The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck is one of the most popular tarot decks in use today in the English-speaking world. Other suggested names for this deck include the Rider-Waite, Waite-Smith, Waite-Colman Smith or simply the Rider deck. The cards were drawn by illustrator Pamela Colman Smith from the instructions of academic and mystic A. E. Waite, and published by the Rider Company in 1910.
The cards were originally published in 1910 by the publisher William Rider & Son of London. The following year, a small guide by A.E. Waite entitled The Key to the Tarot was bundled with the cards, providing an overview of the traditions and history behind the cards, criticism of various interpretations, and extensive descriptions of their symbols. The year after that, a revised version, Pictorial Key to the Tarot, was issued that featured black-and-white plates of all seventy-eight of Smith’s cards. Several later versions of the deck, such as the Universal Waite deck, copy the Smith line drawings with minor changes and add more sophisticated coloring. Read more The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck ›