I started with the
Tarot of the Dead/Tarot de los Muertos. It has really well-done majors that I love, and it drives me crazy that the pips are not fully illustrated with scenes. No amount of love I have for the majors can make me want to read with that deck, because I simply cannot get as much out of it as I can from a deck with fully illustrated minors.
My next deck was the
Mary Hanson-Roberts deck. One of the posters above really recommended this and it seems to be a pretty popular deck, so I guess this is a prime example of to each his/her own. I really don't like this deck. The way the hair looks on many of the characters is just so weird to me, and I feel that many of the illustrations are shallow or irrelevant. Also, after years of not being used, the paper box decayed and I lost a few cards. So, I set aside the cards I DID like for crafts, and put the ones I didn't like (about 2/3 the deck) aside to donate to my favorite little craft store.
My third deck (thank the gods) was the
Rider-Waite deck by US Games. I have accumulated many decks since, but I still use the RWS regularly. This was the deck with which I actually succeeded in learning to read Tarot. With my first two decks I struggled to memorize definitions and pored over books, finding no mnemonics to aid my studies. With the RWS, not only is the imagery on the cards incredibly detailed, relevant, abundant, and well-researched, there is SO much academia out there on this deck, and it references so many branches of magic that it is an excellent pathway to learning about them--you don't need to understand kaballah or astrology or color symbolism to read the cards, but they link up and there are myriad correlations if you are interested in expanding your knowledge base. Waite wrote a pretty good book for his cards, but you don't need it by any means. For one, you can find it free online; for another, there is just so much academia out there. The artwork is not beautiful, but there is something comforting about it, I think.
I wouldn't recommend this deck if you are not very familiar with Rider-Waite, but if you read with RWS often and are looking to spice it up a little, I HIGHLY recommend The
Tarot of the New Vision/Tarot de la Nueva Vision. The artwork on this deck is VERY beautiful, and it is a 180 degree flipped imagined view of the RWS. The card meanings play off of the RWS, but the new point of view and newly included information give each card a whole new meaning. This is a wonderful deck.
I recently purchased the
Mystic Faerie Tarot, as well. I bought it on a whim, realized AFTER I bought it that it was a full moon, and it turned out to be one of the best Tarot purchases of my tarot reading life. It's a slightly different system from RWS, but each suit has a faerie tale, told by the Ace-10 of that suit. The minors and majors are all incredibly well done, and I cannot say enough good things about this deck. The book that comes with it has changed the way I read other decks. In fact, I had so many good things to say about it that I wrote this review:
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/my ... view.shtml (third one down, by Erica Heath).
I have the
Tarot Art Nouveau by Antonella Castanelli that is stunningly beautiful but very hard to read. I recommend it as a collector but not necessarily as a tarot reader. It has one of the best wheels I have every seen, and I love all the Kings, but the cards are very complex and not obviously related to the meanings, which are not necessarily aligned with any system I know.
Another deck that's fun but not great if it's your only deck is the
Gummi Bear Tarot. Very cute, approachable, but it would help to be very familiar with RWS.
The Housewive's Tarot is fun, but difficult to learn by. I acquired it very early on because I liked the imagery, and was unable to read with it. Now it makes more sense to me, but for years it puzzled me. This will be a personal thing for you.
I recently acquired the
Revelations Tarot as well, It is very beautiful and very complex. It is very, very well constructed and well thought out. I highly recommend it if you like the imagery. Each card is reversible, and the reversed picture aligns with a specific (described in the book) reversed meaning. The accompanying book is very good. I like this system, but I also like being able to interpret reversed cards in whatever way seems relevant (which you can't really do with this deck). I highly recommend this deck.
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TLDR: If you're looking for a deck to be your only deck (rather than to begin or build a collection) I would most highly recommend the
Mystic Faerie Tarot, The
Rider-Waite-Smith, and the
Revelations Tarot, depending on your personal style. If you'd like to do further research,
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/ is a FANTASTIC website, you can browse tarot decks by a number of variables, and every listed deck (I've never found a deck that isn't listed) has pictures of majors, minors, court cards, and the backs, as well as very informative reviews. The reviews have to pass a certain standard of informativeness and writing to be posted and every deck does have at least one review, so there is no shortage of information there.
