Marseille or Rider-Waite for a beginner?

If you want to start reading quickly, almost on the first evening, go with the Rider-Waite-Smith. All 78 of its cards, the Minor Arcana included, are illustrated with scenes: a grieving figure facing three spilled cups, a man drifting off on a boat, someone keeping watch beneath nine swords. You can describe what you see before you ever learn the official meaning, and that is exactly what a beginner needs to start trusting themselves. If you would rather work with a pared-down structure, where the numbers and colors matter more than the pictures, go with the Tarot de Marseille: its Minor Arcana are not illustrated (five coins is just five coins set in a pattern), so you have a little more to memorize at first, but you learn to read through structure instead of anecdote. Neither one is better. The Rider-Waite carries you early on; the Marseille builds your muscle. Plenty of people start with the first and come to the second out of curiosity.

Does my first tarot deck have to be a gift?

No, that is a legend, and a fairly recent one at that. You sometimes hear that a tarot deck has to be given, never bought, or it will not work right. No historical tradition says anything of the kind: the tarot began as a card game in fifteenth-century Italy, and nobody waited to be handed a pack before they sat down to play. The belief took hold in the twentieth century, and it mostly serves the people selling the idea of a sacred object. Buy your own deck if you want to: choosing it, paying for it, opening it, that is already the start of a relationship with it. A deck given as a gift can be a lovely present, but it will not bond with you any better than one you picked yourself. What builds the bond is the time you spend with the cards, not how they reached your hands.

Is an oracle a good first deck?

An oracle can make a pleasant first companion, but it will not teach you the tarot. An oracle (the Belline Oracle, say, or any of the countless modern ones) has no fixed structure: no 78 cards, no Major and Minor Arcana, no elemental suits. Each oracle runs on its own system, invented by its author. That is its freedom and its limit at once: nothing you learn from one oracle carries over to another, let alone to the tarot. If you want a gentle, image-rich way in with no grammar to memorize, an oracle will suit you. If you want to learn a symbolic language you can pass on, one that stays with you for life and that thousands of people share, start with a real tarot deck.

Tarot

How to Choose a Tarot Deck to Start: Marseille, Rider-Waite or Oracle

This guide is part of the series Tarot explained: 78 cards, history, and reading as a mirror (part 2 of 7).

When you are starting out, three families are open to you. The Rider-Waite-Smith illustrates all 78 of its cards with little scenes, which makes it readable the first time you handle it. The Tarot de Marseille keeps its Minor Arcana plain (coins and cups laid out in rows, no scene), which asks more of your memory but hands you a very solid symbolic structure. Oracles have no fixed structure at all: total freedom, but nothing to lean on. The right choice comes down to how you learn, not to fate. The deck that picks you, and the rule that you must never buy your own, are sales legends, not laws.

By Jade Nohemia 6 min read June 18, 2026

You are standing in front of a rack of cards, or a shop page online, and you hesitate. They all look alike, yet you keep being told they are very different. This page is here to help you decide, with nothing to sell you: no sponsored brand, no buy link, just enough to choose with your eyes open. Three broad families exist, and the right one comes down to you, to how you learn, not to a sign from fate.

Before we compare them, one piece of plain honesty. The tarot is a symbolic tool for looking inward. Its cultural history is well documented: it began as a card game in fifteenth-century Italy, and the historian Michael Dummett traced its path with real precision. Reading it for divination came much later, near the end of the eighteenth century. A reading is a mirror you hold up to see yourself more clearly, never a verdict on what is coming. Keep that in mind, because it changes how you shop for a deck. You are not after a powerful object. You are after a language you feel at home in.

The three families, plainly

The Rider-Waite-Smith: illustrated, so readable right away

Published in London in 1909, this deck was designed by Arthur Edward Waite and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, whose initials are the “S” we now add to the name. Its breakthrough comes down to one simple idea: illustrate all 78 cards, the Minor Arcana included. Where older decks just lined up geometric shapes for the Five of Cups, Smith painted a scene, a man cloaked in black staring at three spilled cups, blind to the two still standing behind him.

That scene tells you something on its own. You can name what you see, the grief, the regret, what is left all the same, and you end up reading almost true before you have opened a single book. For a beginner, that is gold: the card meets you halfway. Waite shipped the deck with a guide, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, where he urges caution himself: the images are worth what they stir in you, not some mechanical forecast. It is the most widely owned deck in the world, so the one with the most resources behind it, and the model for most of the cards you will meet elsewhere.

The Tarot de Marseille: pared down, so it builds structure

Older in form, settled in France from the seventeenth century on, the Tarot de Marseille goes the other way. Its 22 Major Arcana are richly drawn, but its Minor Arcana are not: the Seven of Coins is seven coins set in a pattern, no figure, no story. Nothing to read off the picture, so everything to work out through structure, through the number, the color, the suit.

