What Are Tarot Cards? A Clear Beginner’s Guide

Seventy-eight cards wait inside the box. Some show recognisable human situations: a traveller stepping forward, a figure standing beneath a starry sky, a tower struck by sudden change, a quiet hermit carrying a lantern. Others appear simpler at first glance: cups, swords, wands and coins arranged in patterns or gathered into small scenes.

The images invite interpretation almost immediately. Yet a beginner may still hesitate. Must every card be memorised before the deck can be used? Does drawing Death predict a literal death? Is tarot a historical system, a spiritual practice, a psychological exercise or simply an old card game that acquired new meanings over time?

The honest answer is that tarot has been more than one thing.

It began as a card game in Renaissance Italy. Over later centuries, it became associated with divination, occult philosophy, visual symbolism and personal reflection. Today, people approach it in many different ways. Some use tarot within a spiritual practice. Some read cards professionally. Some enjoy the artwork and history. Others use a deck as a structured way to slow down and think about a question from a less familiar angle.

This guide begins with a calmer question: what are tarot cards, and what does a beginner genuinely need to know?

Tarot is most useful when it opens a question, not when it pretends to close every uncertainty.

What is a tarot deck?

A standard tarot deck contains 78 cards. The Victoria and Albert Museum divides these into 22 triumph cards, commonly called the Major Arcana, and 56 pip cards, commonly called the Minor Arcana.

The Major Arcana contains some of the best-known tarot images: The Fool, The Magician, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Death, The Tower, The Moon, The Sun and The World. These cards tend to depict large themes, turning points and archetypal situations.

The Minor Arcana is organised into four suits:

• Cups
• Swords
• Wands, also called batons or staffs in some decks
• Coins, often called pentacles in modern decks

Each suit contains numbered cards from Ace to Ten and four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. Some historical packs use different names or variations, but the overall structure remains recognisable.

In modern symbolic reading, Cups are often associated with emotions and relationships; Swords with thought, tension and communication; Wands with action, creativity and momentum; and Coins or Pentacles with material life, work, resources and the body. These associations are useful, but they should not be treated as rigid laws. Different decks and traditions give the imagery slightly different accents.

Tarot did not begin as a fortune-telling system

The historical beginning of tarot is less mysterious than many popular claims suggest.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that the earliest references to tarot date to the 1440s and 1450s and are centred around northern and central Italian cities including Venice, Milan, Florence and Urbino. The cards were first known as trionfi, or triumph cards, and were used in a trick-taking game.

The original structure included the familiar Italian suits of Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins. To these were added a sequence of trump cards and the Fool. In the hands of wealthy patrons, some early decks became luxury objects: hand-painted and gilded cards intended not merely for play, but for display and pleasure.

The V&A holds rare fifteenth-century Italian examples, including cards depicting the Star, the Knave of Coins, Death and the Ace of Cups. Their imagery belongs to the visual world of Renaissance courts. The pictures contain allegory, social hierarchy, moral themes and symbols that players of the period would have recognised.

This history matters because tarot is sometimes presented as though it emerged fully formed from a single secret tradition. The surviving evidence tells a more interesting story. Tarot developed through play, art, printing, commerce and reinterpretation. Its meanings did not arrive all at once. They accumulated.

When did tarot become associated with divination?

Tarot began to acquire a stronger association with fortune-telling in the late eighteenth century.

The V&A identifies Etteilla, born Jean-Baptiste Alliette, as an important figure in this transition. He had already worked with cartomancy, the practice of interpreting ordinary playing cards. In the 1770s and 1780s, tarot became increasingly connected with divination and with speculative claims about ancient Egyptian origins.

Those Egyptian-origin claims are not supported by historical evidence, but they had a lasting influence. During the nineteenth century, occult writers added further correspondences involving numerology, Kabbalah, astrology and ceremonial magic. Tarot became not just a game or parlour curiosity, but a symbolic system capable of carrying many layers of interpretation.

This does not mean that every modern reader must adopt every later correspondence. It simply explains why tarot decks now feel so dense with associations. A single card may contain a Renaissance image, a nineteenth-century occult interpretation, an artistic reinvention and a reader’s personal response all at once.

The Major Arcana and the larger questions

The 22 cards of the Major Arcana are the images most people recognise when they first encounter tarot. They feel dramatic because they often depict moments when ordinary life seems to open into a larger question.

