How can you learn tarot on your own? With one deck, a notebook and 15 minutes a day for 30 days: week one to get to know the deck, week two for the 22 major arcana, week three for the 56 minor arcana, and week four for spreads. You need neither a special gift nor a paid course to start. This page is the hub of our French-language beginner series.
Can you really learn tarot alone?
Yes. Three worries come up often: "you need a gift", "I cannot afford lessons", and "78 cards is too many". Reading cards is a skill, like reading music. See do you need a gift to read tarot for the origin of that belief. You can begin for free with the guide to all 78 cards. As for the number of cards, the plan below goes in small blocks, and the rule is simple: learn to look before you learn to remember. Tarot works as a mirror for reflection, not as a prediction machine. If you want a fuller explanation of the reading itself, see how to read tarot cards and tarot divination for beginners.
What you need
A 78-card deck, a notebook, and 15 minutes at a fixed time. Two big traditions coexist: classic Marseille, with stylised majors and minors without scenes, and the 1909 tradition illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, with a scene on every card. Both work; choose one. When you learn alone nobody can whisper a card's meaning to you. On our French-language learning deck the one-sentence meaning, the keywords and a question are printed on every one of the 78 cards, so you can check your own reading at a glance in weeks 2 and 3. The full beginner course in French is included with the deck, through a personal link after purchase. Any deck can follow this plan; ours just removes the lookup step.
French-language learning tarot deck, 1909 art
Meanings printed on every card in French, a French guidebook in the box and the full course in French after purchase. Ships to the EU, UK, Switzerland and Iceland.
See the French deckThe 30-day plan
Week 1, days 1 to 7: meet the deck. Spread out the cards and sort them into five piles (majors and four suits). Draw a card of the day and describe the image in three sentences before reading its meaning. Learn the structure: 22 majors, 56 minors, four suits (in the common attribution of the Golden Dawn and the 1909 deck, Wands are fire, Cups water, Swords air and Pentacles earth; some older traditions swap Wands and Swords). Practise shuffling and cutting. On day 7, reread your notes. Checkpoint: you can explain majors versus minors.
Week 2, days 8 to 14: the 22 major arcana. Learn them in seven small groups, from the Fool (0; Le Mat in Marseille, where it is unnumbered) to the World (XXI), the journey a modern reading sees in the majors. In the 1909 tradition Strength is VIII and Justice is XI; Marseille swaps them. For each group, summarise each card in your own words, then compare with the meaning given by your deck or the tradition. See also the major arcana guide. Checkpoint: draw five majors at random and say what you know before checking.
Week 3, days 15 to 21: the 56 minor arcana. One approach we like is to start from the logic of suit plus number. Aces are beginnings, twos choices, threes growth, fours stability, fives tension, sixes harmony, sevens trials, eights movement, nines near-completion, tens completion. Wands mean action, Cups emotion, Swords thought, Pentacles the concrete. Court cards, in one common teaching: the Page learns, the Knight acts, the Queen masters from within, the King from without. Read the minor arcana guide. Checkpoint: deduce the meaning of five random minors.
Week 4, days 22 to 30: real spreads. Day 22, your first three-card spread. Day 24, a five-card cross. Day 25, add reversed cards. Day 26, study card combinations. Day 28, reread your whole notebook for recurring themes. Day 29, list ten cards you know and ten to review. Day 30, decide what comes next.
After the 30 days
You will not be an expert, and that is not the goal. You will have vocabulary, a notebook and a habit. Keep a daily card and one spread a week. Related reading in our series: free 10-lesson tarot course, how to draw tarot cards, reading tarot for yourself, most positive tarot cards, tarot, oracle or 32-card deck, memorising the 78 cards and beginner mistakes.
Frequently asked questions
How do I start learning tarot?
Choose one deck, keep a notebook and draw one card a day, describing the picture first. Then learn the structure and move in small groups of cards.
Can anyone learn tarot?
Yes. It takes regularity, observation and honesty with yourself, not a gift or a diploma.
Which deck is best for a beginner?
The one whose images speak to you. Scenes on every card, as in the 1909 tradition, help many learners, but Marseille works too.
Includes a free full tarot course in English
Includes a free full tarot course in English
