Best First Tarot Deck: Rider-Waite vs Thoth vs Golden Dawn
The three deck families compared on the one thing that decides whether a beginner can read at all: whether the numbered cards are illustrated scenes or bare suit symbols.
Almost every "best first tarot deck" list is a list of pretty decks. This one is about structure, because structure is what decides whether your first deck teaches you tarot or teaches you that tarot is too hard. Three families dominate: Rider-Waite-Smith, Thoth, and the Golden Dawn line. They are not interchangeable, they disagree with each other on specific cards, and one of them is a genuinely poor place to begin.
Contents
Buy a deck built on the Rider-Waite-Smith system. The reason is structural rather than aesthetic: Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 illustrations gave every numbered minor card a scene with figures in it, where Marseille and Golden Dawn decks show the same card as an arrangement of suit symbols with nothing to read. That single feature is what lets a beginner interpret a card before memorising anything, and because most decks published since are RWS clones or RWS-adjacent, everything you learn transfers. The Thoth deck — painted by Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley's direction between 1938 and 1943, published 1969 — has abstract numbered cards with a printed keyword, a restructured court, and five renamed majors (Adjustment, Lust, Art, The Aeon, The Universe); it rewards people who already enjoy astrology and systematic esoteric material. Golden Dawn decks such as Godfrey Dowson's Hermetic Tarot (1980) are black-and-white study decks carrying decans, sigils and esoteric titles, and are a poor first deck. One further trap: Marseille numbers Justice VIII and Strength XI, while RWS and Thoth swap them, so if your book and your deck disagree on a number, go by the picture.
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck was illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith to a brief from A. E. Waite and published by William Rider & Son, London, in 1909; Smith worked for a flat fee without royalties and was long uncredited in the deck's title.
Source/tradition: Publication record; Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910
Fully illustrated numbered minor cards are the RWS deck's decisive structural innovation; earlier patterns such as the Marseille render the pips as arrangements of suit symbols.
Source/tradition: Comparison of surviving Marseille-pattern decks with the 1909 deck
The Thoth deck was painted by Lady Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley's direction between 1938 and 1943 and first published in 1969, after both had died; it renames five major arcana and restructures the court.
Source/tradition: Crowley, The Book of Thoth, 1944; publication history
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn exchanged the numbering of Strength and Justice to fit its zodiacal attributions; both the Waite and Crowley decks retain the exchange, while the Marseille pattern does not.
Source/tradition: Golden Dawn attributions as carried into the Waite and Crowley decks
Godfrey Dowson's Hermetic Tarot (1980) renders the Golden Dawn's Book T material in black and white with esoteric titles, decans and sigils, and without illustrated scenes on the numbered minors.
Source/tradition: Hermetic Tarot, U.S. Games Systems, 1980
Beginning with one deck, sitting with the major arcana before the minors, and keeping a short daily written record is the common teaching practice among working readers.
Source/tradition: Widespread contemporary teaching practice
That any deck is more accurate than another, that a deck's provenance confers authority, or that a first deck must be received as a gift, is not supported; the gift folklore has no traceable source before the twentieth century.
Source/tradition: No documentary source for the gift rule; no evidence bearing on deck accuracy
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
The one feature that decides everything: illustrated pips
A 78-card tarot deck splits into 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana. The minors divide into four suits of ten numbered cards — the pips — plus four court cards each.
How those pips are drawn is the single biggest practical difference between decks, and it is the thing beginners are almost never told.
In a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, every pip is a small scene with people in it. The Five of Pentacles shows two figures in the snow outside a lit church window. You can look at that card cold, with no memorized meaning, and get somewhere — hardship, exclusion, help nearby and unnoticed.
In a Marseille or Golden Dawn style deck, the Five of Pentacles is five pentacles arranged on the card, like the five of diamonds in a poker deck. There is nothing to read. The meaning comes entirely from a system you have to learn first: number theory, suit element, and in the Golden Dawn line an astrological decan and a Kabbalistic sephira assigned to each card.
Both are legitimate. Only one of them lets you start reading in week one.
The three families, compared
| Rider-Waite-Smith | Thoth | Golden Dawn / Hermetic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published | 1909 | Painted 1938–1943, published 1969 | Order material from the 1890s; Hermetic Tarot 1980 |
| Made by | Pamela Colman Smith, directed by A. E. Waite | Lady Frieda Harris, directed by Aleister Crowley | Godfrey Dowson, after the Order's Book T |
| Pips | Fully illustrated scenes | Abstract, with a keyword printed on each | Suit symbols plus esoteric titles and sigils |
| Court cards | Page, Knight, Queen, King | Princess, Prince, Queen, Knight | Princess, Prince, Queen, King |
| Renamed majors | Standard names | Adjustment, Lust, Art, The Aeon, The Universe | Standard names with esoteric titles added |
| Color | Flat, bright, high contrast | Dense, layered, hard to read at speed | Black and white line work |
| Prerequisite knowledge | None | Helpful: astrology, Thelemic vocabulary | Required: decans, Tree of Life, elemental dignities |
| Good first deck? | Yes | Only if you already like dense systems | No |
Rider-Waite-Smith: the default, and why
The deck usually sold as "Rider-Waite" was drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, working to a brief from Arthur Edward Waite, and published by William Rider & Son in London. Smith illustrated all 78 cards in a matter of months for a flat fee and no royalties, and for most of the twentieth century her name was left off the deck entirely. A growing number of people now call it the Rider-Waite-Smith deck or simply the Smith-Waite, and that is the fairer name.
Its dominance is not an accident of marketing. Illustrating the pips was Smith's decisive contribution — earlier decks had left them as pattern cards — and it turned tarot from something you memorized into something you could look at. Nearly every deck published since sits somewhere on a spectrum from "RWS clone" to "RWS-adjacent," which means that learning it once transfers to hundreds of other decks. Learn Thoth first and much of that portability does not exist.
The practical consequence for a beginner: buy an RWS-system deck, and every book, course, YouTube video and card-meaning site you find will be describing the card in your hand. Buy something structurally different and you spend your first year translating.
If you want one to start on
The Witch of the Forest's Tarot Magick Deck
Seventy-eight cards built on the Rider-Waite system, illustrated by Viki Lester for Lindsay Squire, with a printed guidebook of card meanings and spreads. It is structurally RWS, which is the part that matters — so every beginner resource written in the last century applies to it — with artwork that people actually want to handle daily. That combination is the entire brief for a first deck.
$19.99
See the Tarot Magick DeckThe Strength and Justice swap — and why your book might disagree with your deck
This trips up nearly everyone at some point, so it is worth having straight.
In the older Marseille pattern, card VIII is Justice and card XI is Strength. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn swapped them so that the sequence would line up with their zodiacal attributions — Leo to Strength, Libra to Justice. Waite, a Golden Dawn member, kept the swap, so RWS decks have VIII Strength, XI Justice. Crowley kept the swap too, but renamed both: Justice became Adjustment and Strength became Lust.
None of this changes the meaning of either card in practice. It means that if your deck and your book come from different families, the numbers will not match, and you should trust the picture rather than the number.
Thoth: brilliant, and not a starter
Aleister Crowley conceived the Thoth deck as a six-month project. Lady Frieda Harris painted it over roughly five years, from 1938 to 1943, repainting cards repeatedly at his direction; neither of them lived to see it published, which finally happened in 1969.
It is arguably the most intellectually complete tarot ever made, and it is dense in a way that fights beginners. The pips are non-figurative — geometry, colour and instrument, with a single keyword printed at the bottom — so the printed word ends up doing the reading for you. The court is restructured. Five majors are renamed. And a great deal of the design encodes Thelemic and astrological material that means nothing until you have learned it separately.
If you already read astrology, or you enjoy learning a system as a system, Thoth is a rewarding place to live. As a first deck it usually produces one of two outcomes: reading the keywords instead of the cards, or quietly giving up.
Golden Dawn and the Hermetic Tarot: a study deck, full stop
The Golden Dawn's own tarot instructions — the document known as Book T — were never published as a commercial deck by the Order itself. Godfrey Dowson's Hermetic Tarot, published in 1980, is the most faithful widely available rendering of that material.
It is entirely black and white. Every card carries its Golden Dawn esoteric title, its decan, its planetary and zodiacal sigils and its angelic attributions. The pips are symbol arrangements. There is no image to intuit from and no color to lean on. This is a deck for someone who has decided to learn the Golden Dawn system and wants the system itself on the cards.
We sell it and we will still tell you not to start there. The Hermetic Tarot is a superb second or third deck and a poor first one. If you are shopping for a beginner — yourself or someone else — go to the Tarot & Divination collection and pick something on the Rider-Waite system instead.
What actually matters when you hold the box
Once you have picked a family, the rest is physical.
