The Original Rider Waite Tarot Deck  (English, Paperback, Waite A.E.)

The Original Rider Waite Tarot Deck is, perhaps, the most desirable tarot deck in the world. It comes along with an instruction booklet that explains the cards and their uses.

Summary of the Book

Rider Waite Tarot Deck was originally published by William Rider & Son of London in the year 1909. The famous illustrator Pamela Colman Smith drew the cards as per the instructions given by the academician Arthur Edward Waite. The following year, A.E. Waite penned an instruction booklet The Key to the Tarot and explained in more detail as to how to use the deck, the history of the cards and the meaning and significance of each symbol. The booklet was combined with the deck and they were together sold as a set. It gradually became famous and has been playing a substantial role in the progress of tarot decks. The pictures on the deck appear simple yet every feature has a figurative connotation. The 78 cards are distributed into two Arcanas - Major and Minor. The instruction booklet explains how the 56 minor cards are further divided into four suits - wands, cups, pentacles and swords. Most of the tarot decks produced today are said to be replicas of the 1909 Rider-Waite deck, because of the resemblance in their illustrations and symbolism.

About A. E. Waite

Arthur Edward Waite was a British writer, academician, editor, and translator. He authored about 50 books and translated many works from French to English. His major interests were topics like The Holy Grail, Alchemy and Tarot. Arthur was born in America but moved to England in his early years after his father’s demise. He was a sincere Catholic, however, post his teenage sister’s death, he started losing faith. He slowly started getting fascinated about the occult. He began writing essays and articles that ultimately made him develop the Rider Waite Tarot Deck along with The Key to the Tarot. Some of the books written by Arthur are Inner and Outer Order Initiations of the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn, The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail, and Theories As to the Authorship of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes.