Tarot Decks
Rider-Waite-Smith
Also Known As Rider-Waite · Rider Waite · Waite-Smith The form preferred by scholars, because it names the artist rather than the publisher. · The Rider Tarot · Waite Smith
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Origin 1909
Published in London in 1909 by William Rider and Son, designed under the direction of A. E. Waite and drawn in full by Pamela Colman Smith, an artist and illustrator who, like Waite, had been initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. For most of the twentieth century the deck was sold and cited as the "Rider" or the "Rider-Waite" pack and Smith was not named on it at all; she was paid a flat fee, held no rights, and died in 1951 in poverty and obscurity. The now-common forms "Rider-Waite-Smith" and "Waite-Smith" exist to correct that, and the correction is not decorative: the pictures are hers, and it is the pictures that made the deck.
Its decisive innovation is that all 56 minor cards are illustrated with scenes. Earlier decks in the Marseille tradition showed the numbered minors as arrangements of suit signs, five cups, seven coins, with no narrative. Smith drew a situation for every one of them. That single choice is why Rider-Waite-Smith dominates modern reading: a beginner can read a picture, and the overwhelming majority of tarot books, apps and derivative decks published since the 1970s take her scenes as the baseline meaning of the card.
Waite also renumbered two trumps, giving Strength VIII and Justice XI where Marseille gives Justice VIII and Strength XI. The reason is the Golden Dawn attribution of the trumps to the zodiac, which requires Strength to fall to Leo and Justice to Libra. The atlas numbers its trumps in the Waite order; the Marseille and Thoth traditions do not.
Copyright: the 1909 artwork is in the public domain in the United States. That is a fact about this deck specifically and does not generalise to others, see the Thoth entry.
Facts
Identity
Publication Year Origins
Origin Period Place of Origin Creator / OriginatorArthur Edward Waite, who directed the design 1 ArtistPamela Colman Smith, who drew all seventy-eight cards and for most of a century was named only in small print 1 Attributions
TraditionHermetic Order of the Golden Dawn 1 Cult
Attributes and IconographyEvery one of the 56 minor cards is illustrated with a narrative scene rather than a bare arrangement of suit signs, Pamela Colman Smith's decisive innovation over the Marseille tradition; it is this picture, not the trump sequence, that made the deck the modern standard most tarot books, apps and derivative decks published since the 1970s have taken as their baseline. 1 Deck
Cards in the Deck Pip CardsScenic pips: every suit card is an illustrated scene 1 Trump NumberingStrength VIII, Justice XI (Golden Dawn and Rider-Waite-Smith order) 2 Method
How the Cards Are ReadRead from Smith's illustrated scenes rather than from number and suit alone, which is why a beginner can read the minor cards directly from the picture. The trumps follow Waite's Golden Dawn-derived renumbering, Strength at VIII and Justice at XI, rather than the Marseille order. 1 Learn More
The Rider-Waite-Smith Deck
Published in London in 1909 by William Rider and Son, the deck was designed under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite and drawn in full by Pamela Colman Smith, an artist and illustrator who, like Waite, had been initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Its decisive innovation was to give the minor arcana fully illustrated scenes rather than the geometric pip arrangements of the older patterns; the Sola-Busca deck of the late fifteenth century had done something similar and Smith is generally thought to have seen it at the British Museum, but the Rider-Waite-Smith made scenic pips standard. Waite also exchanged the positions of Justice and Strength, numbering them XI and VIII, to fit the Golden Dawn's astrological attributions. The deck is by a wide margin the most influential ever made, and the great majority of decks published since are built on its imagery.
Pamela Colman Smith and the Question of Credit
For most of the twentieth century the deck was called simply the Rider-Waite, and Smith was paid a flat fee and named in small print if at all; she died in poverty in 1951 and her work was largely forgotten. The renaming to Rider-Waite-Smith, now standard in serious writing, reflects a considerable reappraisal: it is now generally accepted that Smith's contribution went well beyond execution, that Waite left the seventy-eight minor cards substantially to her, and that the deck's enduring power lies in her images rather than in his commentary.
Smith was of mixed Jamaican and English background, worked as an illustrator, folklorist and theatrical designer, and was associated with the suffrage movement; her wider work has been the subject of exhibitions and scholarship since the 2010s. Waite's own book, the Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is deliberately cagey and does not explain much of what she drew.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Authored By
Derived from This
The deck's own product description states it is modelled on the Waite-Smith tarot.
The deck's own description states it recasts the Rider Waite Smith deck's structure and sequence.
The deck's own description states it is built on the Rider Waite Smith structure.
The deck is described as modelled on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck's standard structure, reworked through the creator's own thematic lens.
The deck's own description states its astral signatures are layered onto a Rider Waite Smith derived structure.
Disciplines That Use This
Cartomancy is divination by cards of any kind; these are the decks the atlas holds.
The decks the atlas records in full.
Held Differently
Reworked By
The Wildwood Tarot's own description states plainly that it reworks the Rider Waite Smith derived structure.
Sources
1. Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story
Stuart R. Kaplan, with Mary K. Greer, Elizabeth Foley O'Connor and Melinda Boyd Parsons, U.S. Games Systems, 2018On the 1909 Rider commission and the crediting of the artistView the Source 2. A History of the Occult Tarot
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, Duckworth, 2002On Waite, the Golden Dawn attributions and the exchange of trumps VIII and XIView the Source The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Arthur Edward Waite, William Rider & Son, 1910Part II, The Doctrine Behind the Veil; Part III, the Greater ArcanaView the Source The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume I
Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, 1978the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and Pamela Colman SmithView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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