Tarot is one type of divination using cards. There are different types of Tarot decks but a full deck has at least 78 cards divided into specific groups and those cards have specific meanings, more or less. Each card has a name. 

Some of the names may be misleading if you don't already know a bit about Tarot; Death is generally not foretelling a literal death, but instead endings and new beginnings. Judgment isn't always about being judged. There is Christianized symbolism in some decks - that Judgment card refers to the coming together of all humanity at the Christian Judgment Day - but you don't have to believe in any particular religion to use Tarot.

Tarot is good for many types of open-ended questions. For example: 

"What do I need to do or know so that I can get the best grades this semester?"

"How can I find the right partner for me?"

"What will the upcoming month be like?"

There are ways to answer questions about timing with Tarot but I prefer to use Lenormand for that. And you can ask a yes/no question; there are associations that can be used to map each card to "yes" or "no". But those aren’t areas where Tarot shines.

In general, it will have those 78 specific cards and specific groupings of cards that I mentioned, but there are variations:

There are three major types of deck, based on an original deck's design and structure. Marseilles decks go back further in time and there is no surviving "original" edition, although Jodorowsky and Camoin created a reconstruction of what they think the first Marseilles deck must have been like. Jodorowsky wrote about this in his book, The Way of Tarot, and the deck is still available as of 2023…although I had to order it from a seller in Europe and I’m in the US.

Rider-Waite-Smith based decks (RWS) started with a deck illustrated by Pamela "Pixie" Coleman Smith based on instructions provided by Arthur Edward Waite; it was published by the Rider Company in 1909. Many older sources just call it the Rider-Waite Tarot but I consider it important to credit the artist, as do many others these days. Most of the many Tarot decks on the market follow RWS more or less. There are also a number of RWS deck reprints out there; it's in the public domain so anyone can use the images.

Thoth based decks started with the Thoth Tarot, illustrated by Lady Frieda Harris based on instructions provided by Aleister Crowley. The Thoth deck itself is still in print.

Waite and Crowley belonged to the same esoteric organization, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and it influenced their interpretations of Tarot but they still disagreed on some points.

22 of the cards are the Major Arcana. They are usually numbered from 0 to 21. Each is illustrated with a scene related to the meaning.

If you place these cards in numerical order, they tell the story of an innocent called The Fool (Card #0) going on a journey of discovery. The cards for each number go in a specific order, although two of the cards are swapped depending on whether the deck is based on the RWS deck (Strength is #8, Justice is #11) or either Marseilles or the Thoth deck (the equivalent of Justice is #8, the equivalent of Strength is #11). The names of the cards may be different depending on the deck; even if a deck is, say, RWS based, the creator might change "Death" to be, say, "The Shadow". If there are extra cards in a particular artist's deck, they are usually extra Major Arcana cards numbered 22 and higher, extending the journey. 

The purpose of the Major Arcana is to describe major turning points in the querent's life, like a new vocation or a relationship that changes everything that comes after. So while some Major Arcana and Minor Arcana cards have similar meanings, seeing a Major Arcana card typically means something that is going to affect your life in a bigger or more profound way.

The other 56 cards make up the Minor Arcana, dealing with more everyday matters. The Minors are divided into four suits, which are traditionally called Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles; each has 14 cards. The names of the suits can vary; for example, it's common for the Pentacles to change to Coins or Stones. Each suit represents one of the Pagan elements, although there's disagreement about whether Wands represent Fire and Swords represent Air, or the other way around. It's said that Wands as Fire and Swords as Air is the Golden Dawn's public teaching and when you advance to learning more of the Order's secrets, they tell you it's actually the reverse. Not being part of the Order, I can't say. I just know that people have arguments for either version being correct, some decks make it clear and others leave it up to you, and it's fairly settled that Cups are Water while Pentacles are Earth.

In each suit, there are 10 cards numbered Ace to 10. They don't necessarily tell a linear story in their imagery, if they have illustrated scenes at all. Marseilles decks just have five swords on the Five of Swords, and so forth - you have to know numerology to interpret them.

