How to Read Tarot for Beginners (The Honest Way)
Welcome to the table. You found your way here, which means something in you is curious. That’s enough to start.
This is the first lesson of a thirteen-week beginner tarot course. The intermediate track follows once you’ve finished. The whole thing is free. If anything you read in the next thirteen weeks lands for you, share it with someone else who’s been quietly curious about tarot but didn’t know where to begin. That’s how this work gets out into the world.
This article is your orientation. It will take about seven minutes to read.
Stay with me through this one, because everything that comes after builds on what we cover here.
A LITTLE SOMETHING TO START YOU OFF
Before we begin, I made you something. When you join my Tarot Medium newsletter, you’ll receive a free printable tarot notebook designed to walk alongside this thirteen-week course.
Print it at home (or Staples), three-hole punch it, slide it into a binder, and you’ve got your own dedicated tarot journal ready to go.
Every card you pull, every flash of intuition, every pattern you start to recognize across readings.
All of it deserves a place to land. Your notebook becomes your personal field guide as your practice grows, and it’s yours to keep forever.
Claim Your Free Tarot Notebook Here →
How Do You Learn to Read Tarot Cards as a Beginner?
You start the way I wish someone had started me twenty years ago
I received my first tarot deck at fifteen. A Christmas gift. I remember opening it and feeling intrigued by the imagery, but I also rolled my eyes at it. Around that same time I knew a very gifted psychic whose only tool was their mind. No cards, crystals or props. Just presence. That psychic’s accuracy made the cards feel unnecessary to me. Almost theatrical.
I set the deck aside for some time.
When I finally returned to it in my thirties, after a lot of life and a lot of intuitive development, I understood something I couldn’t see at fifteen.
The cards weren’t competing with intuition. They were a structured way to access it. A psychic tool like tarot is a lot like putting on a suit before work.
The suit doesn’t make you good at your job. It changes how you show up to it. Tarot doesn’t make you intuitive. It gives you a focal point that helps your intuition arrive on time.
The cards work through subliminal triggers, pattern recognition, layered symbolism, and very specific combinations of color. Once you understand how the mechanism actually functions, the magic stops feeling magical and starts feeling like a craft. That’s when it gets interesting.
What Is Tarot Actually For?
It’s a mirror, not a magic eight ball
The whole industry has done a number on what tarot actually does. People show up expecting fortune telling. They want timelines. They want yes or no. They want to know if their ex is coming back, what their lottery numbers are, and whether they’ll meet their husband at Trader Joe’s on a Tuesday.
Tarot doesn’t do that.
Seventy-eight cards represent seventy-eight moments every human life contains. Beginnings. Decisions. Heartbreaks. Triumphs. Periods of waiting. Periods of release.
The deck holds up a mirror to where you are in the cycle and what the next honest step looks like. It doesn’t predict. It reflects your own patterns back to you, through an unbiased intuitive lens.
That distinction is the whole foundation of this course. Once you understand that tarot is a tool for self-knowledge rather than a slot machine for the future, the cards stop being scary and start being useful. The Death card doesn’t mean you’re going to die (although combined with other specific cards, it can imply a physical loss). The Tower doesn’t mean your house is going to burn down. The Three of Swords doesn’t mean your partner is leaving you for someone else (again, depending on surrounding cards.. more on that later)
The cards show what’s actually happening in your life, reflected back to you with enough symbolic distance that you can finally see it clearly.
What Will I Learn in a Beginner Tarot Course?
Everything you need to read tarot for yourself
The beginner track is structured to take you from never having touched a deck to confidently reading three-card spreads for yourself by the end. Each lesson builds on the one before.
By Week 13, you’ll have a working relationship with all seventy-eight cards, an understanding of the four suits and what they actually represent, and the foundational skill of reading cards in conversation with each other instead of one at a time.
Here’s what’s coming over the next thirteen weeks:
Week 1: How to Use This Course
Week 2: What Tarot Actually Is (and What It Has Never Been)
Week 3: The Structure of the Deck: Why 78 Cards and Not 52
Week 4: The Major Arcana: The 22 Moments Every Human Life Contains
Week 5: The Minor Arcana: Where Real Life Actually Lives in the Cards
Week 6: The Suit of Wands: Fire, Drive, and What You Are Here to Do
Week 7: The Suit of Cups: Water, Emotion, and Everything You Feel but Cannot Say
Week 8: The Suit of Swords: Air, Thought, and the Stories You Tell Yourself
Week 9: The Suit of Pentacles: Earth, Body, and What You Are Actually Building
Week 10: Numbers in Tarot: The Pattern That Runs Through Every Card
Week 11: Court Cards: Are They You, Someone Else, or Both?
Week 12: Reversals: Blocked, Internalized, or Ignored?
Week 13: How to Read a Spread Instead of Just Reading Cards
Once you complete the beginner track, the intermediate track begins.
That module will cover reading spreads in depth, elemental dignities, the Celtic Cross, reading for others, intuition versus memorization, timing in tarot, shadow work with the cards, and creating your own spreads. Twenty-six weeks total. Six months of learning, fully free.
What Tarot Deck Should I Buy as a Beginner?
Less than you think, more than you’ve been told
You need a tarot deck. That’s the only required tool. I recommend any Rider-Waite-Smith deck or a derivative of it for beginners because the imagery, layered symbolism, and very specific combination of colors are what the visual language most modern tarot is based on.
The deck I use professionally is the Terra Volatile, which is a Rider-Waite-Smith derivative with muted, earthy coloring and renaissance era illustration that I find easier to read in long sessions.
If you’ve inherited a deck from someone, that works too.
The myth that you can’t buy your own deck is exactly that, a myth. It’s your relationship with it.
A notebook helps but isn’t required.
