How to Choose Your First Tarot Deck: A Beginner's Guide

Buying your first tarot deck is one of those decisions that feels much bigger than it is. There are thousands of decks in print, every one of them beautiful, and almost every list online tells you something different. The good news: the criteria that actually matter for a first deck are few, concrete, and easy to check before you buy.

This guide walks through what makes a deck genuinely easy to learn on, which decks meet those criteria, and how to choose between them based on how you plan to read.

What makes a tarot deck beginner-friendly

1. Fully illustrated minor arcana

This is the single most important factor, and the one most beginners don't know to look for. A tarot deck has 78 cards: 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana. In some decks the minor arcana are illustrated with full scenes, the way the majors are. In others - the older Marseille tradition, and decks descended from it - the minors are "pips": the Five of Cups is simply five cups arranged on the card, with no scene, no figures, no story.

Pip decks are wonderful, but they give a beginner nothing to read. You have to bring the meaning to the card from memory. A fully illustrated deck does the opposite: it hands you a picture with a mood, a gesture, a situation. You can describe what you see and be most of the way to a reading before you have memorized anything.

If you take one thing from this article: your first deck should have fully illustrated minor arcana.

2. Symbolism you can actually look up

Tarot has a shared visual vocabulary: cups for emotion, swords for thought and conflict, wands for drive and creativity, pentacles for money, body and material life. Decks that stay close to that vocabulary let you use any book, any course, any free resource online, because the symbols line up.

Highly personal or heavily reinterpreted decks are gorgeous, but they quietly cut you off from most learning material. That's a fine trade once you know the system. It is a hard trade on day one.

3. A guidebook that teaches rather than lists

Most decks ship with a small folded leaflet - a few keywords per card and nothing else. That is enough if you already read. If you don't yet, look for a deck packaged with a full book, or plan to buy one alongside your deck.

The difference is real. A leaflet tells you the Five of Cups means loss. A book tells you what the figure in the card is doing, why two cups are still standing behind him, and what that changes about how you read it next to other cards.

4. Card size, stock and finish

Standard tarot cards are noticeably larger than playing cards, and 78 of them make a thick stack. If you have small hands or any joint pain, a full-size deck can be genuinely awkward to shuffle. Smaller pocket editions solve that; larger editions solve the opposite problem, which is reading fine detail in low light.

Card stock matters too. Thin, glossy cards slide apart nicely but crease at the corners. Thicker matte stock lasts longer and is easier to handle but takes a while to break in.

5. Art you actually want to sit with

This sounds soft next to the other four, and it is the one that decides whether the deck gets used. You will look at these 78 images hundreds of times. If the palette irritates you or the figures feel cold, the deck stays in the drawer no matter how correct it is on paper.

Look at ten or fifteen cards from a deck before buying, not just the cover. Pay attention to the minor arcana specifically - that is 56 of the 78 cards, and it is what most preview images skip.

Five decks worth considering as a first deck

Rider-Waite Tarot

The Rider-Waite Tarot, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, is the deck that made fully illustrated minor arcana standard. Nearly every modern tarot book, course and app is written against its imagery, which means everything you learn transfers directly.

Best for: anyone who wants the shortest path from unboxing to reading, and anyone who plans to learn from books.

Worth knowing: the art is early twentieth century and reads as flat and old-fashioned to some people. That is a taste question, not a quality one - but it is the most common reason people trade it in.

Easy Tarot (deck and book)

Easy Tarot pairs Josephine Ellershaw's teaching book with Ciro Marchetti's digital artwork. The card imagery follows the Rider-Waite structure closely, so nothing you learn is wasted, but the illustrations are lush, modern and full colour.

Best for: beginners who want the traditional system without the traditional art style, and who want a real book rather than a leaflet.

Worth knowing: the set is bulkier than a deck alone, so it is more of a home deck than a bag deck.

