It is probably preferable to acquire your own deck rather than receive one from someone else. A deck that you personally chose will be more meaningful to you. A deck you search for and discover will feel unique. Furthermore, nothing is worse than being forced to use a first deck you despise! As a result, I advise you to always get your own first deck.
In This Article...
Where can I Buy a Deck?
Unbelievably, Tarot decks may be found anywhere there are books. Tarot decks are also available anywhere there are crystals, healing oils, and witchcraft-related items. Consequently, there are two major ways to search for Tarot cards for sale.
Anywhere you can buy a book is the most frequent location where you can find a Tarot deck. Tarot card decks are available, for instance, on Amazon, Barns & Noble, WH Smith, Waterstones, and even eBay. The majority of these locations give you the option of shopping online or in person.
Visit your neighborhood magical store as an other alternative for purchasing a Tarot deck. Tarot decks are available for purchase at your local mind, body, and spirit store. If you’re not sure which location is the closest to you, search for “Local Psychic Shop” or “Mind, Body, Spirit stores near me” on Google and take it from there.
The primary retailers of Tarot decks in the UK, USA, and Australia are listed above. I therefore assume that you can buy decks from these locations, like Amazon or neighborhood witchy shops, pretty much anywhere in the world.
How Many Cards are in a Tarot Deck?
You must be aware of the number of cards in a Tarot deck in order to identify it as such. Your deck should contain 78 cards. As a general rule, your deck should contain 78 cards, although some decks may come with one or two additional cards that you can keep and play around with. A Tarot deck is not considered to exist if it lacks 78 cards.
Which Tarot Deck is Right for Me?
To be quite honest, you should purchase a Rider-Waite Tarot deck if you’re just starting off and have no idea what you’re doing (sometimes called a Rider Waite Smith Deck). It is acknowledged that this is the Tarot deck that is used the most frequently. It features 78 cards and will be available almost anywhere decks are sold.
The box of a typical Rider-Waite deck will be deep blue with gold accents. There are a variety of Rider-Waite decks available, but if you’re really unsure and concerned that you’ll buy the wrong one, opt for the one with the blue box and gold accents.
Which Tarot card should a newbie purchase?
It stands to reason that the Rider Waite Tarot Deck is a classic. You can’t go wrong here either, even though it’s not as attractive as the newest decks. It’s reasonably priced and ideal for beginners.
How can I choose the right tarot deck?
When Rachel True was eight years old, she came into contact with a deck of tarot cards for the first time. This is a language, and I can learn to speak it, she recalled thinking. So started the actress’s lifetime study of tarot, which culminated in the 2020 release of her own stunning deck, True Heart Intuitive Tarot (her face is on the Empress card, if you look closely).
Before purchasing a deck, psychic medium and tarot reader Sarah Potter advises looking at the artwork on websites like Aeclectic Tarot since it communicates the meaning of the cards. “It’s crucial to be able to relate to the imagery. Choose a deck that gives the appropriate mirror for you “she claims.
Tarot reader and astrologer Lexi Ferguson advises purchasing multiple decks if you’re undecided. “Eliminate any uncertainty. Choose one deck at a time from three, four, or five and observe your behavior “says Ferguson. “You don’t need to reflect about your life. It will feel like your deck at some point along the journey because you keep reaching for it.” Added trick? Tarot reader Michelle Tea advises considering a deck carefully before making a purchase. You’ll keep thinking about it, she explains, and that’s how you’ll know you really want it.
The stunning, top-rated tarot card decks that experts suggest for beginners are included below after we surveyed a variety of experts.
Can you interpret your own tarot cards?
It’s normal to be a little clumsy when you first start practicing the tarot. Tarot study is similar to learning a new languageit takes time to become proficient. But what happens if you no longer require the booklet and have intimate familiarity with the deck? Are you able to read yourself? No, except for a few rare instances. Simply put, it’s a horrible idea.
You see, the majority of us turn to astrology or tarot when we’re looking for clarity amid a period of ambiguity. In contrast to astrology, which is quite technical, our consciousness restricts our capacity to read tarot cards. Working with your personal interpretation of the cards, you are not constrained by short- and long-term cycles like the planets’ orbits. It might be tricky to go beyond your current circumstances while utilizing the tarot to better understand a trying scenario. Even if all the cards are spread out in front of you, putting them together requires such a broad perspective that it is all but impossible to fully understand the meaning of each card. Basically, any biases you already have will always be reflected in your tarot reading!
How do novices get started with tarot cards?
If you find this daunting, Howe advises you to take a deep breath and believe in your own initiative. “In order to see it less as “This holds all of these secret meanings that I have to do all this work to access” and more as “I know all the meanings; it’s just a matter of establishing the connections and being able to articulate them,” use language or knowledge that you already possess. She points out that the four elementsearth, water, fire, and airplay a significant role in the tarot, which is advantageous because the majority of people already have an understanding of the meanings of each element. ” If you do that, your viewpoint will be more personal, and you will be able to express yourself more freely.
