How to Shuffle Tarot Cards: 6 Methods (and How Many Times)

To shuffle tarot cards, mix the deck face down with any method that moves cards to new places, such as the overhand shuffle, the riffle or the wash, then cut it and draw. There’s no single correct way: the best shuffle is one that mixes the deck well without damaging cards that are larger and stiffer than playing cards.

The quick version: wash the cards on a table for a minute, or riffle gently eight to ten times, or overhand shuffle for longer than feels necessary. Then cut the deck into three piles and restack them. Everything below is the detail: six methods step by step, which one suits which hands and decks, what the maths says about how many shuffles is enough, and how reversed cards end up in the deck.

No deck to hand? There’s a free one-card draw at the end of this page, so you can practise reading the moment you’ve finished.

Jump to a section:

• Six ways to shuffle tarot cards: overhand, riffle and bridge, the wash, Hindu shuffle, pile shuffle and cutting into three
• Which shuffle should you use? (comparison table)
• Big cards, small hands
• How many times to shuffle
• Shuffling in reversed cards and cards that fly out
• Shuffling for someone else
• A simple shuffling routine and looking after your deck
• Common shuffling mistakes
• Practise with a free card draw and frequently asked questions

Six Ways to Shuffle Tarot Cards

A standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck has 78 cards, each around 7 by 12 centimetres. A poker card is about 6.3 by 8.8. So the stack is half as thick again as a pack of playing cards, and the longer cards bend less willingly. That’s why casino techniques can feel clumsy with tarot.

Whatever method you use, keep the cards face down so you aren’t choosing what goes where.

1. The overhand shuffle

This is the shuffle most people do without being taught. It’s the gentlest way to mix a deck in your hands.

1. Hold the deck face down in your dominant hand, on its long edge, with your fingers along one long side and your thumb along the other.
2. Rest the deck’s lower edge in the palm of your other hand.
3. Use the thumb of your lower hand to drag a small packet off the front of the deck, so it falls into your palm.
4. Keep peeling off packets, each one landing on the last, until the top hand is empty.
5. Pick the whole deck up again and repeat many times.

Trade-offs: it barely bends the cards and it’s easy to learn. The catch: it mixes slowly. Each pass moves blocks of cards while the cards inside a block stay together, so a few shuffles leave much of the old order intact. It never turns a card round, either.

2. The riffle and bridge

This is the casino shuffle: the deck is split in two and the halves are flicked together so their cards interleave.

1. Put the deck face down on the table and split it into two roughly equal halves, side by side with their short ends close together.
2. Hold each half with your thumbs on the near corners and your fingers on the far end.
3. Lift the inner corners slightly with your thumbs and let the cards fall from both thumbs, so they drop in an alternating stream.
4. Push the two halves together. Or, for the bridge, bend the interleaved deck upward into an arch and let it cascade back flat.
5. Square the deck and repeat.

Trade-offs: no hand shuffle mixes faster. But every riffle bends the corners, and the bridge bends every card along its length. Do that daily and the cards develop a curve, the corners fray and the deck starts to clump. If you riffle, skip the bridge and lift the corners as little as you can.

3. The wash (or “smoosh”)

Also called the scramble, this is how many tarot readers shuffle. Honestly, it’s the one I’d learn first.

1. Clear a clean, dry surface, ideally with a cloth on it.
2. Spread the deck face down across the surface.
3. Swirl the cards around with flat hands, as if mixing dominoes, moving cards from the edges into the middle and back out.
4. Keep going for a minute or so, longer if the cards are still in clumps.
5. Gather the cards into a single pile without looking at their faces, and tap it square.

Trade-offs: nothing bends, so it’s kind to the cards, and a thorough wash mixes very well. It also turns cards in every direction, which brings reversals in whether you want them or not. You need table space, and a rough surface can scuff the backs.

4. The Hindu shuffle

Well known to magicians, this is an overhand shuffle turned on its side. Packets come off the top of the deck rather than the front.

1. Hold the deck face down from above in your dominant hand, thumb on one short end, fingers on the other.
2. Bring it over your other hand, palm up.
3. With the thumb and fingers of the lower hand, pinch a small packet off the top of the deck at its long sides.
4. Draw the top hand back, so the packet stays behind and drops into your lower palm.
5. Repeat, letting each packet fall on the last, until the deck is used up. Then start again.

Trade-offs: it’s gentle and the cards don’t bend. It mixes in much the same slow, blocky way as the overhand. The grip spans the card’s full length, which can strain small hands on a full tarot deck.

5. The pile shuffle

Here you deal the deck out into piles, then stack the piles together.

1. Choose a number of piles, say six or seven.
2. Deal cards face down one at a time, left to right along the row, starting again at the left each time you reach the end.
3. Carry on until all 78 are dealt.
4. Stack the piles on top of one another, in any order you like.

