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During her teens, she traveled throughout England with the theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Rider-Waite Tarot was named one of the Top Ten Tarot Decks of All Time by Aeclectic Tarot.īorn February 16, 1878, in Middlesex, England to American parents, Smith's childhood years were spent between London, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica. The innovative Minor Arcana, and Pamela Colman Smith's ability to capture the subtleties of emotion and experience have made the Rider-Waite Tarot a model for the designs of many tarot packs." - ( from The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume III) The pictorial images on all the cards allow interpretations without the need to repeatedly consult explanatory text. Prior to the Rider-Waite Tarot, the pip cards of almost all tarot decks were marked only with the arrangement of the suit signs - swords, wands, cups, and coins, or pentacles.
RIDER WAITE TAROT CARD FULL
"A unique feature of the Rider-Waite deck, and one of the of the principal reasons for its enduring popularity, is that all of the cards, including the Minor Arcana, depict full scenes with figures and symbols. This edition includes Smith’s original hand drawn titles. Rider-Waite Tarot has set the standard for hundreds of other tarot decks, which follow the archetypal images created by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909 under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite.
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