Halloween is just around the corner! During this time, a tradition in the U.S. is to get your tarot cards read or to enhance your gaming experiences by either adding a divinatory element or finding a tarot-themed game. If you need resources and inspiration to read, learn, or play with tarot, we’ve got you covered!

5 Websites to Learn and Read Tarot

Tarot card meanings can take a bit to learn, and sometimes guidebooks truncate definitions or don’t offer reversals. Luckily, there are a few sites you can reference to look up meanings on-the-fly or pull a random card.

1. auntyflo.com/tarot: Aunty Flo offers meanings and free tarot readings with a feminine vibe.
2. biddytarot.com: A popular resource to learn tarot or take classes, Biddy Tarot is the “go to” for new and experienced tarot card readers.
3. facade.net: If you want to draw free tarot cards, this site has a broad selection of decks and spreads to choose from. Each reading offers meanings tied to the deck you choose, and is customized per spread.
4. labyrinthos.co: Labyrinthos has a clean, modern design and offers tarot card meanings, Lenormand meanings, as well as an app.
5. learntarot.com: If you want a straightforward, text-heavy course, this resource offers a lot of wisdom from an experienced tarot card reader.

10 Halloween Tarot Decks

Tarot cards are a popular item for collectors, card readers, writers, and art enthusiasts. There are so many Halloween-appropriate decks, we had trouble picking just ten. In this list, you’ll find literary, horror, and traditional Halloween tarot card decks that are perfect for a spooky, fun holiday.

1. Beetlejuice Tarot: Celebrate 30 years of Beetlejuice with this official tarot deck set, containing both Major and Minor Arcana and a fold-out map, for strange and unusual tarot practitioners of all skill levels. Fans of Beetlejuice can use this deck and fold-out map, complete with card meanings and instructions, to perform fun and informed readings. The 78 custom illustrations for this tarot deck evoke the haunting spirit of the infamous bio-exorcist and features images of fan-favorite characters, from Adam and Barbara Maitland and Lydia Deetz to the ghastly characters in the Netherworld’s Waiting Room.

2. Edgar Allen Poe Tarot: Whether you’re brand new to tarot or are an experienced reader, The Edgar Allan Poe Tarot will be your guide on your spiritual journey. Each card has two sections: Into the Maelström, which provides divinatory meaning, and Tell-Tale Heart, which explores its connection to one of Poe’s works. This unique format makes every card a doorway to discovery.

3. Golden Age of Horror Tarot: The Golden Age of Horror Tarot Card Deck was created from direct scans of Golden Age Comic Book Covers and was funded on Kickstarter. The original deck was released in 2019, and a new Kickstarter funded the second printing. The GAH Tarot Deck Consists of 78 unique full color illustrations, for both the Major and Minor Arcana. The cards are based on vintage horror comic book covers, dozens of fonts have been used along with the covers to create a unique and beautiful full size Tarot Deck. If you prefer a smaller size, you can pick up The Golden Age of Horror Second Edition which employs all new card art, but uses poker-sized cards instead of full-sized.

4. The Halloween Tarot: Designed by Karin Lee, The Halloween Tarot features aA black cat with glowing eyes who leads you on anocturnal sojourn through the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. The characters of the Major Arcana visit from the realms of horror stories and Halloween tradition. Frankenstein and his bride ‘bring to life’ the Emperor and the Empress cards. The Minor Arcana suits are Pumpkins, Imps, Ghosts, and Bats, each with a special significance.

5. Jack O’ Lantern Tarot: Gorgeous rich colors and perfectly rendered compositions are sure to make this one of the most popular Halloween decks available. As the Wheel of the Year turns to autumn, this lovely tarot reflects how the distance between our world and the spirit plane thins and fades. With fabulous art by Giuliano Costa, this laughing and grinning macabre new deck of eternal wisdom and perilous delight carries the Halloween spirit fully into Tarot.

6. Macabre Tarot: Are you ready to let your skin crawl? Are you ready to get lost in the night? Are you ready to embrace everything that lives in the shadows? Step into the darkness and release your fears. A 78-card tarot deck, with premium design aesthetics, that calls you to turn away from the light and explore your own shadow. Packaged in a coffin-shaped box, this deck is not for the faint of heart!

