Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot
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Waite gives another detail in this example, where he says, “His hope (17) has all of his tact (1) on the left hand and the safety of caution (9) on the right.” Here he is using his own keywords to generate a triplet meaning, which he then interprets as “to attain his end, subtlety and savoir-faire must be checked by prudence.” As we have seen, Waite saw the Hermit (9) as prudence, one of the cardinal virtues.
Reading tip: We can then see by this method that if we were to want to know about a person’s empowerment, we would locate the Emperor card, and read the cards either side of it. If we were to want to know about relationship, we would look to the Lovers and the two cards either side of that card; for money matters, we would look at the Devil card. In this way we can read the single line for many different aspects of the person’s life.
Waite concludes his reading of this particular example by suggesting that as the cards either side of the Emperor are weak, and the card that precedes the final triplet is the Lovers (7), the man will be served best by marriage. This is further borne out by having his religion card (5: Hierophant) bordered by two “marriage” cards, the High Priestess and the Lovers.
How Did Waite See the Spiritual Path in Tarot?
In his Manual of Cartomancy, Waite could not help but elevate the simple fortune-telling games he was providing by also offering profound intimations of the mystical path held secret in the cards. Within three examples of card-reading, in the third he lays out the mystical path using the tarot. He lists the cards in the order 11, 19, 18, 15, 3, 5, 17, 13, 9, 8, 16, 10, 7, 6, 2, 20, 4, 21, 14, 1, 12. Only one card, 20, is reversed. We offer below our version of Waite’s own reading for these cards.165
When we seek to overcome our attachment to the world and our fight with the daily trials and tribulations (11: Strength), we gain the strength to move beyond this state of illusionary conflict and duality. This will ultimately turn us upside-down in a new state of awareness (12: Hanged Man) at the end of our journey–the final initiation. Our search for divine consciousness (21: The World) leads us to adepthood on one side (4: Emperor) through awareness of the divine immanence (14: Temperance). That divine dawn (19: Sun) is already present the moment we start on our path, ruling over spiritual fantasy (18: Moon) and overcoming our false relationship with the universe (11: Strength).
Spiritual pride (15: Devil) is a strong enemy; it is present at the start of our path, and may only be redeemed by the spiritual soul (3: Empress)—otherwise it will encourage our spiritual fantasy (18: Moon).
The life of living according to this doctrine (5: Hierophant) reveals a secret, for it is between the ascent of the soul (3: Empress) and the descent of the divine light (17: Star). It is by the soul striving to arise from its station that the light is drawn down upon it—from nature comes grace. In fact, divine grace (17: Star) and divine science (9: Hermit) bear up the mystical Death experience (13: Death).
Another card of warning, the fall from the right path (16: Tower) can be avoided if one holds perfect balance (8: Justice) and maintains aspirations to the divine, come what may (10: Wheel).
In our three-fold nature; physical, spiritual, and divine (7: Chariot) we drive forwards from that aspiration (10: Wheel) towards the mystical marriage (6: Lovers). The negative judgement of our soul (20: Last Judgement [reversed]) can be undone by following the path, cleaving to the divine (2: High Priestess) and attaining victory over all temptation (4: Emperor). All that must be overcome (1: Magician) is revealed by sacrificing one’s old life (12: Hanged Man) in the light of Grace (14: Temperance).
We can see in this interpretation that Waite is alluding to meanings that may not be apparent in his other works; the Devil is certainly here the antichrist, the Sun is the “dawning of the orient from on high” (143)—a quote from Luke 1:78, referring to Christ the Messiah. The female soul of humanity (and the divine) is the Shekinah, seen as the Empress. These cards are being seen in the light of Waite’s mystical Christianity.
We can also here see Waite’s earliest comparisons and connections between such cards as the Star and Temperance (the light of the divine descending and the light of grace on the ascent), and his use of the tarot as a language to express mystical dictums. As he says, “I say therefore that the sequence of cards has indeed set forth the kind of life which not only leads to the Doctrine but to the whole term of spiritual knowledge” (144).
The card of Strength goes deeper than many interpretations as representing the conquest of the attachments of the world. Furthermore, the Star card here is not merely “hope,” but the light of the divine descending upon the striving soul—a mystical secret embodied by these cards.
This profound description of the mystical path concludes Waite’s chapter on “the secret word” in his Manual of Cartomancy, and is followed immediately by a chapter on “How to Find Lucky Numbers with Dice.” We really do go from the sublime to the almost ridiculous. When we understand Waite’s early writings in the light of retrospect and revelations from his later writing and unpublished material, we can see how these secrets can now be revealed, hidden in plain sight. Waite hid them for those who had eyes to see, and ears to hear.