The Fool stands at the beginning of a journey. The Hermit withdraws with a lantern. Justice asks about balance and consequence. The Hanged Man suggests pause and altered perspective. Death marks an ending or transformation. The Tower confronts instability. The Star offers a quieter form of hope. The Moon belongs to uncertainty, imagination and the difficulty of seeing clearly at night.

These are not fixed predictions. Drawing The Tower does not guarantee a disaster. Drawing The Lovers does not automatically predict romance. Drawing Death does not ordinarily mean literal death.

The cards are more useful when read as images that invite questions:

• What is changing?
• Where am I resisting an ending?
• What am I idealising?
• What needs a more honest boundary?
• What can only be understood after a pause?

A card becomes less frightening when it is treated as a prompt rather than a sentence.

The Minor Arcana and the texture of everyday life

The Minor Arcana is sometimes underestimated because its cards can appear less theatrical. Yet these 56 cards give tarot much of its practical depth.

The numbered cards and court cards often speak to recognisable experiences: a difficult conversation, the pressure of too many responsibilities, the satisfaction of steady work, the need to leave something behind, a moment of generosity, a period of indecision or the temptation to act too quickly.

The Minor Arcana brings the large themes of the Major Arcana down to the scale of ordinary life.

A simple way to begin is to think of the four suits as four areas of attention:

The court cards add another layer. They may be read as people, roles, attitudes or aspects of the reader’s own behaviour. A Knight can suggest movement or intensity. A Queen may suggest a mature relationship with the suit’s qualities. A Page can represent curiosity, a message or an early stage of learning.

There is no need to decide immediately which interpretation is correct. Tarot becomes clearer through context.

Why one modern deck became so influential

Many people beginning tarot today encounter the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, sometimes shortened to RWS.

The deck was created through the collaboration of Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith and was first published in London in the early twentieth century. The British Museum identifies Waite and Smith as fellow members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The V&A notes that the deck’s lasting influence came partly from its fully illustrated pip cards.

Earlier decks often presented many numbered Minor Arcana cards more simply: a certain number of cups, swords, batons or coins arranged on the card. Colman Smith created narrative scenes for the Minor Arcana. A beginner could look at an image and begin to sense tension, movement, hesitation or relief before consulting a guidebook.

Her illustrations helped shape the visual language of modern tarot. Many contemporary decks reinterpret scenes and symbols that became familiar through her work.

Although tarot’s roots are Italian rather than British, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck gives it an important place within a British journal of symbols and curious traditions. London became one of the settings in which the modern visual language of tarot took a particularly influential form.

Tarot de Marseille, Rider-Waite-Smith and modern decks

A beginner does not need to know every historical tradition before buying a first deck. It helps, however, to recognise three broad categories.

Tarot de Marseille

Tarot de Marseille refers to an influential family of European decks with a recognisable visual style. The British Museum holds a reproduction of a complete 78-card Tarot de Marseille pack based on a deck created by Nicolas Conver in 1760. These decks are historically important and visually beautiful, but their pip cards can require more study because they are not always illustrated with narrative scenes.

Rider-Waite-Smith

The Rider-Waite-Smith tradition is often accessible to beginners because its Minor Arcana cards are fully illustrated. Many modern guidebooks use its imagery as their starting point.

Contemporary decks

Modern tarot decks reinterpret the structure through many artistic languages: woodland imagery, folklore, botanical illustration, minimalist design, historical art, animals or contemporary life. Some remain close to Rider-Waite-Smith symbolism. Others depart from it substantially.

The best first deck is not necessarily the most dramatic one. It is a deck whose images you are willing to look at slowly.

Tarot cards and oracle cards are not the same thing

Tarot decks usually follow the recognisable 78-card structure: 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards divided into four suits.

Oracle decks are more flexible. They may contain almost any number of cards, and their creator decides the themes, structure and interpretive system. One oracle deck may focus on plants. Another may use affirmations, animals, seasons or abstract symbols.

Neither is automatically better. Tarot offers a shared structure with centuries of history and a large body of interpretation. Oracle cards offer freedom and simplicity. Some people use both.

For a beginner seeking a system that can be studied gradually, tarot has one major advantage: the deck continues to reveal patterns as familiarity grows.

Do tarot cards predict the future?

People have used tarot for divination for centuries. It would be misleading to write about the cards while pretending otherwise. Yet it would be equally misleading to promise certainty.

Tarot cannot guarantee an outcome. It should not replace evidence, professional advice or personal responsibility. A card spread is not a medical diagnosis, a legal opinion, an investment strategy or permission to ignore a difficult reality.