You’ll learn faster if you write down what you see and what each card means to you in your own words, rather than parroting back the book definitions. Tarot is a living language, and your interpretation of a card will deepen over time as your life experience expands. Recording your interpretations gives you something to look back on and refine.
You don’t need crystals. You don’t need candles. You don’t need to be initiated into anything. You don’t need permission. None of the gatekeeping you may have encountered online is necessary to read tarot well. The work is in the relationship between you, your deck, and your willingness to be honest with yourself.
Do You Have to Be Psychic to Read Tarot?
No. Intuition is a practice, not an ornate gift.
One of the biggest misconceptions about tarot is that you have to be “gifted” to read it. You don’t. Intuition is a practice, the same way playing piano or learning a language is a practice. The more you do it, the better you get.
There are people with natural inclinations toward intuitive work, the same way some people are naturally inclined toward music or athletics. None of that means the rest of the world can’t learn.
What separates good readers from beginners isn’t talent. It’s repetition. Reading the cards every day for a year will teach you more than any book ever could.
Most professional readers have done hundreds of readings before their interpretations start to feel like second nature. Some of mine took thousands of readings to fully land.
I’ve been a student of tarot for over twenty years and I’m still learning. There are cards I thought I understood at twenty-five that mean something completely different to me now. The deck grows with you. That’s part of the gift.
How Often Should I Practice Tarot When Learning?
Read it. Sit with it. Pull the cards we discuss.
Each lesson in this course is designed to be read in about ten minutes and practiced over the week that follows. Don’t rush through all thirteen at once. The information will be there.
Tarot is one of those rare studies that rewards patience over speed. Trying to memorize seventy-eight cards in a weekend will burn you out and turn the practice into a chore.
After you read each lesson, pull the cards we covered out of your deck. Look at the imagery. Sit with them. Ask yourself what you see before reading what anyone else says they mean. Your first impression of a card matters.
That instinctive read is your intuition speaking, and the entire purpose of this course is to teach you how to trust that voice.
Over time, your relationship with each card will deepen. Some cards will feel like old friends. Some will challenge you every time they appear. That dynamic is the work. Tarot isn’t a book you finish. It’s a relationship you cultivate for the rest of your life.
What If I Don’t Understand a Tarot Card?
You probably will. But if you don’t, come back to it.
Some lessons will land instantly. Others will need to marinate before they make sense. If a particular concept feels foggy, that’s information. Sit with it. Revisit it the next day. The understanding usually arrives when you stop trying to force it.
Tarot is layered. The first time you learn what a card means, you’re getting one layer of its meaning.
The fifth time you encounter that same card in a reading, another layer reveals itself. The fiftieth time, you’re seeing something the book never told you. That’s why this practice rewards the patient.
If you find yourself overwhelmed, the answer is almost always to slow down. Pull one card a day instead of trying to memorize ten at a time. Let the cards teach you instead of trying to bend them to your timeline.
Is There a Free Tarot Course Online?
Yes. This one. Gatekeeping was never the point.
There’s a thriving industry built on charging hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for beginner tarot education. Most of it is recycled information presented in slick packaging.
I have nothing against people earning a living teaching, but I’ve seen too many curious beginners walk away from this practice because the cost of entry felt prohibitive.
Tarot doesn’t belong to anyone.
The information has been freely available for centuries. My job here is to organize it, contextualize it through twenty years of professional reading experience, and hand it to you in a format that’s actually useful rather than mystifying.
If anything you learn in this course helps you understand yourself better, share it. Send it to someone you love. Forward it to the friend who’s been curious. Post it on your social media. Word of mouth is how this kind of work travels.
What Comes Next in the Tarot Course?
The question that built an entire industry
Next Thursday, we go where most beginner courses refuse to: the truth about what tarot actually is. Where it really came from. The myths that have attached themselves to the cards over the centuries.
Marketing campaigns dressed up as ancient wisdom. The cultural baggage you’re going to have to unlearn before you can read with any real clarity.
The history of tarot is more interesting than most people realize, and far less mystical than the industry would like you to believe.
Once you see where the cards came from and what they were originally designed for, the entire practice opens up. The mystery doesn’t disappear. The mystery just relocates to the right place: inside you, not inside the cards.
Between now and then, take your deck out. Hold it. Shuffle it. Look at the imagery.
Notice which cards catch your eye and which ones make you uncomfortable. Both reactions are useful data. The cards are about to become a mirror, and the first thing they’ll show you is what you’ve been avoiding looking at.
I’ll see you Thursday. Welcome to the work.
If any of these speak to what you’re moving through right now, follow the one that pulls at you most:
- True power: The True Power of Tarot
- Real intuition: Why Psychic Intuition Isn’t a Rare Gift
- Common questions: 7 Questions Everyone Asks About Tarot
- Tarot honesty: Is Tarot a Scam? What Readers Know That Most People Don’t
- Trusting yourself: The Real Reason Tarot Readings Help You Trust Yourself Again
- First lessons: 8 Lessons Every Beginner Learns When Reading Tarot
About the Author
Chris Bennett is one of the world’s most highly rated psychic mediums and tarot readers, with over two decades of professional experience and thousands of client sessions to his name. Based in Canada and founder of The Tarot Medium, Chris is widely regarded as the best online tarot reader for those seeking accurate, evidential, and emotionally grounded guidance. Backed by more than 360 five-star Google reviews, his work spans authentic mediumship, intuitive clairvoyance, psychic life path readings, and grief support rooted in real psychological depth. Chris is known internationally for delivering readings that prioritize clarity, emotional intelligence, and personal agency, never theatrics or manipulation. He serves clients across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and beyond through secure online psychic readings, tarot consultations, and mediumship sessions. To book a session, visit thetarotmedium.com.
