For my first post, I thought it appropriate to start at the beginning... well, almost the beginning. I'll assume you have already put in a little research and know what a tarot deck is. For those of you who are curious about the Tarot and wish to embark on a journey, I have compiled for you a list of some beginner-friendly decks and books. The most important consideration to make is, does the deck appeal to you? Do you actually want to spend a lot of time with it, and get to know each other? It's important that it feels right.
RIDER-WAITE-SMITH
The most well-known and enduringly popular deck would have to be the Rider-Waite, aka Rider Waite-Smith (RWS for short) or Waite-Smith. (Rider= publisher. Waite= creator/director. Smith= Artist). It has now been in print for 100 years!
The artwork is deceptively simple- block-coloured line drawings that contain a depth of symbolism and meaning. Every single card has a scene on it, while you may have noticed that in some other decks, there are repetitive suit symbols on the minor cards- eg. the 7 of Cups will have a picture of 7 Cups. These "pip" cards can be difficult to learn meanings from, especially for a beginner.
This is a true classic, and ideal for beginners. Many advanced readers still favour it. You can buy it new in a few incarnations- the standard US Games version, the "Original" (has a vintage feel, but not a reproduction of the actual original...) , the Universal Waite (a softer, prettier re-colouring by Mary Hanson-Roberts), Radiant Rider Waite (a re-drawing and re-colouring of the original images- it's radiant!), Albano-Waite (another re-colouring, this time bright!), and so on. If you're lucky, you could also source a vintage deck. You'll find that many books will teach with this deck. You will also notice that many decks have very similar scenes on them, even though the artwork may be very different. This is because this was and still is a very influential deck. The image above is a selection of cards from the US Games deck (except it now has typed titles rather than hand-drawn). If you don't like the artwork or feeling of the cards though, there are a myriad of other suitable options, a few of which I will introduce you to soon...
