Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot
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Chariot: Prince Starbeam—the violet void, quest, escape, triumph, travel, long journey, beginnings, “he saw the path no longer, but its thorns only” (Quest, 78).
Magician: Messenger of the Court of Stars—help, warnings, messages, deception, counterfeit, blame, distress: “Moreover, the great things are earned and not given” (Quest, 85).
Justice: The Court of Stars—majesty, power, threshold, records, honour, truth, certainty, debate, mandate, measure: “The law over trifles in Faerie is perchance a law of silence” (Quest, 99).
High Priestess: Princess Cynthia, High Lady of Life (in the House of Dreams)—revealing, grace, silence, awakening, the end of seeking: “Thou art the end of my dreaming, and the path that leads me home” (Quest, 103).
Hierophant: The Priest of Stars, Master in Chief of the Portal—litanies, gnosis, consecration, vesicles, church, chanting, veneration, ritual, tradition, worship: “A bye-lane, a narrow lane, a very crooked path, a track over green meadows, a path beside the brook. But this is the way into Faerie, and this goes also through” (Quest, 106).
Last Judgement: The Law of the Single Purpose—speaking as others would understand, awakening, the wind of spirit: “There is new thought in the morning, the light makes all things new” (Quest, 120).
Moon: The Magic Mirror—Dreams, the surface of things, reflection, nature, memory, travel, roving: “There is one straight road in Faerie, and it is the path of the Moon” (Quest, 4).
Tower: The Dream Tower—loss, companionship, fear, time, liberation: “Go to the Dream Tower, which is not reached by him who fares alone. Seek therefore first for one who waits thy coming” (Quest, 144).
Sun: Aureolus—fulfilment, music, celebration, illumination, devotion, glory, radiance, triumph: “The way into Faerie is a word of sweetness; the path of Faerie is kindness” (Quest, 165).
World: A Sphere of Still Reality—the Holy Gate, gathering, union, manifestation, closing, valediction, ending, timelessness: “The end is seen in vision: the vision becomes the end” (Quest, 167).
Fool: Architect of the Bridge of Harmony, the Golden Stairs—harmony, testament, blessing, life, the chain of things: “To dissolve the outward sign is to find the inward grace” (Quest, 175).
A Three-card Faerie Reading
In this reading, we use the major arcana only and select three cards for the following oracle:
Card 1: The College of Maidens—this card teaches you the lesson you must learn from the situation.
Card 2: The Court of Stars—this card gives the likely outcome of the situation.
Card 3: The College of Magic—this card gives an action to take best advantage of the situation.
If we selected out the three cards, asking a question on behalf of a client who sought advice about Internet bullying, we might receive:
College of Maidens: The Nuptials of Faerie (Lovers)
Court of Stars: The Law of the Single Purpose (Last Judgement)
College of Magic: A Sphere of Still Reality (World)
We would interpret these cards and suggest to the client that the lesson they were being taught is to find those who supported their aims and vision, and wed with them. The situation they were facing, according to the College of Maidens, was to teach them with whom not to be connected. The Court of Stars offers the outcome as eventually turning a corner—the light of tomorrow will bring new insight and is likely to be very different than today. In terms of taking action, the College of Magic suggests gathering people who share the same vision together, and ensuring that vision is manifest by completing projects and tasks.
This is an entirely practical and applicable reading, given in the guise of Waite’s Faerie symbolism as it corresponds to the tarot. Perhaps you can try your own reading and share it with us on our social media pages and groups!
We hope this section inspires you to find a copy of Waite’s The Quest of the Golden Stairs and read it with an appreciation of the allusions Waite is creating to Kabbalah, tarot, and the mystical quest. It is indeed a pilgrimage of the soul that is being described in the book, presented as Faerie lore. Waite brings to life the eternal “dream of Nature” that is Faerie, and takes us to the very Court of Stars, the Dream Tower, the City of Morning Light, and the College of Magic. In doing so, a gate opens to a new appreciation of the world, of tarot, and of Waite himself, perhaps more of a romantic mystic and fey dreamer than you might ever have expected.
Waite and Tarot
Waite first wrote about tarot as early as 1887, in a short article in Walford’s Antiquarian magazine. This magazine was edited in name by G. W. Redway, but in practice by Arthur Machen, a longtime friend of Waite. The article was titled “The Tarot: An Antique Method of Divination,” which Waite introduced as “a very curious and oracular method of divination by cards of a unique character.”
It is interesting how he described the majors, so we reproduce that here in its entirety:
The Juggler: with the implements of his profession on a small table in front of him.
Pope Joan: or the Female Pontiff.
The Empress: a woman seated in the centre of a radiating sun, having a crown of twelve stars upon her head and the crescent moon beneath her feet.
The Emperor: a man seated on a cubic stone and wearing a helmet surmounted by a crown. In his right hand there is a sceptre surmounted by a globe. This symbol is also borne by the Empress.