7. Occult Tarot: Drawing on daemons, symbols, and sigils from ancient magickal grimoires including Archidoxis Magica and the Key of Solomon, Occult Tarot presents a fully realized divination tool to finally embrace and behold the mysteries of the night.The first tarot deck to faithfully adhere to the Solomonic principles of demon conjuration, Occult Tarot allows practitioners to discover the power of ancient demons and learn to tame the beasts that wander between the physical and spiritual worlds.

8. Sleepy Hollow Tarot: In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tarot, artist Nick Lawyer takes the gothic subject matter of Irving’s novel and intertwines it with the profound themes of the Tarot to create a powerful tool for self-discovery. With engaging and inspiring illustrations reminiscent of the famous Rider-Waite Tarot by Pamela Colman Smith, it proves instantly familiar but transports the reader to a new world of divinatory possibilities.

9. Spoopy Tarot: The Spoopy Tarot deck is a kawaii treat for all the spooky season tricksters, featuring the classic tarot deck reimagined with cute li’l ghosts, nasty witches, and other fun stuff that goes bump in the night. Instead of the fool’s journey, Spoopy Tarot follows a spirit floating through a haunted house, encountering 78 extremely cute tarot cards—adorable versions of traditional tarot archetypes in the major and minor arcana.

10. Universal Monsters Tarot and Guidebook: Let Count Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and other creepy creatures guide your tarot practice with this hair-raising tarot deck and guidebook inspired by the iconic Universal Pictures Monsters! Featuring stunning original artwork inspired by classic tarot iconography, this 78-card deck depicts spine-chilling characters, imagery, and themes from the legendary Universal Pictures monster films, from Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula to the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and more!

Are you looking for Lenormand tarot recommendations? This style of tarot employs a blend of playing cards and divination. If you are keen on adding this element, check out The Brown Witch Lenny Linen by Aunty K’s Tarot or grab a horror-themed poker deck like Infaernum. You can find instructions to read the meanings of Lenormand cards at Labyrinthos or check out The Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook: Reading the Language and Symbols of the Cards.

5 Tarot-Themed Games

Over the years, tarot cards have been used to both supplement rules in tabletop RPGs or be used as their own mechanic in story, card, and board games. Here’s a selection of games perfect to use with tarot cards or for Halloween.

1. Arcanes Majeures: This game uses the Fate Accelerated rules with one significant twist – tarot cards play a central role in character and setting creation. Your High Aspect and Trouble are replaced by a tarot card of your choosing, and your character gets supernatural abilities related to that card. City-states are designed by drawing tarot cards as well, to answer a series of questions that will define the conflicts going on around the PCs.

2. Divinare: A bluffing game for 2 to 4 players, Divinare is a themed game that plays in 30 minutes. Late 19th century, London, England, prominent mediums gathered for an historic tournament whose winner will be named the best clairvoyant of the century. Players will incarnate the finalists of this tournament. Their goal is to guess the cards in the hand of their adversaries to estimate how many cards of each category will be shown at the end of the game. But will bluffing, tactical playing and their divinatory powers make better predictions than their competitors?

3. Dungeon Solitaire: Labyrinth of Souls: Defeat monsters, disarm traps, open doors, and navigate mazes as you explore a dangerous dungeon using tarot cards. Collect treasure and magic items, gain skills, and gather companions. But beware, the dungeon is vast, and death awaits those who linger too long. If your torches burn out you will be lost forever in the darkness. If your rations run dry, you will starve or go mad. And the dungeon itself is a force of corruption, threatening all who enter.

4. Fortune’s Childe: Fortune’s Childe is a fantasy roleplaying game designed for one player and one gamemaster. The player assumes the role of the Fool, a lighthearted wanderer adrift through life, whose personal quest is the same as all our quests: to attain wisdom and good fortune while avoiding ill events and staving off death. At the beginning of each game session, the player decides whether his character is Upright or Reversed, with his or her abilities depending on that choice.

