Tarot Decks for Beginners
There are decks that reward you for already knowing the language and then there are decks that teach it to you as you go.
A first tarot deck has a job that no other deck in your collection will ever have to do again. It has to be readable before you can read, which means clear imagery you can describe out loud, a structure that matches the books and courses you will inevitably turn to and a guidebook that explains rather than gestures.
That usually means a deck built on the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, because its symbolism is the shared vocabulary almost every teacher writes in. It can also mean a deck that prints its keywords on the cards themselves, which sounds like a small thing until you are three cards into a spread and reaching for the book again.
The decks below are the ones in our collection we would genuinely put in a new reader’s hands. The reason for each is written out so you can disagree with us.
Our beginner tarot decks and why
Every card carries its keywords in print, upright and reversed, with zodiac and elemental cues alongside, so you can lay a spread and read it without stopping to look anything up. A 200-page guidebook comes with it, the most substantial of any deck here.
A full Rider-Waite-Smith deck that keeps the traditional Major Arcana titles and adds quiet keyword signposts to the minors, with a cheat sheet in the box and a 111-page guidebook. Fanny Wuyts illustrated all 78 cards over five years and no AI was used.
A full 78-card Rider-Waite-Smith deck plus one bonus card, so every tarot book and method you turn to still applies. Its 101-page guidebook gives a full page to each card with reversal keywords. Its voice is compassionate rather than stern.
Identical printed keywords and identical structure to the beige edition. Choose between them on which artwork you would rather sit with.
How to choose between them
- Which tarot deck should I buy if I want to start reading straight away?
- The Lucid Dreams Beginners Tarot. Its printed keywords carry you through the early readings and you can stop relying on them whenever you are ready.
- Which beginner tarot deck is best for learning traditional Rider-Waite-Smith meanings?
- Any of them. The Lucid Dreams Beginners Tarot, the Cosmosis Tarot and The Shadows We Cast are all built on the full Rider-Waite-Smith system, so every tarot book and course you turn to will describe the deck in front of you. Choose between them on the artwork rather than the structure.
- Which beginner tarot deck comes with the most substantial guidebook?
- The Lucid Dreams Beginners Tarot, with a 200-page guidebook. The Cosmosis Tarot has 111 pages and The Shadows We Cast 101. All three interpret every card in the deck.
Worth reading alongside these: how to choose your first tarot deck, the beginner’s guide to tarot. Looking for something else? shadow work and dark tarot decks, dream and psychological tarot decks, indie oracle decks. Or see the full collection of indie tarot decks, every one of them stocked and shipped from the UK.