Life
A. E. Waite was a British mystical writer and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. With artist Pamela Colman Smith he produced the 1909 deck later known as the Rider–Waite or Rider–Waite–Smith tarot: fully illustrated minor-arcana scenes that reshaped twentieth-century cartomancy. His Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) explained the images in a Christian-mystical and Golden Dawn-informed vocabulary while distancing itself from fortune-telling sensationalism. He also wrote widely on Rosicrucianism, kabbalah and ritual. ORDL includes him for the deck's structural influence.
The system
- Fully illustrated Minor Arcana as narrative scenes.
- Golden Dawn correspondences adapted for a mass-market deck.
- The Pictorial Key as a companion grammar of the images.
Key works
- Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck (with Pamela Colman Smith, 1909)
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910)
Where to start
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot; compare with a modern history of the Golden Dawn and Smith’s art.
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