I don’t know when tarot got a reputation for being either spooky nonsense or extremely serious witchy business with no middle ground, but here we are.
The truth is it’s neither. It’s a tool — the same way journaling is a tool, or therapy is a tool. You pull a card, you sit with what it brings up, and sometimes that’s more useful than you’d expect. Sometimes it’s just pretty pictures. Both outcomes are fine.
If you’ve been curious but felt like you needed some kind of special permission or a specific personality type to start — you don’t. Here’s what you actually need to know.
Where did tarot cards even come from?
Tarot started as a card game. Not a mystical ritual — an actual game, played in 15th century Europe, with hand-painted cards and a hierarchy that determined which card beat which. Think of it like an elaborate, symbolic version of trump cards.
It wasn’t until 18th century France that cartomancers — that’s the technical term for tarot readers — started using the deck for divination. The centuries of symbolism baked into the cards made them feel charged with meaning. And once that door opened, it stayed open.
The framing that stuck wasn’t really “predict the future.” It was more like — these cards reflect universal themes. Human experiences that cycle and repeat. The cartomancer’s job is to find the connections.
What’s actually inside a tarot deck?
A standard tarot deck has 78 cards, which is a lot more than the 52 in a regular playing deck. Those 78 are split into two groups: the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. They do very different jobs.
The Major Arcana is 22 cards. The Minor Arcana is 56. You need both to do a full reading, but understanding what each group is for makes interpreting them a whole lot less overwhelming.
What are the Major Arcana cards?
The 22 Major Arcana cards are the heavy hitters — they represent the big, transformative forces at work in a life. The stuff you can’t fully control. Think: major transitions, deep psychological themes, universal human experiences.
They were the trump cards in the original tarot game, meaning they could beat any other card regardless of suit. That precedence carried over into divination. When a Major Arcana card shows up in a reading, you pay attention.
Here’s a quick rundown of all 22:
0 — The Fool. The wildcard. A traveler who hasn’t yet gained the wisdom for what’s ahead. Pure potential, and also a little reckless.
1 — The Magician. Represents the crossing between worlds and the power to manifest what you want. The lowest trump, but don’t sleep on it.
2 — The High Priestess. The divine feminine. Deep, hidden wisdom. The stuff you know but haven’t said out loud yet.
3 — The Empress. Fertility — of ideas, of life, of creative output. Often shown pregnant or surrounded by nature.
4 — The Emperor. Power, structure, and protection. The person in charge.
5 — The Hierophant. Mercy, inspiration, and the link between the earthly and the spiritual. Often depicted as the pope.
6 — The Lovers. Relationships, attraction, and occasionally — sacrifice. Also sometimes shown as The Twins.
7 — The Chariot. Triumph and guidance during hard times. A warrior or royal figure moving forward.
8 — Strength. A person battling a lion. Righteousness overcoming base instinct. Enlightenment, basically.
9 — The Hermit. A cloaked figure with a lamp, walking alone. Maturity, healing, and the wisdom that only comes from going inward.
10 — Wheel of Fortune. The structure of the universe in motion. Most readers take it as a sign that a significant shift is coming.
11 — Justice. A figure holding a gold scale. Equity, balance, and the triumph of doing the right thing. (Switched with Strength in some decks — don’t worry about it.)
12 — The Hanged Man. Scarier than it sounds. This one actually represents inner wisdom, intuition, and the liminal space between what was and what’s coming next.
13 — Death. Also scarier than it sounds — and also one of the most misunderstood cards. The Death card is about endings making room for new things. The Grim Reaper here represents mortality and transition, not literal doom.
14 — Temperance. An angel diluting wine with water. Moderation, frugality, and — sometimes — the satisfaction of finally reaching a goal.
15 — The Devil. Fear, temptation, seduction. The stuff you know you shouldn’t want but kind of want anyway.
16 — The Tower. Arguably the most ominous card in the deck. Chaos, ruin, sudden upheaval. It’s not fun to pull, but it’s honest.
17 — The Star. A woman pouring water under a starlit sky. Hope, loss, and the strange way those two things often coexist.
18 — The Moon. Fear of the unknown. Deception. The things hiding just outside the light.
19 — The Sun. Happiness and good fortune. One of the genuinely good ones to pull.
