Best tarot deck to learn with

Are you new to the tarot and wonder what is the best deck to start with? If you are then you are not alone. “What deck should I use?” is one of my most asked questions. The thing with tarot is that every tarot reader is different. There is no one glove that fits all and what I always recommend first is that you find a deck that works for you. If you are unsure what deck works for you though, keep reading. 

DECKS YOU ALREADY HAVE

You may have been gifted a deck of cards or seen a deck and fell in love with the images and purchased it. However, just because a deck is beautiful does not mean it is a good deck to study with (it doesn’t even mean it is a good deck to work with.)

If you start learning tarot and find you cannot connect with your cards of that it is harder then you thought, maybe you are using the “wrong” deck for now.  (Don’t worry, once you learn the tarot you can always return to that deck.) 

In short, there are two types of decks that many (not all) tarot readers learn with. 

Marseille type decks. 

The Marseille type decks are old tarot cards that many readers love and are still very popular in Europe. They consist of 78 cards, 22 are major cards and 56 are minor cards. The Marseille type decks do not have image scenes on the minor cards. The majors and the court cards have people and images but the minors do not. 6 of coins, is a card with 6 coins (and a few leaves dotted between) the 6 of swords is 6 swords intertwined. This non scenic trend is the same in each of the minor cards. 

Some tarot readers love the simplicity of just having the 6 coins, 6 swords etc on each card. It is like a blank canvas for many to input what they choose, what they learn or what their intuition tells them. 

Other tarot readers find it very hard to learn with these type of decks as the images on the cards do not tell a story or give much to the imagination that can open the intuition. 

Rider Waite type decks. 

The Waite type decks also have 78 cards that consist of the 22 majors and the 56 minors. The main difference in these type of decks is the images in the minor cards are very scenic. The 6 of coins you can see a man giving money to two very poor people who are in the street begging. In the 6 of swords you can see a man travelling on a boat. 

These scenes can make it easier for readers to immediately tell a story with the images. Many readers can connect instantly to a time when they had to “get away” or “take a holiday” they can connect to the man giving money to the poor as “giving and receiving,” “charity,” “being helped or being able to help others”. Just with the image many readers can already have a good idea of what the cards are saying. 

My suggestion is you find what type of deck works best for you but mostly I see my students find it easier to work with a Waite type deck and once they know and understand the card they can then switch to any deck, including the Marseille or any other pretty deck that they find. 

I hope you watch my video above and enjoy your tarot journey. If you are new to tarot why not download my free tarot guide for starters.