The Pope: leaning on a cross and tracing the same sign, with the right hand, upon his breast. Two persons wearing crowns on their heads lie prostrate before him.
A man standing erect with arms crossed on his breast: two women, representing Vice and Virtue, are on his right and left side respectively.
The Victor: a chariot of cubic shape surmounted by an azure and star-spangled canopy. A warrior stands therein, wearing his armour and a crown whose points are ornamented with pentagrams. In one hand he carries a sceptre, in the other a sword, and the chariot is drawn by a double sphinx.
Justice: with sword and balance.
The Hermit: or Capuchin, equivalent to Prudence. An old man in a monkish garb, carrying a lantern, which he partially conceals under his cloak.
The Wheel of Fortune: a Hermanubis ascending it on the right, a Typhon descending it on the left, and a sword-bearing Sphinx resting unmoved at the top.
Strength: a virgin closing the jaws of a lion.
Judas Iscariot: a man hanging by one foot from a gallows suspended between two trees. His arms are tied behind him.
Death: reaping crowned heads.
Temperance: a woman pouring the contents of one urn into another.
The Devil: or Baphomet, goat-headed and waving inverted torches.
The Castle of Pluto: a temple filled with gold, which falls into ruins and overwhelms its worshippers. This symbol is also called the Tower of Babel.
The Burning Star: probably that of the Magi, surrounded by the seven planets. Their influence descends in a rainbow upon the naked figure of a girl pouring water on to the earth from two chalices. A butterfly has alighted on a rose at her side.
The Moon: beneath which there is a tower and a footpath winding over a desert. In front of the tower are chained a wolf and a dog; the latter is barking at the moon. A crab is crawling between them.
The Sun: whose rays descend upon the naked bodies of two children, a male and a female, who join hands in a fortified enclosure.
The Last Judgement: an angel sounding a trumpet, at which the dead rise from their tombs.
The Fool: carrying a wallet, and pursued by a savage animal from which he has not the sense to escape. (Also counted as zero in some calculations of the game.)
The Crown: a circle, generally of gold or of flowers, placed in a square at whose angles are the emblems of the four evangelists.
The gauze-clad figure of a girl is often represented running within the circle.
Even in this earliest writing, Waite is keen to create correspondences to antiquity; for him, Pope Joan has the attributes of Isis, and the figure of the Empress has striking analogies to Venus/Aphrodite. The Pope sits between the hermetic pillars of Jakin and Bohas; later Waite moved these to the High Priestess card.
Most of all at this time Waite was seeing a correspondence to the Apocalypse using Éliphas Lévi as a source of kabbalistic knowledge to unveil the secrets of the tarot with “those who are gifted in the discernment of curious analogies.”
The vision of heaven identical to the twenty-second key is described as “a throne surrounded by a double rainbow, together with the four sacramental animals of the Kabbalah.” He draws a veil over these speculations and concludes “these coincidences are, at least, very curious, and afford much food for thought.”
Waite on His Own Writings
Waite was not shy about referring to his own anonymous or nom de plume writings. Here he is speaking of his own book, in decrying the “fortune-telling” nature of tarot in his Key to the Tarot:
There is a current Manual of Cartomancy [his own, under the name Grand Orient] which has obtained a considerable vogue in England, and amidst a scattermeal of curious things to no purpose has intersected a few serious subjects. In its last and largest edition it treats in one section of the Tarot; which—if I interpret the author [himself] rightly, it regards from beginning to end the Wheel of Fortune, this expression being understood in my own sense.
Waite goes on to say he has “no objection” to this interpretation, whilst condemning it as merely a “conventional description,” and then deems other designs and images of the Wheel as mainly “invention in support of a hypothesis.” At no point does he reveal any alternative or secret version of the card which is to be supposed from his statements.
Waite on the Purpose of Divination
Waite wrote that the oracle “ … does not solve doubts concerning the Trinity, or explain mysteries of eschatology—except indeed indirectly, by counsel, interpretation, and turning the intention of the seeker towards those holy things in which doubt and difficulty dissolve.” 60
On their use as divination, Waite follows Antoine Court de Gébelin as considering the tarot more useful than other modes of playing-card reading, “containing as it does in a certain sense the entire universe, and the different states of which man’s life is susceptible.”
He references in this early article the works of Lévi, Paul Christian, and Frederic de la Grange. The only mention of a method of reading is a brief and less than useful mention of the “grand key” method (covered elsewhere in this book) as arranging the cards “either in a square or a triangle, placing the even numbers in opposition and conciliating them with the uneven.”
With regard to the minor arcana, it is most likely that Waite presented Pamela a version of Book T, the Golden Dawn’s teaching document on the tarot. She would not have had a copy of it herself at her grade, so the notes or a copy would have been from Waite.
