Tarot for beginners is mostly a question of what to leave out. You need one deck, a notebook and about ten minutes a day, and you do not need to memorize seventy eight meanings before you are allowed to turn a card over, because the meanings arrive on their own once the cards are attached to real days.
The honest first month looks like this: one card with your first drink of the day, a sentence or two about it before bed, and a good deal of looking things up that tails off around week three. By the end of it most people have a favorite card, a card they dread, and the beginnings of a feel for the deck that no book could have given them.
What you actually need
Most guides to tarot for beginners open with a shopping list, and ours is short. It is one deck that you like looking at, and any deck drawn in the Rider Waite Smith pattern will do, because every guide you will ever read describes those scenes. Add a notebook that lives in one place and a pen that lives with it, and that is the whole kit.
You can leave the rest in the shop, the second deck, the cloth, the candle and the thick book with an entry for every card in every position, because all of it is a way of getting ready instead of starting. If you would rather not buy anything yet, the readings on this site deal a full deck for you and read the cards in plain words, and the daily card is the same one card habit with the paragraph already written, which is a fair way to find out whether you like this before you spend anything.
Why learning seventy eight meanings is the wrong job
The keyword list is where most beginners give up, and it was never the task. A card is a picture with a scene in it, and a scene can be read the way you read a photograph on a stranger’s fridge, by saying what is happening and how the people in it seem to feel about it. Meanings learned as words stay words. Meanings met on a Tuesday, attached to something that actually happened, stay for good.
The deck also does a lot of the remembering for you. Four suits, each about one part of life, ten numbers that run from the first stirring of a thing to its fullness, sixteen people, and twenty two big cards that carry the themes with weight. Once you know that much, which takes an afternoon, an unfamiliar card is never a blank. The page on the major and minor arcana lays the structure out.
The honest first month of tarot for beginners
Week one, every card looks like bad news. The Three of Swords turns up and you spend the morning braced for it, and what arrives is a meeting at eleven. Week two, you recognize five or six cards without looking, and you start to notice which ones you were hoping for while you shuffled. Week three, you miss a few days, which is the week the habit either dies or becomes yours, and it becomes yours if you pick it up on the Thursday without an apology.
By week four the notebook holds something no book contains, the record of which cards came in which week and what was going on, and that record is the beginning of reading; everything after it is more of the same, done with more patience.
The questions to leave until later
In the first month, do not ask the deck about your ex, your manager, or whether somebody feels the way you hope. The trouble is that a beginner reading a hard question for themselves will bend every picture toward the answer they came for, and then distrust the whole deck when the answer does not arrive. Keep the early questions small and about your own day, such as what am I not looking at this week, or what would make this afternoon easier. The page on how to ask a tarot question has the longer version, and it is worth reading before the first real question.
When you are ready for more than one card
You will know, because one card will start to feel like half an answer. Three cards is the next size and enough for almost every question a person actually has, provided you decide what each seat means before you turn anything over. Ten cards can wait a year.
Tonight, rather than someday
The deck you buy someday will not teach you anything, and neither will the one in the drawer, and that is most of what goes wrong with tarot for beginners. Leave the notebook open on the counter tonight, let tomorrow’s card be the first thing you look at instead of your phone, and if it makes no sense at breakfast, read it again at bedtime, when it usually does.
Questions people ask
Do I need to memorize all seventy eight tarot cards?
No, and trying to is the usual reason people stop. Learn the structure instead: four suits with one subject each, numbers that run from a beginning to a fullness, and twenty two major cards with the big themes. After that, an unfamiliar card is a picture you can describe, and the meaning tends to arrive on its own once the card has turned up on a real day.
Can I learn tarot without buying a deck?
For the first few weeks, yes. The readings on this site deal a full deck for you and describe each card in plain words, and the daily card gives you the one card habit with the paragraph already written. Buy a deck when you notice that you want to hold the cards yourself, because by then you will know which pictures you like looking at.
How many cards should a beginner draw?
One, for at least the first month, and that is not a beginner’s compromise. A single card has to be read on its own, with nothing beside it to soften the bits you would rather not see, and that is the skill. Move to three cards when one card starts to feel like half an answer, and leave the ten card layouts for a year from now.