How this course works (free, at your own pace)

In this lesson: how the free course works, how your progress is saved and what you need before you start.

Welcome. I am so glad you are here. Before we touch a single card, I want you to know how this course works, because knowing the shape of a path makes it much easier to keep walking it. Most people who give up on tarot do not give up because it is hard. They give up because they tried to learn 78 meanings in a weekend and felt they had failed. This course is built so that does not happen to you.

Free, private and at your own pace

This is a free course for complete beginners, and it will stay free. You do not need an account, you do not need to give me your email address and you do not need any special gift. You need curiosity, a deck of cards and a few minutes a day.

When you finish a lesson, press “Mark as done”. If you are signed in, your progress is saved in your account, so it follows you to every device where you sign in. If you are not signed in, it is saved in your own browser on this device, and nothing is sent to me. That keeps your learning private. It also means that, without an account, the course forgets where you were if you switch to another phone or clear your browser data. If that happens, open the course page and pick up from the lesson you remember. Nothing is lost that you cannot find again in a minute.

How the course is built

The course has nine short modules and 34 lessons, and they follow the order in which a reader actually needs things. Module 0 is this welcome, your deck and notebook, and how to shuffle and look after the cards. Module 1 explains what tarot is, where it came from and which myths you can safely drop. Module 2 is about reading ethically, because good habits are easiest to learn on the first day, before bad ones have a chance to settle in.

Modules 3, 4 and 5 teach the cards themselves: the 22 Major Arcana (the big picture cards, from the Fool to the World), the four suits with their numbers and the sixteen court cards. Module 6 teaches spreads (set layouts where each position has a meaning), from a single daily card to the Celtic Cross. Module 7 covers reversals (cards that land upside down), journaling and reading for other people. Module 8 gives you a 30-day practice plan, three lessons on deck history and other decks, and your certificate.

Each lesson teaches one idea. Most take five to fifteen minutes to read. At the end you will find one small exercise and a short quiz. The quiz is not an exam. It is there so you can check that the main idea landed, and you can take it as many times as you like.

What a good pace looks like

Imagine two beginners. The first reads ten lessons on a Saturday, feels full of information, and then does not touch the deck for three weeks. The second reads one lesson, draws one card that evening, writes two lines in a notebook and repeats that the next day. A month later, the second beginner knows the cards far better, even though she read more slowly. Tarot is learned with your hands and eyes, not only by reading about it. The lessons give you ideas. The shuffling, looking and writing between them turn those ideas into skill.

People often ask how long it takes to learn all 78 cards. Most beginners feel at home with the deck after a few months of regular practice, and nobody needs to memorize every card before their first reading. You will keep learning for years, and that is part of the pleasure.

So go as slowly as you like. Some people do one lesson a day for a month. Others read a whole module on a Sunday afternoon and then practice for a week. Both work, as long as the cards come out of the box between lessons. And you do not need to draw big spreads to begin. For your first readings, one card is enough.

Why short, spaced lessons work

Historical The idea of learning a little at a time is older than any tarot book. In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus published Memory, a study in which he taught himself lists of nonsense syllables and measured how fast he forgot them. He found that we forget quickly at first, and that reviewing material again after a gap makes it stick far better than cramming. This is now called the spacing effect, and it has been confirmed many times.

Modern A second finding helps too. In 2006 the psychologists Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed that students who tested themselves remembered more a week later than students who simply reread the same text. This is called retrieval practice. For tarot, it means that drawing a card and trying to recall its meaning before you look it up is one of the best ways to learn. The course is built around both ideas: short lessons, practice between them, and a journal where you write first and check second.

A sample week

Here is what a realistic week might look like for someone with a job and a family. On Monday evening, she reads one lesson in fifteen minutes. From Tuesday to Friday, she does a one-card draw each morning while the kettle boils and writes one line in her notebook. On Saturday, she does the lesson’s “Try this” exercise. On Sunday, she rereads the week’s notes and marks any card she keeps forgetting. That is under two hours in total, and after a month she will have finished four lessons and drawn more than fifteen cards with real attention.

