GUIDE · FOUNDATIONS
How to read tarot cards
How to read tarot cards, step by step: shaping a question, shuffling, laying a spread, reading each card in its place, and learning all 78 without rote memory.
To read tarot cards, you hold a clear question in mind, shuffle the deck, and lay a few cards in a spread whose positions each carry a meaning. You then read every card in its position, look at how the cards relate to one another, and draw them together into one account of the situation. Tarot describes and reflects; it does not foretell.
You do not need to know all 78 cards before your first reading. You need a question, a deck, a little quiet, and the patience to look before you interpret.
What do you need to start reading tarot?
To start reading tarot you need a deck, a question and a few minutes without interruption. Almost every modern deck follows the same structure of 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana in four suits. Many follow the imagery of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in 1909 with art by Pamela Colman Smith, and its pictures make the Minor cards easier to read from sight than older decks with plain pips.
Choose a deck whose images you want to spend time with. A notebook helps too, because the readings you record become your best teacher.
How do you read tarot cards, step by step?
A tarot reading moves through eight steps, from the question to the record you keep afterwards. With practice they run together, but it is worth taking them one at a time at first.
Choose a question
A good tarot question is open and centred on you: “How can I approach this new role?” rather than “Will I get the job?” Open questions give the cards room to describe a situation; yes-or-no questions leave them little to say, and questions about another person’s private thoughts ask them to say what no one can know. The guide How to ask tarot a question, in this Library, goes further.
Settle and shuffle
Shuffling is the first part of the reading, not a delay before it. Hold the question loosely in mind while your hands work, and stop when your attention feels gathered. There is no correct number of shuffles. Some readers then cut the deck into piles and restack it, or fan the cards face down and choose.
Choose a spread
A spread is a fixed layout in which each position has a meaning, such as the past, the present or the advice. For your first readings, one card or three is plenty. A single card gives you one image to think about; three cards begin to tell a story. The guide Three-card tarot spreads, in this Library, sets out the common versions.
Lay the cards
Lay the cards face down in the order of the spread’s positions, then turn them over one at a time, left to right, keeping each the way up it fell. If a card lands upside down and you read reversals, leave it reversed; if you do not, turn it upright. Both ways of working are sound.
Look before you interpret
Before you reach for any meaning, spend a minute with the spread as a picture. Notice what draws your eye first, which card you would rather not look at, which figures face each other, which colours dominate. Count how many Major Arcana there are and which suit is most common. This first look often holds the truest part of the reading, and it is easily lost once you start reciting meanings.
Read each card in its position
Each card means something in its own right, and the position tells you which part of the question it speaks to. Ask what the card describes, then ask what that would mean in this place. A card of hard effort in the past position reads as groundwork already laid; the same card as advice reads as an invitation to begin that effort now.
Read the connections
The cards in a spread speak to one another, and the connections often say more than any single card. Look for shared suits or elements, repeated numbers, a story that runs from one card to the next, a figure in one card who seems to answer another. A spread is a sentence, not a list of words.
Draw it together and record it
Close the reading by putting it into one or two sentences of your own, then write them down with the date, the question and the cards. Come back to the entry a few weeks later, and you can see what the reading noticed, what you missed, and how your understanding of each card has grown.
A short example of a three-card reading
Suppose you ask “How can I approach this new role?” and lay a past, present, future spread. The Eight of Pentacles falls in the past, the Two of Wands in the present, and the Three of Wands in the future.
The Eight of Pentacles in the past describes careful practice: skill built one piece at a time. The Two of Wands in the present stands for ambition and planning, a wider horizon and the wish to build something of your own. The Three of Wands, looking forward, points toward effort sent out into the world and early results, with others’ support as plans grow.
Now the connections. There are no Major Arcana, which suggests the matter is largely in your own hands. Two Wands sit side by side, so Fire leads: drive and initiative are the strongest current. The numbers climb from Two to Three, the early stages of a cycle, which fits a role not yet begun. Read together, the spread might say: the groundwork is done, and the present asks you to plan boldly and let others see what you intend. That is a reflection to test against your own sense of things, not a forecast.
How do you learn the 78 tarot cards?
You learn the 78 tarot cards fastest by learning the structure of the deck, not by memorising 78 separate meanings. Four pieces of structure carry most of the weight.
