Mystical systems
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot
Direct answer
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot: The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot is the deck designed by A. E. Waite, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith and published in London by William Rider and Son in 1909.
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At a glance
- Also called
- rider waite tarot, rider-waite deck, rws tarot
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Tarot, Major Arcana, Minor Arcana, Celtic Cross
The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot is the deck designed by A. E. Waite, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith and published in London by William Rider and Son in 1909.
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Why is it called Rider-Waite-Smith?
The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot is the deck from which most English-speaking readers learn. Arthur Edward Waite planned it, the artist Pamela Colman Smith drew all seventy-eight cards, and the London firm of William Rider and Son issued it in December 1909. Older names leave the artist out and call it the Rider-Waite or simply the Rider deck.
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot’s lasting change was in the fifty-six suit cards. Earlier decks showed the Three of Swords as three swords and nothing more. Smith gave every numbered card a scene with figures in it, so a meaning could be read from the picture. Most modern decks copy her scenes, which is why a book written for one of them usually serves for the rest.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Tarot, runes, I Ching.
What sets Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot apart
What marks this deck out is that a person can read it by looking. Pamela Colman Smith drew a small drama on each of the forty numbered suit cards, where earlier packs repeated the suit sign. She seems to have taken hints from the fifteenth-century Sola Busca tarot, photographs of which the British Museum had recently acquired. Waite supplied the scheme and the Golden Dawn attributions; the mood, the stage-like settings and the faces are hers, and her monogram sits in a corner of every card.
- Published: December 1909, by William Rider and Son, London
- Designer: Arthur Edward Waite (1857 to 1942)
- Artist: Pamela Colman Smith (1878 to 1951)
- Cards: seventy-eight: twenty-two trumps and fifty-six suit cards, all with scenes
- Numbering change: Strength is eight and Justice eleven, the reverse of the older order
- Handbook: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911
Often mistaken for something else: The Thoth tarot, painted by Lady Frieda Harris for Aleister Crowley and first printed as a deck in 1969, is abstract and dense with symbols; the 1909 deck tells its meanings through figures in plain scenes.
The story behind Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot
Waite and Smith were both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the deck carries some of its symbolism, including the exchange that puts Strength at eight and Justice at eleven. Waite's short handbook, The Key to the Tarot, appeared in 1910 and the illustrated Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1911. Smith was paid a flat fee and died in Cornwall in 1951 with little recognition. The deck reached its widest public after U.S. Games Systems began printing it in 1971.
Why Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot matters
Nearly every book of card meanings written in English since the 1970s describes these pictures, so knowing the deck explains where the standard meanings come from.
How to read Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot
Readers treat it as the reference deck: a new deck is described as following it or departing from it, and teachers start pupils on its scenes.
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot in practice: an example
A beginner turns up the Five of Pentacles, sees two ragged figures passing a lit church window in the snow, and can speak about hardship and overlooked help before opening any book.
Where readings of Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot go wrong
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot’s meanings are those Waite and Smith chose in 1909. They are one tradition of reading, not the original sense of the cards.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- rider waite tarot, rider-waite deck, waite-smith tarot, rider waite smith deck meaning, rws tarot
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Why is it called Rider-Waite-Smith?
Rider was the publisher, William Rider and Son. Waite was the author who designed the deck and wrote its handbook. Smith is Pamela Colman Smith, the artist, whose name was left off for most of the twentieth century.
What makes the Rider-Waite-Smith deck different from older tarots?
Every numbered suit card has a full scene with people in it. In the older Marseille pattern those cards show only the suit signs arranged in a design, so their meanings have to be memorised.
Is the Rider-Waite-Smith the original tarot?
No. Tarot cards were made in Italy in the fifteenth century for a game. This deck dates from 1909 and was designed from the start for divination and occult study.
