Who drew the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot?

Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951), an artist and illustrator in London, drew all 78 cards in 1909 to the instructions of Arthur Edward Waite. Both were members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

When was the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot published?

In December 1909, by William Rider & Son of London, with Waite's book The Key to the Tarot. The illustrated Pictorial Key to the Tarot followed in 1910.

Why are Strength and Justice numbered differently in the Rider–Waite–Smith deck?

Waite swapped them, making Strength VIII and Justice XI, to fit the correspondences between the trumps and the zodiac taught in the Golden Dawn. Older decks such as the Tarot de Marseille number Justice VIII and Strength XI.

Is the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot in the public domain?

The original 1909 cards are out of copyright in the United States and, since Pamela Colman Smith died in 1951, in countries where copyright lasts seventy years after the artist's death. Later recoloured editions may carry their own copyright.

The Rider–Waite–Smith tarot: the deck that gave every card a picture

Drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for Arthur Edward Waite and published in London in 1909, it became the model for nearly every reading deck since.

The Rider–Waite–Smith tarot is the deck most people picture when they hear the word tarot. The Fool stepping off a cliff with a white dog at his heels, the heart pierced by three swords, the tower struck by lightning: these pictures were drawn in London in 1909 by an artist paid a flat fee, for a scholar of the occult who wrote the instructions.

It was the first popular deck to give every one of its 78 cards a picture. Here is who made it, where its pictures came from, and how a deck of 1909 became the model for nearly every reading deck since.

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Two members of the Golden Dawn

The High Priestess (II) · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot, London, 1909, early printing about 1910 (public domain)

Arthur Edward Waite was born in Brooklyn in 1857 and grew up in London, where he wrote on mysticism, alchemy and ritual magic. Pamela Colman Smith was born in London in 1878 to American parents, spent part of her childhood in Jamaica and studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In London she illustrated books, designed for the theatre and told Jamaican folk tales on stage.

Both belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the London society whose members had studied the tarot as a key to their system of magic since its founding in 1888. Smith joined in 1901. When Waite planned a new deck, he asked her to draw it.

A big job for very little cash

The Magician (I) · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (public domain)

Smith drew the 78 cards in a few months of 1909. Waite set out the symbolism of the trumps, and gave her the meanings of the numbered cards. The scenes she drew for those, a man carrying ten staves, a woman blindfolded among eight swords, a figure looking at five spilled cups, are generally thought to be largely her own invention.

In November 1909 Smith wrote to the photographer Alfred Stieglitz: "I've just finished a big job for very little cash!" She was paid a flat fee and received no royalties. William Rider & Son of London published the deck that December, with Waite's small book The Key to the Tarot. An illustrated edition, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, followed in 1910.

The Ten of Cups · Rider–Waite–Smith The Five of Cups · Rider–Waite–Smith The Eight of Swords · Rider–Waite–Smith The Ten of Wands · Rider–Waite–Smith The Three of Pentacles · Rider–Waite–Smith The Six of Pentacles · Rider–Waite–Smith The Four of Swords · Rider–Waite–Smith

A picture on every card

In most older decks, the numbered cards show only their suit signs: seven cups, nine swords, set out in a pattern. Smith drew a scene on every one of them, with people doing something that carries the card's meaning. It is the reason a beginner can read this deck without learning 56 meanings by heart, and the reason most reading decks since have done the same.

The Three of Swords · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (public domain)

The idea was not new. The Sola Busca tarot, engraved in Italy around 1490, had a scene on every numbered card, and in 1907 a set of photographs of all 78 of its cards reached the British Museum in London. Several of Smith's designs follow it closely. The clearest is the Three of Swords: a heart pierced by three swords, in Venice in 1491 and in London in 1909. Smith signed many of her cards with a small monogram, which you can see at the bottom right of this one.

Waite's changes to the trumps

Strength (VIII) · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (public domain) Justice (XI) · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (public domain)

Waite kept the 22 trumps of the Tarot de Marseille but changed their order in one place. Strength, which had been number XI, became VIII, and Justice moved from VIII to XI, to agree with the correspondences between the trumps and the signs of the zodiac taught in the Golden Dawn. Most English-language decks have followed his numbering since.

He also redrew the meanings. The Popess became the High Priestess, the Pope the Hierophant, and the Lovers, in older decks a young man choosing between two women, became Adam and Eve beneath an angel.

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From a London publisher to the world

The Star (XVII) · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (public domain)

The deck sold steadily for sixty years without becoming famous. In 1971 U.S. Games Systems of New York reissued it, and in the decades that followed it became the most widely used tarot deck in the English-speaking world, the model for thousands of later designs.

Its name has changed with it. For most of the century it was the Rider–Waite tarot, after its publisher and its author. The artist's name was added later, as her part in it came to be recognised. Smith herself did not live to see the deck's success. She died in Bude, Cornwall, in 1951, poor and largely forgotten.

The Empress (III) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Lovers (VI) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Chariot (VII) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Wheel of Fortune (X) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Hanged Man (XII) · Rider–Waite–Smith Death (XIII) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Tower (XVI) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Moon (XVIII) · Rider–Waite–Smith The Sun (XIX) · Rider–Waite–Smith The World (XXI) · Rider–Waite–Smith

The cards shown here

The Hermit (IX) · Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (public domain)

The cards in this article are scans of an early printing of the deck, made around 1910 and known to collectors as "Pam-A". They come from the collector's site muzendo.jp through Wikimedia Commons, and are in the public domain. Fable's tarot reading uses the same scans, all 78 cards, edge to edge.

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For where these pictures came from, read the history of tarot and the story of the Sola Busca tarot.

Sources: Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910); Stuart R. Kaplan, Mary K. Greer, Elizabeth Foley O'Connor and Melinda Boyd Parsons, Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story (2018); Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot (1980); Marco Katz and Tali Goodwin, Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot (2015). Card images: Pamela Colman Smith and A. E. Waite, Rider–Waite–Smith tarot (William Rider & Son, London, 1909), early printing about 1910, scans by muzendo.jp via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.