We’re going to go through a brief introduction of these tarot card traditions in chronological order. In general, most indie decks will follow the format of the Rider Waite Smith. They may also have extra cards, but they’re exclusive to the particular deck. The same goes for court cards, so you’ll sometimes see pages being called daughters, queens called mothers, etc. For example, pentacles turn into stones, etc. Since each individual deck can be unique, you may see tarot decks that change the name of the suits, but keep their elemental affinities. Now, before we get into this, I wanted to make sure that we make the distinction between tarot traditions, like the three that we just mentioned, versus each artist-created change of the cards. Today, we’re going to go through these differences, and also give you a correspondence list so you never get confused about which cards are equivalent. For example, if you’ve ever wondered why in some decks, Justice is the 8th card versus the 11th card, the answer is because of the differences within these tarot traditions. He is best known as the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, first published in 1910.One of the more frequent questions that I hear, whether it’s in response to the Labyrinthos App, or the decks, is about the differences that we sometimes see between the 3 most common tarot deck types or traditions: The Rider Waite Smith, the Marseille, and the Thoth. Waite was a prolific author of occult texts, works on the Holy Grail, and the body of mystical knowledge, which comprises the basis of modern Tarot. The Golden Order, whose structural hierarchy was based on the Kabbalah, is considered the single greatest 20th century influence on the occult. Soon after joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he became the Grand Master, and redirected the focus of the order from magic to mysticism. Beginning at the age of 21, Waite pursued research and writing on psychical and esoteric matters. The designs, published in the same year by William Rider and Son, exemplify the mysticism, ritual, imagination, fantasy, and deep emotions of the artist.īorn in America in 1857, Waite was raised and educated as a Catholic in England. In 1909, under the guidance of Arthur Edward Waite, she undertook a series of seventy-eight allegorical paintings described by Waite as a rectified tarot pack. Around 1903, she joined the Order of the Golden Dawn. Smith returned to England, where she became a theatrical designer for miniature theatre, and an illustrator - mainly of books, pamphlets and posters. Thereafter, she began formal art training at Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, graduating in 1897. During her teens, she traveled throughout England with the theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Rider-Waite Tarot was named one of the Top Ten Tarot Decks of All Time by Aeclectic Tarot.īorn February 16, 1878, in Middlesex, England to American parents, Smith's childhood years were spent between London, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica. The innovative Minor Arcana, and Pamela Colman Smith's ability to capture the subtleties of emotion and experience have made the Rider-Waite Tarot a model for the designs of many tarot packs." - ( from The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume III) The pictorial images on all the cards allow interpretations without the need to repeatedly consult explanatory text. Prior to the Rider-Waite Tarot, the pip cards of almost all tarot decks were marked only with the arrangement of the suit signs - swords, wands, cups, and coins, or pentacles. "A unique feature of the Rider-Waite deck, and one of the of the principal reasons for its enduring popularity, is that all of the cards, including the Minor Arcana, depict full scenes with figures and symbols. This edition includes Smith’s original hand drawn titles. Rider-Waite Tarot has set the standard for hundreds of other tarot decks, which follow the archetypal images created by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909 under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite.
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