What you need

You need very little. A tarot deck comes first, and a deck based on the Rider-Waite-Smith pictures is easiest, because most books and websites, this one included, describe those images. The next lesson helps you choose. You also need a notebook, and a cheap one is perfect, because you will use it for short notes after each draw. Finally, find a quiet corner and ten minutes. You do not need an altar, candles or crystals. If you enjoy them, use them. They are not required.

What this course will not do

This course will not teach you to predict the future with certainty, because tarot cannot do that. It will not ask you to believe anything. It will teach you to look carefully at 78 pictures, to ask good questions and to notice what a reading brings up in you. Many people find that is more than enough, and some find it changes how they think about their own choices.

Getting the most from the quizzes

The short quiz at the end of each lesson is a learning tool, not a test of worth. Here is how to use it well. Take it once straight after reading, without scrolling back up. If you miss a question, do not simply click the right answer. Reread the part of the lesson it comes from, then close the page and try again the next day. That small gap, and the effort of remembering, is exactly what Roediger and Karpicke found makes learning stick.

You can do the same with cards. Once you have read a module, pick three cards from it, cover their names, and say aloud what you remember about each before you check. It feels harder than rereading, and that is why it works.

When life gets busy

Every learner has weeks when the course slips. A useful rule is to have a “minimum day”: the smallest practice you will still do when everything else is too much. For many people that is one card drawn and one word written. It takes less than a minute, and it keeps the thread unbroken. When the busy week ends, you return to full lessons without the feeling of starting again.

If you miss a whole month, do not reread everything. Go back one lesson, read it, draw one card, and carry on from there. Most of what you learned is still there, waiting to be woken up.

Learning with a friend

The course works well alone, but it can be even more fun with one other person. Agree on a lesson each week, do your own exercises, then meet for half an hour, in person or by video. Each of you draws one card for the other and describes only what you see in the picture. You will be surprised how often the other person notices a detail you have looked past a dozen times. Keep the meetings short and friendly, and keep each other’s notes private, a habit that will matter in module 2, on consent and confidentiality.

Questions beginners ask

How long will the whole course take? The course has 34 lessons. At one lesson a week, about eight months. At three a week, about three months. Both are fine, and you can stop and return at any time.

Do I have to do the lessons in order? The modules build on each other, so order helps, especially for the card meanings. But if you are curious about history or spreads, peeking ahead does no harm.

What if I fall behind? There is no behind. Pick up where you left off; the cards will wait.

Do I need to memorize all 78 meanings? No. You will learn a system of suits, numbers and Major themes that lets you work out most cards, and you can look things up for years.

Myths to drop: You do not need to be “naturally intuitive” to start. Faster is not better; spacing beats cramming. And a course cannot make you a professional reader in a month, but it can make you a confident, honest beginner.

Try this

Choose one quiet spot for your deck and one notebook that you will use only for tarot. Write today’s date on the first page and one sentence about why you want to learn. That sentence will be interesting to reread when you reach the last lesson.

Recap

The course is free and private: your progress lives in your own browser, or in your account if you sign in. It moves in nine modules from the basics, through ethics and the cards, to spreads and real readings. Slow and regular practice beats fast reading, and one card is enough to begin. You need a deck, a notebook and a few quiet minutes, and nothing else.

What next

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Your deck and your notebook. If you want to look ahead, the tarot hub and the card meanings are always there, and my book The Novice’s Guide to Tarot follows the same path in more depth.

Further reading: Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger and Mark A. McDaniel, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Harvard University Press, 2014). Lauri Mukkala, The Novice’s Guide to Tarot, as a companion to this course.

Sources

• Lauri Mukkala, The Novice’s Guide to Tarot, introduction.

Go deeper: The Novice's Guide to Tarot: Introduction

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