Rider Waite Tarot Deck Meanings

The Rider-Waite Smith Tarot Deck is by far the most popular tarot deck in use today, and it is likely because of the care and attention of its creator, Arthur Edward Waite. Waite was a Victorian occult book editor who, after much reading on the subject, designed his own cards and published a book in 1910 titled, The Key to the Tarot. Pamela Colman Smith was the illustrator of the cards. The Waiter-Smith deck is a fine example of compelling tarot imagery.

Waite's religious or spiritual orientation is decidedly mystic, if not entirely obscure, but somehow, this works to heighten the fascination and mystery of the tarot. Oddly enough, Waite did not intend his cards to be used for divination. In The Key to the Tarot, he writes: “It should be understood that I am not denying the possibility of divination, but I take exception, as a mystic, to the dedications which bring people into these paths as if they had any relation to the Mystic Quest.”