Choosing your First Deck
I see this question asked a lot in the tarot community, hell last year I made a post recommending new decks for budding readers.
Here’s the secret about what makes a great 1st deck:
ANY DECK YOU WANT IS A GREAT FIRST DECK*
The most important thing is to pick a deck that gets you excited. Learning tarot is a slow process.
Learning tarot is a long haul process so get a deck that gets you pumped up again and again to pick it up and learn. Kudos to the people who get the basic meanings down in a week, they’re extremely rare birds. If you’re already iffy about the artwork, colors, of general vibe of the deck... chances are it’s gonna end up in a drawer forgotten. If you’re excited to use the deck, you’ll be excited to learn, thus making it easier to learn because you WANT to practice. It’s a cycle that feeds itself.
... oh... but see that asterisk back there? That’s the but, there’s always a but. The real question to ask, and you can’t ask this of any tarot reader, but you have to ask yourself: How hard am I willing to work to learn tarot?
This is where you need to think about your personal work ethic, how easy is it for you to do memorization. Do you often cut corners or are you a Hermione Granger when it comes to learning? Be honest with yourself. The only person who hears this answer is you, don’t be shy or embarrassed about the answer. Neither type of personality is wrong. A new reader is setting their own lesson plan. This is about picking a deck that will have a craftable lesson plan that works. It’s about acknowledging what you’re going to need to do to make the deck work for you.
As an example: Struggled your whole life with straight memorization ( ding ding ding that’s me! ) Maaaaybe a deck that has unillustrated pips isn’t the best choice, but ( again always a but ) if you’re willing to write keywords on the cards this could be a way around this problem as you wait for the means to burn into your skull.
As a final tip, there are countless resources that will tour a full deck to help would be buyers decide if the imagery is right for them. Buyers will know if it’s got illustrated pips or a lot of visual cues that they’re already familiar with... or if the illustrator uses symbolism that is outside a comfort zone.
So again, any deck you want is a great beginner deck, just some will require extra time and effort to learn.
