The Rider-Waite-Smith deck: history and editions

How to read the labels Historical what the old sources say. Later tradition what later writers added. Modern modern practice and my own notes.

If you have seen a tarot card in a film, a meme or a shop window, you have probably seen the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, or a deck drawn after it. It is the deck most English-language beginners learn with, and it is the deck my card meaning pages are based on. Here is where it came from, why there are so many versions of it, and what “public domain” does and does not mean for it.

1909: a new kind of deck

Historical In December 1909 the London publisher William Rider and Son brought out a new tarot deck. Its designer was A. E. Waite, a writer on mysticism and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Its artist was Pamela Colman Smith (1878 to 1951), an illustrator, stage designer and storyteller who had worked in New York and London, and who was also a Golden Dawn member. Smith drew all seventy-eight cards.

Her crucial innovation was to give the numbered Minor Arcana full illustrated scenes. In older decks, such as the Tarot de Marseille, a card like the Six of Cups shows six cups in a pattern and little else. In Smith’s deck, every card tells a story: a child handing a flower-filled cup to a smaller child, a figure walking away from eight stacked cups at night. That is why beginners find the deck so readable. You can look at a Minor card and see a situation, not just a number.

Waite’s accompanying guide followed. A short version, The Key to the Tarot, came out with the deck, and the expanded Pictorial Key to the Tarot, with black-and-white plates of all seventy-eight cards, followed in 1910 and 1911. It is still in print and free to read online.

Waite also changed the order of two Major Arcana cards. In older decks Justice is VIII and Strength is XI. Waite swapped them, making Strength VIII and Justice XI, so the sequence fitted the astrological order the Golden Dawn used, with Strength linked to Leo and Justice to Libra. If you ever pick up a Marseille or Thoth deck and the numbers look wrong, this is why. Read by card title.

The first printings

Historical The first printing in December 1909 was very small, and its cards had a pattern of roses and lilies on the back. In March 1910 a much larger printing appeared on better card stock, with a back design collectors call “cracked mud.” This printing, made from 1910 to 1920, is often called the “Pam-A” or “A” deck, and many collectors prize it as the version closest to what Smith and Waite saw. Rider kept publishing the deck in various editions until 1939.

The card scans I use on this site come from an early printing shared on Wikimedia Commons. You can see sixteen of the Major Arcana in my 1909 tarot gallery.

Smith, Waite, and the name of the deck

For most of the twentieth century the deck was called the “Rider-Waite” deck, after the publisher and the designer. The artist’s name was left off. Smith received little money or recognition for her work in her lifetime and died poor.

Today many readers call it the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) or Smith-Waite deck to give her credit. In 2009, for the hundredth anniversary, U.S. Games Systems published the Smith-Waite Centennial deck as part of a Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set. It puts her name first. On this site I use “Rider-Waite-Smith,” the name most beginners will recognize. To learn more about the artist herself, read my page on Pamela Colman Smith.

Editions and recolorings

Modern Since 1971, U.S. Games Systems has published the deck in the United States, and its Rider-Waite edition is the version many people own. Over the decades a whole family of versions has grown from Smith’s line drawings. They keep her compositions but change the colors, the borders, the card size or the printing. A few you will meet:

There are also many pocket, tin, giant and borderless editions, plus hundreds of “RWS clones”: decks by other artists that keep the same scenes and symbols in a new style. All of them are read the same way. If you already own one, my card meaning pages work with it. If you are choosing one, my guide on how to choose your first deck walks you through it.

Colors matter more than you might think. Waite and Smith were both Golden Dawn members, and that system gave colors specific meanings. A recoloring can change the mood of a card, so if a symbol’s color is part of a meaning you read about, check it against an early printing.

Copyright and trademark notes

This is the part people often get wrong, so here it is plainly. I am not a lawyer, and this is general information, not legal advice.

Modern Smith’s 1909 images are generally treated as public domain in the United States. In countries where copyright lasts seventy years after the death of the last author, including the United Kingdom, where the deck was first published, and the European Union, the original images are public domain too: Smith, the last of the two creators to die, died in 1951.

That does not make every edition free to copy. Later editions and recolorings may still be protected. U.S. Games Systems claims copyright in its 1971 edition for new material such as the card backs and the box, and the recolorings of 1990 and later are new artistic work. So if you want to use RWS images in your own project, work from a scan of an early printing, not a photo of a modern deck.

“Rider-Waite” and related names are trademarks of U.S. Games Systems, Inc. I use the name here only to identify the historical deck. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

Why the deck still matters

Later tradition Many popular tarot books written in English since the 1960s assume this deck. Eden Gray’s Tarot Revealed (1960) made Rider-Waite-Smith style reading approachable for a wide audience, and later teachers built on it. That means if you learn with an RWS-style deck, almost every book, course and online meaning you find will match the pictures in front of you.

It also means the deck carries a particular set of layers: Golden Dawn astrology, Waite’s own mystical Christianity, and Smith’s theater-trained eye for a scene. You do not need to master all of that to read well. You can start with what you see on the card.

Some cards in the deck show nude figures, such as the Lovers and the Star. I show the original 1909 cards by Pamela Colman Smith, which are in the public domain, exactly as she drew them. Apart from these historical cards, I keep the site free of nudity.

Reading with an RWS-style deck

If this is your first deck, here is a simple way to use what makes it special. Take any Minor card and, before you read a meaning, describe the scene in one sentence as if it were a still from a play. Who is there? What are they doing? What just happened, and what might happen next? Then compare your sentence with the card’s meaning page. You will often find you were already close.

Do the same with the backgrounds. Smith filled them with weather, water, mountains and walls, and these small details change the mood of a card. A gray sky, a calm river or a closed gate can be the detail that speaks to your question.

Where to go next

• Learn the history of the cards before this deck in my history of tarot.
• Start with the Major Arcana and the Fool’s Journey.
• Look at the deck as art in my page on tarot in art history.

My book The Novice’s Guide to Tarot works with any Rider-Waite-Smith-style deck, card by card.