How to Read Tarot Cards: A Beginner’s Guide

Tarot is a system of 78 archetypal images that serve as mirrors for the human experience. When you draw a card, you are not discovering the future. You are meeting a symbol, a piece of the collective human story, and asking what it has to say about the story you are living right now.

The tradition I work in, influenced by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and Jungian archetypal psychology, approaches tarot as a tool for self-knowledge. The cards do not have inherent power. Their power comes from the conversation between the image on the card and the interior landscape of the reader. This is why two people can draw the same card and experience entirely different readings, the card meets you where you are.

If this is your first encounter with tarot, I invite you to set aside any preconceptions about fortune-telling, dark arts, or supernatural prediction. What you will find instead is a beautifully illustrated system for asking better questions about your own life.

According to Arthur Edward Waite in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, tarot originated in 15th-century Northern Italy as a card game called tarocchi. The original decks were luxury items, hand-painted for wealthy families. It was not until the 18th century that French occultists, particularly Court de Gébelin and Éliphas Lévi, reinterpreted the cards as tools for divination and esoteric study. The archetype was always there; the framing shifted.

The deck most modern readers know, the Rider-Waite-Smith, was created in 1909 by Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Smith’s genius was illustrating every card in the Minor Arcana with a narrative scene rather than simple pip patterns. This made the deck intuitively readable, even for beginners, and established the symbolic language of nearly every modern deck that has followed. You can sit with this lineage daily through our Daily Tarot Card.

Since then, thousands of tarot decks have been created, each filtering the archetypal images through a different cultural, artistic, or spiritual lens. In the dream-logic Rachel Pollack describes in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, the symbols change; the underlying archetypes endure. What’s being revealed here is the same set of human stories, told in new dialects.

The 78-card tarot deck is divided into two sections. According to the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, the Major Arcana consists of 22 numbered cards (0 to XXI) representing major life themes and archetypal energies, what Joseph Campbell would recognize as the stages of the hero’s journey: The Fool’s passage through innocence, challenge, transformation, and integration. When a Major Arcana card appears in a reading, notice what you feel, the archetype suggests something significant is at work.

The Minor Arcana consists of 56 cards divided into four suits: Wands (fire, passion, action), Cups (water, emotion, relationships), Swords (air, thought, conflict), and Pentacles (earth, material world, body). Each suit runs from Ace through Ten, plus four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, and King. The four suits mirror the four elements that astrology also speaks in, which is why our zodiac signs guide can deepen tarot study unexpectedly.

Think of it this way: the Major Arcana describes the big themes of your life. The Minor Arcana mirrors the everyday texture, the small choices, feelings, and situations that make up your daily experience. A reading with mostly Minor Arcana cards suggests practical, addressable concerns. A reading heavy with Major Arcana, as Carl Jung might describe it, suggests the unconscious is moving and you are in a period of significant inner transformation.

Begin by choosing a question. The best tarot questions are open-ended: “What do I need to understand about this situation?” is better than “Will I get the job?” Tarot works best when you give it room to surprise you.

Shuffle the deck in whatever way feels natural, riffle shuffle, overhand shuffle, or simply mix the cards on a table. While shuffling, hold your question gently in mind. When you feel ready, cut the deck and draw your cards.

Place the cards in the spread positions (see below) and turn them over one at a time. For each card, notice three things before consulting any meanings: What is happening in the image? What feeling does it evoke? What, if anything, does it remind you of in your own life? Your first intuitive response is often the most accurate.

The One-Card Draw is the simplest and most underrated spread. Draw a single card each morning and sit with it throughout the day. Over time, this builds an intimate relationship with the deck and sharpens your intuitive reading skills far more effectively than complex spreads.

The Three-Card Spread (Past, Present, Future, or Situation, Challenge, Advice) is the workhorse of tarot. It is simple enough for beginners but nuanced enough for experienced readers. The relationship between the three cards often reveals more than any single card could.

The Celtic Cross is the most well-known complex spread, using ten cards to explore a situation in depth, the heart of the matter, crossing energies, root cause, recent past, near future, self-perception, environment, hopes and fears, and likely outcome. This spread is best attempted after you are comfortable with simpler layouts.

When a card appears upside-down (reversed), according to the long tarot tradition documented by Mary K. Greer in Tarot for Your Self, many readers interpret it as a blocked, internalized, or delayed version of the card’s upright meaning. The Empress reversed, for instance, might suggest creative blocks or difficulty with nurturing, not the opposite of nurturing, but its shadow side.

Not all readers use reversals, and you should feel free to choose what works for you. If you are just beginning, the archetype suggests starting without reversals to learn the upright meanings thoroughly first. Add reversals after you feel confident with the basic 78-card vocabulary. A simple three-card spread is often the gentlest way to practice both modes.

A third approach, which I use often myself, is to read reversed cards as an invitation to look inward. The upright card faces outward into the world; the reversed card faces inward toward the psyche, Jung’s shadow becoming legible. What is this archetype doing inside you that has not yet found expression?

Tarot reading is part knowledge and part intuition. The knowledge comes from studying the traditional meanings of the 78 cards and practicing with spreads. The intuition comes from paying attention to the quiet, non-verbal responses that arise when you look at a card.

Keep a tarot journal. After each reading, write down the cards you drew, your initial impressions, and the traditional meanings. Revisit your entries after a week or a month and notice which interpretations proved most resonant. Patterns will emerge, and your confidence will grow.

Finally, remember that tarot is a practice of compassion. Whether you are reading for yourself or for someone else, the cards are not judges. They are mirrors. They show what is, not what should be. Approach every reading with curiosity rather than anxiety, and the cards will meet you with remarkable honesty.