The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

By A.E. Waite and Sereptie

A new edition of A.E. Waite's classic The Pictorial Key to the Tarot that explores tarot's radical political potential and its usefulness for the left.

A.E. Waite’s The Pictoral Key to the Tarot has been a mainstay among tarot reference guides for more than a century.

As an acclaimed occultist and scholar of the Kabbalah, Waite collaborated with artist Pamela Colman Smith to create what has become possibly the world’s most famous tarot deck. The pictoral key offers a rich introduction to the history and symbology of the modern tarot in addition to providing a detailed explanation of the 78 cards found in the original Smith-Waite deck. Readers will enjoy an in-depth exploration of the tarot’s secrets while gaining insight to the conventional meanings and reversed readings associated with each card.

Repeater’s re-release of this classic text contains a forward by Sereptie (Craig Laubach), creator of The Philosopher’s Tarot, celebrating the importance of the tarot to artists, activists, and others seeking to transform a world fraught with material and psychic oppressions. This expanded edition also includes an appendix featuring a quick reference guide to common keywords and interpretations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Repeater
• Release date: Feb 11, 2025
• ISBN: 9781915672766

Book preview

Preface

It seems rather of necessity than predilection in the sense of apologia that I should put on record in the first place a plain statement of my personal position, as one who for many years of literary life has been, subject to his spiritual and other limitations, an exponent of the higher mystic schools. It will be thought that I am acting strangely in concerning myself at this day with what appears at first sight and simply a well-known method of fortune-telling. Now, the opinions of Mr Smith, even in the literary reviews, are of no importance unless they happen to agree with our own, but in order to sanctify this doctrine we must take care that our opinions, and the subjects out of which they arise, are concerned only with the highest. Yet it is just this which may seem doubtful, in the present instance, not only to Mr Smith, whom I respect within the proper measures of detachment, but to some of more real consequence, seeing that their dedications are mine. To these and to any I would say that after the most illuminated Frater Christian Rosy Cross had beheld the Chemical Marriage in the Secret Palace of Transmutation, his story breaks off abruptly, with an intimation that he expected next morning to be door-keeper. After the same manner, it happens more often than might seem likely that those who have seen the King of Heaven through the most clearest veils of the sacraments are those who assume thereafter the humblest offices of all about the House of God. By such simple devices also are the Adepts and Great Masters in the secret orders distinguished from the cohort of Neophytes as servi servorum mysterii. So also, or in a way which is not entirely unlike, we meet with the Tarot cards at the outermost gates — amidst the fritterings and débris of the so-called occult arts, about which no one in their senses has suffered the smallest deception; and yet these cards belong in themselves to another region, for they contain a very high symbolism, which is interpreted according to the Laws of Grace rather than by the pretexts and intuitions of that which passes for divination. The fact that the wisdom of God is foolishness with men does not create a presumption that the foolishness of this world makes in any sense for Divine Wisdom; so neither the scholars in the ordinary classes nor the pedagogues in the seats of the mighty will be quick to perceive the likelihood or even the possibility of this proposition. The subject has been in the hands of cartomancists as part of the stock-in-trade of their industry; I do not seek to persuade anyone outside my own circles that this is of much or of no consequence; but on the historical and interpretative sides it has not fared better; it has been there in the hands of exponents who have brought it into utter contempt for those people who possess philosophical insight or faculties for the appreciation of evidence. It is time that it should be rescued, and this I propose to undertake once and for all, that I may have done with the side issues which distract from the term. As poetry is the most beautiful expression of the things that are of all most beautiful, so is symbolism the most catholic expression in concealment of things that are most profound in the Sanctuary and that have not been declared outside it with the same fulness by means of the spoken word. The justification of the rule of silence is no part of my present concern, but I have put on record elsewhere, and quite recently, what it is possible to say on this subject.

The little treatise which follows is divided into three parts, in the first of which I have dealt with the antiquities of the subject and a few things that arise from and connect therewith.

