I'm just starting out with tarot. Which

No cards drawn this turn — you're asking how to start, so here's the method first.

Start with the Rider–Waite–Smith 78-card deck. For a beginner it's the one where the pictures *are* the dictionary: every one of the 78 has full scene imagery, and the standard meanings you'll meet in every book and app line up with it. That's why this skill's own deck is that one.

What to skip your first six months:

• "Beginner decks" (Llewellyn's knock-offs) — big word lists, no artwork. You learn to match words, not to read pictures, and then real decks feel foreign.
• Thoth, Marseille, or Rider–Waite variants — excellent, but they encode a different system. Add one only after you can read plain RWS cold.
• Oracle and "meaning decks" — not tarot, different job.

How to actually learn it, in order:

1. The 22 majors first, read as one journey: 0–7 building identity, 8–14 the inner correction, 15–21 shadow, breakdown, healing, integration. Reversals read as blocked, overdone, turned inward, delayed — or flipped, not as "bad".
2. The four suits are four elements: Wands = fire, action and making; Cups = water, feeling and relationship; Swords = air, thinking and conflict; Pentacles = earth, body, money, craft. Learn the suits, and the numbered cards come fast.
3. Cards, not lists. Look at the picture and say what you see before you look anything up — person, gesture, how many objects on the ground. That's the habit that survives contact with other decks.

Physical notes: you'll use your deck a lot, so pick one you like handling and don't mind flipping — condition matters more than brand. Get a book-sized guidebook to *RWS specifically* if you want one.

One thing you can do this week: pick three majors you can already recognize by sight and say out loud what is happening in each picture, no definitions. That's your real starting point.

Want me to run one practice card for you now, so you see what a draw here actually looks like?