Complete guide to reading tarot using regular playing cards

This guide will help you read tarot with a normal deck of playing cards. 

I was recently visiting a friend and didn’t have a tarot deck with me. At some point of my visit, my friend wanted that I do a tarot reading for her. That time we managed to find a deck of regular playing cards, and I can tell you that you can make pretty good tarot readings with them.

Can you use normal playing cards to read tarot? 

You can read tarot by using a regular deck of playing cards. The main differences between the two are the absence of Major Arcana cards and the card imagery from the playing cards. When using regular playing cards to read tarot, it is essential to know the properties of numbers and the meanings of each suit. 

Using regular playing cards is an excellent exercise to improve your tarot readings skills. It forces you to learn a bit about numerology in the tarot and the properties of each suit. I have found it helpful for myself in my tarot journey. I wanted to put together this post to help people read tarot with playing cards, but also discover useful ways to memorize the card meanings. 

How do you read tarot using a deck of playing cards?

There are some apparent differences between regular playing cards and tarot cards that will affect how you can use them for tarot readings. It is essential to understand these differences to know how to interpret the card meanings when you are using a regular playing card deck for fortunetelling or divinatory purposes. 

The differences between regular playing cards and tarot cards

A regular deck of playing cards includes 52 cards plus a joker. Each of the four suits contains 13 cards, and the suits are Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades. Typically, only the royal cards have imagery on them, making it hard to reflect on the card imaginary when using them for tarot interpretations. 

The most common tarot decks have 78 cards. The deck is divided into two sections, which are the Major and the Minor Arcana cards. The minor arcana has 56 cards and resembles the regular playing card deck closely. The difference is that the suits are named: Cups, Pentacles, Swords and Wands, and each of the suits include an extra trump card called the Page. Therefore making each suit to have 14 cards in total. 

The most significant difference between the two decks is the absence of Major Arcana cards in the regular playing card deck. The Major Arcana (big secrets) is a set of 22 cards that depict the journey of “the Fool” through the significant lessons in life. The Fool is a “0” numbered card and can be represented in a playing card deck by “the joker.” When you are using a regular deck of cards for tarot readings, you will be playing as if you were only playing with the minor arcana cards. 

Another significant difference between the two decks is that each tarot card has a unique imaginary, which helps the interpreter in divinatory usages. The card imaginary holds a lot of symbolism that tells a story about the card’s meaning. 

Regular playing cards only show off the number and the suit on cards from 1-10. The court or royal cards have royal figures knight – J, queen – Q, and king – K. 

The last significant difference that will affect your tarot interpretations through playing cards is that there are no reversed cards. Most regular playing cards appear upright, no matter how you shuffle the deck.

Tarot Cards	Playing cards
78 cards	53 cards
4 suits + Major Arcana	4 suits
Suits: Cups, Pentacles, Swords, and Wands	Suits: Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs
14 cards in a suit	13 cards in a suit
Unique imagery on each card	The number and the symbol of the suit
Possibility for reversed cards	No reversed cards
Major Arcana (22 cards)	Joker card

Now that we know how the two decks differ, it’s time to look at how we can interpret the regular cards in a tarot reading. 

The Four Suits in tarot and playing cards

As we just learned, the tarot deck has the suits: Cups, Pentacles, Swords and Wands. The regular card deck has Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs. They correspond to each other as follow:

• Hearts = Cups: Represent emotions and relationships
• Diamonds = Pentacles: Represent the materialistic things
• Spades= Swords: Represent Inspiration, thinking and rationality
• Clubs = Wands: Represent Action and passion

To read tarot with a regular deck of cards it is important to know something about the properties of each suit.  

The Cups (Hearts) tell about our relationship and emotional connection with ourselves and others. The Pentacles (Diamonds) often relate to our career and financial parts of life. Swords (Spades) often depict how we make decisions. And Wands (Clubs) tell us about the passion and willpower within us. 

To go a bit deeper into the meanings it will be useful to take the next extra step and familiarise yourself with the basic elements and how they relate to each suit. Masculinity and Feminity also give away features of the element. Masculinity is about logic and rationality and Feminity gives the suit more emotional and nurturing characteristics.  

When using either tarot or playing cards for fortunetelling or divination purposes, each suit is related to one of the basic elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Understanding the elements and attaching them to the suits will help you understand the card meanings better.  

