Tarot Deck Guide: How to Choose, Shuffle, and Care for Your Cards

Q: What tarot deck should a beginner buy?

Any deck based on the Rider-Waite-Smith pattern, with a full scene on every card. Nearly every book, course, and app teaches from it, so the pictures match the lessons.

Q: Do you have to be given your first tarot deck?

No. That's folklore from the last century, not a tradition. Most readers buy their own deck, and it works exactly as well.

Q: Do you need to cleanse a tarot deck?

No. Cleansing is an optional reset ritual. It's nice when a deck is new or after a heavy reading, and nothing goes wrong if you skip it.

Written by the Toe Bean Tarot team Sep 21, 2026 · 6 min read We built a full tarot curriculum: 98 guided lesson sections, spaced repetition, and two original 78-card decks.

A tarot deck is 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana in four suits. That part is fixed and has been since the 1400s. Everything else about owning one is a choice you get to make: which deck to start with, how to shuffle it, whether to cleanse it, and where to keep it between readings. This guide walks through each choice in order and links to the longer answer when you want one.

The back of a Toe Bean Waite tarot deck card: a gold crescent moon and stars on deep indigo. — Back, Major Arcana, Minor Arcana: the three faces of any tarot deck.

The Fool from the Toe Bean Waite tarot deck, a black cat in a purple starfield robe stepping toward a cliff edge. — Back, Major Arcana, Minor Arcana: the three faces of any tarot deck.

What's in a tarot deck

22 Major Arcana: the big archetypes, numbered 0 (The Fool) to XXI (The World). The Major Arcana guide walks through them.
40 pip cards: Ace through Ten in Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles, the everyday stuff of life.
16 court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, and King of each suit. Court cards explained covers the ones everyone finds hardest.

That adds up to 78, and the count is the same in nearly every deck you'll ever pick up, which is what makes tarot learnable once and usable forever. The full breakdown, plus why a few decks ship with 79 or 80 cards, is in how many cards are in a tarot deck. Every card's meaning is listed in all 78 tarot card meanings.

Choosing your first deck

Pick a deck built on the Rider-Waite-Smith pattern, with a full scene on every card. That's the deck most books, courses, and apps teach from, so what you read will match what you're holding. Thousands of modern decks follow that pattern with their own art, cats included, so you don't have to settle for one look. There's a five-point checklist in the best tarot deck for beginners, and if you've seen Thoth or Marseille decks and wondered what's different, Rider-Waite vs Thoth vs Marseille sorts out the three families.

Two quick myths while we're here. You can buy your own tarot deck (nobody has to gift it to you), and a tarot deck isn't the same thing as an oracle deck; here's the difference.

Getting to know a new deck

Before you read with a new deck, go through all 78 cards in order. You'll spot the artist's choices, the cards that look different from what you expected, and the ones you already love. Then do the deck interview spread: six cards where the questions are about the deck itself. It takes ten minutes and it's the fastest way to start feeling at home with new art.

Shuffling

Any shuffle that mixes the cards without bending them is correct. Tarot cards are bigger and stiffer than playing cards, so most readers use an overhand shuffle, a pile shuffle, or a face-down "wash" on the table. If you read reversed cards, turn half the deck around before you shuffle so reversals can happen. All four methods, including one for small hands, are in how to shuffle tarot cards. And when a card flies out mid-shuffle, that's a jumper card, which has three sensible answers and no wrong one.

Cleansing (optional)

Some readers "cleanse" a deck when it's new, after reading for someone else, or when readings feel stale. It's a reset ritual, not a requirement, and nothing happens if you skip it. The six common methods (knocking, reordering, moonlight, salt, smoke, sitting with the deck) and the honest answer to "do I have to" are in how to cleanse tarot cards.

Storing and caring for your cards

Keep them flat, dry, and out of direct sun. The box they came in does all three. Silk cloths, drawstring bags, and tins are nice and optional. The things that wreck a deck are sunlight, humidity, rubber bands, and cats who sit on warm cardstock. Details in how to store tarot cards.

The deck picker in the Toe Bean Tarot app on an Android phone, showing the Salty Bean tarot deck with The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, and The Empress. — Three decks in one app: Toe Bean Waite, the public-domain Waite-Smith, and Salty Bean.

Owning several decks and switching between them is the thing the Toe Bean Tarot app does for you. It comes with three decks that all follow the Rider-Waite-Smith pattern, so what you learn on one carries to the next, and every card opens to its full meaning and imagery notes. If you own a paper deck too, you can lay out a spread and photograph it for a reading. It's on Google Play (Android only for now).

Quick answers

How many cards are in a tarot deck?

78: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. The Minors are four suits of 14 cards each.

What tarot deck should a beginner buy?

Any deck based on the Rider-Waite-Smith pattern with a full scene on every card, so the pictures match the lessons you'll read.

Do you have to be given your first tarot deck?

No. That's folklore from the last century. Most readers buy their own, and it works exactly as well.

Do you need to cleanse a tarot deck?

No. Cleansing is an optional reset. Nice when a deck is new or after a heavy reading, and nothing goes wrong if you skip it.

Where to go from here

A deck is step one. Learning what's on the cards is the rest, and the complete beginner's roadmap puts that in order, starting with a daily one-card draw and building up to full spreads.