Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot

by Marcus Katz

  Key Symbols

  A naked woman is kneeling by the side of a pool: Her right foot is balanced on the water’s surface, and she holds two jugs. She is Binah, the third Sephirah on the Tree of Life, symbolic of all form, structure, and nature—the matrix and the mother. Whilst the Empress may be her external manifestation, the Star is the highest spiritual aspect of the feminine.114

  The pouring jugs: The jug in the woman’s right hand empties into the pond whilst the jug in her left hand pours onto the ground and divides into five streams. From these jugs pour the waters of life and spirit, the substance of the heavens and the elements. The card shows the two aspects of life divided, the above and the below. They find their synthesis and completion in the feminine figure of the World card.

  Flowers sprout up from the earth: The flowers show that where the grace of this card is received, it will grow. In a sense this is a better depiction than what Waite calls the “tawdry explanation” of the card as “hope.” It indicates that hope is a dynamic process of being open to opportunity.

  A mountain range in the distance: This card is a precursor to spiritual development: it exists in a realm of its own beyond normal comprehension.

  An eight-pointed star emblazoned in the sky: In this detail it differs from its Golden Dawn model, which had twenty-one rays. Waite offers no explanation for his choice.

  The large star is surrounded by seven satellite stars: They are arranged slightly alike to the seven sisters, the Pleiades (which are visible to the naked eye).

  To the far right is a tree on hill; a bird (the “bird of Hermes” in the Golden Dawn version) sits upon its top: We will look at this in more detail to show how just one symbol on a card can be unpacked.

  Let’s consider the way one particular symbol—the bird that is one of the birds we will try and count later in our Q & A intermission—has been discussed over the century from when it was first placed on this card. In doing so, you’ll see an example of how every symbol in the entire deck has produced a panoply of interpretations.

  The bird in the PCS deck was never a permanent fixture of the Star card, appearing variously in many guises in the early origins of the tarot. It was perhaps first identified as an Ibis by Papus, writing in the context of the tarot’s “Egyptian connection.” In Tarot of the Bohemians (1892), he gives it as an ibis or butterfly, saying both are symbols of the soul (172).

  The early Sola Busca deck (often cited as an influence on Pamela) actually has a “winged head,” whilst the earlier Marseilles deck features an unidentified bird in various colours, black, red, or blue depending on the printing. Later decks use a butterfly or owl as the winged symbol. The Visconti deck doesn’t have a bird or trees, only two hills and the Star. Wirth uses the butterfly.

  By the time of the Golden Dawn, Mathers describes the background images of the Star as “trees and plants grow beneath her magic influence (and on one the butterfly of Psyche alights).” The Cipher manuscripts of the Golden Dawn draw the bird on the floor, near a pool or possibly a nest, but do not identify it. In a rarely published piece, Mathers equates the card with Juno and hence the peacock (The Golden Dawn Source Book, Kuntz, 1996).

  Waite gives “whereon a bird alights” in Pictorial Key (1910), and Pamela certainly used the Marseilles image as inspiration for this card, but again it isn’t identified. As it was Waite who translated Papus, they would have probably taken it for an ibis.

  Kaplan (Classical Tarot, 1972) refers to the ibis, illustrated by the Marseilles deck.

  Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom mentions the bird as an ibis, according to “tradition” (1983, 123). She later writes in Tarot Wisdom (2008) that the bird is sacred to Thoth, and comments on Thoth’s role as artistic creativity.

  Dictionaries of tarot symbols have stated it more definitively, for example, the ibis is given in Pictures from the Heart (Thomson, 2003, 200).

  In a reading: The card is vision—the vision that can never be reached, but sets a point for our navigation. We must always hold one star in sight and recognise that it is ultimately our self. We are what we do and we become what we have done.

  Key words and concepts: Hope, vision, aspiration.

  Waite: This image is elevated by Waite to the Sephirah Binah on the Tree of Life (PKT, 139). This is the mother of all, the matrix, the understanding that informs all creation. Waite gives the Star the association of the rivers of Eden, similar in a sense to Temperance, pouring forth understanding to those who will drink of it.

  Colman Smith: The posture given to the Star and her ability to stand upon the water indicate the unreal nature of hope.

  Secret significance: Only truth can flow forever.

  Reading tip: Whilst the Star is a generally positive card, it can be empty and even dangerous if not accompanied by more active and dynamic cards. Otherwise it is like having a compass in a prison. Whilst the Star is shining in a reading, it provides a destination, but that must be reached by any of the cards in the spread that show motion and activity. It is these cards that will most indicate the type of activity to reach one’s goals.

  The Moon: 18

  The Design

  The design here follows the most common Marseilles layout of a moon above two towers under which two animals, usually a dog and a wolf, sit. In the lower part of the card, a lobster or crayfish is depicted in water—or on a plate or shield. The towers Pamela has painted here are in several of her other paintings, notably one inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C Minor. In that image we see the three phases of the moon, perhaps, reflected in the waters at the feet of the three figures in a stark landscape of fear.

