Easy Tarot: New Edition by Ellershaw & Marchetti

The 228-page revised handbook. Ellershaw's teaching text, expanded for this edition: meanings, card relationships, elemental correspondences, and answers to the questions beginners actually ask.

Marchetti's Gilded Tarot Royale. The full 78-card deck in Ciro Marchetti's rich digital-painterly style, one of modern tarot's most beloved beginner-friendly decks.

Seven spreads plus working aids. Including the signature Life Spread, with cheat sheets for card combinations and diary pages for tracking readings.

• Contents: 78-card Gilded Tarot Royale deck, 228-page revised handbook, cheat sheets, diary pages
• Authors: Josephine Ellershaw (handbook), Ciro Marchetti (deck artwork)
• Publisher: Llewellyn, 2025 edition
• Dimensions: 5.38" x 1.25" x 8.34"
• SKU: DEASTAR

The Easy Tarot kit earned its standing by solving tarot's real beginner problem, which was never the cards but the pedagogy. Ellershaw's method builds readings the way readings actually work: cards in relationship rather than isolation, meanings anchored to life events, spreads introduced in an order that teaches technique cumulatively, with her Life Spread serving as the course's capstone. The cheat sheets and diary pages turn the book's lessons into practice, and the practice into a reader.

Marchetti's Gilded Tarot Royale is the method's perfect partner. His imagery keeps the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition's symbolic bones while rendering them in luminous, legible scenes a newcomer can read intuitively before memorizing anything, which is precisely the confidence Ellershaw's method wants to build on. Together they remain the recommendation we give most often when someone asks for a true first kit: everything needed, nothing assumed, and a deck worth keeping long after the training wheels come off.

1. Read the handbook's opening chapters before touching the deck; Ellershaw's sequence rewards obedience.
2. Begin with daily single draws, cheat sheets at your elbow.
3. Work the seven spreads in the book's order, saving the Life Spread for when technique settles.
4. Use the diary pages faithfully; readers are built in the writing down.
5. Graduate at your own pace; the Gilded Royale reads beautifully at every level.

Give it three weeks of daily draws. The wall most beginners hit will simply fail to appear.

• Divination for Beginners by Scott Cunningham: the survey text that situates tarot among the world's systems.
• DruidCraft Tarot by Carr-Gomm & Carr-Gomm: a natural second deck once the training wheels retire.
• Earth Goddess Altar Cloth, 24 x 24 Inches: the reading surface for the new practice.
• Amethyst Chakra Necklace: the intuition stone worn at the reading table.
• White Sage Smudge Sticks, Set of 6: the cleanse between practice sessions.

Is this really good for total beginners?

It is the kit built for exactly that reader: no prior knowledge assumed, technique taught cumulatively, and cheat sheets bridging the gap while memory catches up. It remains our standard first-kit recommendation.

Which deck is included?

Ciro Marchetti's Gilded Tarot Royale, the full 78-card deck in his luminous style, RWS-tradition bones with imagery a newcomer can read on sight.

What is the Life Spread?

Ellershaw's signature layout, taught as the handbook's capstone: a comprehensive spread linking the reading to life's actual departments, the method's graduation exercise.

What is new in this edition?

The 2025 Llewellyn edition carries the revised and expanded 228-page handbook with updated guidance, cheat sheets, and diary pages alongside the full deck.

Will I outgrow it?

The method, eventually and by design; the deck, rarely. Gilded Royale copies tend to stay in rotation for years after the handbook goes to a friend.