Section 01THE DRAWING
The Drawing
Who held the pen, who wrote the brief, what they were copying from, and what happened to the pictures afterwards.
7 pieces in this section
- Lead piece
Paid Once, Still in Print
Pamela Colman Smith illustrated seventy-eight cards for a flat fee in 1909. The deck bears her name today; the copyright revenue it generated for over a century did not reach her.
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Waite Wrote the Brief, and the Pictures Are Not in It
The published record of what Arthur Edward Waite specified is thin. What Pamela Colman Smith drew is far richer — and the gap between the two is where the deck lives.
Read the piecePhoto: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot 1922 Title Page · Wikimedia Commons
The Sola Busca Went on Show in London in 1907
The earliest fully illustrated seventy-eight-card deck reached a London exhibition two years before Pamela Colman Smith began drawing for Waite — and the comparison with her pip cards has been documented ever since.
Read the piecePhoto: cottonbro studio / Pexels
Harris Repainted the Magus Until Crowley Stopped Asking
The Thoth Tarot took five years to paint, and one card — the Magus — was never settled. The published deck carries three printed versions because the commission's revision cycle outlasted Crowley's patience.
Read the piecePhoto: Uyen Nguyen / Pexels
Before 1909, the Pip Cards Were Blank
Pamela Colman Smith drew fifty-six scenes that had never existed before — and every tarot artist since has had to decide what to do about that.
Read the piecePhoto: Pedro Rey / Pexels
The Fool Has No Number, or the Number Is Zero
One card, two positions, and five centuries of editorial argument about where it belongs: the Fool, unnumbered or zero.
Read the piecePhoto: Costumed participant holding chalice and The Fool tarot card at Wyldwood Renaissance Festival 2026 · Wikimedia Commons
Salvador Dalí Designed a Tarot Deck in 1984
A late commission produced seventy-eight paintings that fuse Surrealist imagery with the Rider-Waite-Smith canon — and raised lasting questions about how much of the work was the artist's own.
Read the piecePhoto: DΛVΞ GΛRCIΛ / Pexels
