Tarot Tuition

Choosing your first deck

Rider Waite Smith, Tarot de Marseille, Thoth?

There are so many decks to choose from. As well as the three main styles mentioned above, there are numerous themed decks, usually Rider Waite Smith based, featuring cats, dogs, dolphins, zombies, elves, fairies, gnomes, unicorns. The list is endless. catering to all and every taste!

The best deck to learn with is the deck that you are attracted to, the one that will make you want to use it and discover it's secrets.

However, I do recommend that you give the themed ones a miss, at least to start with.

The Rider Waite Smith deck is a good place to begin, as is a Tarot de Marseille. And yes, it is possible to read both types, and indeed the Thoth, but they are three quite different systems and so it really is best to learn them one at a time!

I like the art in the Thoth deck, and have used it to read for myself, purely intuitively, but suspect that I am doing it a disservice, by not studying it in depth! So, my areas of expertise are TdM (Tarot de Marseille) and Rider Waite Smith (RWS).

One of the obvious main differences between the TdM and RWS can be found in the pip cards. Both have the 22 Trumps or Major Arcana, 16 court cards, and 40 pip cards ascending from the Ace to 10 in the four suits. The RWS pip cards are illustrated with images conveying the meaning of the card, whereas the TdM shows the merely the number and the suit.

So, which is the easiest for a beginner? It is fair to say that most people, at least in the English-speaking countries, have begun their Tarot journey with the RWS deck. There are so many helpful books on this style of deck, and information readily available on the internet, that it is often recommended as a good deck to start with. As previously mentioned, the pictorial pips also make it more instantly accessible. But that’s not to say that it’s not possible to start with a TdM. What some may see as limitations in the non-illustrated pip decks, are to others the opposite, a sense of freedom from the occult symbolism of RWS, and a gateway to using their own intuition as to the meaning of any card. Both systems are valid and there is no right or wrong in what you choose. I was a RWS reader for many years, and I still use, enjoy, and appreciate my RWS based decks, but am now a complete convert to TdM decks, or perhaps more correctly historical decks.

Shop around online, look at some YouTube videos and take some time to choose your deck.

If you need any advice I'd be happy to help. I'm always keen to talk Tarot!

First Steps

So, you have bought your first deck and are ready to embark on your Tarot journey. There is often a small booklet enclosed with the cards, usually showing various spreads and giving basic meanings for the cards. Ignore this for now.

The best thing you can do, especially if you are completely new to Tarot, is take out all the cards, just look at them, enjoy the experience of holding them in your hands, and do not stress about memorising meanings from that little book!

The first thing to notice is that the 78 cards form distinct groups. There are 22 Trump (Major Arcana) cards, numbered from 0 The Fool to 21 The World. These are the ones that often feature in films...queue sinister music and the creepy looking fortune teller reveals "Death" or "the Tower or "The Hanged Man"... Then you will see that there are the number cards (the pips) going from Ace to 10, followed by the "Court" cards, Page, Knight, Queen and King. There are four sets of these pip and court cards, similar to the four suits in a deck of playing cards, but in Tarot they are called Cups, Swords, Batons (Wands) and Coins (Pentacles). These 56 cards are referred to as the Minor Arcana in the RWS system.

Play with your deck. Arrange the cards in the groups mentioned above, or form them into any other groups that may occur to you. Have fun with process of getting to know your cards.

There are many excellent books that can help you get started and these will depend on whether you decide to go for RWS, TdM or indeed the Thoth. For RWS, Joan Bunning's "Learning the Tarot" or Rachel Pollack's "The New Tarot Handbook" are very good as is anything by Mary Greer. For TdM I recommend "Marseille Tarot Revealed" by the Yoav Ben Dov to get you on your way. If you have chosen to begin with the Thoth then "Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot" by Lon Milo DuQuette will certainly help. It is a very personal choice as to what books are the best. These are just a few suggestions and there are many many more books out there!

I believe that you will get the most out of Tarot if you are prepared to do the work. Read all you can, absorb other people's ideas but ultimately you must make it your own. I read somewhere, and I cannot remember which book it was in, that it's not so much a case of what does a particular card mean, it's what does that card mean to YOU. When I started to learn I bought a journal and wrote the name of each card at the top of a page. I looked at each card in turn and wrote down what I thought it meant. My first impressions, what I could see in the card, how it made me feel. It's best to do this BEFORE looking at any books. Then I compared and added meanings from the books I was reading, so I had a wealth of possible interpretations. But that's just the beginning. Learning to read Tarot is like learning a language. It's not just memorising set meanings for 78 cards. But it's so worth the effort!