![]() ![]() 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. Smith's vibrant drawings transformed the standard tarot deck. These cards are likely of later Venetian origin, possibly mid-fifteenth-century Tarocchi of Venice cards.The cards were drawn in 1909 by Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite. There exists today, in the archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, 17 Major Arcana cards generally believed, probably erroneously, to have been hand painted about the year 1392 by Jacquemin Gringonneur for Charles VI of France. By the sixteenth century a modified Tarot pack called the Tarot of Marseilles gained popularity. Subsequently, the card packs became more numerous because they were reproduced by techniques using woodcuts, stencils and copper engraving. It is generally accepted that playing cards emerged in Europe in the latter half of the fourteenth century, probably first in Italy as a complete 78-card deck - or some inventive genius subsequently combined the common 56 cards known as the Minor Arcana with the 22 esoteric and emblematic Tarot cards known as the Major Arcana to form the 78-card pack.ĭuring the fifteenth century Tarot cards were generally drawn or hand painted for the princely houses of Northern Italy and France. In the year 1369 playing cards are not mentioned in a decree issued by Charles VI of France against various forms of gambling however, 28 years later, the Prevot of Paris, in an ordinance dated January 22, 1397, forbids working people from playing tennis, ball, cards, or ninepins excepting only on holidays. Covelluzzo, a fifteenth-century chronicler, relates the introduction into Viterbo of the game of cards in the year 1379. A German monk, Johannes, describes a game called Ludas Cartarum played in the year 1377. The emergence of Tarot cards in Europe predates by over five centuries the work of Waite. ![]() Gebelin asserts that it is from the Egyptians and Gypsies that Tarot cards were dispersed throughout Europe. Thoth was the Egyptian Mercury, said to be one of the early Kings and the inventor of the hieroglyphic system. Court de Gebelin writing in Le Monde Primitif in 1781 advances the theory that Tarot cards derived from an ancient Egyptian book, The Book of Thoth. The precise origin of Tarot cards in antiquity remains obscure. ![]() In The Key to the Tarot he writes: “The true Tarot is symbolism it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.” What are the Tarot cards about which Waite so skillfully writes? What is the message of each card and when and where did these fascinating cardboard symbols first originate? Waite utilized symbolism as the key to the Tarot pack. Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) was a genuine scholar of occultism whose published works include The Holy Kabbalah and The Key to the Tarot first issued in England in 1910.
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