Best Tarot Decks For Beginners

[katrinka]

This has been an interesting thread to read.

When I started out, I was told to get a RWS deck, because it was the only way to learn.

ARRRRGGGGGGHHH.
No.It isn't.
It gets recommended a lot, I recommend it myself, but - it's not the ONLY way.

I was discouraged from trying out the Thoth, as it would be 'too difficult' although it was more pleasing to my eye.

More ARRRRGGGGGGHHH.

Noobs, if you like the Thoth, PLEASE get Crowley's BoT and Duquette's book, and take it from there!

[Amoroso]

I mostly recommend the RWS or any of its clones + a good hefty book, like Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen or Tarot Wisdom by Rachel Pollack. If they want the Thoth I first steer them to the easier to digest books by DuQuette, Snuffin, Banzhaf, or even Ziegler before they ride the big kahuna. If they're really into another deck, as long as it has a nice companion book I'm good with it.

[Grizabella]

When I first started learning, RWS was suggested strongly as a beginning deck. I've always thought the art work for that deck was ugly so I started out with things like The Medicine Woman and Buckland Romany and Haindl. Finally, after floundering along for quite some time, I buckled down and got the Universal Waite, which is more pleasing to my eyes. I found that it was a much better deck for learning than the others I'd chosen and I'm very glad I finally got the deck and did my earliest learning with it. I advise newcomers to Tarot to get and study the RWS first. But I do realize it's an individual thing and I'd never say that if someone chooses to begin with another deck that it won't work for them. For me, though, I believe using other decks before learning the Rider Waite was really holding me back.

What I tell my students is if you learn with RWS you can go on to read with any deck. But if you learn with something like the Ian Daniel's Vampyre (just for example off the top of my head) or another of the newer decks, you may become very fluent with that one deck but may find it difficult to impossible to branch out and read with other decks fluently. A solid foundation with RWS is the best beginning a reader can have, in my opinion.

I've been using the cards for about 21 years now and I'm just beginning to branch out to Thoth (Zillich is my Thoth-y deck) and the Barbara Walker. I can read with any deck now that's a RWS clone but just now felt the urge to branch out to other decks. I don't "do" Marseilles yet, either, but maybe someday I'll learn that, too.