What Is the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck?

If you've ever seen a tarot card, in a film, in a friend's collection, in a bookshop window, there's a good chance it was a Rider-Waite card, or a deck directly inspired by one. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is the most influential tarot deck ever created, and understanding why tells you a great deal about how tarot works.

A brief history

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck was first published in December 1909 by the Rider Company in London, which is where the "Rider" in the name comes from. It was designed by Arthur Edward Waite, a British occultist and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, an artist and fellow Order member whose contribution is increasingly recognised as the deck's defining genius.

Pamela Colman Smith, known to her friends as "Pixie", was a remarkable figure: a Black British woman working at the intersection of art, theatre, and the occult in Edwardian London. Despite being the deck's illustrator, her name was omitted from the original title for decades. The addition of "Smith" to the deck's name is a relatively recent correction of a long overdue historical record.

What made it revolutionary

Before the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, most tarot decks illustrated only the 22 Major Arcana cards with full scenes. The 56 Minor Arcana cards were represented with simple geometric arrangements of their suit symbols. The Five of Cups, for instance, might show just five cups arranged on the card with no scene or figure.

Smith changed this entirely. She illustrated all 78 cards with full narrative scenes, figures in landscapes, rich with symbolic detail. The Five of Cups became a cloaked figure mourning over spilled cups, with two full cups still standing behind them. Suddenly, the cards told stories. They were immediately more intuitive to read.

This innovation transformed tarot. For the first time, a reader could look at a card and feel its meaning before consulting a guidebook. The imagery carried the interpretation.

The symbolic language

Every element of the Rider-Waite-Smith imagery is intentional. The colours, the figures' postures, the landscapes, the animals, the objects, all carry symbolic weight drawn from Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, and Western esoteric tradition.

The Fool steps off a cliff with a white rose in hand and a small dog at his heels, innocence, new beginnings, the leap before the fall. The High Priestess sits between two pillars marked B and J, Boaz and Jachin, the pillars of Solomon's Temple, suggesting the threshold between the known and unknown. The Tower is struck by lightning, its crown blown off, figures falling, sudden disruption, the collapse of what was built on unstable ground.

You don't need to understand all of this symbolism to read the cards. But knowing it's there deepens the practice over time.

Why it remains the standard

Over a century after its creation, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck remains the most widely used tarot deck in the English-speaking world. More books, guides, courses, and resources are written with Rider-Waite imagery as their reference than any other deck. Learning Rider-Waite means learning the lingua franca of tarot.

Most modern tarot decks, however different their aesthetic, are in dialogue with Rider-Waite. Some reinterpret its symbolism through different cultural lenses. Some strip it back to minimal geometry. Some expand it into lush, complex illustration. But the underlying structure, the card meanings, the narrative logic, almost all of it traces back to Smith's 1909 illustrations.

Using a different deck

Morrow Arc is built around the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, but you don't need to use that specific deck. If you practice with a different deck, the meanings here will largely translate, especially if your deck draws from Rider-Waite symbolism, which most do. As your practice deepens, you may find a deck whose imagery speaks to you more personally. That's part of the journey.

Can you learn tarot with a different deck?

Yes, and many people do. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is the recommended starting point because more learning resources reference it than any other deck. But if you already own a different deck, or feel drawn to a particular one, you can learn tarot with it.

Most modern decks are in direct conversation with Rider-Waite symbolism. The Thoth deck reinterprets it through a different esoteric framework. The Morgan-Greer, Universal Waite, and hundreds of contemporary decks are essentially Rider-Waite redrawn in a different visual style. The meanings transfer.

Where you may notice gaps: some highly abstract or pip-only decks don't illustrate the Minor Arcana with full scenes. If your deck shows five cups arranged geometrically rather than a figure mourning over spilled cups, you'll need to rely more on memorised meanings and less on imagery. Rider-Waite's full-scene illustrations are what make it easier to read intuitively from the start.

5 Rider-Waite cards every beginner should learn first

You don't need to learn all 78 cards before you start reading. These five cards cover the most common themes and appear frequently in daily practice, understanding them well gives you a useful foundation:

The Fool, New beginnings, the leap before the fall, unbounded potential. Appears whenever you're at a threshold or contemplating something new. One of the most optimistic cards in the deck when upright.

The Tower, Sudden disruption, the collapse of what was built on unstable foundations. Looks alarming; rarely is. Usually points at something that needed to change anyway.

The High Priestess, Intuition, inner knowledge, the wisdom that comes from stillness. Appears when the answer you're looking for is already inside you.

The Star, Hope and renewal after difficulty. One of the most genuinely comforting cards in the deck, not naive optimism, but quiet certainty that things will improve.

Ace of Cups, New emotional beginnings, love, creativity opening. Often appears when something tender is starting, a relationship, a creative project, an emotional shift.

Once these feel familiar, add five more. Build the deck gradually through daily pulls rather than study.