You can absolutely teach yourself tarot, and most readers begin exactly this way. Start with a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, learn how the 78 cards are structured, study one card a day, read the images before you reach for the book, keep a journal of what you notice, and practise with small spreads until the meanings settle into something second nature. There is no exam and no gatekeeper. Tarot is a language of symbols, and like any language it is learned by living with it a little every day.
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Lay your cards in our free Tarot Reading Helper and it reads each position back to you, card by card.
Open the reading helperStart with a beginner-friendly deck
The single most helpful choice you can make is your first deck. For self-teaching, the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) system is the gentlest place to start, because almost every learning resource, including this one, describes the cards in its imagery. Illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith and published in 1909, it gives all 78 cards a fully drawn scene, so even the numbered cards tell a story you can read rather than a bare row of cups or coins to memorise.
You do not need to spend much, and you do not need to wait for a deck to be gifted to you (that is folklore, not a rule). Choose one whose artwork you genuinely enjoy looking at, since you will be gazing at it often. If you would like help narrowing the field, our guide to the best tarot decks for beginners and the quick what tarot deck is right for me quiz will point you somewhere that suits your eye.
Learn how the deck is structured
Before you memorise a single meaning, it helps enormously to see the shape of the whole deck. A standard tarot deck holds 78 cards in two groups:
- The Major Arcana (22 cards), from The Fool at zero through to The World. These carry the big life themes and archetypes, the milestones of a journey. Start here with our Major Arcana meanings.
- The Minor Arcana (56 cards), which handle the everyday texture of life. These divide into four suits, each tied to an element and an area of experience: Wands (fire, drive and creativity), Cups (water, emotion and relationships), Swords (air, thought and conflict) and Pentacles (earth, money and the material world). See our Minor Arcana meanings.
Each suit runs Ace to Ten, then the four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. Once you can picture that map, every new card has a home, and learning it feels like filling in a grid rather than swallowing an unordered list.
Study one card a day
The one-card-a-day habit is the backbone of teaching yourself tarot. Each morning, draw a single card, sit with it, and simply notice: what is happening in the picture, how it makes you feel, what it might be pointing to in your day. In the evening, look again and see whether it quietly matched anything that happened. This slow, repeated contact is how meanings move from the page into your instinct.
If you do not have your deck to hand, our tarot card of the day tool draws one for you and gives you a starting interpretation to compare against your own. Over a few months, a card a day walks you through the whole deck more thoroughly than any cramming session could.
Read the image before you reach for the book
Here is the habit that separates readers who truly understand tarot from those who only recite it: look at the picture first. Before you open any guidebook, ask yourself what you actually see. Who is in the card? Are they moving toward something or away? Is the sky bright or stormy? What would it feel like to stand there? The RWS images are full of deliberate detail, and your own first read is often close to the traditional meaning.
Only after you have made your own guess should you check the book or a reference such as our how to read tarot cards guide. Doing it in this order trains your intuition and your memory at the same time, so you are building understanding rather than dependence on a lookup.
Keep a tarot journal
A simple notebook will teach you faster than any app. Each day, write down the card you drew, your first impression, the keywords you associate with it, and later a line on how the day unfolded. Over time your journal becomes a personal dictionary, written in your own voice, and you will find that your notes on a card are the ones that actually stick. It also lets you look back and see how your reading has grown, which is quietly encouraging on the days it feels slow.
Practise with small spreads
Once single cards feel familiar, start combining them. Begin small so you are not overwhelmed: a three-card spread is the perfect next step, most often read as past, present and future, or as situation, action and outcome. Our three-card tarot spread guide walks you through it position by position. The real skill you are building here is reading cards in relationship to one another, letting them tell a joined-up story rather than three separate ones.
To practise without laying out physical cards, the free tarot reading tool deals a spread for you, and the tarot reading helper supports you in interpreting what comes up. Treat these as sparring partners: draw, interpret it yourself first, then read the guidance and compare.
Take the free course to give it structure
Teaching yourself does not mean teaching yourself alone. If you would like a clear, gentle path rather than a scattering of tips, our free course The Tarot Path lays the whole journey out in order, from your very first card to reading full spreads with confidence. It is genuinely free, self-paced, and built exactly for the reader teaching themselves at home. Working through it alongside your daily card and your journal gives your practice a spine, so you always know what to learn next instead of wondering whether you are doing it right.
Above all, be patient with yourself. Nobody learns 78 cards in a weekend, and the point was never to memorise them anyway. The meanings arrive through living with the deck, so read little and often, trust what you notice, and let understanding gather the way it always does, quietly and then all at once.
Keep exploring
When you are ready to go deeper, browse the full tarot hub for guides to every card and spread, start the free Tarot Path course to give your learning a clear order, and build the daily habit with your tarot card of the day. One card at a time is all it takes.
Frequently asked questions
You can absolutely teach yourself tarot: start with a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, learn how the 78 cards are structured, study one card a day, read the images before reaching for the book, keep a journal, and practise with small spreads until the meanings become second nature. There is no exam and no gatekeeper, only patient daily practice.
A Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck is the gentlest place to start, because almost every learning resource describes its imagery and all 78 cards are fully illustrated with scenes you can read. Choose one whose artwork you enjoy, since you will look at it often.
A standard tarot deck has 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana carrying the big life themes, and 56 Minor Arcana covering everyday life. The Minor Arcana splits into four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles), each running Ace to Ten plus four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King.
There is no fixed timeline, and nobody learns 78 cards in a weekend. Most self-taught readers feel comfortable with the basics after a few months of daily practice. Reading little and often matters far more than speed, since meanings settle in through repeated, gentle contact rather than cramming.
Memorising helps less than looking. Read the image first, notice what you see and feel, and make your own guess before checking any book. This trains your intuition and your memory together, so you build genuine understanding rather than a dependence on looking each card up.
Start with single cards, then move to a three-card spread, most often read as past, present and future, or situation, action and outcome. Three cards teach you to read cards in relationship to one another without overwhelming you, which is the core skill of every larger spread.
No, but a structured course gives your self-teaching a clear order. Lunar Haus offers a free, self-paced course, The Tarot Path, that lays the whole journey out from your first card to full spreads, which pairs well with a daily card and a journal so you always know what to learn next.
