to Start Reading Tarot

Reading tarot is a journey with no real destination. You’re always learning, constantly growing, and always picking up something new right around the corner. But every trip, no matter how long, has to start somewhere.

Welcome to your first step on the trail!

In this guide, you will find everything you need to learn how to start reading tarot. You’ll learn to choose your first deck, prepare for readings, practice reading tarot cards, and much more. This is only the beginning, but it’s essential to building your confidence as a tarot reader.

Let’s get started!

Choose Your Tarot Deck

You need a tarot deck before you can truly delve into tarot reading. Reading books and consulting online sources is a great way to learn about tarot, but nothing compares to having the cards in front of you.

It’s time to get up close and personal with the tools of the trade.

Choose a tarot deck that speaks to you. Look through as many pictures of the artwork as possible. See if the imagery helps you discern the meanings intuitively. Find out what kind of guidebook comes with the deck, if any. Consider the deck’s theme and if it lends well to all kinds of readings.

Being drawn to a specific deck is more important than picking up something new or trendy.

Despite what you may have heard, you don’t have to wait for someone to gift you a tarot deck. It’s beautiful to buy cards for yourself (and, honestly, a lot more practical). There’s a much better chance you’ll end up with something you connect with if you go ahead and pick it out yourself.

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Best Tarot Decks for Beginners

As a novice, you need a deck that helps you connect what you see with what each card represents. The best decks for tarot beginners will always be the ones that follow traditional Rider Waite Smith imagery, cards that have keywords printed on them, or a combination of the two.

If you’re stuck on what deck to get, check out these fantastic tarot decks for beginners:

• Traditional Rider Waite Smith
• Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot
• Tarot for Kids by Theresa Reed
• Simplicity Tarot by Emilie Muniz
• Ethereal Visions Illuminated Tarot by Matt Hughes
• Everyday Tarot by Brigit Esselmont

You can choose any tarot deck you like as your first tarot deck. But while learning, try not to get anything too complicated or straightforward (avoid those pip decks at all costs). Those elaborate decks will still be there when you’re more familiar with the tarot.

Cleanse and Connect to Your Tarot Cards

Tarot cards are a spiritual tool and should always be regarded as such. They hold the energy of anyone that touches them and any tarot readings they are used for, so it’s essential to cleanse them regularly.

Some great ways to cleanse your tarot deck include crystals, incense, sunlight, moonlight, visualization, and sound. If you still feel stagnant energy in your readings, try putting the cards back in the correct order before cleansing them. This acts as a complete reset that gives you a blank slate and a fresh start.

Connecting to your tarot cards ensures you vibe with your deck when it comes time to read.

Get in tune with your tarot deck by reviewing every card and looking at the art, meditating with it, doing a deck interview spread, drawing daily cards, or sleeping with your deck near your bed. The best way to form a connection is to use your deck as much as possible.

You won’t feel a connection to every tarot deck you buy. Even if the art is your aesthetic, they might feel wrong when you shuffle them, or you may find it impossible to pick up on what they’re trying to tell you in a reading.

Don’t let it discourage you!

Not every deck is for every reader. If you give it the old college try and still feel disconnected, moving on to something else is better.

Prepare for Your Tarot Readings

There’s more to learning to read tarot than sitting down and laying out a few cards. You can shuffle the cards and see what pops out to gain clarity, but you usually want some structure to your readings. Prepping for reading gets you into the right headspace and makes the task much more accessible.

Before you begin, take a few minutes to prepare by creating a space, picking a question to ask, and deciding whether or not to use a tarot spread for your reading.

Create a Sacred Space

Sacred space means different things to different people.

Sitting on your bed in pajamas is just as valid as a natural wooden table covered in a silk tarot cloth surrounded by crystals and candles. For one person, a sacred space is sitting out in nature. To another, standing at their kitchen counter does just as well.

Creating space within yourself is far more important than the place you’re laying the cards.

Take the time before readings to sit with yourself. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and center your energy. Hold the deck you plan to use between your hands and open yourself up to anything it might convey during the reading.

By allowing yourself this space, you can better connect with your intuition and read from a place of peace.

Decide What Question to Ask the Tarot

Do you want to know what’s set for the upcoming month? Are you curious about what’s running through their mind when they see you? Are you trying to learn more about your spirit guides?

Whether it’s a simple yes or no question or in desperate need of guidance in a tense situation, decide what you will ask before you pick up your cards. Knowing your question ahead of time allows you to focus on it entirely while you’re shuffling.

If you’re unsure what to ask, try asking your tarot deck what you should ask. Take direction from whatever card you get and see where it leads you.

Choose a Tarot Spread

Lastly, pick your tarot spread if you want one (no, you don’t have to use one).

Tarot spreads range from the ever-popular three-card spreads to a full Celtic Cross. They cover every topic you can imagine and take the stress out of tarot readings by providing direction.

But how do you choose a tarot spread?

Once you know what to ask the cards, search for spreads in that area. You will find love spreads, career spreads, and spiritual spreads galore. Spreads for moon phases, birthdays, and holidays give you more reasons to pull out your deck for some advice.

Make sure to save all your favorite tarot spreads for later. You never know when you’ll need some insight into how that cute person you locked eyes with on your morning coffee run feels about you.

Learn How to Handle Tarot Cards

Learning how to start reading tarot is very hands-on. To do a tarot reading, shuffle a standard-sized tarot deck much more extensive than your usual playing cards. Figuring out how to pull and lay cards on the table can also feel intimidating.

As with most things, handling tarot cards takes practice. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it.

While you’ll find your style of shuffling and pulling tarot cards somewhere along the way, exploring your options is a good idea. You never know what combination will end up clicking.

