Rider-Waite Tarot

by Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith

published in many versions over the course of the century

traditional card titles

eight: Strength, eleven: Justice

suits are wands, cups, swords and pentacles

courts are page, knight, queen and king

illustrated pips, no captions

backs non-symmetrical

     You can get this deck almost anywhere.  You can get it giant, regular, pocket or miniature.  You can get it in at least five colorations.  Mary Hanson-Roberts re-worked the colors in the Universal Waite.  François Tapernoux gilt edges for the Golden Rider.  Carol Herzer added stars and sunbeams in the Illuminated Tarot.  Frankie Albano gave a crayola effect for the Albano-Waite.  First published in 1909, it’s still the most popular pack.

     We quote from Waite, “The Tarot is, of course, allegorical – that is to say, it is symbolism – but allegory and symbol are catholic to all countries and all times; they are not more Egyptian than Mexican; they are of Europe and Cathay; of Tibet beyond the Himalayas and of the London gutters.”

         Waite’s writing is defensive of his particulars.  Perhaps his sort of scholarship leads inevitably to the insomnia he led his artist to portray in the card which stands for his deck.  He is even defensive about having so led her, “In regard to the minor arcana, they are the first in modern but not in all times to be accompanied by pictures, in addition to what is called the ‘pips’ – that is to say, the devices belonging to the numbers of the various suits.  These pictures respond to the divinatory meanings, which have been drawn from many sources….

     “We seem to have passed away utterly from the region of higher meanings illustrated by living pictures.  There was a period, however, when the numbered cards were also pictures, but such devices were sporadic inventions of particular artists and were either conventional designs of the typical or allegorical kind, distinct from what is understood by symbolism, or they were illustrations – shall we say? – of manners, customs, and periods.  They were, in a word, adornments, and as such they did nothing to raise the significance of the lesser arcana to the plane of the trumps major; moreover, such variations are exceedingly few.…

     ”When the pictures in the present case go beyond the conventional meanings they should be taken as hints of possible developments along the same lines; and this is one of the reasons why the pictorial devices here attached to the four denaries will prove a great help to intuition.  The mere numerical powers and bare words of the meanings are insufficient by themselves; but the pictures are like doors which open into unexpected chambers, or like a turn in the open road with a wide prospect beyond.”

     Perhaps this describes the dream that awakens the scholar Waite had Smith paint?