• The Suit of Cups (tarot) or Hearts (playing cards) are related to the classic element of water: When you think about the suit of Hearts, keep “water” in your mind. Water is agile, flowing, purifying, and adaptable. It can be gentle, like a stream crossing a flowery meadow, or fierce as an apocalyptic tsunami. Water is also a symbol of dreams and the unconscious. Water is a feminine element. It represents energy that focuses on emotions and emphasizes intuition over logical thought and spiritual matters over material concerns. In a tarot reading their meanings, this suit is often associated with emotions, relationships, connection, and how you react towards others and your environment.

• The Suit of Pentacles or Diamonds are related to the classic element – earth: When you see Diamonds in your tarot spread, keep this element in your mind. Earth is a feminine element, it is fertile that allows growth and production, promoting prosperity. Earth is the foundation that everything is built on. Earth represents stability, hard work, and grounds many aspects of the suit. In tarot, this suit is associated with life’s materialistic aspects, focusing on work, career, and finances.

• The Suit of Swords or Spades is related to the element of Air: When you are analyzing the Spade cards, think about air, which is continuously in motion. It is a masculine element, and it is refreshing and cleansing. It can be gentle like a summer breeze and fierce like a tornado. It represents energy, force, and power, even though it remains unseen. In tarot, the Suit of Swords associates with action, thinking, and communication. They represent someone curious, logical, disciplined, moral, and fair. 

• The Suit of Wands or Clubs are related to the element of Fire: When you think about Clubs, keep “fire” in your mind. Fire is a masculine element full of action, ambition, unpredictability, and closely related to passion and sexuality. It is an active element, causing permanent change if not controlled. When in control, it can bring safety and comfort to one’s life. In tarot, the suit of Clubs encourages us to be true to things that are important to us, and take action in order to change our lives towards the things that make us tick.

Numerology with playing cards and tarot 

Understanding numerology helps you improve your intuitive tarot reading.  Whether you are using a tarot deck or standard playing cards, this will be useful information. But as the playing cards are missing the card imaginary, understanding numerology becomes essential. 

Here is a brief list with one or two keywords to make things simple.

• Ace – New Beginnings
• 2 – Balance and partnerships
• 3 – Growth and creativity
• 4 – Stability and Structure
• 5 – Instability And Change
• 6 – Cooperation and Harmony
• 7 – Assessment and Knowledge
• 8 – Accomplishment and Action
• 9 – Fruition and Fulfilment
• 10 – Completion and Renewal

You can think of this as a journey through numbers. I find this useful as it almost paints the picture of each card into my mind. Now that we have the keywords of the numbers and know the corresponding suits, we can combine them.

Let’s take a look at an example by using Diamonds that correspond to Pentacles. Now, remember that this suit was related to the element of earth. So the meaning could be anything earthly: Materialistic aspects of life such as finances, wealth, cars, houses, work, business, etc. 

All aces represent something new. With Diamonds (pentacles), it would be something new related to work, business, or finances. Perhaps a new business venture.

With 2 of Diamonds, we would be forming partnerships so maybe a co-founder of your future  business would walk into the picture. Or if it was something finance-related you would be finding a balance with your income and spending.

When 3 of Diamonds show up it is indicating that your business is starting to have some promising results and you are being creative with it. 

4 of Diamonds create structure and finances are starting to look stable. Everything is going as planned.

5 of Diamonds brings in instability and market fluctuation. Perhaps your finances are taking a dip. Or you are having problems with your possessions like your house. 

6 of Diamonds is when you find your self from the ground after dropping down from the blow that 5 of diamonds brought. You are finding harmony again to reset. 

7 of Diamonds is a time of reassessment. This is when you use your gained knowledge to get up, plan again, and look for the future. 

8 of Diamonds are about taking action so you are going forward with full steam again. 

9 of Diamonds tells you that there is growing wealth coming your way. Business is booming again. 

10 of Diamonds brings you to completion. A cycle has come to its end. Perhaps you are selling your business or starting a new one. Maybe you are thinking about changing your house or a car.  

Below are all the suits described in similar fashion through a similar exercise. Remember that you can adjust the meenings the way you want but I hope this method can act as a guidance for yourself.

Continue reading after the pictures because next, we are about to take a look at the Court cards – Knights, Queens and Kings and how they can be interpreted.

Court cards in Tarot readings with playing cards

You might already know that the cards were initially used for gaming purposes in the history of tarot cards. Therefore the tarot court cards resemble what we have as the royal cards in the playing card deck. The significant difference is that there are no pages in the regular deck. 

This makes things a bit easier as we can focus on the personality traits of just the three: knights, queens, and kings. But how do we do that? 