How to Shuffle Tarot Cards

Shuffling can get tiring after a while, especially during more extended readings. Finding what’s most comfortable for your hands in the long term. Here are a few different methods you can try.

• Overhand Shuffle – Hold the whole deck in one hand and use your other hand to pull cards from the bottom of the deck. Drop the cards back on top of the deck in sections.
• Scramble Shuffle – Spread the entire deck on the table, mixing them chaotically before bringing them back together.
• Cut the Cards – Cut the deck into three sections on the table. Put the sections back together with the center pile on top.
• Riffle Shuffle – Halve the deck and fan the ends of the cards together until they interlace. Push the deck back together.

You can even combine shuffling methods! Try a riffle or scramble shuffle to start and switch to an overhand shuffle. Or go from an overhand shuffle to cutting the cards before you pull.

How to Pull Tarot Cards

How you pull cards is just as personal as how you shuffle them. There’s more than one way to pull cards for your readings. It’s all about what feels most natural to you. Try these methods of removing cards and see what you think.

• Pull cards from the top of the deck when you feel you’re done shuffling.
• Cut the deck in half, put the bottom on top, and pull from the new top of the deck.
• Cut the deck into three piles and pull from the center pile.
• Fan the deck across the table, and use your intuition to pull the cards.
• Use your intuition to pull cards from the middle of the deck while it’s in your hand.
• Wait for cards to jump out of the deck while you’re shuffling.

Different ways of pulling cards work better, with some shuffling than others. For example, an overhand shuffle is the only way to get jumper cards.

How to Lay Tarot Cards

Laying tarot cards is one of the most specific parts of the process. How you do it depends on whether or not you’re using a tarot spread.

If you are using a spread, they usually come in picture form. It will show you where each tarot card needs to go and in what order to lay them down. Please keep them in the same layout as the spread you’re using so you know what each card represents in the context of the entire spread.

Without a spread, you’re free to do whatever you want with your cards.

Remember that tarot cards are pulled in a particular order for a reason. Lay them down in a line from left to right as you pull them so you can see the story they’re trying to tell.

Interpret the Tarot Cards Meanings

You’ve shuffled the cards, pulled how many you need, and laid them all on the table before you. Now it’s time to figure out what they mean so you get an answer to your question.

When you first learn how to start reading tarot, it’s only natural to want to reach for a book every time you do a reading. There’s nothing wrong with using a guide to help you figure out the meaning of a card, but it’s essential not to depend entirely on those keywords.

Your connection to the cards will form many of the meanings you use to read tarot in the future.

Before reaching for a book, use your intuition to glean any meaning from the cards you pulled. Look at the artwork and see what comes to mind when you’re not trying. Write these words down in your tarot journal to compare them to the meanings you look up later.

Don’t be afraid to be wrong. What you see in the cards is just as important as what’s written in any book, if not more.

Practice Reading Tarot with These Exercises

Hot take: you don’t have to know all the meanings of every tarot card before you learn how to start reading tarot.

Sitting down and reading tarot is one of the best ways to learn the meanings. That practice will help you build confidence as a tarot reader much more than memorizing every meaning of a book’s major and minor arcana cards.

Along with formal readings, you can do some of these fun beginner exercises to flex your intuitive muscles.

Intuition Relay

Get out your deck and shuffle up the cards. Set it in front of you and start pulling cards from the top one at a time and laying them face up. Please write down the name of the card and the first thing that comes to your mind when you look at it.

Do it fast!

Move on to the next card and the next until you get through the entire deck. Compare your notes to a keyword list and see which cards you nailed and which stumps you.

Storytelling

Lay all major arcana cards out in order, starting with the fool. Tell the story that runs through the cards to your ability. Make it as straightforward or as detailed as you want.

This exercise works with the minor arcana cards as well. Go one suit at a time and find a story from ace to ten in the cards.

Try pulling three to five cards randomly from your deck on a smaller scale. Craft a story around what’s happening from card to card to get a feel for how they fit together to form one narrative.

Personal Association

Draw on experiences from your life to help you connect with each tarot card. Choose one to focus on, look up what it means, and write down something you went through in the past that embodies the same energy.

Personal association is a great way to remember court cards. Match each page, knight, queen, and king, to someone you’ve known. If you can’t think of anyone, try connecting them with characters from movies, tv shows, or books.

Daily Drawings

Pull a tarot card for your day every morning. Please spend a few minutes thinking about what it might mean for your day ahead. You can even take it with you while you run errands or work.

Come back to the card you pulled and look at it again. Point out things that happened throughout the day that connect to its meaning. You might be surprised by how the energy of certain cards presents itself in everyday life.

Positive and Negative

Go through the deck and pull out all the cards you consider the most negative.

First, write down what each card means at face value and what makes it so wrong in your mind. Then, take some time to find the hope spots in these cards. How can they be seen in a positive light? This will give you a new perspective on a lot of cards.

Do the same thing for the most positive cards in the deck. Try to find ways they could be read as unfavorable.

Written Readings

When you do readings for yourself, write everything down. It’s much better than sitting and staring at the cards you pulled. Writing out readings lets you get your thoughts out so you don’t miss anything. You can look back at them and see how much you’ve grown as a tarot reader.

Get Readings from Other Tarot Readers

As a beginner, other tarot readers are one of your best resources.

Nothing beats the experience of reading tarot for several years. You can learn so much simply by watching other people interpret the cards. It’s a great way to see things from a perspective you hadn’t considered before and to add new meanings to your arsenal. When you first learn how to start reading tarot, give yourself the gift of observation.

Whether you buy a personal tarot reading from someone or watch pick-a-card readings on YouTube, allow yourself to experience other readers.

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