Trade-offs: it bends nothing and separates new cards that stick together. But on its own it isn’t random at all. Dealing into a fixed number of piles moves every card to a predictable place, so the same starting order always gives the same result. Use it to count the deck, then wash or riffle.

6. Cutting into three piles

The cut is the classic last step before a reading. It’s also how many readers let the person asking take part.

1. Place the shuffled deck face down on the table.
2. Lift part of it off with your left hand and set it down to the left.
3. Lift part of that pile off and set it further left, so you have three piles.
4. Restack the piles in a new order, or pick the one that draws you and read from its top.

Trade-offs: a cut is a pause, not a mix. Restacking moves whole blocks without changing the order inside them, so it adds almost nothing to randomness. Its job is to mark the move from mixing to reading. The left hand is a common custom, not a rule.

Which Shuffle Should You Use?

Here’s how the six compare at a glance. “Randomness” means how quickly the method mixes the deck, assuming you do it reasonably well.

Method	Randomness	Card wear	Good for
Overhand	Slow	Low	Beginners, standing up, small spaces
Riffle and bridge	Fast	High	Sturdy or old decks, quick thorough mixing
Wash	Fast, if long enough	Very low	Precious decks, adding reversals
Hindu	Slow	Low	A calm, even rhythm
Pile	None on its own	Very low	Counting the deck, unsticking new cards
Cut into three	Almost none	Very low	Finishing, involving the querent

My suggestion: wash at home, overhand on the go, and combine them when you can. A short wash followed by a few overhand shuffles mixes well, gathers the cards neatly and doesn’t cost the deck anything. Then cut. If you’re still learning how a reading flows, the shuffle, cut and draw step of the beginner’s guide shows where shuffling fits in.

Shuffling Big Cards with Small Hands

If 78 tarot cards feel like a brick, you’re not doing it wrong. They’re simply larger than most hands are comfortable with. A few practical fixes:

• Split the deck. Shuffle half at a time, then wash the two halves together or riffle them gently on the table.
• Let the table take the weight. The wash needs no grip at all, and an overhand shuffle with the deck’s lower edge resting on the table is far easier than one in mid-air.
• Turn the deck sideways. For the overhand, hold it by the long edges so your hand spans the card’s width rather than its length.
• Take smaller packets. Peeling off five or six cards at a time is easier to control, and it mixes better than big chunks.
• Consider a smaller deck. Pocket and mini editions of the Rider-Waite-Smith are easy to find.
• Wait for a new deck to loosen. Fresh cards often stick together, especially with gilded edges. Washing them every day for a week or two usually frees them up.

How Many Times Should You Shuffle Tarot Cards?

It depends on the method, and there are two honest answers: the mathematical one and the reader’s one.

What the maths says

In 1992 the mathematicians Dave Bayer and Persi Diaconis published a well-known study of riffle shuffling. They showed that, for a 52-card deck, about seven ordinary riffle shuffles mix the cards well. Fewer than that leaves clear traces of the original order. Many more than that adds very little.

Bigger decks need more riffles, but not many more, because the number needed grows only slowly with the size of the deck. A rule of thumb from their analysis, one and a half times the base-2 logarithm of the deck size, gives about nine for 78 cards. Treat that as a ballpark rather than a precise result. So eight to ten gentle riffles is a sensible figure for a tarot deck.

Other methods behave very differently:

• Overhand and Hindu shuffles mix far more slowly than riffles. Mathematical studies put the number needed for a thorough mix of even a 52-card deck in the thousands. Ten overhand shuffles is a light stir, not a full mix.
• The wash doesn’t come in countable passes. Go by time and look: about a minute, with every card moving and no clumps left.
• The pile shuffle, repeated with the same number of piles, just applies the same fixed pattern again. Doing it ten times isn’t ten times more random.

For scale: 78 cards can be ordered in about 1.1 × 10¹¹⁵ different ways (78 factorial). If you also count each card as upright or reversed, multiply by 2⁷⁸, which gives roughly 3.4 × 10¹³⁸. A well-shuffled deck is almost certainly in an order no deck has ever been in before.

What readers do

Plenty of readers never count. They shuffle until it feels right: until the question has settled, the hands slow down on their own, or a sense of “now” arrives. That’s a perfectly good choice. If you believe the cards that are meant to come up will come up, a precise count may not matter to you at all.

Still, mix thoroughly whatever you believe. It stops last night’s spread sitting on top again. If “feels right” keeps arriving after three overhand shuffles, add a short wash first.

Shuffling in Reversed Cards

A new deck comes out of the box with every card facing the same way. Overhand, Hindu, riffle and pile shuffles all keep cards facing the way they were. So if you want reversed cards in your readings, you have to put them there. Two ways:

• Turn part of the deck. Split the deck in two, rotate one half end to end, put the halves back together and shuffle thoroughly. After a good mix, each card has roughly a one in two chance of facing either way.
• Wash. Swirling the cards turns them in all directions, so when you gather them, some will be upside down. You can’t control the proportion exactly, but a long wash spreads reversals through the deck well.