Howe suggests the three-card draw and the Celtic Cross as the two fundamental spreads for beginning readers. In the former, three cards are chosen at random from the deck to symbolize the subject’s mind, body, and spirit, or past, present, and future. According to Howe, you could even up the stakes and use a six-card draw, with one card for each location.
Is Tarot difficult to learn?
The amount of information you need to study and memorize to read tarot, though, can seem overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s what we’re here to tell you. You’ll be an expert by the time your friends from college come around for drinks tonight if you just follow our quick-start tarot instruction.
Tarot reading has been practiced since the 14th or 15th century and may have started out as a card game, similar to poker, rather than a spiritual activity. Nevertheless, a spiritual component emerged, and tarot cards started to be employed for divination in the late 18th century. They have also been applied to psychological research. Even Carl Jung thought of the playing cards as a tool to depict the “archetypes of mankind.”
The majority of 78-card tarot decks follow the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition and make use of related archetypes and iconography.
Additionally, there are tarot decks from various traditions, such as Marseilles tarot decks, as well as oracle cards, which can have any quantity of cards with their own particular imagery. But chances are, if you’re new to tarot, your deck is a Rider-Waite-Smith one.
Each of the 78 cards in these tarot decks has a distinct meaning. You don’t have to keep all of that in your head, even though it is a lot to know about them. The following are the key facts to be aware of:
1. The Minor Arcana and the Major Arcana are the two categories of Tarot cards.
Similar to a standard deck of playing cards, the 56 Minor Arcana cards are divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. The total journey of your life is covered by the 22 Major Arcana.
What tarot card has the most influence?
The Fool is typically seen as a card from the Major Arcana when performing a tarot reading. Contrary to popular belief, the Fool does not fall under either category in tarot card games. Instead, the Fool serves a function that is distinct from both the simple suit cards and the trump cards. As a result, the Fool has no number assigned to it in the majority of tarot decks that were initially created for playing games. Although Waite assigns the Fool the number 0, in his book, the Fool is discussed between Judgment (number 20) and The World (number 21). The Tarocco Piemontese is the only traditional game deck that numbers the Fool 0. Since the 1930s, the corner index for the Fool in Tarot Nouveau decks has frequently been a black inverted mullet. The Fool is one of the most expensive cards in practically all tarot games.
Are all tarot cards created equal?
Despite their vastly different designs, all tarot decks share a few characteristics. Each one has 78 playing cards, divided into the main and minor arcana. The major arcana, which are the deck’s 22 trump cards, generally allude to bigger influences and disclosures when they are revealed during a reading. These cards stand alone without a suit and represent key occasions or people in a person’s life.
In contrast, the minor arcana refer to influences and issues that are more commonplace. Wands, swords, pentacles, and cups make up the four suits that these 56 cards are divided into. (Occasionally, tarot decks will use different terminology, such as “Pentacles for coins, but they are exact equivalents to the four original divisions.) A different aspect of life is represented by each outfit. Wands typically represent imagination and passion, swords intelligence, pentacles work and wealth, and cups emotion. Additionally, each suit is associated with a certain set of astrological signs, such as wands being associated with fire, swords with air, pentacles with earth, and cups with water.
Since we’re beginners, the meanings you’ll most frequently refer to are the functional definitions, albeit these meanings can be used when cards symbolize people and their zodiac signs. For example, a three-card spread with three pentacle cards strongly denotes a financial concern. (More on the various spreads will follow.)
While much of this is up to the deck’s owner and what resonates with them, there are a few conventions that apply to the majority of tarot readings. If you’re reading cards for someone else, you should ask them to provide you with a question or suggest something they’re interested in, and keep that question in mind while you shuffle the deckalso referred to as “removing the effects of earlier research and readings. (An illustration would be, “When will I discover love?” Am I pursuing the correct career? “How can I get through my block?
Then you could query the person you are reading for (also known as “cutting the deck, once more concentrating on the querent. Although some readers will cut the deck for the querent, we prefer this option since it gives the querent a chance to feel linked to the deck personally. In any case, you will draw the necessary number of cards for your spread and, if you’re reading for yourself, place them between you and the querentor directly in front of you.
How should I maintain my Tarot deck?
While rearranging the cards in the tarot deck is a good approach to purify and clear their energy, there are some circumstances in which you might wish to perform a more specialized ritual. If you’re just getting started with tarot, cleaning your deck can be an excellent place to start.
You might want to clean your tarot deck for a variety of reasons, including:
- beginning with a fresh deck
- readings for other people
- You think you need to recharge.