  53. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Pamela Colman Smith. (Illustration courtesy of authors, private collection.)

  Key Symbols

  The moon’s three worlds: For Waite, these represent intellectual uncertainty, illusion, and mutation. The soul mourns the sadness of material life; spiritual fantasy. Overall it is falseness and deception.

  Thirty-two rays: This number is also the total of paths on the Tree of Life in Yetzirah; the world of formation and imagination.

  Fifteen Yod symbols: The Yod marks below the moon represent the dew of thought, thoughts that arise from reflection that nourish the ground of manifestation.

  Two watchtowers, each with one window: The towers guard both east and west, and they are the fears and fantasies that delude and divert us from following the path.

  Two dogs: They bay at the moon above; often one is a dog and one a wolf (the tamed and wild side of animal nature), sacred to Anubis, the jackal-god who guarded and guided the soul in its journey.

  A lobster (or crayfish) emerges from a pool: The most basic animal nature, seeking the light.

  The meandering path: It winds between the lobster and dogs, leading to the mountains beyond. This is the path of toil, work, and initiation.

  In a reading: The Moon represents the imagination and all its fears and concerns.

  Key words and concepts: Reflection, imagination, dreams, fear.

  Waite: This is the card of animal nature and the lower mind, which at best can only reflect and become aware of its higher principles.

  Colman Smith: Pamela has provided us a gateway into her own landscape of dreams. The towers appear several times in other art and elsewhere in the tarot, in the Death card. They are the boundaries of her liminal world, standing between reality and dream. As Pamela drew upon the music of Debussy in her work, we might imagine that she was familiar with his “Clair de Lune” in Suite Bergamasque (1905), which itself was based on an 1869 poem of the same name by the French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (1844–1896). If she was familiar with these, it’s likely the poem’s theme communicated itself from Verlaine’s words through Debussy’s music to her art. Following is one excerpt, but the whole poem is worth reading to appreciate Pamela’s Moon:
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  Your soul is a chosen landscape

  Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go

  Playing the lute and dancing and almost

  Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.115

  54. Untitled, Pamela Colman Smith. (Illustration courtesy of authors, private collection.)

  Secret significance: All that is reflected is reflected from truth and belongs to it.

  The Moon is the reflected light of perception, which hides the true awareness of unity. It is the realm of the imagined world—the world as we sense it—and the shadow of reality. The unknown that waits at the end of the path of the Moon is the reality of nature beyond our everyday projection.

  Reading tip: As the moon reflects light, it is interesting to consult the cards in a reading that show light (the Sun, the lamp of the Hermit, the rainbow of the 10 of Cups, etc.) to see how these cards are being reflected. It may be that the querent is forcing these other cards to their own perspective and as a result not seeing them clearly.

  The Sun: 19

  The Design

  In the Golden Dawn design, two children are playing in an enclosed garden upon which scene the sun shines. In the “Practicus” ritual of the Order, this is said to signify the principles of water and earth, and passive and active, brought together by the Sun’s rays. Waite also quotes the Golden Dawn ritual in his description of the “waved and salient” rays of the sun—an arrangement the Order saw as representing the masculine and feminine energies alternating in combination. However, Waite takes Éliphas Lévi’s suggestion that some versions of this card showed a naked child on a horse bearing a scarlet banner. It is possible Lévi was referring to the Jacques Vieville tarot, published in Paris during the seventeenth century. In it, the Sun card shows a child bearing a banner, seated on a horse.116 This is an example showing that Waite was very involved in the choice of design for the majors, as it is unlikely Pamela would have expressed any preference to which design template—Golden Dawn, Marseilles, or Lévi’s description—was used. Perhaps Waite saw the use of an even more obscure European design as being able to cleverly reference Lévi’s “hint” whilst also avoiding using the Golden Dawn version as it was a secret for the initiated. He managed in this case to have his cake and eat it too.

  Key Symbols

  A large sun: It features a face and is radiating in the sky. This is the symbol of both divine and mundane light—the light that leads us to truth. It is thus a card of obvious truth, clarity, and sureness.

  Four sunflowers are visible on the card: These flowers may not really track the sun as they were said to in folklore, but they are symbolic of turning to the light. They were used by the Theosophical society as symbolic of the quest.

  The wall: seen behind the figures is partly symbolic of the veil of the Tree of Life, before the Sephirah of Tiphareth, or “beauty.” It is the grade of the Adept, who becomes reborn in the “Christ-centre” of the initiatory system. In his second tarot, Waite made this card more explicitly an image of Christ. The wall here can be compared to the veil behind the High Priestess, signifying the other major dividing point of worlds on the Tree of Life, the Abyss. In everyday terms, we can read it as saying that the only barrier to pure awareness is what we build for ourselves.