The good news is that it is relatively easy. We go back to the classic elements, but this time we can drop one of them, as the pages are absent from a deck of regular playing cards. We take a look at the elements and turn them into personality traits. This is how I interpret them.

• Knights relate to the element of Fire: They are young and eager, with a passion for proving themselves to the world. They can be overly keen to take on the traits of their suit. Let’s give them keywords: Passion and nativistic eagerness.

• Queens relate to the elements of Water: Remember how gently water flows, but it can destroy everything on its way. They are knowledgable, and they have great intuition. Let’s give them keywords: Inner wisdom and intuitive power.

• Kings relate to the element of Air: Air represents energy, force, and power. When it comes to personality traits, the air brings clarity to thinking and leading. They are great communicators of their ideas and visions. Let’s give them keywords: Strategic communication and vision.

Now that we have the personality traits we can combine them with the attributes of each suit. Each Personality trait takes on the correspondents of the suit. So a Knight of Clubs will be intense with fire. His personality is fire, while the suit relates to fire as well. 

By combining the personality traits that we gave it – Passion in action and Naivistic eagerness, and we combine it with the characteristics of FIRE: action and enthusiasm. It makes Knight of Clubs a very passionate person that goes forward towards the things that are true to him. He is eager to show the world what he is made of. This person will make mistakes along the way, but his passion will drive him to reach his goals. Let’s give it a meaning: Going forward with passion.

Similarly, if we take the Queen of Diamonds. Here we have personal traits from the element of water, and the suit’s attributes come from the element of earth. Queens have inner knowledge and intuitive power. Earth represented the materialistic things in life, things related to finances and work-life. She is hardworking, and she knows how to get things done. She doesn’t brag, but everyone knows that she knows how to get things working when it comes to business. Let’s give it a meaning: Knowing how things work. 

Similarly, I created the meanings for each court card. Take a look at them here. 

The Joker and the Fool

The Joker will be the equivalent of the Fool in tarot. This card will be the only representative of the Major Arcana cards, which depicts the journey of the Fool. The Fool is a joyful character who represents in tarot new beginnings, adventure, carelessness, and unlimited potential. 

In many playing card decks, the Joker is a card that stands either upright or reversed. Therefore you can interpret this card also in its inverted position. If you would like to do that, its reversed meaning represent recklessness, foolishness, and risk-taking. If you would like to learn more about reversed interpretations, you might want to read this article I wrote on reversed meanings. 

Example of a love tarot reading with playing cards?

Now that we have all the card meanings, we can start doing simple tarot readings with playing cards. Tarot readings are done with a spread, and the easiest is a three-card spread. The only limitation of doing these readings is your imagination. You can come up with an unlimited number of tarot spreads if you like, but I will give you an easy example. 

When you are shuffling the deck, think of the question you want to ask the tarot. Let’s say that you want to know the possible success of a relationship between you and a potential candidate. When you feel that the deck is shuffled enough, place three cards from left to right in front of you. 

The card on the left will present to you. The card in the middle will present the potential partner. And the card on the right will demonstrate the relationship. 

1. 3 of Clubs
2. King of Diamonds
3. Joker

You: 3 of Clubs was about creative action and growth. It looks like you will be the one initiating the relationship with creativity. It’s time for you to create a pickup line that will sweep him or her away. 

Your potential partner: This is a wealthy person and who values the materialistic things in life. They are very generous but expect some respect. He or she is also a great communicator. They are a very rational type, so you might want to consider this when you are coming up with a pickup line. 

The potential of your relationship. Joker is a great sign. You two together will be an adventure. It has unlimited potential to become a meaningful relationship. Anyhow it will be a joyful ride, so go for it! 

Tarot reading with playing cards Yes or No

Yes, or No readings are popular due to their simplicity. It’s nice to draw a card when you have a quick question. With playing cards, you are in the absence of reversed cards, so you cannot use the most straightforward method of doing YES or NO readings where upright is yes and reversed is no. 

You will need to come up with a list of Yes and No cards of your own. There is no setlist in which cards have a yes and no meaning. When you have gotten a grasp of the card meanings, you can make this list. How do you relate with the card, and what do they mean to you are the big questions. In the end, it is entirely up to the interpreter of the cards to decide which card means yes and which card means no. 

But if you want to make things really simple, you can decide that even number cards are yes and odd-numbered cards are no. Or heart and diamonds are YES, and spades and clubs are NO. 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Putting it together was a joy and an excellent exercise for me as well. Please share your thoughts on this in the comment section below. 

Happy tarot readings with playing cards!