It should be understood that it is not put forward as a contribution to the history of playing-cards, about which I know and care nothing; it is a consideration dedicated and addressed to a certain school of occultism, more especially in France, as to the source and centre of all the phantasmagoria which has entered into expression during the last fifty years under the pretence of considering Tarot cards historically. In the second part, I have dealt with the symbolism according to some of its higher aspects, and this also serves to introduce the complete and rectified Tarot, which is available separately, in the form of coloured cards, the designs of which are added to the present text in black and white. They have been prepared under my supervision — in respect of the attributions and meanings — by a lady who has high claims as an

Reviews for The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

[macoram-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

"... the rectified and perfected tarot which accompanies this work." (page 33) says much about its author, Edward Waite. A self-proclaimed "master" of arcane knowledge who pretentiously imposed his miscellanic multi-sourced esoteric constructs, creating a distorted and childishly obvious beginner's pack of cards explicitly intended for the lowly divinatory use he explicitly (and paradoxically) scorned.
He wasn't even original, copying most of the restricted (and sometimes aleatory) Alliette's (18th century "Book of Toth") card divinatory meanings and inspiring himself on the imagery of the "Sola busca" Italian tarot of the Renaissance. Even the artist Pamela Smith seems to have been underpaid for her hard work (from her own account) all for the glory of Waite.
A controversial pack of cards (and this accompanying book) which irremediably "polluted" the last century of the (already more than five centuries old) tarot tradition.

[jarvenpa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good, basic, very early tarot learning based on the Rider/Waite deck, which is kind of the King James Version of Tarot (learn it, and you know the basics and can go on to other stuff).

This also happens to be the only book I ever in my life shoplifted. I took it from a mega bookstore at which I was working when the managers instituted a search everyone on entry and exit policy. Little paperback, 1.95 at the time. No, they didn't discover it in the extremely thorough search of my nice 20 something self. And I kept it. But I still feel a frisson of guilt. (it no longer exists, the stolen book; rain and mice got to it years ago).

[tullius22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It should be noted that Waite considers the actual divinatory uses of his subject with some aversion. He prefers the 'higher' realms of thought and he seems to fancy-flowery rosy-intellectual philosophical sorts of sentences...

For all that, though, I think the boy has won his spurs more, or, at least, *at least as much* by what he has *permitted*, than by what he has thought or written or decided. It is clear to me, at least, and I think it's proven, even, that certain bits of it, say, Part III, Section 4, "Some Additional Meanings Of The Lesser Arcana", were actually written by certain others, which is really--if you think about it, right!--a rather shocking concession for a man like M. Waite, I mean, such a thing to *do*, after all, he protested so much, and so *earnestly* that it was really "the doctrine behind the veil" and not "the outer method of the oracles" which drew him, all the way back in distant 1909 or 1910 or 1911 or whenever this thing hit the presses of M. Rider for the first time.

And of course, you have to ask yourself, if he really loved the philosophical sort of esotericism as exclusively as he would have you believe if you actually believed some of the things he wrote--though that's really just words, and any student of myth ought to know what lies words are--well, if all that's so, why would he go out of his way to unveil what's now the most famous Tarot spread of them all, which even a newbie (and a boy!) like me now knows, I mean, what a thing to *do*, if he really scorned the oracles as much he said he did, back when the sun never set on the British Empire, and Queen Victoria wasn't even dead ten years yet, hell, she was hardly even cold, back then...

And the cards themselves are good.

(9/10)

[marc_beherec · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Waite is interesting, both because of his broad reading of all things occult and because of the contempt with which he holds most occultists. It's difficult to tell how much he believes anything. The Key is primarily a description of the tarot deck Waite designed. I was a little disappointed in that it doesn't discuss divination by tarot more; he doesn't seem to feel there's any validity to it, which of course is quite odd for someone who bothered to write a book on tarot. Waite draws on other tarot decks to a limited extent, but doesn't describe why he chooses particular symbols rather than others well enough, in my opinion. I think I would have preferred if he'd presented various old cards and then explained why he chose particular designs over others. But I suppose that would be outside the scope of the book, and would cost more to produce than he could have charged for such a popular work.

[lonorising · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Lousy book. Near total rip-off. Quality & quantity of info contained within totally lacking. Buy almost any other commentary on the tarot and you will be better off.

[anituel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I know that it isn't popular to like A. E. Waite in modern occultism, but I really do appreciate him. While some of his sincerest opinions are a bit ridiculous, most of his research is sound and he was clearly speaking from experience on a number of important points. His insight into the Tarot is second to none, though it should be noted that as a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he was oathbound not to reveal certain secrets. Hence, some of his interpretations of the Minor Arcana are purposefully flip-flopped and some of the symbolism of the Major Arcana is incomplete. Those knowledgeable in the Tarot will find a lot of gold here, while those who are just beginning had best look elsewhere.