Exercise: Hearing the Secret Word
Using this simplified version of the Opening of the Key and following Waite’s example, shuffle and lay out the twenty-one major arcana cards (minus the Fool) whilst considering the question, “What life leads to the secret knowledge?” Use Waite’s version of the card meanings for the world of Attainment to construct your own personal version of the secret path tarot reveals for you at this time.
The Seven Packs Method
Waite also offers a second method of reading in Pictorial Key useful for general situations. It has two stages, and again is a fusion of the Opening of the Key method with traditional cartomantic methods from Etteilla and elsewhere. As a result, it uses a more complex method of shuffling and laying out the cards than most contemporary readings (which use straight spreads.)
Stage One
Shuffle the deck, reversing some cards also, and cut once.
Deal out seven cards into a pile, face upwards.
Deal out another seven cards, placing them to the left of the first pile, and repeat until you have seven piles, which you have laid right to left.
Take the first pile (on the right) and lay the cards out, still face up, in a new row of seven cards, right to left again.
Take the second pile and lay the seven cards down one at a time on top of each pile in the new row. Repeat this for all seven original piles to create a new row of seven piles.
Take the top card from each pile, shuffle all seven and lay them in a new line from right to left.
Take the next two cards from each of the seven piles, shuffle and lay them in two new lines below the first just laid.
Take the remaining cards up (seven piles of three cards), shuffle, and lay them out in three new lines below those laid previously, again, right to left.
You should now have 7 cards in 6 lines, 42 cards in total.
If the Magician (for a male querent) or High Priestess (for a female querent) are not in the 42 cards laid out, locate it from the discarded pile and place it face up a little to the right of the first row.
If the card is already laid out, remove it and place it likewise. In this case, take any card from the discarded pile and place it in the layout to occupy the position from where you have moved the Magician or High Priestess.
The cards are now read in rows from right to left, starting at the top row.
Waite tells us that he highly values the process of intuition and clairvoyant faculties, above “concentration, intellectual observation and deduction” (PKT, 310), which should only be used in the absence of the more intuitive appreciation.
He does however provide some clues to reading that we have developed
into the following approach, which we call �
��Placing Hands.”
Exercise: Placing Hands Method
Create a layout in the method given by Waite.
Look over the matrix of forty-two cards. Gather your first impressions.
Look at every major card in the matrix and discern any patterns of meaning. As an example, if you saw the Justice card, Judgement, and Death, these three all hold something of a reckoning, perhaps a final one, in the situation. This gives you the bones of the interpretation.
Take your hand and with a clear mind, sweep it gently back and forwards over the cards. Notice any card which feels significant, as if you should not cover it with your hand. Make a note of these cards, likely one to four in total.
Place your hand on one of these cards and allow impressions to arise.
Repeat this process for the other significant cards individually.
Compare these impressions to the bones of the interpretation from the major cards. This will give you a general framework for the “storyline.”
Now read the meanings of each card in the first row from right to left as if you were reading a storyboard for a movie—only the movie has the storyline that you have already worked out.
Read each row as a new storyboard, then link them together as one story or a series over time.
Reading tip: Waite suggests that it may take time to distinguish between “mere guessing” and an intuitive “impression arising from the mind which is sub-conscious.” If you start to notice what it feels like in your life when you make a wild guess, and when you “just know” something is the case, you can compare these two experiences. Make a note of how they are different—often it is physical, like a gut feeling. Some people feel something on the back of their neck. When you perform a reading, become sensitive to this area and allow it to guide you.
Stage Two
If you wish further detail from the reading undertaken above, you can now utilise the remaining stack of thirty-five cards, which was previously discarded.
Take the thirty-five cards, shuffle, and cut once.
Deal the cards out into six piles from right to left, face up. Place seven cards in the first pile; the next six cards in the second pile; the next five in the third pile; the next four in the fourth pile; the next two in the fifth pile; and the final eleven cards in the sixth pile.
Take each pile and deal them face up, left to right, in six lines, resulting in a triangle with a longer line at its base.
The lines are now read as follows, reading from right to left as before:
Top Line 1 (seven cards): The immediate situation (house) and environment
Line 2 (six cards): The state of the Querent
Line 3 (five cards): External events and actions outside the querent’s influence
Line 4 (four cards): Shows what may surprise or be unexpected (for good or bad)
Line 5 (two cards): Advice or “consolation,” something positive about the above
Line 6 (eleven cards): A check-line whose reading may assist interpretation of all above
Steps to the Crown:
Mystical Meditation with the Waite-Smith Tarot
We have selected out from Waite’s aphorisms in Steps to the Crown particularly relevant quotes for contemplation and meditation of the major arcana. To perform a meditation on the tarot, take a card from the majors which calls to you or confuses you, but at least provokes some reaction.
