Ok few questions

Yes of course there are some confusing times when you start. You can probably say that of any skill you learn of course. We all have lots of questions in the beginning and sometimes you read something ambiguous and are not sure know to understand it, much less how to put it into practice or even if you should or not.

To make things more complicated, there are many many ways to do anything in Tarot. Most are not really right or wrong. There is no absolute right way to do anything, but what feels right and works well for you is something you should keep doing. I don't think there are two readers who read in exactly the same way. It is, in large part, an individual path, and you have to find your own way in some sense...to feel your way to what works best for you and is right for you.

I would say also the best person to read for in the beginning is yourself. You are usually a pretty good judge of how accurate the answers are. And it lets you perfect your technique a bit, before you branch out to reading for others, to drop techiques that are not working well and to try out new ones and get the kinks out that might work better.

My idea, and this is personal, is that it is best to read for strangers when you start reading for others than friends. As how much of a challenge is that to divine things about people you already know a lot about. Some of that could creep in. Once you can read for strangers and you see how accurate that is, it's very confidence building and that spreads to all the readings you do.

The last question, about whether the same card in different decks have the same meanings, is no to a greater of lesser degree depending on how you read and what type of reader you are.

But, the least I can say is that, each deck created by each reader has some of their personalities and personal philosophies embedded in the meanings. That changes the meanings to a greater or lesser degree, but there is always some change.

Sometimes, the meanings can be the same but with slight variations, sometimes they can be totally different. My Celtic Wisdom Tarot, for example, while it is a true Tarot, has totally renamed all the Major Arcana cards (eg "The Fool" is called "The Soul", "The World/The Universe" is called "The Perfecter" with everythign else changed in between) and the Suits are all different too. There are almost no common meanings between the deck and a regular one.

As well, and just to confuse things, not all readers use the book meanings. I read in a way that I don't use them much and the way I read the same card in the same deck never has the same meaning twice, never mind the same card in different decks...

Bar

I don't have anything to add to the excellent responses that have already been given regarding the first two questions. Regarding the third, I would like to add that within a given tradition (RWS, Thoth, Marseilles, etc.), differences will usually be subtle. For example, all decks modelled after the RWS deck will illustrate their majors with RWS interpretations, or a close variation, in mind. I realize that there will be exceptions. The Druidcraft adheres closely to the RWS standard, but its "Devil" card (renamed "Cernunnos") is very different from the "Devil" card in the RWS deck. I would not read Cernunnous the same as the Devil. If you compare majors from different interpretative traditions, the differences will be more obvious. It's instructive to compare the RWS majors with the Thoth majors.

I would say that the greatest variations from deck to deck would be with the court cards. Even within a given tradition, differences can be radical. For those who have these decks, just look at the difference between the Knight of Wands in the Robin Wood deck and its equivalent in the World Spirit Tarot, the Seeker of Wands. I've recently been working through "The Complete Tarot Reader: Everything You Need to Know From Start to Finish." It has excellent exercises for developing your own personality profiles for the court cards in the decks you own. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I agree that the best person to read for when you are first learning the cards is yourself. You can see how accurate the reading has been better than anyone else can. Meditating on the cards, or simply looking at them and examining them can also be a great help. I personally started out with the Celtic cross and I love it, the small spreads usually seem to simplistic to me, but I know that they work very well for other people. Cards do mean different things to different people, they mean different things in different places in a spread, depending on what cards are around them, and what the situation you are reading for is. Of course that is complex, and it can be discouraging if you try to learn everything all at once. I think the fact that there is always more to learn is a great thing about the Tarot. You can start just reading the definitions from a book and slowly build up. That is how I started, and I am now comfortable enough with the Tarot to read professionally for strangers, with multiple decks.