- The Major Arcana. Twenty-two cards, numbered 0 to XXI, that describe the large movements of a life. Read in order, they form a sequence often called the Fool’s journey, from the Fool at the threshold to the World at completion. The guide The 78 cards: Major and Minor Arcana, in this Library, gives each one a line.
- The four suits and their elements. Wands belong to Fire (will, drive, creativity), Cups to Water (feeling and relationship), Swords to Air (thought, words and conflict), Pentacles to Earth (work, money, the body and the practical). Know the suit and you know the territory of a card before you know the card.
- The numbers. The numbered Minor cards run from Ace to Ten, and each number carries a stage: Aces begin, Fives disrupt, Tens complete. Combine a number with a suit and you can make a fair first reading of a card you have never studied. The Five of Cups is disruption in the world of feeling: a loss, a regret.
- The court cards. Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings show a suit’s quality as a person holds it, from the eager learner to the established authority. They often stand for people in your life, or for a side of you.
Beyond the structure, the images do the rest. Study one card a day: write what you see before you read any meaning, then compare. If the image suggests something the book does not, take the image seriously.
Common beginner mistakes in tarot
Most beginner mistakes in tarot come from reading too fast or asking the cards to do what they cannot. A few are worth watching for.
- Asking the same question again. Redrawing because you dislike the answer teaches you nothing. Sit with the first spread, and return to the question another day if it still matters.
- Reading every card in isolation. A string of single meanings is not a reading. The connections between cards are where the reading lives.
- Taking hard cards literally. Death rarely means a death, and the Tower rarely means disaster. Difficult cards usually describe a change, a strain or a truth arriving, and they are often the most useful cards in a spread.
- Reading every reversal as the opposite. A reversed card more often keeps its theme in a quieter, blocked or delayed form. The guide Reading reversed cards, in this Library, offers four questions to put to one.
- Treating the reading as a verdict. Tarot describes a situation and suggests ways to meet it. It does not settle medical, legal or financial questions, and it is no substitute for a professional where one is needed.
How TarotSeeker helps you learn to read
TarotSeeker, the reading companion for iPhone, is built for exactly this stage of learning. Shuffle your own physical deck and enter the cards as they fall, or let the app draw for you when your deck is not to hand. Before the reading, the app helps you shape your question, and suggests a reframe when a question is vague or asks for a simple yes or no.
Once the cards are down, you can write your own first read of the spread before the companion’s reading appears, so its interpretation never anchors yours. The companion then reads the connections between the cards: their elements, their numbers, their positions, the weight of the Major Arcana, the court cards. It shows the grounds for each connection, so you can see the reasoning and test it against what you noticed yourself. Comparing the two is one of the quickest ways to learn. You can ask follow-up questions, keep every reading in a journal, and draw a free card each day to study one card at a time.
Questions readers ask
Can beginners read tarot for themselves?
Beginners can read tarot for themselves, and most readers learn that way. Reading for yourself is good practice because you know the context of the question, so you can see quickly whether a card’s meaning fits. The main difficulty is honesty: it is tempting to read the cards as you hope. Writing your first impression down before you consult any meaning helps keep the reading truthful.
How long does it take to learn tarot?
Learning tarot well enough to give a useful reading takes most people a few weeks of regular practice, if they learn the structure of the deck rather than memorising each card. Knowing the four suits, the numbers from Ace to Ten and the Major Arcana sequence gives you a working reading of almost any card. Depth with the individual images comes over months and years of use.
Do you have to memorise all 78 tarot cards?
You do not have to memorise all 78 tarot cards to read them. The suit tells you a card’s territory, the number tells you its stage, and the image fills in the rest, so you can reason your way to a sound reading of an unfamiliar card. Most experienced readers still consult meanings now and then, and their readings are no weaker for it.
What is the easiest tarot spread for beginners?
The easiest tarot spread for beginners is a single card, followed by a three-card spread such as past, present and future. One card lets you study an image closely without distraction. Three cards add the most important skill of all, reading how cards relate, while staying small enough to hold in mind at once. Larger spreads such as the Celtic Cross are best left until three cards feel natural.
Should beginners read reversed tarot cards?
Beginners can read reversed tarot cards or leave them out, and both choices are sound. Reading upright only lets you learn 78 meanings before adding the reversed shading, and the surrounding cards can supply that shading anyway. If you do read reversals, treat them as the card’s energy blocked, quieter or delayed, rather than as its simple opposite.
