Abstract
The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot is a deck of seventy-eight cards created by artist Pamela
Colman Smith and commissioner and occult scholar Arthur Edward Waite in 1909. The deck
combines art from the 18th century Marseille tarot with religious and alchemical symbols and
narrative images. By creating the deck, Colman Smith and Waite strove to shape common
practices and public perceptions for tarot readings by fortune tellers and hobbyists. In The
Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Waite asserts that tarot cards could be used as a mystical tool to
access obscured wisdom. He explained how the cards function as a tool for self-improvement
through a mystical process of meditating on Universal Ideas presented on tarot cards, to access
the depths of the knowledge it symbolizes, referred to by Waite as the Secret Doctrine. While
Waite only saw the Secret Doctrine in the section of the deck called the Major Arcana, Pamela
Colman Smith expanded the interpretive potential into the Minor Arcana by creating original
narrative images for each card. These cards further increased the appeal of the deck for fortune
tellers because the images expanded representation, making the images more relatable to more
people.