Alone and Everywhere: Influences on Pamela Colman Smith in her Illustrations of the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck

The Rider-Waite Tarot deck is arguably the most popular divinatory Tarot deck in use today. This is the deck most new readers learn with, myself included. I began reading the Tarot in late 2015 in an academic setting. I learned on the Rider-Waite deck and have yet to find another deck I would rather read with. The artwork by Pamela Colman Smith is both simple and complex, continuously revealing deeper meanings the more I study it. This is why I decided to research Smith and uncover what influenced her when illustrating these cards. Every image is picked with a purpose, some more obscure than others, especially to someone not well versed in mystic beliefs and history. I was not knowledgeable in any occult beliefs or teachings when I first saw the deck, aside from some Greek imagery. Details such as the T.A.R.O. on the Wheel of Fortune card or the Egyptian creatures on the World card made no sense to me. At first I thought they had little meaning beyond a creative flair by the artist. But these minute details reveal the ties her cards have to world history and the mystic universe. Pamela Colman Smith was a well-known and esteemed artist in the early nineteen-hundreds. However, she is hardly seen or recognized in modern texts. Her biggest legacy, the Rider-Waite Tarot deck hardly gives her any credit. The only evidence of Smith's work is her initials in the bottom right corner of every card. This makes Pamela Colman Smith quite the mysterious woman. Even in life, her colleagues found her an enigma, or a mystic pixie. She worked sporadically, with paints littered about her apartment. Smith was chosen by Waite to work on his new Tarot deck mostly because she was in the right place at the right time. She was a good artist, but not actively sought after for big projects like this. What impacted Smith in illustrating the Rider-Waite deck? Pamela Colman Smith was influenced by her personal art style/life, the Tarot's history, the teachings of the Golden Dawn, and important people in her life when illustrating the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.