That makes it harder at the start, and that is the whole point. The Marseille pushes you to think in numbers (the climb from one to ten), colors (wands, cups, swords, coins) and movement, instead of leaning on a scene. Alejandro Jodorowsky, who poured a vast amount of work into the Marseille in The Way of Tarot, treats it less as a forecasting device than as a tool for knowing yourself, almost an alphabet of the soul. Many readers come to the Marseille after the Rider-Waite, trading the reading of pictures for the reading of structure.

Oracles: free, so without a framework

An oracle is not a tarot. No 78 cards, no Major and Minor split, no shared elemental suits. Each oracle is its own self-contained system, invented by its author, with its own card count and its own themes. The Belline Oracle is one historical example, and hundreds of new ones come out every year. Their strength is their gentleness: often very image-rich, often reassuring, with no heavy grammar to memorize. Their limit is the flip side of that: what you learn from one oracle does not carry over, not to another oracle and not to the tarot. You start from zero with every deck. If learning a language holds no appeal and you just want a companion for reflection, a divinatory oracle does the job nicely.

Which Tarot Deck Suits Who?

You want to draw a card tonight and say something sensible about it without having studied a thing: the Rider-Waite-Smith. You love systems and numbers, you like the idea of a grammar to master over the long haul, and a slower start does not scare you: the Tarot de Marseille. You are not out to learn a language, just to keep a gentle object on hand to mark your days, no strings attached: an oracle. None of these three wishes beats the others. They simply tell you how you like to learn.

How to choose, in practice

Settle the goal first. Learning the tarot the way you learn a language? Aim for a real 78-card tarot, Rider-Waite for the gentle slope, Marseille for the rigor. Just giving yourself a little ritual of reflection? An oracle is plenty. Next, look at the Minor Arcana before you buy: if an illustrated Five of Cups speaks to you more than a bare row of cups, you already know which family to lean toward. Last, pick a readable edition, clean colors, a size that sits well in the hand: you are going to shuffle these cards hundreds of times, and comfort matters more than rarity.

Does the Deck Really Have to Choose You?

The most stubborn one: “the deck has to choose you,” or “you must never buy your own first tarot.” That is a myth, and a commercial one at that. No historical tradition asks for it, since the tarot started out as a game you bought like any ordinary pack of cards. The belief spread in the twentieth century, and it mostly flatters the idea of a sacred object you would be wrong to handle casually. Buy your deck if you feel like it: choosing it is already part of the bond.

Another false test: a steep price, or the “energetically charged” edition. A card does not get its meaning from its cost. An entry-level Rider-Waite reads every bit as well as a collector’s edition. In the same vein, be wary of any deck billed as “more powerful”: the power, if there is any, lives in the attention you bring to the reading and the conversation it opens with yourself, not in the cardstock.

Once you have chosen, the real work starts: getting to know the cards one by one, sitting with a Major Arcanum like The Magician that opens the deck, then weaving the threads between them. That is where the tarot becomes a faithful mirror, and the rest of the guide is here to walk beside you, one step at a time. Take your time: a deck reveals itself over years, not over one evening, and that is exactly how it should be.

Frequently asked questions

Marseille or Rider-Waite for a beginner?: If you want to start reading quickly, almost on the first evening, go with the Rider-Waite-Smith. All 78 of its cards, the Minor Arcana included, are illustrated with scenes: a grieving figure facing three spilled cups, a man drifting off on a boat, someone keeping watch beneath nine swords. You can describe what you see before you ever learn the official meaning, and that is exactly what a beginner needs to start trusting themselves. If you would rather work with a pared-down structure, where the numbers and colors matter more than the pictures, go with the Tarot de Marseille: its Minor Arcana are not illustrated (five coins is just five coins set in a pattern), so you have a little more to memorize at first, but you learn to read through structure instead of anecdote. Neither one is better. The Rider-Waite carries you early on; the Marseille builds your muscle. Plenty of people start with the first and come to the second out of curiosity.
Does my first tarot deck have to be a gift?: No, that is a legend, and a fairly recent one at that. You sometimes hear that a tarot deck has to be given, never bought, or it will not work right. No historical tradition says anything of the kind: the tarot began as a card game in fifteenth-century Italy, and nobody waited to be handed a pack before they sat down to play. The belief took hold in the twentieth century, and it mostly serves the people selling the idea of a sacred object. Buy your own deck if you want to: choosing it, paying for it, opening it, that is already the start of a relationship with it. A deck given as a gift can be a lovely present, but it will not bond with you any better than one you picked yourself. What builds the bond is the time you spend with the cards, not how they reached your hands.
Is an oracle a good first deck?: An oracle can make a pleasant first companion, but it will not teach you the tarot. An oracle (the Belline Oracle, say, or any of the countless modern ones) has no fixed structure: no 78 cards, no Major and Minor Arcana, no elemental suits. Each oracle runs on its own system, invented by its author. That is its freedom and its limit at once: nothing you learn from one oracle carries over to another, let alone to the tarot. If you want a gentle, image-rich way in with no grammar to memorize, an oracle will suit you. If you want to learn a symbolic language you can pass on, one that stays with you for life and that thousands of people share, start with a real tarot deck.