The Rider-Waite-Smith Deck: Why It Became the Standard

A 1909 collaboration between a mystic and a forgotten artist that shaped how the world reads tarot.

Walk into any occult shop, browse any online tarot store, open any tarot book published in the last century, and you'll encounter the same deck: the Rider-Waite-Smith, first published in December 1909. It's the deck most people think of when they hear the word "tarot." Virtually every English-language tarot book uses its imagery as reference. Most modern decks are explicitly designed as variations on its template.

How did one specific deck, produced by a small English publisher over a century ago, become the global standard? The answer involves a deliberate innovation in card design, a strategic choice about distribution, and — until recently — the systematic erasure of one of its two creators.

The two people behind the deck

Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942) was an American-born British poet, scholarly mystic, and lifelong member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He wrote prolifically on esoteric subjects — his published works include The Holy Kabbalah (1929), The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), and numerous studies of Freemasonry, the Holy Grail, and Christian mysticism. By the time he commissioned the tarot deck in 1909, he was a recognized authority on Western esoteric traditions.

Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951) was a Jamaican-born British artist, illustrator, and theatrical designer. She studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under Arthur Wesley Dow, a prominent art educator who emphasized Japanese compositional principles. Smith had a successful career as an illustrator — she worked on editions of William Butler Yeats's work and was part of the Irish Literary Revival's artistic circle. She was also a member of the Golden Dawn, which is where she met Waite.

Smith produced all 78 card illustrations in approximately six months, working from Waite's instructions for the Major Arcana and — crucially — with significant creative latitude on the Minor Arcana. Waite provided concepts and symbolic requirements for the trump cards. For the numbered cards, his instructions were apparently minimal. The innovative scenes on the Minor Arcana were largely Smith's invention, working from Waite's general framework.

The innovation: illustrated pips

Here's why the deck became the standard. Before 1909, every printed tarot deck depicted the numbered Minor Arcana cards (Ace through 10) as simple arrangements of suit symbols. The Seven of Cups showed seven cups, arranged symmetrically. The Three of Swords showed three swords in a geometric pattern. There was no scene, no narrative, no human figure. These are called "pip cards," and they required the reader to memorize meanings because the image alone communicated nothing beyond "here are three swords."

Smith changed that. She painted full illustrative scenes for every numbered card in the deck. The Three of Swords became a heart pierced by three swords against a stormy background. The Seven of Cups became a figure contemplating seven cups filled with different visions. The Five of Pentacles became two destitute people walking past a lit church window. Each image told a story. Each card could be read by looking at the picture.

This was revolutionary. It made tarot accessible to people who hadn't memorized keyword lists. You could look at the Three of Swords and immediately feel its meaning — heartbreak — without consulting a book. This accessibility is the single most important reason the Rider-Waite-Smith deck displaced its competitors.

Michael Dummett, in The Game of Tarot (1980), acknowledged the significance of this innovation: "The pictorial Minor Arcana cards of the Waite-Smith deck constituted the most important single change in the external appearance of the tarot pack since the creation of the Trumps." High praise from a historian who was generally skeptical of esoteric claims.

The other innovations

Beyond the illustrated pips, the deck introduced several other design choices that became standard:

• Full-figured court cards: Smith depicted the Page, Knight, Queen, and King as full characters in motion, not stiff heraldic figures. The Knight of Wands rides a charging horse. The Queen of Swords sits with her sword raised and hand open. These are people, not symbols.
• Swapped Strength and Justice: Waite placed Strength at 8 and Justice at 11, reversing the older Marseille numbering. Most subsequent English-language decks followed his sequence.
• Christianized trump imagery: Waite softened some of the more overtly occult or pagan imagery from earlier decks. The Pope became The Hierophant. The Popess became The High Priestess. The images drew from Christian mysticism as much as from Hermetic sources.
• The Fool as wanderer: Smith depicted The Fool as a young person about to step off a cliff, replacing the older image of a jester or madman. This visual — the threshold-leaping innocent — became the iconic Fool image.

The erasure of Pamela Colman Smith

For most of the 20th century, the deck was sold as the "Rider-Waite Tarot" — named after the publisher (William Rider & Son) and Waite, with Smith's name absent. This wasn't accidental. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911) describes the cards' symbolism without naming Smith as the artist. Early printings of the deck credited no illustrator at all.

The reasons for Smith's erasure are complex. Gender undoubtedly played a role — the early 20th century occult world was male-dominated, and women's contributions were routinely minimized. Smith's race (she was of mixed Jamaican and English heritage) may have been a factor. She also fell out with Waite and the Golden Dawn, leaving the order in 1909, the same year the deck was published. The relationship ended badly enough that Waite apparently had no interest in sharing credit.

Smith died in 1941, largely forgotten, with her artwork unsold and her tarot illustrations uncredited. She died in relative poverty in Cornwall, her artistic career having declined significantly after the 1910s.

The restoration of Smith's credit began with Stuart R. Kaplan, founder of U.S. Games Systems, who acquired the rights to the deck for American distribution and began researching its history. Kaplan's The Encyclopedia of Tarot (1978) was the first major publication to document Smith's role in detail. Mary K. Greer and other tarot historians continued the work. By the 2010s, tarot practitioners were increasingly using the term "Rider-Waite-Smith" or "Smith-Waite" to acknowledge her contribution.

In 2009, the centenary edition of the deck was published as the "Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set," finally placing her name on the box. In 2020, U.S. Games Systems published the "Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot Deck," making the credit explicit in the product title.

Why the RWS endures

A century later, the Rider-Waite-Smith remains the default for several overlapping reasons:

• First-mover advantage in illustrated decks: The RWS was the first widely available deck with fully illustrated Minor Arcana. It defined the template before competitors emerged.
• English-language dominance: Most tarot books are written in English, and virtually all of them use the RWS as their reference deck. The deck's imagery is baked into the global tarot vocabulary.
• Public domain imagery: The RWS art entered the public domain in many countries (the original 1909 printing is public domain in the UK as of 1980). This allowed countless publishers to reprint it, making it the most widely available and affordable deck.
• Interpretive clarity: Smith's images are unambiguous enough for beginners but contain enough symbolic detail to reward advanced study. They work at multiple levels simultaneously.
• Countless derivative decks: Most modern themed decks (feminist, queer, animal, botanical, pop-culture) use the RWS as their structural template, substituting new imagery while maintaining Smith's compositions. This reinforces the RWS's status as the reference standard.

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