I found this marvelous watercolor on Mary K. Greer’s blog and had to share it because it says so much about both the tarot keys and the two magicians who created the Rider-Waite–Smith taro deck. Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur Edward Waite were both members of the Golden Dawn and were more mystics than hard core ceremonial magicians. They both lived at that pivotal time after Queen Victoria’s death when a breath of fresh air was blowing through England bringing with it new ideas and possibilities and magic. But here all similarity ended.
AEW was a scholar and a prolific writer. Some critics feel he was too prolific, but I digress. He was married twice and had one daughter by his first wife. He was The Magician of the pair because the idea, or inspiration of a tarot deck was his, and he is the one who found the artist, outlined the general ideas of the designs, and found a publisher. The basic meaning of The Magician is the manifestation of an idea.
PCS was also a writer, but first and foremost, she was an artist, and not just any sort of artist. She trained at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where she was taught to express emotion and ideas indirectly but meaningfully in visual art. Art was both social and spiritual and was a tool for changing the world. and In other words, she was a Symbolist.
She knew William Butler Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and several other influential writers and magicians of the time. One of her many theater and avant garde performance jobs involved working for Henry Irving and his stage manager, Bram Stoker (author of the original Dracula), at the famous Lyceum Theater in London.
PCS used her magic to look deep within herself, find universal truths and ideas, and communicate them in the form of beautiful, symbolic images. They were so well crafted that they worked in the subconsciouses of those willing to be still and meditate on them like yeast in bread dough. She lived in her imagination and for her art. Physical success would have been nice, but if it meant giving up her art, it wasn’t worth it. Her most valuable possessions were her spiritual and artistic integrity, and she never compromised these. So, unfortunately, she was never able to make very much money, she never married or had children, she died in poverty, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
A perfect, but tragic, High Priestess.
Hugo Bauer, the creator of the above painting sums it all up nicely: “As the Waite-Smith tarot was the result of a collaboration I only thought it natural to make a double portrait. Nevertheless I don’t hold much sympathy for Waite as he didn’t pay Pamela the money and respect she deserved. Still, without him this deck would never have existed, and his influence on the major arcana was considerable. But no explanation is needed for the fact that I placed Pamela in the centre and on the foreground, as it is her artwork and unbelievable spiritual insight that made the Waite Smith deck so special. I hope that fellow admirers of Pamela will consider this painting to be a truthful homage to an artist that never got the respect she deserved.”