Rider-Waite-Smith · 1909 / 1911

Tarot card meanings, in the words of the people who made the deck

The deck most people mean by "tarot" was drawn by Pamela Colman Smith and published in 1909 to a programme set by A. E. Waite, who explained it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911). Each card below has its own page with Waite's text, his upright and reversed meanings for the minor cards, and what the Golden Dawn's Book T (printed 1912), the system behind the imagery, says of the same card. Two traditions, each in its own words.

Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.

Draw & reflect Where the cards came from

The Major Arcana

Wands

Cups

Swords

Pentacles

Images: Pamela Colman Smith, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Texts: Waite (1911) and Book T (1912), public domain. Selection and arrangement CC-BY-SA-4.0 (PlayfulProcess).