5. Querent: The Cartomancer’s Tome: Instead of using dice, formulas, and pre-created campaigns, Querent allows the player to generate unique and rich experiences by using tarot cards. It combines the personal experience of a tarot reading with the adventures of a roleplaying game. This makes the game more narrative-driven instead of statistic-driven. To play, pick up the guidebook, The Cartomancer’s Tome, and any deck of tarot cards.

13 Reference Books about Tarot

If you’ve taken Monica Valentinelli‘s Tarot for Storytellers workshop at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium, Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, Clarion West, etc. some of these books might seem familiar. This list of references are accessible to anyone interested in learning tarot, and are perfect for storytellers regardless of your preferred medium.

Many of the listed titles are available in multiple formats wherever books are sold or borrowed. Some of the books are older editions that have been reprinted, and may be available at a used bookstore as well.

1. 1001 Tarot Spreads: The Complete Book of Tarot Spreads for Every Purpose: People seeking to understand themselves and their destiny have long relied on tarot cards for divination. And while finding guidance may be as simple as drawing one card randomly from the deck, over the years many other layouts have been devised—from three-card past/present/future readings to more complicated layouts that use almost the entire deck. Bestselling author and master reader Cassandra Eason will guide you through this rich variety of spreads so you can get a more precise answer to your question. Address a lingering anxiety by laying down a 10-card Celtic Cross. Buying a house? About to undergo surgery? Confused by a flighty love interest? Look to this book for 1,001 different ways to draw and place cards that will give you clues about the future, context for the present, and insight into the past.

2. Book of the Tarot: In this overview of the mystical cards, a brief history of the cards is accompanied by an original full page illustration by 22 different comic book artists for the Major Arcana. Also included is a summary of the Minor Arcana and an introduction to card spreading. A great primer to the Tarot cards with unique interpretations of the enchanted cards such as Death, the Moon, Judgement, the Chariot, the Devil, and all of the others for people who want a general overview as opposed to a deep dive.

3. The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals: What do you do with the “other half” of the Tarot deck: the reversed cards? Experienced and beginning Tarot readers alike often struggle with interpreting cards when they’re upside down. Struggle in the dark no more. Respected Tarot scholar and author Mary K. Greer sheds light on the subject in The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, the first book in Llewellyn’s new Special Topics in Tarot series. This series was created in response to an increasing demand for more Tarot books on advanced and specialized topics. Reversals are not black and white? There is more than one way to interpret them. Explore these shades of grey with the twelve different methods for reading upside down cards.

4. The Fablemaker’s Animated Tarot and Guidebook: The Fablemaker’s Tarot Deck and Guidebook PDFs are your guide to beginning your journey into combining the worlds of TTRPGs and the meaningful, mesmerizing practice of tarot. Whether you’re a hardcore gamer or are just curious about TTRPGs, and whether you’re an advanced practitioner of tarot or are merely curious, you’ve come to the right place. This digital edition of print-and-play tarot cards includes a 280-page guidebook designed for use in tabletop gaming. Discover how to use tarot in TTRPG campaigns, enhance character classes, learn spreads for divination, etc.

5. How to Normal Tarot 2nd Edition: This guidebook is an interesting, nuanced set of card illustrations and descriptions that can be used independently of the Normal Tarot. The Caretaker runs Normal Horoscopes, a fantastic blog of horoscopes and mystical advice. The blog is still updating daily now on Tumblr, and the Caretaker, the blog’s tender, can be found on twitter and patreon as well at @NormalHoroscopes. If you love the Normal Tarot, also check out Furiously Prognosticating, the first collection of their posts, also published by Seven Thirteen Books.

6. Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners: First published in 1998, Joan Bunning’s Learning the Tarot has become a tarot classic. Written in a confident and natural style, the book communicates the basic depth and beauty of each card, shows how the cards trigger psychological projection, and enhances intuition. Learning the Tarot is a thorough (but never overwhelming) invitation to the beginner. The book focuses in detail on: the actual process of discovering meaning in the cards, how to consider one card by itself, how to look for card pairs, and how to create the “story” of a reading. The book includes a convenient reference section that contains two pages of information for each card, including a picture from the popular Waite-Smith deck, a description, keywords, action phrases, and suggestions for cards with similar and opposite meanings.

