How to Choose Your First Tarot Deck

Choose a first tarot deck with three things: 78 fully illustrated cards in the Rider Waite Smith tradition, art you genuinely love looking at, and a guidebook in the box. That combination covers ninety percent of what matters. Everything else, including the superstition that someone must gift you the deck, is noise.

I say this as someone who owns more decks than I will admit in print, and who still reaches for a battered RWS-style deck when a reading really matters.

Scenic Imagery Comes First for Beginners

Your first deck needs a full scene on every card, including the number cards. This is the opinion I hold most firmly here, after watching it play out with student after student.

In the Rider Waite Smith tradition, the Five of Cups shows a figure in a black cloak grieving over three spilled cups while two full ones wait behind him. You can read that story off the picture before you have memorized a single keyword.

Many gorgeous indie decks use plain pip cards instead: just five cups, arranged prettily, meaning nothing to your eye yet. Those decks are wonderful later. I use them myself, and I even wrote a guide to reading pip cards without scenic imagery. But handing one to a beginner is like teaching someone to read with a book that has no pictures and half the letters missing. You will spend your first year flipping to the booklet for every single card, and most people quit somewhere in that year.

You do not need the original 1909 artwork, which some people find dated. Hundreds of modern decks keep the RWS structure with fresh art. The phrases to look for in a listing: "RWS based," "Rider Waite Smith tradition," or "78 cards, fully illustrated."

Then Let Your Eye Choose

Within that tradition, pick the art that pulls you in. You are going to look at these images thousands of times, and a deck you find beautiful is a deck you actually reach for on a tired Tuesday night. A deck you bought because a list said it was correct will sit in the drawer.

When a student tells me she keeps "forgetting" to practice, my first question is always whether she likes her deck. The answer is almost always no.

While your eye is choosing, let your hands have a vote too:

• Card size. Oversized decks photograph beautifully and shuffle miserably, especially in smaller hands. Standard size is kinder to beginners.
• Card stock. Flimsy stock bends and frays within months of real use. You want cards with some body to them.
• Readability. Very dark, very abstract, or very cluttered art is hard to interpret while you are learning. You should be able to tell what is happening in a scene at arm's length.

The Guidebook Question

Get a deck that comes with a real companion book, not just a folded slip of paper with one keyword per card. In your early months, that book is a steady hand, telling you what the creator intended and giving you somewhere to start when a card feels mute.

Two cautions, though. First, the booklet is a reference, not scripture. When your gut says a card means something different in this spread, your gut gets a seat at the table. Second, plan to outgrow it. If you are still looking up every card after a year, the problem is usually a pip deck or a practice that never got daily. My guide to building a daily tarot practice is built for exactly that transition.

No, It Does Not Have to Be a Gift

Someone will tell you, possibly in a very confident tone, that a true reader never buys her own deck: it must be gifted or the cards will not work. I want to retire this myth personally.

It is a charming piece of folklore with nothing underneath it. I bought my first deck myself, with my own money, and choosing it was part of the bond. Waiting passively for someone to hand you the right deck is the exact opposite of the energy you want to start a practice with. Tarot is full of these inherited rumors, and I debunked the worst of them in my tarot myths piece. Buy your own deck. Today, if you like.

The First Week With Your New Deck

When the box arrives, resist the urge to do a huge dramatic reading in the first hour. Spend the first week just getting acquainted:

1. Flip through all 78 cards in order, slowly. Notice which images snag your attention and which unsettle you. Both lists matter later.
2. Sort the deck into the Major Arcana and the four suits, so your hands learn the structure your head will rely on.
3. Shuffle it your own way, as much as you can. New decks are stiff and ordered. Shuffling is how a deck stops being the factory's and starts being yours.
4. Pull one card a day and simply describe what you see before you look anything up. Start, fittingly, wherever the deck wants: my students are forever amazed how often The Fool shows up in first-week pulls, and honestly, the card of beginnings turning up at the beginning is the deck introducing itself.

Lower the Stakes on Deck One

Almost every reader ends up with a small collection, each deck suited to a different mood or question. So release the pressure of choosing perfectly. You are hiring your first teacher, and the job description is short: clear illustrated scenes, art you love, a guidebook, decent card stock.

And if you want to feel what a reading sounds like while your deck is still in the mail, you can get a free three-card reading from me and study how the cards get woven into one answer.