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# The Unsung Woman Artist Behind Your Tarot Cards
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/the-unnamed-woman-artist-revealed-in-the-monogram-of-your-tarot-cards/
- Published: 2016-10-26T11:05:10.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:13:32.000Z
- Description: In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith collaborated with occultist A. E. Waite on the most popular tarot deck of the 20th century.
- Author: Allison Meier
- Tags: Art, games, Halloween, tarot, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:23 (2016, 2017, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/10/waitesmithtarot.jpg)

Illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite tarot deck (1909, reprinted in 1937) (courtesy [Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library](http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Author?author=Smith%2C+Pamela+Colman&ref=hyperallergic.com))

*As Halloween approaches, it offers a chance to delve into the occult, phantasmagoric, otherworldly, and haunted aspects of our world. In a series of posts, we’re exploring art history that offers a portal to a darker side of culture.*

The Hermit with his cloak and lantern, the Hanged Man suspended from one foot, the High Priestess seated between two columns — these are all familiar figures to those who practice divination. The most widely used tarot cards, and the first to be mass-marketed in English with original art, are the ones comprising [the Rider-Waite tarot deck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite%5Ftarot%5Fdeck?ref=hyperallergic.com), first issued in 1909\. The 78 illustrations on the cards cemented certain visuals in modern tarot, and accompanying each you’ll find a small monogram of a “P” crossed with a looping “C” and “S.” The letters stand for [Pamela Colman Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela%5FColman%5FSmith?ref=hyperallergic.com), the unsung artist of popular tarot.

![Pamela Colman Smith in 1912 (via Wikimedia)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/10/pcsmith.jpg)

Pamela Colman Smith in 1912 (via Wikimedia)

Born in England in 1878 to a merchant from Brooklyn, Smith spent time in New York City, London, and Kingston, Jamaica. Nicknamed Pixie, she was an early-20th-century illustrator inspired as much by 19th-century symbolists as Art Nouveau. When Alfred Stieglitz staged the first non-photography exhibition at his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (later called [291](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/291%5F%28art%5Fgallery%29?ref=hyperallergic.com)), in 1907, he chose Smith’s work. At different points in her life, you could call her an illustrator, a children’s book author, a storyteller, a set designer, and an active member of the 20th-century occult movement. She collaborated with Jack Yeats, younger brother of W. B., on a series of 1902–03 broadsheets with colored prints (you can find [a collection of them online](http://images.library.pitt.edu/y/yeats/?ref=hyperallergic.com) at the University of Pittsburgh) and published collected and illustrated [Jamaican stories](https://archive.org/details/cu31924079620021) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In [*Retrievals*](https://books.google.com/books?id=NjnwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&ref=hyperallergic.com#v=onepage&q&f=false), his 2014 book on underrecognized cultural figures, Garrett Caples writes that while at [Pratt Institute](http://125.pratt.edu/gallery/artist/smith1?ref=hyperallergic.com), Smith learned about synesthesia from artist [Arthur Wesley Dow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur%5FWesley%5FDow?ref=hyperallergic.com), and much of her work “depicted imagery spontaneously brought to her mind while listening to music by the likes of Beethoven, Bach, and Schumann: ‘what I see when I hear music-thoughts loosened and set free from the spell of sound,’ as she wrote in a 1908 article.” In a 1907 watercolor — “[Overture. ‘Egmont’ Beethoven](http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=22585&ref=hyperallergic.com)” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum — the head of a woman becomes a cliff on which figures stand against a fluid background. A similar, undulating use of line and color informs an undated watercolor[ at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library,](http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519951?ref=hyperallergic.com) in which purple and gray waves merge with female forms, while ships sail in the distance.

!["The fool" in the Rider-Waite tarot deck (via Wikimedia)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/10/thefooltarot.jpg)

“The fool” in the Rider-Waite tarot deck (via Wikimedia)

Tarot was not always concerned with divination: back in the medieval era, [it was a trick-taking game](https://hyperallergic.com/the-bawdy-history-of-medieval-playing-cards/). But by the time British occultist [A. E. Waite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.%5FE.%5FWaite?ref=hyperallergic.com) collaborated with Smith on the deck, issued by the Rider company, it had become a tool for spiritual guidance. Both Waite and Smith (along with a cast of curious characters, from Aleister Crowley to Bram Stoker) were members of the [Order of the Golden Dawn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic%5FOrder%5Fof%5Fthe%5FGolden%5FDawn?ref=hyperallergic.com), which influenced contemporary interpretations of the occult. Peter Bebergal [wrote in *The New Yorker*](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/making-the-tarot-literary-again?ref=hyperallergic.com) that Waite “saw magic not as a means to power but as a path toward a higher consciousness.” Smith also brought her own research to the symbolism of the cards.

Smith’s life as a career artist contributed in some ways to the obscurity that followed her 1951 death; steady illustration work and the fact that she dabbled in a wealth of fields have made her legacy difficult to pin down. Recently her name has been revived somewhat, as with the 100th anniversary of the Rider-Waite Deck, [a Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set](http://www.usgamesinc.com/The-Pamela-Colman-Smith-Commemorative-Set/?page=2&ref=hyperallergic.com); issued by U.S. Games Systems, it comes complete with a biography of the artist by Stuart R. Kaplan. More importantly, though, her art remains alive every time a card is drawn from the Rider-Waite deck, which should rightfully be called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Each ominous specter of death on a horse or trepidatious wheel of fortune, as depicted by Smith, offers personal guidance through direct, captivating imagery.