New to the cards, or just curious? Here are the basics every reader should have in their pocket.
- A tarot deck has 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana.
- The Minor Arcana has four suits of 14 cards each: Ace through Ten, plus Page, Knight, Queen and King. (In our decks the suits become Flares, Highballs, Razors and Chips.)
- Tarot started as a card game. The earliest surviving decks were painted in 15th-century Italy and called tarocchi.
- Using tarot for divination became popular in 18th-century France.
- The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in 1909 and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, shaped how most modern decks look.
- Oracle decks are not tarot. They have no fixed structure — any number of cards, any themes.
- Reversals are optional. Many readers read upside-down cards as blocked or inward energy; many ignore them. Both are valid.
- A spread is just a layout with a meaning for each position. The three-card Past / Present / Future is the classic starter.
- Open questions work best. "What do I need to know about my job?" beats "Will I get fired?"
- Tarot is a mirror, not a sentence. It shows patterns and possibilities; you still choose.
Practice tip: pull one card every morning and write one line about it. After a month, you'll know your deck.