Daily Tarot Card: How to Draw and Read One Card a Day
One card in the morning, one sentence in the evening. That is how I learned the 78 cards, and it will teach you faster than any book.
One card in the morning, before the day gets loud. You need nothing more than that to really learn tarot. I did not learn the 78 cards from books. I learned them like this: one each morning, next to my coffee, and a look back in the evening.
The daily card is the smallest spread there is, and the most honest. It does not tell you what will happen today. It hands you a picture to look at your day through.
Below is how to draw it, which question to ask, how to read a single card on its own, and the mistakes that make a daily card worthless.
How to draw a daily tarot card
You need a complete deck of 78 cards and two quiet minutes. No ritual, no candle, no special cloth. If you like those things, have them. They are not required.
- Give it a fixed place in your morning. After getting up, before the first look at your phone. Always at the same time, so it becomes a habit and not a chore.
- Shuffle. Keep going until your hands stop by themselves. Now and then turn part of the pile around, so that reversed cards can turn up too.
- Ask your question. One only, silently or aloud. The next section tells you which kind works.
- Draw one card. Fan the deck face down and take the card your hand stops at. Or cut the deck and take the top one. Both are fine, as long as you stick to one method.
- Turn it sideways. Like the page of a book, from left to right. If you flip it over the short edge you turn it upside down, and you no longer know whether it lay upright or reversed.
- Look first, read second. Before you look up any meaning, study the picture for half a minute. What do you notice first? A colour, a gesture, a face? That is your way in.
- Leave it out. On your desk, by the mirror, as a photo on your phone. The card does its work over the day, not in that one minute in the morning.
If you do not own a deck: the FalciDilara app has a free daily card waiting for you every day, upright or reversed, and I write you what it means for that day.
The question to ask in the morning
The question decides whether the daily card is any use to you. A single card cannot forecast the course of a day, and it should not try. It can show you where to look.
Questions that do not hold:
- “What will happen today?” Too big, too passive. You turn yourself into a spectator of your own day.
- “Will he text me today?” That is a yes or no question about another person. There is yes or no tarot for that, and even there I prefer to ask differently.
- “Will the meeting go well?” The card does not know your boss. It only knows you.
Questions that hold:
- “What should I pay attention to today?”
- “What helps me today?”
- “Which attitude gets me through this day well?”
- “What am I overlooking right now?”
Pick one of these and stay with it for a whole month. Only when the question stays the same can you compare the answers. Mine has been the same for many years: what should I pay attention to today?
How to read a single card
In a spread with several cards, the cards explain each other. The daily card stands alone. So I read it in three steps: which group does it belong to, what does the picture show, and where does it touch the day in front of me?
The group tells you at once which part of your life the card is speaking about.
A card from the Major Arcana as your daily card means that today you touch a theme that will stay with you longer than until evening. A card from the Minor Arcana is closer to everyday life: a conversation, a task, a mood.
Then the picture. Read it as a scene. Who is standing there, what is the figure doing, where is it looking? Only at the end comes the question: where do I see this scene in my calendar today?
This is how it sounds with real daily cards:
Eight of Pentacles
A craftsman sits at his bench, hammering one coin after another. Today care counts, not the grand gesture. Take the one task that needs patience and finish it.
Two of Cups
Two people hold out a cup to each other. A day for a conversation between equals: with your partner, a friend, even a colleague. Notice who offers you something today.
Five of Wands
Five figures swing their staffs in all directions and nobody really lands a blow. Friction, competition, many opinions in one room. You do not have to win every argument today.
Knight of Swords
A rider charges forward with his sword raised. As an attitude: today you are quick in your head and quick with words. Read the message a second time before you send it.
The Hermit
An old man with a lantern, alone on a mountain. Withdraw for an hour today. The answer you are looking for will not come from the next conversation but from the silence before it.
The Sun
A child on a white horse under a great sun. A bright, open day. Show what you have made, say what makes you glad. Today things are allowed to be simple.
The Tower
Lightning strikes a tower. The card frightens people, and it almost never means a disaster. As a daily card: something built on shaky ground shows its crack today. Better today than a year from now. More on this in the article on the tarot cards people fear.
Upright and reversed
The app and I read all 78 cards upright and reversed. Reversed does not mean bad, and it does not simply mean the opposite either. A reversed card shows the same theme, only stuck, turned inward, or out of proportion.
Three questions help with any reversed daily card:
- Is it blocked? The Ace of Cups upright is a feeling that overflows. Reversed, the feeling is there but you are not letting it out today.
- Does it turn inward? The Chariot upright sets off. Reversed, the question is where you want to steer at all, before you pick up speed.