A calmer way to approach tarot is to treat it as a reflective practice. A spread introduces images into a question. Those images may expose assumptions, bring neglected concerns into view or suggest a different way of framing the situation.

This does not make tarot trivial. Reflection can be valuable. Symbolic thinking can reveal where language has become repetitive or where a decision has been reduced to an unhelpful binary. But the cards should expand judgement, not replace it.

A useful reading returns the decision to you with clearer edges. It does not take the decision away.

How to begin reading tarot cards

A beginner does not need a velvet cloth, an elaborate ritual or the ability to memorise 78 definitions before drawing a first card.

Begin simply:

1. Choose a deck you can look at with interest. For many beginners, a Rider-Waite-Smith-based deck is a practical starting point because the imagery is widely discussed and the Minor Arcana cards contain scenes.
2. Look before reading the guidebook. Notice the figures, weather, colours, direction of movement and emotional atmosphere.
3. Ask an open question. “What should I consider about this situation?” is usually more useful than demanding a yes-or-no answer.
4. Draw one card. A single-card reading is enough for the first weeks.
5. Write a few lines. Record the card, your first impression and one practical thought that follows from it.
6. Check the traditional meaning afterwards. Compare it with your initial response rather than replacing your response immediately.

The aim is not to become impressive quickly. The aim is to develop attention.

A simple one-card tarot practice

One card can be more useful than a complicated spread, especially when the question is still taking shape.

Try the following:

1. Take a quiet minute and name the subject clearly.
2. Ask: What deserves my attention here?
3. Shuffle the deck in any comfortable way.
4. Draw one card.
5. Describe what you see before interpreting it.
6. Write one sentence beginning: This card makes me consider…
7. End with one realistic next step, even if that step is simply to wait or gather more information.

This practice avoids the pressure to produce a dramatic answer. The card becomes a lens rather than a verdict.

A simple three-card spread for beginners

When one card feels too narrow, three cards offer enough structure without creating confusion.

This spread is deliberately modest. It does not ask the cards to dictate the future. It uses symbolism to make a present situation easier to examine.

Do you need to read reversed cards?

Some readers interpret a card differently when it appears upside down. These are called reversed cards or reversals. A reversal may suggest delay, blockage, inwardness, excess or a more difficult expression of the card’s theme.

Other readers do not use reversals at all. They find enough complexity in the upright card and its position within the spread.

A beginner may safely ignore reversals until the deck feels more familiar. There is no examination to pass and no single authorised method. It is better to read a smaller system thoughtfully than a larger system anxiously.

Cards that frighten beginners

Several cards acquire unnecessary fear because their imagery is dramatic.

A difficult card can still be uncomfortable. It should not be made falsely cheerful. But tarot is rarely improved by panic. The point is to read the image honestly and keep the interpretation proportionate.

Tarot, symbolism and the value of uncertainty

Tarot belongs naturally beside the other subjects explored in The Hawthorn Archive because it asks the same kind of attention.

As with British folklore, the most interesting approach lies between blind belief and automatic dismissal. As with the changing phases of the Moon, symbolism can provide a rhythm for reflection without becoming a set of commands issued from outside your life.

A tarot deck is a small archive of recurring human situations. People begin journeys. They become impatient. They hope, withdraw, overwork, grieve, build, hesitate, celebrate and begin again. The costumes change. The patterns remain recognisable.

The cards do not need to reveal a secret future in order to earn their place on the table. Their quieter gift is enough: they make familiar questions look unfamiliar for a moment, and sometimes that is how a better answer begins.

A deck of images, not a machine for certainty

Tarot cards have travelled a long way from the courts of Renaissance Italy. They have been used for play, collected as works of art, adapted by occult writers, reimagined by artists and drawn across countless kitchen tables during moments of uncertainty.

A beginner does not need to accept every claim ever made about them. Nor is there any need to strip the cards of mystery until they become lifeless.

Tarot works best when approached with curiosity, patience and proportion. Learn the structure. Notice the image. Ask a better question. Keep your judgement. Leave space for ambiguity.

The cards may not tell you exactly what will happen next.

They may help you notice what you are bringing with you when you take the next step.

Sources & further reading

• Victoria and Albert Museum – A History of Tarot Cards
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – The World in Play: Luxury Cards, 1430-1540
• British Museum – Complete Tarot de Marseille Pack
• British Museum – Etteilla Tarot Pack for Cartomancy
• British Museum – Arthur Edward Waite