- Your card readings seem a touch “odd” or “disconnected”
- Your deck hasn’t been used recently.
- Your deck has been handled by others
- You think you’ve been utilizing your deck a lot. A LOT, especially for books with strong emotional content
Why should you cleanse or clear your tarot deck?
Tarot deck cleansing helps keep the energy flowing between you and your deck. Consider it as a little spiritual hygiene to maintain a strong and clear connection. It’s not necessary, but if you have any of the aforementioned symptoms, try a few of the energetic cleansing techniques listed below and note which ones seem to work the best for you.
How often should you cleanse your tarot deck?
This is another way of stating USE YOUR INTUITION: there are no hard and fast laws. Don’t stress if you don’t believe it is necessary for your deck. Alternately, if you like to cleanse them once per week or once per month, that’s great. If it feels appropriate to you, you can even place your favorite crystal on the balcony each night.
If you frequently place crystals on your deck and store it on an altar while not in use, you might not feel the need to cleanse it frequently because this quick ritual will likely be sufficient to keep your deck feeling nice.
There are numerous ways to cleanse your cards, just as there are numerous reasons why you might desire to do so.
Different ways to cleanse your tarot deck
Use holy smoke. Light a dried rosemary, lavender, cedar, sage, or palo santo cleansing wand until it begins to smoke. Hold the smoke a safe distance below the deck while holding the burning herbs in one hand and the deck in the other so that the smoke drifts upward onto the cards. Turn the deck so that the smoke covers it from all angles. Next, safely put your deck to the ground and put out the fire.
On the deck, set a selenite stone (or a black tourmaline or a transparent quartz). It works well to leave it like way for an hour, but I prefer to leave it overnight.
Set them on display during a new moon. The New Moon is energy of a blank slate; you can purify the deck by setting it on a window sill on a new moon night. At this moment, you can also make a brand-new intention for your deck.
Place the cards in a salty dish. A strong and stabilizing cleaner is salt. My preferred choice for a thorough cleansing is this. Allow it to sit anywhere from one to eight hours in a dry area.
Unorderly shuffle. Spread the cards out on the ground, then shuffle them around like a child playing in dirt. This method’s freedom and randomization serve as an excellent reset.
the shuffle and sort. Set up the deck in rows of seven cards across, commencing with the Major Arcana numbers 0 to 22. (see photo above). Next, arrange the cards, Ace through King, one for each suit, as follows: Swords, Pentacles, Cups, and Wands. View the deck in this configuration, then mix everything up (like the chaotic!) and shuffle it thoroughly.
Are there various tarot card sets?
The Renaissance allegorical motifs are abandoned in the pictures of the French-suited tarot trumps, which significantly deviate from the earlier Italian-suited design. French-suited tarot cards are almost exclusively used for card games, with the exception of novelty decks. Around 1740, the first French-suited tarots appeared. These cards were known as “Tiertarock” because they featured animal pictures on the trumps. Around 1800, a wider range of decksmany with genre art or vedutabegan to appear. There are now four patterns for French-suited tarot decks:
- Industrial and Gothic Roman numerals are used for the trumps in the Central European genre art tarock deck known as Industrie und Glck (“Diligence and Fortune”). The red suits 5 to 10 and the black suits 1 to 6 are not included in the set of 54 cards that are sold with it. There are 3 patterns: Types A, B, and C, with Type C being the norm while Types B and C are only offered sometimes or as specials.
- A 78-card deck of Tarot Nouveau, often known as Tarot Bourgeois, is available. In France and Denmark, it is frequently used for Danish Tarok and Tarot games. Cego is occasionally played in Germany as well. Arabic numerals in the corner indices are not as important as the genre art.
- Use of the Adler-Cegothis animal tarot is widespread in the Upper Rhine Valley and nearby mountainous areas like the Black Forest and the Vosges. It features 54 cards that are arranged similarly to how the Industrie und Glck packs are arranged. Arabic numbers are used in its trumps, but only within centered indices.
- The Schmid-Cego pack, designed by F.X. Schmid, features Tarot Nouveau-style genre pictures, but the Arabic numerals are centered like in the Adler-Cego pack.
Questions you don’t really want answered
Even though it might seem apparent, it’s advisable to refrain from asking the tarot cards questions that you aren’t prepared to hear the answers to. That’s because answers to these questions can reveal information you’re just not quite ready to hear.
“Tarot can definitely come off as offensive if you’re not willing to hear the truth or consider an opposing opinion. Tarot reading Nicole Fortunaso
According to tarot reader and life coach Nicole Fortunaso, “tarot may truly come out as offensive if you are not willing to hear the truth of the problem or look at an alternate viewpoint.” She advises analyzing why you’re reacting the way you are in order to reflect on how to effectively address the underlying problem if you ask the question and aren’t satisfied with the response.