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Card size | Standard tarot is roughly 2.75 × 4.75 in. If your hands are small, look for a "pocket" or "mini" edition, or you will never shuffle it comfortably and you will stop using it. |
| Card stock and finish | Thin glossy stock clumps; heavy matte stock is stiff at first and breaks in well. Neither is wrong, but they shuffle very differently. |
| Reversible backs | If the back design is not symmetrical, you can see which cards are reversed before you turn them. Only an issue if you read reversals. |
| Guidebook | A little white booklet is a keyword list. A proper printed guidebook with spreads is worth paying for on a first deck. |
| Borders and titles | Untitled cards look elegant and slow beginners down badly. Get titles on your first deck. |
Two things you do not need to worry about
You do not have to be given your first deck. The folklore says a tarot deck must be a gift. It has no traceable source before the twentieth century, it conveniently keeps beginners from buying, and essentially every working reader we know bought their own. We took this apart in Tarot vs Oracle Cards, which also covers what separates a tarot deck from an oracle deck in the first place.
You do not need to start with a "serious" deck. The deck you will actually pick up beats the deck you respect. If the art makes you want to open the box on a Tuesday evening, that is a real advantage and not a frivolous one — as long as the structure underneath is RWS.
A reasonable first-year sequence
- One RWS-system deck with a guidebook. Not three. Sit with the majors for a fortnight before you touch the minors.
- A daily single card, written down in two lines: what you drew, what happened. After a month those notes teach you more than any book.
- A second deck only when the first one bores you — and make it RWS again, so the transfer is free.
- Thoth or Hermetic in year two, if the system itself has started to interest you. By then you will have something to compare them against, which is when they become genuinely useful.
When you are ready to read for someone else, how to prepare for a tarot reading covers the part that is not about cards at all. And when two readings say opposite things — they will — this is what to do about it.
What we are not saying
We are not saying that tarot predicts events, that any deck is more "accurate" than another, or that a deck's provenance gives its readings authority. Nothing in the historical record supports that, and the differences described above are differences of design and pedagogy, not of power.
We are also not saying the Golden Dawn or Thelemic material behind these decks is nonsense. It is a serious, internally consistent body of nineteenth and twentieth century esoteric work, and it is worth studying on those terms. It is simply not what a first deck is for.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best tarot deck for beginners?
Any deck built on the Rider-Waite-Smith system, because its numbered minor cards are drawn as scenes rather than as arrangements of suit symbols. That single feature lets you read a card before you have memorized anything, and it means every beginner book, course and card-meaning site will match the deck in your hands.
Rider-Waite vs Thoth: which should I choose?
Rider-Waite-Smith if you are starting out. The Thoth deck's numbered cards are abstract designs with a printed keyword rather than illustrated scenes, five major arcana are renamed, and the court is restructured, so much of what you learn does not transfer to other decks. Thoth rewards people who already enjoy astrology and systematic esoteric material.
Is the Hermetic Tarot a good first deck?
No. Godfrey Dowson's Hermetic Tarot renders the Golden Dawn's Book T material in black and white line work, with esoteric titles, decans and sigils on the cards and no illustrated scenes on the numbered minors. It is an excellent study deck for someone learning that system and a frustrating place to begin.
Why do Strength and Justice have different numbers in different decks?
The older Marseille pattern numbers Justice as VIII and Strength as XI. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn swapped them to fit their zodiacal attributions, and both the Rider-Waite-Smith and Thoth decks kept the swap. If your book and deck disagree on the number, go by the image on the card.
Who actually drew the Rider-Waite deck?
Pamela Colman Smith illustrated all 78 cards in 1909 to a brief from Arthur Edward Waite, for a flat fee and no royalties, and was left uncredited in the deck's title for most of the twentieth century. Many readers now call it the Rider-Waite-Smith or Smith-Waite deck for that reason.
How many decks should I own when I start?
One. Owning several at once splits your attention between visual vocabularies before you have learned any of them. Add a second when the first has genuinely stopped surprising you, and keep it on the same system so the learning transfers.
Sources & further reading
- Pamela Colman Smith and A. E. Waite, tarot deck published by William Rider & Son, London, 1909; Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910.
- Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris, Thoth deck painted 1938–1943; The Book of Thoth, 1944; deck first published 1969.
- Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T — The Tarot; Godfrey Dowson, The Hermetic Tarot, U.S. Games Systems, 1980.
- On the Strength/Justice renumbering and its zodiacal rationale: Golden Dawn attributions as carried into both the Waite and Crowley decks.
- More from the magazine: Tarot vs Oracle Cards · How to Prepare for a Tarot Reading · When Two Readings Contradict Each Other