- Is it too much or too little? The Emperor upright gives order. Reversed, it is too much control or none at all.
With heavy cards, the reversed position is often the lighter one. The Three of Swords reversed shows a pain that is easing. The Devil reversed shows a dependency loosening its grip.
If you are just starting out and reversed cards confuse you, you may read them all upright for the first month. Simply turn them round. Later you add the second reading, and your vocabulary doubles.
Keeping a card journal
Without a journal, the daily card is a pleasant morning habit. With a journal it becomes a textbook you write yourself. A small notebook is enough, or a note on your phone.
In the morning you write:
- the date
- the card, and whether it lay upright or reversed
- your question, if it changes
- one single sentence: what do I see in this picture?
In the evening you add a second sentence: where did I meet this card today? Nothing more. Two sentences a day is something you can keep up.
One of my own entries looks like this: “Five of Wands, upright. Morning: everyone talking, nobody listening. Evening: parents’ meeting, forty minutes of arguing about the school trip, I said one thing and then kept quiet. Good.”
After four weeks something happens that no book can give you. The Five of Wands is no longer “conflict and competition”, it is that parents’ meeting. The cards take on your own meanings, and those sit deeper than any list learned by heart.
The card in the morning is a question. The answer is the one you write in the evening.
When the same cards keep coming up
On Sunday, count through your week. Seven cards, laid side by side or read back in your notebook, show a pattern a single card never shows.
The same card twice or more
With 78 cards, that is rare enough to look twice. The card is not saying something new each time. It is saying that its theme is still open. Ask yourself: what did it show me the first time, and what did I do with it?
One suit dominates
Four or five Swords in a week: you are living in your head, brooding, arguing. Many Cups: a relationship or a feeling stands in the foreground. Many Pentacles: money, work, health in the sense of routines and habits. Many Wands: something wants to be started.
Many Major Arcana
Three or more major cards in seven days show a week in which the course is being set. In weeks like that, plan less and look more closely.
The same number
Three fives in a week, whatever the suit, speak of friction and loss. Three aces speak of beginnings. The number then tells you more than the single card.
Court cards again and again
Either a particular person is pushing into your week, or you are trying out a new role. See whether they are Pages, who learn, or Kings, who decide.
If a theme will not let go after a week, the daily card is too small for it. Then a larger spread is worth your time: the three card spread for past, present and future, the love tarot spread when it is about one person, or the Celtic cross for the really big questions.
Daily card mistakes
Drawing again until you like the answer. This is the most common mistake, and the one that ruins everything. If you draw a second card straight after the Tower, and then a third, you do not end up with a daily card but with a pile to pick the prettiest from. The first card stands. Especially the uncomfortable one.
Asking the same question three times a day. The cards do not get more precise when you push them. They become arbitrary. One question, one card, one day.
Only looking things up, never looking. If you go straight to a book or a website, you learn other people’s sentences. Look at the picture first, write your own sentence, then read up.
Taking the card as a forecast. The Ten of Swords in the morning does not mean the day will be terrible. It means something is over and you may stop holding on to it. If a card scares you, you are reading it wrong.
Handing decisions over to a card. Whether you resign, see a doctor or invest money is not for a daily card to decide. Tarot is a tradition of interpretation, not a science. The card gives you an angle. The walking you do yourself.
Skipping the evening. Without the look back, you never find out what a card means in your life. The second sentence in the journal is the more important one.
Frequently asked questions
Can I draw more than one daily tarot card?
For the daily card, it stays at one. If the card is unclear to you, you may add a single clarifying card, with the question “What does this card mean more precisely?”. It does not replace the first card, it explains it. If that becomes a habit, you are in truth drawing again until you like what you see.
Should I draw my daily card in the morning or in the evening?
In the morning, if you want it to go through the day with you. Some people draw in the evening and ask “What mattered most today?”. That is a good exercise too, but it is a review and not a daily card. Choose one and stay with it.
What does it mean if I keep drawing the same daily card?
That its theme is not finished. The card repeats until you have done something with it: had a conversation, made a decision, let something go. Look in your journal at what was going on on the days it appeared. You usually see the link at once.
Is a reversed daily card a bad sign?
No. Reversed means the theme of the card is stuck, turned inward or out of balance. With heavy cards like the Three of Swords or the Devil, the reversed position is actually the kinder one.
Can I draw a daily tarot card online, or does it have to be a real deck?
Both work. What matters is that you draw one card and stay with it. A real deck has the advantage that you learn the pictures in your hands. The free daily card in the app has the advantage that it is there every morning, even on the train. You will find more spreads and card meanings in the tarot section.