Tarot Vintage
Iconic Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, the most popular and influential deck ever created.
by A. E. Waite, Pamela Colman Smith · 1909
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The record
The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot - originally known as the Rider-Waite Tarot - was first published in 1909. Artist Pamela Coleman Smith, under the instruction of Arthur Edward Waite (both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), created the tarot deck which to this day is the most popular tarot in print. What distinguished the Rider Waite Tarot from other decks was the fact that all 78 cards were fully illustrated. Tarot decks that preceded it generally had a fully illustrated Major Arcana, but the Minor Arcana was something akin to a deck of playing cards, with the suits illustrated only as repetitive patterns, with stylised Court cards. (The only exception to this was the 15th century Sola Busca Tarot which was also fully illustrated. In fact similarities between several of the Minor cards in the Sola Busca Tarot and the Rider-Waite-Smith deck are notable. It is highly likely that Pamela Coleman Smith saw a reproduction of the Sola Busca deck when it was exhibited at the British Museum.) Pamela Coleman Smith illustrated the deck in a rustic mediaeval style, but her images were far from naive. The sheer density of symbolism in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck is something to behold
The cards
