Pamela Colman Smith was the artist of one of the first commercial and possibly most successful Tarot decks, The Rider Waite deck. She received neither the recognition she hoped for or the recompense she deserved, however her paintings have influenced the design of most modern decks.

Corinne Pamela Colman Smith was born in Pimlico, Middlesex¹, England on 16 February, 1878. Her parents were Charles Edward Smith and Corinne (nee Colman) Smith. Her father was from Brooklyn, New York and her mother was Jamaican. Pamela was blessed with exotic looks from her mixed ethnicity. Her childhood was spent travelling since her father was an auditor for The West India Company, with time spent in Brooklyn, London and in Kingston, Jamaica.

Her mother died when she was ten, and because she was often separated from her father by his work she joined the Lyceum theatre group for company. Much of her later art work was influenced by her early teen years which she spent touring the country in this theatrical community.

She returned to be with her father in New York when she was 15 and attended the newly opened Pratt Institute, studding art with Arthur Wesley Dow and graduating 4 years later. Pamela returned to London in June 1899 with an ambition to succeed as an artist and author. She wrote Annancy Stories - a set of Jamaican tales about an African folk figure, Anansi the Spider - among other books on folk tales.

The Golden Dawn and The Tarot

Pamela was now a published writer, an attribute that opened many doors in turn-of-the-century London. She illustrated books for the poet, William Butler Yeats, who introduced her to the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn.

The Order of The Golden Dawn was founded by Dr. William Woodman, Dr. William Wynn Westcott and S.L. MacGregor Mathers on 1 March 1888. It was an occult order based on esoteric Christianity. By the time Pamela Colman Smith was inducted into the order it was splitting itself apart at the seams. Many of its members were rebelling against Mathers, who among other things, was involved in an alleged magical war with Aleister Crowley².

The Order broke up into a number of factions, many of the members, including Pamela formed The Order of the Independent and Rectified Rite was headed up by Arthur Edward Waite.

Waite was working on a new tarot deck and, aware of Pamela’s artistic abilities, asked her to illustrate them.

The Rider-Waite Tarot

The deck that Smith and Waite came up with was published by the Rider and Sons Company in 1909. It has become the biggest selling tarot deck of all time. When people see tarot cards in the media, the cards that are most often seen are the Rider Waite deck. The 78 pictures that Pamela Smith painted are those that most people associate with the Tarot. However aside from a pittance in payment, she received nothing for doing the cards, her name isn’t even on the deck.

The Rider-Waite³ is a ground-breaking deck, in that it opened the tarot up to many people. In a major departure, the minor cards⁴, featured paintings depicting the meaning of each, rather than the playing-card style previously used. Many believe that it was the changes Colman Smith made to these minor cards that made the deck more accessible, allowing readings to be made by readers who didn’t have to remember the complex occult numerology, which lead to its success - nevertheless, she received no royalty on the sales. Arthur Waite was much more interested in getting the 22 major cards correct, and left Colman Smith to work on the minor cards mainly by herself.

Many decks that have followed have used Colman Smith’s designs as a basis for their own, sometimes just thematically and at other times almost totally copying her pictures.

And her future was golden?

She received an inheritance after WWI and rented a house called The Lizard in Cornwall. She lived with her friend Mrs. Nora Lake before they both moved to a house in Bude in 1939.

She had not sort fame or notoriety, just hoping to be recognized for her work. When she died on 18 September, 1951 all her possessions were sold off to pay for her debts, leaving her friend with nothing to remember her by, not even a gravestone.