Write down in your own handwriting (in a journal or on note paper) the relevant contemplation here in the following list. Consider it often, over the course of several days, and you may also choose to have the card image available to you. Some students have a locket in which they can place a small image of the card; others set it as their computer or portable device/tablet screensaver or background.
Once you have practiced with one card, try two, then three at the same time. Allow them to flow together in your mind and their combined message to open new insight.
0. Fool
Folly hears out many arguments to the end; common sense breaks away in the middle; wisdom seldom listens. Even at the beginning.
How many paths seem to lead to nowhere; to end in cul-de-sac; to be lost suddenly amidst rank vegetation, and come to a startling stop at the brink of a precipice! And we follow them all our days! Yet there is some consolation in the ruling of the common judgement against these and the other appearances: that which seems to lead nowhere may end in the infinite; the wall of the cul-de-sac may have a postern which gives upon fairyland: and on the steep sides of precipice there may be rough and adventurous steps, going down to a great sea, where ships can be hired for crossing.
1. The Magician
The Wise Men did not come from the East as indicated by the compass. They performed a philosophical journey from an land which is close at hand, even at our doors, and yet is very far away from most of us.
2. The High Priestess
The true word of any mystery is never conveyed or communicated, but is left secret and implied, to be realised and known in the heart.
3. The Empress
Life is an experiment with unknown quantities in the laboratory of the universe; and there are many rash experiments, so there are many fatal consequences.
4. The Emperor
The idea of kinghood goes up into the height of creation, and thus the saint and the mystic are always constitutionalists. The pity of it is that earthly kings are not invariably on the side of the angels.
5. The Hierophant
All great books are sacraments, but all readers do not communicate worthily. It follows that literature is not only a priesthood but a revelation, and that such books are part of the divine institutes and ministry.
6. The Lovers
Love has brought us into life, and it is love also that withdraws us into the wider lives which are beyond it.
7. The Chariot
To yield and to die, such is the average lot of humanity; to die rather than yield, such is the election of heroes; neither to yield nor die, such is the victory of the soul.
8. Strength
That which we do with our might will teach us how also to do that which is better.
9. The Hermit
There are two things which no tongue can express fully—the solitude in which intellectual recollection is found, and the void which is social life.
10. Wheel of Fortune
Birth takes place into bondage and death into emancipation.
11. Justice
Even necessity itself is subject to the law, however much it may disown it.
12. The Hanged Man
Let us relinquish the material affectations, the foolish likings and the attractions, of this world, to those who believe that they are certain to perish with the world.
13. Death
REINTEGRATION, and not individuality, is the end of all separate existence.
14. Temperance
Sorrow is the spade which breaks up the hard earth and fits it to receive the seed of life.
15. The Devil
Vice is its own victim, which it immolates continually, until the term of is expiation is attained.
16. The Tower
It is said that most things are not appreciated till they are lost; the world is the great exception; it is always well lost, as we do not fitly appreciate its emptiness until we have given it up.
17. The Star
There is light in the height, for the star is over the height, and there is hope in the depth, for the star is also in the sea.
18. The Moon
The soul seeks earth for its refuge, and it finds asylum for a period, but the great terror is still without.
19. The Sun
The light shines in the darkness, and there is no darkness so deep that the light cannot be enkindled therein.
20. Judgement
Punishment and reward are not after the manner of visitations, nor are they laws working from without; they are simply sowing and reaping. Bit in the last resource there are great offices of charity.
21. The World
This notwithstanding, her reticence, her secrecy, her essential love of mystery and recurring hint of the unknown, are the real fascinations of Nature. Her scientific study is part of the curse of our unrest. She is properly speaking, the material of divination. Geomancy is more profitable than geography, and astrology is superior to astronomy. But this is said by way of paradox, and carries with it a second meaning.
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Conclusion
Writing about Pamela, her life and times, and the tarot images that she created leaves behind a yearning to know what Pamela really did think and feel. Did she confront her deathbed with any regrets? We’ll never know unless in the future the “hidden diaries” of Pamela Colman Smith come to light. All we can do is to take what little information we have on her, what other people wrote about knowing her, and the art she created and use a little imagination and intuition!
It is said that when somebody comes to the end of their life, it is often the things they did not do that they regret, and we can say with some certainty that peoples’ last words are seldom “I wish I had made more money.” It is said of Pamela that she ended life in poverty, without the recognition she deserved; we can only wonder and surmise if this made her unhappy. It may be that she wished she had had more of a traditional family life, perhaps even her own children to share her world, something that would continue beyond her death. Pamela did not have any descendants to carry on her line; however, she left behind a legacy—a remembrance of her presence here on the earth—that will never die, seventy-eight cards that every day are used to enrich hundreds of life stories.
She has given us a tool to tell stories, and as a storyteller herself she would have enjoyed the unending stories created from her vision.
Waite