The titles of the cards are given in this document based on their kabbalistic structure, so Pamela was unconsciously modelling the images on a purely kabbalistic pattern. In effect, she intuited the Kabbalah through the images.
In January 1905, a new publication called The Occult Review began to circulate. The many issues were like an esoteric journal that would span some forty-five years. The luminaries of magick would come to write for it, including Waite, Crowley, Farr, Hartmann, Maitland, and Dion Fortune. The subjects were diverse, covering but not limited to book reviews, Buddhist doctrine, hauntings, reincarnation, magical lodges, tea-leaf reading, hypnotism, astral travel, vampirism, and talismans.
The Review was under the editorship of John Shirley (1865–1946), who was also editing director of William Rider & Son, a role and association he held for more than thirty years.61 Shirley and Waite together produced a large amount of material, and Waite writes that there was often “more things than one pending between Shirley and myself.” 62 In fact, in 1921, Waite even received advice from a cartomancer, Soror Una Salus, who assured him that he would “hear something very much to my advantage in a business way.” Waite’s attitude to the reading, writing in later life, is that it was no more than an offer to “turn out the cards,” which seems somewhat dismissive.
Waite had been working at the time with a number of publishers, including Redway (who had gone out of business), Ballantyne, and Kegan Paul. However, it was during 1909 that he had become closer to Rider, as Shirley had taken his “first real holiday” since taking over the publishing house and had left Waite in charge of editing the Review.
Shirley would have been very enthusiastic about a tarot deck, we are sure. In fact, it may have even been his idea—he was always seeking new ventures. He saw the aim of the Review and his other ventures as “raising the standard of Occult and Psychic investigation to a higher level and of drawing together the more intellectual spirits interested in the subjects with which it has dealt, by affording a common platform on which they could write for the furtherance of a movement which is yet destined to play a leading part in evolving to a higher and more spiritual level the humanity of our Twentieth Century world.” 63
Writing in his biography, Waite saw his own role in rather vague terms; he speaks of “under my auspices,” providing “proper guidance” and cards “produced under my supervision.” These sound like a claim to involvement in something in which the author is not entirely involved. There is no clear statement that Waite provided rigid guidelines or Pamela surprised him with wild variations to his concepts nor anything definitive.
He saw the major and minors arcana as very separate: “I satisfied myself some years ago, and do not stand alone, that the Trumps Major existed originally independently of the other arcana and that they were combined for gambling purposes at a date which is impossible to fix roughly. I am concerned only for the present needs with the Great Symbols. They are twenty-two in number … ” 64
He also states that “their connection is arbitrary … the Lesser Arcana being allocated to their proper place in cartomancy and the Trumps Major to their own, which is to seership of another order”65
It is in The Occult Review (vol. X, no. 12) that Pamela’s artwork debuts with several card drawings in black and white being used to illustrate Waite’s article, “The Tarot: A Wheel of Fortune.” There are four major cards, four court cards, and four minor cards included to showcase the deck. Waite is more strident here in owning the design than he would be in later years; he writes, “I have embraced an opportunity which has been somewhat of the unexpected kind and have interested a very skilful and original artist in the proposal to design a set, Miss Pamela Coleman [sic] Smith, in addition to her obvious gifts, has some knowledge of Tarot values; she has lent a sympathetic ear to my proposal to rectify the symbolism by reference to channels of knowledge, which are not in the open day; and we have had other help from one who is deeply versed in the subject.” 66
It is most likely that Waite presented Pamela a list of keywords and concepts taken from Book T. As this was above Pamela’s grade in the Order—and we know Waite kept his oaths very seriously—we cannot imagine Pamela was given the whole manuscript, nor much of the significant symbolism. Furthermore, we know from other accounts that Pamela was not an intellectual learner but more an intuitive and immersive acquirer of information.
The advert in 1909 by Ralph Shirley suggests in a footnote that “I may mention that the artist, Miss Colman Smith, made a careful examination of numerous tarot packs from the 14th century onwards before undertaking her work.” It is probable that this “careful examination” came from one or just a few trips to the British Museum, again possibly accompanied by Waite, given the timescales.
In the following table, we present the bare bones of Book T, which Pamela may have been wor
king from to design the minor arcana and court cards.
Card
Lord of
Decan
In
The Ace of Cups is called the Root of the Powers of Water
2 of Cups
Love
Venus
Cancer
3 of Cups
Abundance
Mercury
Cancer
4 of Cups
Blended Pleasure
Moon
Cancer
5 of Cups
Loss in Pleasure
Mars
Scorpio
6 of Cups
Pleasure
Sun
Scorpio
7 of Cups
Illusionary Success
Venus
Scorpio
8 of Cups
Abandoned Success
Saturn
Pisces
9 of Cups
Material Happiness
Jupiter
Pisces
10 of Cups
Perfected Success