Rider-Waite-Smith: One Deck, a Thousand Versions

This is the last one in the series. Three weeks ago we looked at how this deck came to be. The week after, we gave Pamela Coleman Smith her due as the artist who actually drew the cards. Last week we went to Arthur Edward Waite, the man whose name sits on the box. And this week we go outwards, to all the decks that came after this one, and how the Rider-Waite-Smith ended up inspiring so many others.

Here is the through-line. If you own a tarot deck that was made any time after 1909, chances are it is inspired in some way by this deck. Sometimes that is obvious, the same line art with new colours laid over the top. Sometimes it is buried so deep you have to go looking for it, a single motif surviving in a deck that otherwise looks nothing like Pixie’s drawings. So I went through my shelf, and I want to show you the range of it, from the decks that copy the artwork almost exactly to the ones that strip it back to almost nothing and still carry the same skeleton.

A Different Angle on the Same Scene

The first one I want to highlight is one I have never actually used in a reading. I got it because I liked the idea of it. It is the Tarot of the New Vision, and what it does is take the classic Rider-Waite-Smith scenes and change the perspective. So with the World, instead of the version we all know, we are looking at the back of the figure. With the Empress, the Emperor, the Hierophant, the Lovers, they have added details you cannot see from the usual angle. It is a lovely deck to sit with and ask yourself what you notice when the point of view shifts.

In a similar spirit you have got Before Tarot and After Tarot, which take the moment just before each scene and the moment just after. A fun pair to explore. None of these work without the original though. They are all conversations with a deck you already have to know.

Same Bones, Modern Skin

Then there are the decks that mirror the composition and the symbolism almost exactly, but swap out who is in the picture. The Modern Witch Tarot by Lisa Sterle is the obvious one. It follows the Rider-Waite-Smith layout closely, but instead of the figures we are used to it gives you an all-female, much more modern and diverse cast, with a few modern twists worked into cards like the Chariot and the Two of Wands.

The Queer Tarot from Ash and Chess does something similar, modernising the same scenes, but it is far more vibrant and illustrated, and it is, well, very queer. Not just cis straight people. People of all different shapes, sizes and sexualities. Then there is the 420 Tarot, which takes that same idea and gives it a stoner flare, the figures looking like they have very much been smoking something. And the Rainbow Tarot, which sits close to the Queer Tarot in its line work but pushes the colour further. All of them are using the original composition as a starting grid and decorating it differently.

The Literal Recolour

Some decks go even further and use Pixie’s actual line art. This is where the copyright matters. The copyright on the deck has run out, so anybody can use it now in their own work, and a few people have done exactly that. The Weiser Tarot is Pamela Coleman Smith’s line art recoloured, and some of the cards feel a lot more dramatic for it. They have also made it far more diverse in the people you see. It is called the Weiser Tarot because it follows the old Rider-Waite-Smith naming convention of putting the publishing company’s name on the deck. But here is the irony. Rather than the Weiser-Waite or the Weiser-Waite-Smith, they just called it the Weiser Tarot, which means both Waite’s and Pixie’s names get dropped this time, not just Pixie’s. Make of that what you will.

The Pixie Pop Tarot from Shannon Gomez and Jillian C. Wilde is another recolour, this time borderless, with the faces changed up to be more inclusive. It also adds an extra card called the Visionary, which is Pixie’s own likeness. Which I bloody love. The artist who got left off the box for a century, finally drawn into the deck itself.

Familiar Motifs, New Hands

This is the biggest group by far, and the most interesting. Decks where the artwork is genuinely different, sometimes wildly so, but where the motifs Pixie established keep surfacing.

The This Might Hurt Tarot by Isabella Rotman comes with an extra card, and many of its cards look different from what we are used to, but the general motif of each one is instantly familiar if you know the Rider-Waite-Smith. The Mystic Mondays Tarot was one of the first decks I ever bought, from Waterstones, and some of its cards are quite abstract, the minors almost like a pip deck in places. But Pixie’s imagery still comes through in cards like the Seven of Cups, and the Strength card is still card number eight, which means Waite reordering the deck all those years ago is still shaping a deck made a century later.

The Pagan Tarot follows the same order again, with Justice at eleven, and although the artwork is very different the meanings carry straight through. The Three of Cups still has friends sharing drinks. The Ten of Pentacles still has someone surrounded by what they have gathered. The Light Seer’s Tarot from Chris-Anne looks nothing like Pixie’s work on the surface, and yet the Six of Cups still evokes that childhood connection she famously drew. Chris-Anne’s other deck, the Muse Tarot, is more of a patchwork style, but the moon in the High Priestess and the dreamlike pull of the Seven of Cups are both still there.

My daily driver, the Fifth Spirit Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess, is another one where the imagery is very different, different enough that it has changed how I read some of the cards. But the order is Pixie’s order. Strength is still eight, still a figure embracing an animal that could turn on them. In the Rider-Waite-Smith that animal is a lion. Here it is a dog. Same motif, new shape. The Wayhome Tarot by Bakara Wintner tells a similar story, the Seven of Pentacles with its harvest, the Ten of Pentacles with its feast, the waters of the High Priestess. The Secret Tarot is a bit more on the nose, the two pillars and the veil in the High Priestess, the crescent moon, the figures before the beast in the Devil, the figure pouring from a jug into a pool in the Star.

And then there is Everybody’s Tarot by Sara Kathleen, which I absolutely love because it is so simple. Even there, stripped right down, the cards carry it. The journey in the Chariot. The figure shut outside the lit building in the Five of Pentacles, who could be let in but is not letting themselves. The three in community in the Three of Cups. Temperance pouring between two cups. The lion with a flower in its mane in Strength. The four of cups sat there looking thoroughly nonchalant. Familiar motifs, every one of them, just in a unique hand.

Stripped Back to the Bones

The one that makes the point best is the Spacious Tarot by Carrie Mallon and Annie Ruygt. It reduces the cards right down to these simple, beautiful images with no people in them at all. And even then you can see where Pixie’s imagery is coming through. Two cliffs standing in for the two sphinxes of the Chariot. The lightning hitting the top of the pile in the Tower. The seasons and cycles turning in the Wheel of Fortune. No figures, almost no detail, and the skeleton is still unmistakably hers.

I am not saying every bit of this comes straight from one deck. The Rider-Waite-Smith built on the immense history of the tarot that came before it. But it is clear that so many creators have used it as their starting point, because it holds so much shared language and shared symbolism that you can build almost anything on top of it.

Why This One

So why this deck. Part of it is the copyright running out, which is why you get decks that are literally the line art in slightly different colours, like the Weiser and the Pixie Pop. But a lot of it is that the resources are built on it too. Pretty much any tarot education resource you pick up, mine included, is teaching you this system. The meanings, the order, the way the cards talk to one another. It is the shared grammar of the whole practice.

So next time you reach for a deck that is not the Rider-Waite-Smith, take a proper look at it. If it was made after 1909, chances are it is in conversation with this one somewhere. Ask what has been questioned, what has been updated, what has been changed completely, and what has quietly carried through. Once you start seeing it, you cannot unsee it, and it changes the way you look at every deck you own.