How to Read Tarot Cards: 8 Essential Steps to See Clearly and Bond With Your Tarot Deck

Reading time: about 9 minutes.

You unwrap your first tarot deck. The cardstock still smells new. Before you’ve even shuffled, you reach for the little booklet in the box, ready to memorize seventy eight meanings.

Put the booklet down for a minute.

Thousands of readings in, here’s what I wish someone had told me at the start: reading tarot is a lot less about the cards than you think. The cards are a doorway. What walks through it is your own perception, sharpened.

Below are eight foundational steps, counted down to the one that changes everything. You’ll learn how to shuffle with intention, which spread to start with, how to read a whole layout as one story, plus the single mindset shift that turns a decent reading into an unforgettable one.

Want to go further than one article can take you? These online tarot courses teach you to read tarot cards intuitively, no memorizing required.

Keeping notes as you learn? Join the newsletter for your own free tarot notebook, the same layout used for daily pulls.

Never had a reading and wondering about the tone, the boundaries, the clarity? Take a minute with what to expect from a reading, or if you’re ready now, click here to book yours.

8. How Do You Shuffle Tarot Cards?

The shuffle is a meditation, not a card trick

Everything begins with the shuffle. Let’s clear out the myths first.

Your tarot deck doesn’t need to be given to you by someone else. Other people can touch it. Knocking on it three times is optional pageantry. None of that changes what comes through.

Intention is what matters. Shuffling slows your breathing, quiets the chatter, then turns your attention toward the question you’re bringing.

Curious how this fits into ordinary days? Here’s how tarot can guide your everyday choices. Oprah Daily’s beginner’s guide covers the wider basics beautifully too.

7. Why Do You Cut the Tarot Deck in Three?

Left hand, three piles, one clean reset

This is the exact shuffle used before every professional reading, step by step.

1. Cut the tarot deck into three piles with your left hand, traditionally the hand of receiving.
2. Turn one pile around so its top faces the bottom. This is how reversals enter the reading naturally.
3. Rearrange the three piles in any order that feels right.
4. Gather them back into one stack, then give it one final shuffle.

Cutting resets more than the cards; it resets you.

Reversals tend to scare beginners, so here’s a quick note. A reversed card isn’t “bad.” Think of it as a valve that’s restricted the flow of the same energy. When your perspective shifts, the valve opens, which is the whole point of a reading.

If life feels chaotic right now, tarot itself offers a path back to center, as explored in finding balance and letting go with tarot.

6. Which Tarot Spread Should You Choose?

Three cards, endless mileage

A spread gives your reading structure. For beginners, three cards are perfect, and seasoned readers return to them constantly.

Past, present, future is the classic starting point. Here’s a spread worth trying once you’re comfortable.

Before drawing each card, say its position out loud: “This is the fixed aspect.” Speaking the position solidifies it, keeping the reading focused.

Wondering how far the cards can actually see? Here’s a look at the limits and powers of tarot prediction.

5. How Do You Draw Tarot Cards Intuitively?

Your hand knows before your head does

Spread the cards out in front of you. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes if it helps.

Hover your left hand over the cards, letting it drift until one feels right. Some people feel warmth, some feel a pull, some simply know.

Intuition shows up differently for everyone, a point Vogue’s tarot guide makes well. Researchers increasingly describe intuition as a real form of knowing that sharpens with practice.

One rule worth keeping: if you pull a card you don’t like, don’t put it back and draw again. The card you didn’t want is usually the one with the most to say.

Want to sharpen the instrument itself? These tips on increasing your psychic abilities deepen every draw.

4. What Does Card Placement Mean in a Spread?

Location, location, divination

Where a card lands adds context.

The left side of a spread leans toward the past, the right toward the future, while the center often speaks to the core of a situation.

Think of placement as grammar for the cards’ vocabulary. The same card says something different depending on where it sits in the sentence. Allure’s tarot guide covers positioning in an accessible way, ideal for anyone starting out.

3. How Do You Interpret Tarot Cards With Depth?

Every card holds a virtue and a warning

Tarot isn’t a highlight reel of “good” cards dodging “bad” ones. Every card holds both a strength and a challenge, the full weather system of a life.

Go card by card, letting each one build on the last. The first card is your base, the second gives context, then a single message starts to form.

Once you’ve read each card, step back to read the whole spread at once. This is where beginners become readers.

Reading cards in relation to each other, how one amplifies or diminishes the card beside it, is exactly what the intermediate tarot course is built around.

2. How Do You Build a Relationship With Your Tarot Deck?

78 strangers slowly becoming old friends

Here’s how the cards are best learned: one card a day.

Pull a single card each morning. Notice where it plays out by evening. A Five of Swords morning has a way of turning into a Five of Swords afternoon, and once you’ve lived it, you never forget what that card means.

Over time, each card carries a lived memory. That’s when they stop being definitions and start being old friends.

Writing it down speeds everything up, and journaling has well documented benefits of its own. Your free tarot notebook is laid out exactly for this daily practice.

1. Why Should You See Yourself in Every Reading?

The person across from you is a mirror

Here’s the step that changes everything.

When reading for someone else, imagine you’re reading for yourself. Ask: what words would I need to hear for this card?

It sounds strange, though it works. Seeing the other person as a reflection cuts through the illusion of separation. Your ego steps aside, you stop trying to be right, then you simply say what you see.

Speak to them the way you’d want to be spoken to: honestly, without softening the truth into something useless. That’s the truly kind thing.

Tarot is as much about empathy as intuition, something The Good Trade’s guide explores well.

Your First Reading, Start to Finish

Here’s all eight steps in one place, ready for tonight’s first pull or tomorrow morning’s.

Interested in the journey that led here? The full story lives here.

Below is the very first video made for this YouTube channel, summing up everything in this article. Being camera shy, stepping in front of the lens was its own lesson in facing fear. It does get easier.

Where Can I Read More About Tarot?

If any of these speak to where you are, follow the one that pulls at you most:

• Beginner basics: Start here
• Going further: Advanced reading
• Early lessons: Beginner truths
• Upside down: Reversed cards
• Quiet practice: Card meditation
• Inner knowing: Trust intuition

Before you go, grab your free tarot notebook when you join the newsletter. Every pull you record becomes easier to look back on, so the patterns you’d otherwise miss start to surface.

Ready for a reading of your own? Click here to book yours.

About the Author

Chris Bennett, known as The Tarot Medium, is internationally recognized as the best tarot reader in the world, trusted by clients across Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, plus South Africa. Known for accurate, honest readings free of fear or theatrics, his work spans intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, evidential mediumship, plus online tarot courses that teach you to read without memorizing. His online readings reach clients in Montreal, Edmonton, Quebec City, Hamilton, St. John’s, Boston, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland, Atlanta, San Diego, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Hobart, Canberra, Glasgow, Liverpool, Brighton, Belfast, Stellenbosch, Bloemfontein, Gqeberha, Pietermaritzburg, plus everywhere in between.