Is it all right to own both oracle cards and tarot?

Perfectly. They have different roles, and many people use tarot when they want a situation examined closely and oracle cards when they want a single line.

Are there oracle cards with bad meanings?

It depends on the deck. The oracle cards on this service include none that only leave you low. There are cards that mean go carefully, and they always come with something about what to do next.

Can I draw again on the same question?

We would not suggest it. Because the reading finds meaning in chance, redrawing until you are satisfied removes the premise. Drawing again on another day changes how you receive it, too.

Oracle cards and tarot — which one should you pick?

2026.09.07 updated · 5 min read

AoiBalancedAnswering questions from Mio

MioAoi, may I ask you something? What is the difference between oracle cards and tarot? They are both cards with pictures on them.

AoiA good question. They look alike and they come from quite different places. The largest difference is whether the number of cards and their structure are fixed. Hold on to that and the rest of the differences all connect up.

Tarot has a fixed count; oracle decks are free

Tarot has a settled structure of seventy-eight cards: twenty-two major arcana and fifty-six minor. Each card carries meanings that have been shared for a long time. Whoever made the deck, that skeleton does not change.

An oracle deck, by contrast, lets its maker decide both the number and the theme. Some have thirty cards, some sixty; there is no common rule. It helps to think of them as designed around what the maker wants to convey.

MioSo oracle cards are completely different depending on who made them?

AoiExactly. Which is why you can choose one because you simply like that deck. With tarot the reverse holds: because the ground of the reading is shared, what you learn on one deck carries over to any other.

Whether there are reversals also differs

Tarot has upright and reversed, and the same card reads differently depending which way up it comes. Seventy-eight cards with orientation on top of that make for a considerable number of combinations.

Most oracle decks have no reversals; the usual form is to draw one and take the message. The oracle cards on this service have no reversals either. The deck is built with almost no cards that only carry a negative meaning, because what it leaves you with afterwards matters.

	Tarot	Oracle cards
Number of cards	Fixed at seventy-eight	Decided freely by the maker
Structure	Major and minor arcana	No rule
Reversals	Usually yes	Usually no
How hard to read	A great deal to learn	Take the message of one card
What it suits	Breaking a situation into parts	Wanting the one thing you need to hear

Which is more accurate is not the comparison to make

MioHonestly, though — which one is more accurate?

AoiThat is not a comparison worth making. Both belong to the kind of divination that reads from chance in the moment. They are not competing on hits and misses; think of them as mirrors of how things stand.

There is a rule of thumb for choosing. Tarot when you want a tangled situation separated out; oracle cards when you want something at your back. On this service tarot is read as a ten-card Celtic Cross, while the oracle cards are drawn in threes and read as where you are, how it moves, and what lights the way. The roles are divided.

Neither is something to redraw. Drawing over and over until you are satisfied collapses the premise of reading from chance. Taking the card that came is the manner of this kind of divination.

Which to start with

MioI am not very good at memorising things…

AoiThen oracle cards are fine to begin with. Drawing one and reading what it says is already a complete reading. Tarot has more to learn, so it takes a while before you can read it.

Once oracle cards have given you the feel of laying a drawn card against your own situation, moving on to tarot goes much faster. Starting from this side makes sense as an order.

On this service both are decided on the server. That is so that nothing at your end can redraw a card or alter a result. Only if a good card and a poor one come up with the same probability does the card you drew mean anything.

AoiNow that you know the difference, the best thing is to draw one. What you learn from reading and what you learn from drawing are two different things.

Note: the person asking questions in this article is fictional. This is not a record of a real consultation.

Common questions

Is it all right to own both oracle cards and tarot?: Perfectly. They have different roles, and many people use tarot when they want a situation examined closely and oracle cards when they want a single line.
Are there oracle cards with bad meanings?: It depends on the deck. The oracle cards on this service include none that only leave you low. There are cards that mean go carefully, and they always come with something about what to do next.
Can I draw again on the same question?: We would not suggest it. Because the reading finds meaning in chance, redrawing until you are satisfied removes the premise. Drawing again on another day changes how you receive it, too.