Pick a Pack of Cards

Choosing the right Tarot deck

There are hundreds possibly thousands of Tarot decks to choose from these days.
Let's take a look at the more common ones that readers use then we will take a look at various types, styles and themes along with  a few variations on the theme.

In a standard deck of Tarot Cards there are a total of 78, which are divided similarly to a pack of ordinary playing cards. The deck is usually divided into two, the Major Arcana consisting of 22 cards and the Minor Arcana with 56 cards, these being split into 4 suits, these are Cups, Wands, Swords and Coins.

Probably one of the most well known is the Rider-Waite deck.

The FOOL card.

A E Waite is best known as the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume, the Key to the Tarot, republished in expanded form the following year, 1911, as the Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a guide to Tarot reading.
The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot was notable for being one of the first tarot decks to illustrate all 78 cards fully, not only the 22 major arcana cards. Golden Dawn member Pamela Colman Smith illustrated the cards for Waite, and the deck was first published in 1909. It remains in publication today.

Taken from Wikipedia




Another popular deck is the Tarot de Marseille copied and refurbished by many occultist both past and present.

The FOOL card

The Tarot of Marseilles or Tarot of Marseille, also widely known by the French designation Tarot de Marseille, is one of the standard patterns for the design of tarot cards. It is a pattern from which many subsequent tarot decks derive.
Like other Tarot decks, the Tarot de Marseille contains 56 cards in the four standard suits (There are other versions in English which include the 22 Majors and 56 Minors). In French-language versions of the Tarot de Marseille, those suits are identified by their French names of Bâtons (Batons), Épées (Swords), Coupes (Cups), and Deniers (Coins). These count from Ace to 10. There was also an archaic practice of ranking the cards 10 to Ace for the suit of cups and coins in line with all other tarot games outside of Sicily.

I will be discussing variations of card decks later, so don't get too anxious about the decks I am showing now.

The Cosmic Tarot is another popular deck which have some classic pictures on them.

The FOOL card

The Cosmic Tarot is a popular mystical New Age deck with 78 fully illustrated cards based on the Golden Dawn system. The ink drawings on the cards are coloured in pastel and have an attractive, eighties feel. Beginners and professional readers could use these with no problem. The meanings are very similar to the Rider Waite deck.