Your First Tarot Reading Kit

The Your First Tarot Reading Kit bundles a deck with the supporting pieces most people end up buying separately in their first month anyway. If you would rather make one decision than five, this is the shortcut.

Best for: gifts, and for anyone who wants to sit down and read on the day it arrives.

Worth knowing: a bundle is only a saving if you would have wanted each piece. Check the contents against what you already own.

Robin Wood Tarot

The Robin Wood Tarot keeps Rider-Waite structure and symbolism but redraws it with warm colour, natural settings and expressive faces. It is one of the most consistently recommended alternatives for people who find the classic art cold.

Best for: readers drawn to nature imagery who still want full compatibility with standard tarot books.

Worth knowing: a few cards depart from Rider-Waite conventions, so occasionally a book description will not match what you are looking at.

Giant Rider-Waite Tarot

The Giant Rider-Waite Tarot is the same artwork at a much larger size. That sounds like a novelty until you use it: detail that disappears on a standard card becomes obvious, which is exactly what a beginner needs when the instruction is "describe what you see".

Best for: learning at a table, reading for two people at once, and anyone with low vision.

Worth knowing: it is difficult to shuffle in the hands and impractical to carry. Many readers keep it as a study deck alongside a standard one.

Quick comparison

Deck	Art style	Guidebook	Best for
Rider-Waite	Classic, 1909	Leaflet	Maximum compatibility with books and courses
Easy Tarot	Modern digital	Full book	Traditional system, contemporary art
Your First Tarot Reading Kit	See listing	Included	One-purchase starting point and gifts
Robin Wood	Warm, naturalistic	Leaflet	Nature imagery with familiar structure
Giant Rider-Waite	Classic, oversized	Leaflet	Table study, visibility, group reading

Decks to enjoy later, not first

None of these are bad decks. They are simply harder starting points, and knowing why saves you a frustrating month.

The Crowley Thoth Tarot and the Hermetic Tarot are dense with astrological, kabbalistic and alchemical correspondences. They reward serious study and they assume it. The Notoria: Tarot in Light and the Egyptian Tarot are stunning, but their symbolic systems diverge enough from the standard that most beginner resources will not line up.

Buy these as your second or third deck, when you have a system in your head to compare them against. That is when they get genuinely interesting.

How to actually decide

Answer three questions honestly.

How will you learn? If the answer is books, videos or apps, choose a Rider-Waite-based deck. If the answer is purely intuitive - looking at images and saying what comes up - you have far more freedom.

Where will you read? Kitchen table at home points to a larger deck. Bag, desk drawer or travel points to standard or pocket size.

Which images do you want to live with? Scroll the full card gallery, not the box. The deck you keep reaching for beats the deck that scores best on paper, every time.

Frequently asked questions

Does a tarot deck have to be given to you as a gift?

No. This is folklore, not a rule, and it stops a lot of people from ever starting. Buying your own deck is completely normal and arguably better, because you choose art you actually connect with.

How many cards should a beginner deck have?

A full tarot deck has 78 cards. Decks with other counts are usually oracle decks, which work differently - they have no fixed structure and no shared symbolic system. Both are worth owning eventually, but learn tarot on a 78-card deck.

Do I need to buy a book as well?

If your deck comes with a leaflet only, yes - or plan on using free online resources. A deck-and-book set like Easy Tarot removes that decision.

Can I start with an oracle deck instead?

You can, and many people do. Oracle decks such as the Goddess Oracle or the Earth Warriors Oracle are gentler and more open-ended because there is nothing to memorise. They just teach you a different skill than tarot does.

How long before I can read properly?

Most people can do a useful three-card reading within a week if they read daily. Fluency across all 78 cards takes months. Pull one card each morning and write a line about it - that habit outperforms any deck choice.

Where to start

If you want one recommendation: buy the Rider-Waite Tarot if you like the art, and Easy Tarot if you don't. Both teach you the same system, and the system is what you are really buying.

Browse the full range of tarot and oracle decks to see current card galleries and guidebook details before you decide.