  The naked child sat astride the horse: He is happy in his posture and expression, a symbol of simplicity. The answer the card presents in a reading is whatever is most simple, obvious, and straightforward.

  The horse: As an animal with four legs, the white horse represents the four basic elements of our nature, something we rise above in adepthood. As Waite says, the renewed mind in that mode of being “leads forth the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity” (PKT, 147).

  The scarlet banner: Derived from a suggestion of Lévi.

  In a reading: The card is a sign of happiness, contentment, and joy.

  Key words and concepts: Growth, blessing, delight.

  Waite: This card for Waite is Christ. The allusion is only slightly veiled in PKT (144) as Waite declares, “It is the destiny of the Supernatural East and the great and holy light which goes before the endless procession of humanity, coming out from the walled garden of the sensitive life and passing on the journey home.”

  Colman Smith: This card captures the joy of the children Pamela worked with, and we imagine she shared their childlike innocence and perspective. It could well be one of Ellen Terry’s grandchildren through Edward Gordon Craig. With the eternal safety of the walled garden, the everlasting sun, and the glory of the sunflowers (which are still notable at both Smallhythe and Tower Cottage), we like to think this was one of Pamela’s favourite images. As has been suggested, perhaps she hid the word “LOVE” in the wall design next to her signature, as a message forever meant for the child, or our own childlike nature.

  Secret significance: We are here to restore the world to the light of the Garden.

  The Sun contains another secret, one used for dating and identifying versions of the deck. If you look closely at the XIX Roman numeral on the card, you will see to the right of it a single black wavy line, depending on your version of the deck. Where it appears, it looks as if Pamela started drawing one of the radiating waves of the sun, and then for some reason changed her mind. It is for this reason that it is fondly and humorously known by collectors and enthusiasts as the OSL, the “Oh S*** Line.” Another explanation has been offered by Pietro Alligo, of tarot publisher Lo Scarabeo, which is that the line was formed by a crack in the printing stone for the card.117

  Reading tip: The Sun is awareness; it illuminates the cards in proximity. It is also the centre and the self, so no matter the spread you are using, when the Sun appears, consider it the “centre” of the other cards. Look at which cards are closest, and give them more emphasis than the cards farthest from the Sun.

  Judgement: 20

  The Design

  Of this card Waite says, “This symbol is essentially invariable in all Tarot sets” (PKT, 148), although he critiques any of the variations offered previously by Papus, Etteilla, and de Gebelin. The Judgement call is a relatively familiar icon, and Pamela painted it several times: in The Green Sheaf as the “figure of beauty,” as a study for stained glass where the Angel is replaced by a solar symbol with the rays similar to those in ancient Egyptian designs, and in 1915, where she used a similar theme in her poster for the Polish Victim’s Relief Fund.

  It may be that the three foremost figures, upside down, spell in their arm gestures, the letters L, V, and X (crossed hands), which is the Latin lux, “light,” although this could be coincidental.

  55. A Figure of Beauty, Pamela Colman Smith. (Illustration courtesy of authors, private collection.)

  Key Symbols

  A winged angel in the sky blowing a flagged horn: The horn is emblazoned with the flag of St. George (or a cross on a flag). Waite uses the Latin per sepulchra regionum in his description of the image (PKT, 28) which is text from the Latin Dies Irae, “the Day of Wrath” part of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass:

  Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth;

  Through earth’s sepulchres it ringeth;

  All before the throne it bringeth.

  This is a card of resurrection, renewal, and regeneration: It signifies a new calling. Waite confusingly suggests that the figures being resurrected are those three already met in “the eighth card” (PKT, 28) but we believe he meant the thirteenth card, Death, where we also see a man, woman, and child.

  Clouds: These provide a division between the upper and the lower, the mundane and the divine, the everyday and the bigger cosmic picture. Here they show that the calling experienced in this card is of a higher nature than a mere whim.

  Open coffins: Five people, adults and children, rise up with their arms held out to embrace their new life in wonderment. Waite talks about the “generative power of the earth,” although he dis
misses de Gebelin’s suggestion that without the gravestones, this image would be taken for one of creation, not resurrection.

  Mountain peaks: The white mountains provide a vision of distant purity, and a higher realm to which this card is summoning us.

  In a reading: The card is about a calling and a decision. The angel decrees (and Waite links this card to Temperance, who also acts as a messenger) that it is time to get out of our current stagnant situation and arise to a new calling.

  Key words and concepts: Calling, decision, resurrection, new life.

  Waite: This card “registers the accomplishment of the great work of transformation” (PKT, 148). It signifies recognition of an inward call to change.

  56. Peter Pan, Pamela Colman Smith. (Illustration courtesy of authors, private collection.)

  Colman Smith: This is the call of the piper, the lifting up to another world.

  Secret significance: The end calls unto the beginning, and we are between.