Waite tarot

The Waite Tarot is a tarot deck designed by the English occultist Arthur Edward Waite and executed by the artist Pamela Colman Smith , which was published by Rider & Son in London in 1910, which is why it is also known as the Rider-Waite Tarot . Both Waite and Smith were members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , the esoteric teachings of which the deck reflects.

history

The deck was criticized at the time because compared to the order and numbering of the major arcana in the traditional form, coined by the Tarot de Marseille , the trump cards VIII ( Justice ) and XI ( Power ) were swapped. This change does not go back to Waite, but was established 20 years earlier by Samuel Liddell Mathers in the teachings of the Golden Dawn . In addition, the order of the Tarot de Marseille was originally one of several.

The illustration of the Little Arcana by depicting symbolic-allegorical scenes can be seen as a fundamental innovation of the Waite Deck . The only known older example is the Sola Busca tarot , a 15th century Italian deck that Waite must have been familiar with. Photographs of the Sola Busca Tarot were made in 1907 for the British Library , whose holdings were used extensively by Waite. There are also striking parallels in the iconography, for example in sword three , sword seven and rod ten .

Another change concerned the assignment of the four elements to the four colors of the tarot. For the older authors the assignment was:

Bars	↔	Fire
Chalices	↔	water
Swords	↔	earth
Coins	↔	air

Waite swapped the assignments of swords and coins (which appear as pentacles on Waite ) and modern esoteric decks, particularly the Crowley Thoth Tarot , followed him in this change. The assignment, which through the symbolic-allegorical illustration of the small arcane, was now also implemented in the image program and thus visible to the user of the deck, was now:

Bars	↔	Fire
Chalices	↔	water
Swords	↔	air
Pentacle	↔	earth

This illustration of the minor arcana made the divinatory use much easier for many, which probably justified the tremendous success of the deck, which is now the most widely used and most frequently used for the illustration of tarot books. Another moment of success are the illustrations, strongly influenced by Art Nouveau , which Pamela Colman Smith carried out in a pleasing manner and in rather cheerful colors and thus form a contrast to the hieratic austerity of the woodcut-like illustrations in the Marseille decks on the one hand and the gloomy, esoteric and satanic ones Connotations such as the Crowley deck.

reception

The success also includes the large number of decks that are based on the Waite deck, inspired by this deck or that only vary in color and / or design. As examples may be about called the Universal Waite Tarot , the BOTA Tarot by Paul Foster Case , the Morgan-Greer Tarot , or the gummy bears -Tarot of Dietmar Bittrich , the inventor of the gummy bear oracle in which the persons represented by gummy bears are replaced.

In some publications, the Waite deck has been reproduced in whole or in part. These include:

Hajo Banzhaf: The Secret of the High Priestess. Hugendubel, Munich 1981. Waite deck in a set with 7 folding plans and instructions. The folding plans show floor plans for 20 different laying types.
Zolar's Astrological Tarot . US Games 1983: A combination of Waite illustrations with astrological symbolism. Stuart R. Kaplan is believed to be behind the pseudonymous author Zolar.
Georgina Margareta Witta Kiessling-Smith-Jensen: Waite Variationer No. 1. and Waite Variationer II.1-3 1989: Artistic adaptations of the trump cards of the Waite Deck.
- No. 1 shows excerpts from the Waite illustrations. 133 hand-colored copies, numbered and signed.
- II.1–3 are variations of drawing and coloring. 30 hand-colored copies, numbered and signed.

expenditure

Arthur Edward Waite: The pictorial key to the Tarot: being fragments of a secret tradition under the veil of divination. With 78 plates illustrating the Greater and Lesser Arcana from designs by Pamela Colman Smith. Rider, London 1910.
- Reprint: Rider, London 1971.
- New edition: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Weiser, New York 2008.
- Online: sacred-texts.com
- German edition: The picture key to the original Rider Waite Tarot. Fragments of a secret lore behind the veil of divination. Illustrations based on drawings by Pamela Colman Smith. Translation by Astrid Ogbeiwi. Urania, Neuhausen 2005, ISBN 3-03819-070-5 .
Original Rider Waite Tarot. Rider, London 1993, ISBN 0-7126-5846-7 (edition with lower color saturation corresponding to the original).
Facsimile Rider Waite Tarot. Urania, Neuhausen 1998, ISBN 3-908646-94-4 , card examples (limited facsimile edition with German card titles in combination with a pocket edition of Waite's key to the tarot ).

literature

Eckhard Graf: Lexicon of the tarot as well as the oracle and self-awareness games. Nagelschmid, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-927913-03-0 , pp. 137-140.

Web links

Commons : Waite Tarot - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Rider-Waite Clone Tarot Decks , overview of the Waite-Deck variants

Individual evidence

↑ The spread of the name also contributed to the fact that the owner of the rights to the Waite deck, the tarot publisher US Games Systems founded by Stuart R. Kaplan in 1968, registered Rider-Waite as a trademark and the deck in different versions of the design and Coloration marketed under this name.
^ RA Gilbert (ed.): The Sorcerer and his Apprentice. Unknown Hermetic Writings of SL McGregor Mathers and JW Brodie-Innes. Wellingborough 1987, p. 81.
^ RA Gilbert (ed.): Hermetic Papers of AE Waite. The Unknown Writings of a Modern Mystic. Wellingborough 1987, p. 161.
↑ A comparison of such Waite clones can be found at http://www.learntarot.com/deckcomp.htm .
^ Mary Hanson-Roberts, Pamela Colman-Smith: Universal-Waite Tarot. US Games, Stamford, CT 1990, sample cards .
^ Paul Foster Case: BOTA Tarot. Builders of the Adytum, 1931, sample cards .
^ Lloyd Morgan, William Greer: Morgan-Greer Tarot. US Games Systems, Stamford, CT 1979, sample cards .
↑ Dietmar Bittrich: The gummy bear tarot. Complete with 78 cards and accompanying book. Ill. By Anneke Larsmeyer and Sascha Teßmann. Pendragon, Bielefeld 2001, ISBN 3-934872-08-5 , sample maps .

[1] The spread of the name also contributed to the fact that the owner of the rights to the Waite deck, the tarot publisher US Games Systems founded by Stuart R. Kaplan in 1968, registered Rider-Waite as a trademark and the deck in different versions of the design and Coloration marketed under this name.

[2] RA Gilbert (ed.): The Sorcerer and his Apprentice. Unknown Hermetic Writings of SL McGregor Mathers and JW Brodie-Innes. Wellingborough 1987, p. 81.

[3] RA Gilbert (ed.): Hermetic Papers of AE Waite. The Unknown Writings of a Modern Mystic. Wellingborough 1987, p. 161.

[4] A comparison of such Waite clones can be found at http://www.learntarot.com/deckcomp.htm .

[5] Mary Hanson-Roberts, Pamela Colman-Smith: Universal-Waite Tarot. US Games, Stamford, CT 1990, sample cards .

[6] Paul Foster Case: BOTA Tarot. Builders of the Adytum, 1931, sample cards .

[7] Lloyd Morgan, William Greer: Morgan-Greer Tarot. US Games Systems, Stamford, CT 1979, sample cards .

[8] Dietmar Bittrich: The gummy bear tarot. Complete with 78 cards and accompanying book. Ill. By Anneke Larsmeyer and Sascha Teßmann. Pendragon, Bielefeld 2001, ISBN 3-934872-08-5 , sample maps .