7. Mapping the Hero’s Journey with Tarot: Arwen Lynch highlights how the The Hero’s Journey, a tried-and-true method of building stories, can be mapped using tarot and relays how you can use this technique to tell your own stories. Every memorable tale can be filtered through this method. From Star Wars to Shrek to the 3 Little Pigs, the steps are the same. This book guides you from the Ordinary World to the Return effortlessly. Because the goal here is to activate your voice and to use your imagination, there is no need to memorize anything. The Tarot is your tool because you are your own boss. Let this book give you a secret weapon disguised as 78 cards.

8. Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack: Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom has inspired a whole generation of Tarot students. Often referred to as the “Bible of Tarot books”, it is a landmark book that helped launch today’s Tarot renaissance. Drawing on mythology and esoteric traditions and delving deeply into the symbolism and ideas of each card, the book offers a modern psychological interpretation of the tarot archetypes rather than a system of esoteric symbolism.

9. Story Arcana: Using Tarot for Writing: Sometimes, despite all our dreaming, outlining, and drive to write, the story grinds to a halt. Thankfully, there is another way to beat the critic and get back to writing progress in no time. Humans are meaning-making magicians. By working with the tarot as the key to your unconscious, this guide will help you to break through to the deeper levels of your story. By laying out tarot cards in customized spreads for writers and asking powerful questions, you will move though blocks in your writing with ease. Let Story Arcana introduce you to the process of writing with tarot. Writing can be fun again, and this book will show you the way.

10. Tarot for the Fiction Writer by Paula Chaffee Scardamalia: Writing a novel is a wild, unpredictable—and oftentimes stormy—adventure. And sometimes you need a compass to guide you. Because story is inherent in Tarot’s structure, it is an effective map and storytelling tool—whether you’re writing a novel in progress or starting out on a brand-new endeavor. Now you can use Tarot myths, symbols, characters, settings, and innumerable combinations as a powerful, portable, and imaginative tool for story development, editing and revisions, publication, and promotion! Each card has a story to tell you and can help you map out your book.

11. Tarot for Writers: Corrine Kenner teaches you how to read tarot cards and apply them to your writing each stage of the creative process, from fleshing out a premise to promoting a finished work. Enhance your storytelling technique through over 500 enjoyable writing prompts, exploratory games for groups and individuals, tarot journaling, and other idea-stimulating activities that call upon the archetypal imagery and multi-layered symbolism in the tarot. Infuse flair and originality into your work as you learn to: interpret symbols, myths, and learn to read all seventy-eight cards in the tarot card deck; use classic tarot layouts and spreads to structure your story; brainstorm story ideas and develop dialogue and plot; create detailed settings, powerful scenes, and dynamic characters; overcome writer’s block and breathe new life into existing projects.

21. Tarot: Plain and Simple: As the title indicates, this book presents the Tarot in clear language that anyone can understand. If you’ve had trouble learning the Tarot, this book gives the meaning of each and every one of the 78 Tarot cards?both in simple terms and in-depth ones, both upright interpretations and those for when a card is drawn reversed. It includes an overview of the history of the Tarot and suggests why this divinatory method works from a scientific point of view. Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis is a FlamesRising.com favorite, because the text integrates layers of symbolism, including numerology, in a matter-of-fact style.

13. The Ultimate Guide to the Rider Waite Tarot: Discover everything you ever wanted to know about the world’s most popular tarot deck. The Ultimate Guide to the Rider Waite Tarot details the ten most important symbols on each and every card in the deck complete with hundreds of illustrations for easy use. In addition to an explanation of the symbols, each card is given a brief interpretation by topic: primary meaning, prognosis or tendency, spiritual meaning, love and relationship meaning, daily meaning, and the success and happiness meaning. Writing in a convenient format designed for quick reference, European tarot authorities Johannes Fiebig and Evelin Bürger also provide tips, hints, facts, and lore to improve your reading right away.

Have you used any of these tarot card decks, played these games, or read these books? Have a different resource to recommend? Let us know in the comments.


This post contains affiliate links.

Tags | books, Games, halloween, tarot, ttrpgs