20 — Judgement. Rebirth, absolution, your inner calling finally getting loud enough to hear.
21 — The World. A woman standing above the earth, surrounded by animals. Success, completion, the end of one full cycle.
What are the Minor Arcana cards?
The Minor Arcana covers the day-to-day stuff — the specific textures of an individual life rather than the big universal forces.
There are 56 cards split into four suits: Swords, Wands (sometimes called Staves), Coins (sometimes called Disks), and Cups. Each suit has 14 cards — the King, Queen, Knight, and Page (court cards, like a standard deck), plus 10 numbered cards.
So instead of the Queen of Hearts, you’ve got the Queen of Cups. Instead of the Two of Clubs, the Two of Swords. The structure is familiar; the symbolism goes a lot deeper.
The Minor Arcana is where readings get specific. The Major Arcana tells you what kind of moment you’re in. The Minor Arcana tells you how you’re moving through it.
Do you need a specific deck to start?
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is the one most beginners start with, and there’s a good reason for that — it’s the deck most guidebooks and tutorials are built around, so the learning curve is gentler. The U.S. Games Systems website has a good breakdown of what makes it foundational if you want to go deep on the history.
That said, you should actually like the art in your deck. You’re going to be staring at these cards a lot. If the Rider-Waite imagery doesn’t do it for you — and for some people it genuinely doesn’t — there are hundreds of decks with different aesthetics. Cat decks, botanical decks, art deco decks. Whatever keeps you engaged.
If you want the full beginner experience, I wrote about finding your first deck and what to look for a while back. Worth a read before you buy.
How do you actually do a reading?
Start simple. A one-card pull is genuinely enough when you’re learning — you shuffle the deck while holding a question in your mind, pull one card, and sit with what comes up. That’s a reading.
Three-card spreads are the classic beginner move: past, present, future. Or situation, action, outcome. The structure matters less than the practice of actually looking at the card and asking yourself what it’s bringing up.
The thing most people don’t expect — tarot isn’t really about the cards telling you something. It’s about the cards giving you a frame to think through something you already know. But what do I know? That’s been my experience, and a lot of long-time readers will say the same thing.
According to Vox’s breakdown of how tarot actually works, the psychological function of the cards — giving our brains a structured way to process abstract feelings — is a big part of why people find them genuinely useful, even without any metaphysical beliefs attached.
What if you pull a scary card?
Death and The Tower are the two that make beginners panic, and I get it — the imagery is intense. But context matters more than the card itself.
Death almost never means something bad is coming. It almost always signals the end of something that needed to end. The Tower is harder to spin positively — it does tend to show up around disruption — but disruption isn’t always the worst thing that could happen to you.
If you pull something alarming, the question to sit with isn’t “is something terrible about to happen?” It’s “what is already shifting in my life that I haven’t fully acknowledged?” That reframe changes everything. I talked about this a little in my post on using ritual for self-reflection if you want more on that angle.
Do you have to believe in anything to use tarot?
No. Full stop.
You don’t have to be spiritual, witchy, religious, or woo-adjacent in any way. Some people use tarot as a meditation tool. Some use it as a journaling prompt. Some genuinely believe the cards have predictive power. All of those approaches are valid, and none of them require the others.
The only thing you actually need is an open mind — not to the supernatural, just to the idea that sitting quietly with a question and a symbol might surface something worth thinking about. That’s a pretty low bar. And if it turns out it’s just a fun hobby with beautiful art, that’s also a perfectly fine outcome.
For more on building a personal practice that actually sticks, I’ve got you.
Tarot has one of those reputations that keeps people away from something that’s genuinely kind of great. It got tangled up with the idea that you need to be a certain type of person to do it — mysterious, intuitive, probably wearing a lot of rings.
You don’t. You need a deck and a little patience with yourself while you learn the symbolism. The rest figures itself out.
Start with one card. See what happens.
Frequently asked questions
How many cards are in a tarot deck?
Do you have to be spiritual or psychic to read tarot?
What does the Death card mean in tarot?
What is the best tarot deck for beginners?
What is the difference between the Major and Minor Arcana?
How do you do a tarot reading for the first time?
What is the most powerful card in tarot?