The remaining four cards in each suit are the court cards. You're probably familiar with the Jack, Queen, and King from an ordinary deck of playing cards - these are similar because Tarot evolved from telling fortunes with playing cards. They are the Page, Knight, Queen, and King in RWS but their names may vary, and Jodorowsky states in The Way of Tarot that he thinks the Knight should come after the King. Court cards aren't usually numbered so while this idea is unconventional, it seems possible. Court cards are often interpreted to mean a specific person in the querent's life, who could be the querent themself. I have seen a deck with a fifth court card in each suit, too!

All of the cards can be associated with astrological symbolism too, if a reader wishes to learn that. Astrological and numerological symbolism are ways to add to your interpretation of a card but are not necessary.

This is called a reversal, and some readers interpret the card differently as a result. There isn’t one universal way to read reversed cards; some of the possibilities are;

• The opposite of the card’s usual meaning

• The meaning is coming from something internal, not external

• The meaning is something that hasn’t happened yet

The 3 of Swords is a card about heartbreak and moving past heartbreak. If you read reversals and it comes up reversed, it could mean joy or mending your heart, that you broke your own heart, or that the heartbreak is coming if you continue on your current path. (I believe the future isn’t set in stone yet, so we can avoid some things predicted for the future.)

On the other hand, if you don’t read reversals, you may need to rely on the context that the card comes up with, or your intuition, to tell you it means one of those things.

Tarot is usually read with spreads, or set combinations of cards where a card in a particular location relates to a particular subject. For example, you could set down three cards in a horizontal line to represent the past on the left, the present in the middle, and the future on the right. The mini Celtic Cross spread takes this, and adds one below for subconscious or hidden factors, one above for what's on your conscious mind or clear to you, and one laid across the center card to represent a complication or barrier to what's going on. 

Anyone can create a spread by deciding what pieces of information you want to know and arranging the cards in a way that represents how those pieces of information relate. Making a good spread is more complicated, but even if you're a beginning reader, you can experiment and see what works.

In a spread, a card may represent "your weakness" or "your strength" and in those cases I know whether the card is meant to be negative or positive, reversed or not. 

You can start and end a reading with the information provided on my page about divination in general. If the querent is there in person, you can ask them to cut the deck for you if you wish. When finished shuffling, you can draw cards from the top of the deck alone to fill each position in the spread, although I usually pull from the top and bottom as well as cutting the deck when intuition says so and taking cards from the new top or bottom…whatever order feels right. Sometimes it feels like I'm looking for the specific cards that are meant to be chosen.

Depending on the spread, a reader can do more than just say, "The Eight of Cups is in the past position, it means this, so your past was like that." Tell a story about how the past, present, and future, or the unconscious, situation, and conscious relate. You can even do a spread for nobody and practice making a hypothetical story out of it. And while some parts of the spread like past-present-future may be clearly related, looks at all of the cards for relationships or common symbols for more meaning. 

No. If you use one deck most of the time, knowing the meanings from its guidebook or the original meanings for RWS or Thoth may be an option. But if you have five decks and they all tweak the RWS meanings and images, do you memorize five times as much? Just use the original RWS meanings regardless of deck? I don't, and I've never memorized all 78 meanings for any deck. 

Reading intuitively means looking at the card's image and interpreting the image, including noting any feelings or intuitive sensations that come up. A card may mean different things on different days, or for a different querent, because you're seeing, feeling, and sensing different things, or reading the card alongside other cards in the spread gives it different context. You could be a full time professional reader with five RWS based decks and five Thoth based decks, and use them all as often or rarely as needed without memorizing 780 pieces of information, even if they're similar pieces of information. (The similarity isn’t much comfort to me when I think about absorbing all of the information and keeping each deck separate in my mind!)

Knowing the traditional meanings that I do know is sometimes helpful, especially when I have a deck whose imagery is very different and I'm trying to determine how that makes the meaning different. But I feel like if I don't take the imagery into account, I'm ignoring the work that the artist put in to make the deck what it is. I really do think every deck is unique, even if it was based on another. And if you use intuition while reading, you know different decks have different tone of voice, character, personality, or whatever you'd like to call it.

If you have any further questions about Tarot or anything else I do, please use my comment form to ask!