Why it matters: if you read reversals but only overhand shuffle, the deck will keep whatever orientations your last reading left in it. If you always straighten the cards before putting them away, you’ll never see a reversal at all. Neither is wrong, but decide on purpose. The guide to reading reversed tarot cards explains why it pays to choose your reversal method before you shuffle, and gives seven ways to interpret them.

Decide which way counts as “upright” before you start, usually as you, the reader, see the card. And after turning half the deck, shuffle properly, or a run of reversals may just mean most of the spread came from the turned half.

When a Card Flies Out While You Shuffle

Sooner or later a card will shoot out of the deck mid-shuffle. Many readers believe this card has something extra to say and read it alongside the spread. Others see a stiff card and a clumsy moment, and slip it back. Both views are common. Choose your rule in advance, so you don’t keep the cards you like and quietly return the rest.

Shuffling for Someone Else

When you read for another person, there are three usual ways to handle the shuffle:

• The querent shuffles. They mix the deck with their question in mind, then hand it back. It makes them part of the reading.
• The reader shuffles and the querent cuts. You mix, which protects the deck, and they cut into three and choose a pile.
• The reader does everything. Some readers prefer nobody else touches their deck, which is a fine preference. The querent can still say “stop”.

If the querent shuffles, show them the wash first: an enthusiastic bridge shuffle can crease a favourite deck in seconds. For readings at a distance, you shuffle while they think about the question, and they can still call “stop”.

Whoever shuffles, settle the question first. A good question matters far more than any shuffle; see asking the right questions in a tarot reading. Reading for yourself? The guide to reading tarot for yourself helps you stay honest as both reader and querent.

A Simple Shuffling Routine

Some readers treat shuffling as a ritual, others as plain mechanics. Either way, a repeatable routine brings your attention to the question. This one works under any belief, or none:

1. Clear the space. A clean, dry table and a cloth. Put drinks somewhere else.
2. Write the question down. One sentence. If you can’t write it, you’re not ready to shuffle.
3. Decide the rules. Which spread, whether you’re reading reversals, and what you’ll do with a card that flies out.
4. Take three slow breaths. It steadies your hands and your attention.
5. Mix. A wash or riffles, then a few overhand shuffles, with the question in mind.
6. Cut into three and restack. Then lay the cards in their positions, one at a time.

It takes two or three minutes. For a daily practice, follow it with a single one-card pull.

Looking After Your Deck While You Shuffle

Most deck damage happens during shuffling, not storage. A few habits keep cards flat and clean for years:

• Clean, dry hands. Hand cream and greasy fingers leave marks that make cards stick.
• A cloth on the table. It protects the backs during a wash and stops cards sliding off the edge.
• Go easy on the bridge. If your cards already curve, stop bridging and switch to the wash for a while. Storing them flat under a book can ease a mild curve.
• Keep them dry. Damp warps card stock. Store the deck in its box or a bag, away from radiators, windowsills and steamy bathrooms.
• Count now and then. A quick pile shuffle into six piles of 13 confirms all 78 cards are there.

Worn decks read perfectly well, and many readers prefer how a softened deck handles. Just watch for a card you can recognise from the back by a crease or stain. Once you can spot it, the shuffle is no longer fair.

Common Shuffling Mistakes

• Shuffling too lightly after a reading. Imagine yesterday’s three cards were the Three of Swords, the Four of Cups and The Star. Put them back on top, give the deck two quick overhand shuffles, and there’s a good chance one of them turns up again today. That repeat may say more about the shuffle than the situation. Mix well before you read anything into pulling the same card again.
• Reshuffling because you didn’t like the answer. Say you draw The Tower, a card of sudden upheaval, and shuffle again hoping for The Sun. Now you’re choosing the answer rather than reading it. If you want a second view, draw a clarifier from the remaining deck instead.
• Bridging a deck you love. It’s the fastest way to curve and crease the cards.
• Shuffling for ten minutes. If you can’t stop, the question is usually the problem. Rewrite it, then shuffle again.

Practise: Draw a Card

Shuffled your deck? Draw one card, look at the picture for a full minute before you check its meaning, then compare your first impressions with its page. No deck with you? Draw here instead. Each card is picked at random from the remaining deck, as you’d pick from a shuffled pile, and about one draw in three lands reversed.

Want more? Try the free three-card reading or the yes or no tarot tool, or see every option on the free tarot reading page. The list of all 78 tarot card meanings has every card on one page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to put a freshly shuffled deck to work? A card of the day is the simplest daily habit, and the full list of tarot spreads has a layout for almost any question.