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How to read tarot cards: a beginner's guide
Reading tarot is simpler than it looks from the outside and harder than it looks from the inside. The whole craft is this: you ask a question, you lay a few cards down in positions that each mean something, and you read what the cards say in those positions as one sentence about your situation. Everything else is practice.
This page walks through one reading from start to finish with the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, the one drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909 and the one most other decks are based on. If your deck is different, the names and pictures vary; the method does not.
Know what the deck is
A tarot deck has 78 cards in two groups. The 22 Major Arcana, numbered 0 to XXI from the Fool to the World, are the big cards: turning points, lessons, the forces that shape a life. The 56 Minor Arcana come in four suits of fourteen, Ace to Ten and then Page, Knight, Queen and King, and describe everyday life in its four departments: Wands for energy and work, Cups for feeling and relationships, Swords for thought and conflict, Pentacles for money, body and the material world.
You do not need to memorise 78 meanings before you start. Learn what the suits are about, learn what the numbers roughly do (Aces begin, Fives struggle, Tens complete), and look the rest up. Every card on this site has a page, and looking cards up is how every reader learned.
Ask a question worth answering
The quality of a reading is set before a card is turned. “Will he text me?” gives the cards nothing to work with and gives you nothing you can act on. “What do I need to understand about this relationship?” gives both. Open questions, questions about you rather than about other people, and questions that ask for understanding rather than prediction all read better.
Say the question out loud or write it down before you shuffle. Half the point of a reading is being honest about what you are actually asking.
Shuffle, cut, and draw
Shuffle until it feels done, thinking about the question. There is no correct method: overhand, riffle, spreading the cards across the table and swirling them, all fine. Cut the deck once if you like, then draw from the top, or fan the deck and pull cards from wherever your hand goes.
Lay each card into its position as you draw it. Most readers lay them face down and turn them one at a time so that each card gets its own moment; some lay them face up and take in the whole picture first. Try both.
Use a spread
A spread is a map of positions, each with its own question. In a three-card spread the positions are past, present and future, so the card in the first slot is read as what led here, the second as what is happening now, the third as where it goes. The Celtic Cross has ten positions and can hold a whole situation. One card on its own is a spread too, and the best one to learn with.
The position changes what the card means. The Tower in a “what to let go of” position is a relief; in a “what is coming” position it is a warning. Read the position first, then the card.
Read each card
Look at the picture before you look anything up. What is the figure doing? Where are they looking? What is the weather? Pamela Colman Smith put the meaning in the scene, and the detail you notice first is usually the one that matters in your reading.
Then take the card's core meaning, upright or reversed, and put it into the position. “In my present, the Eight of Cups: I am walking away from something that is not enough.” One plain sentence per card. Resist the urge to list every keyword.
Put it into a story
A reading is not a list of card meanings, it is the sentence they make together. Look for the pattern: which suit dominates (a reading full of Swords is about thinking; full of Cups, about feeling), how many Majors there are (more than one or two means the matter is bigger than the question), and whether the cards agree with each other or argue.
Then say what the reading says, in a sentence or two, as if telling a friend. If you cannot, you are not done yet; go back to the card that is not fitting and ask what it is doing there. That card is usually the point.
Write it down
Keep a note of the date, the question, the cards and what you made of them. Readings make much more sense a month later, and a notebook teaches you your own deck faster than any book: you learn what the Five of Pentacles means for you by seeing where it turned up.
The table on this site does this part: lay the cards out as you drew them, and the link or the printed sheet is your record.
Questions
Can I read tarot for myself?
Yes, and most readers do. The one difficulty is honesty: it is easy to read the cards as saying what you hoped. Writing the question down first and reading the hard cards as carefully as the kind ones helps.
Do I need to be psychic to read tarot?
No. Tarot is a way of thinking about a situation with pictures, and anyone who can look at a picture and say what is happening in it can read. Intuition grows with practice; it is not a prerequisite.
How many cards should a beginner draw?
One. A daily single card teaches the deck faster than anything, because you meet one card at a time and watch it play out. Move to three cards when single cards feel easy, and to larger spreads when three do.
Does the deck have to be a gift?
No. That is a modern superstition. Buy the deck whose pictures you want to look at for an hour at a time.