Choosing Your First Tarot Deck

Ignore the old superstition that your first deck must be a gift. The only real rule is to choose a deck you will actually pick up and use. Everything else is preference, and preference is allowed to lead.

If you want the gentlest start, choose a deck based on the Rider-Waite-Smith system. Its great innovation was illustrating every card, including the numbered minors, with a scene you can read at a glance. It is the lingua franca of modern tarot, so nearly every guidebook, app, and tutorial, this site included, maps onto it.

The other two cornerstones are worth knowing about. The Tarot de Marseille is older and reads its numbered cards from pattern and number rather than illustrated scenes, which many find harder to start with but rewarding later. The Thoth deck is dense with esoteric symbolism and a strong point of view. Both are wonderful; neither is the path of least resistance for a first deck.

The deck whose images you genuinely want to look at is the deck you will learn fastest, because you will reach for it. If a modern deck's art calls to you, start there. When you are ready to browse, the deck quiz and the cornerstone decks are a good place to begin.