The (probably) queer artist who designed the most popular tarot deck used today.

Pamela Colman Smith - The (probably) lesbian or queer artist who designed the most popular tarot deck used today.

Most of us know it as the Rider-Waite deck (now usually called the Waite-Smith deck or the Rider-Waite-Smith). Originally published as simply the Tarot deck, the deck came to be named after the man who commissioned it, and the publishing company that eventually published it.

However, somewhere on each and every card of the deck is the signature of the artist who drew each and every card, combined in a kind of bind rune made up of the three initial letters of her name, Pamela Colman Smith.

Colman Smith (1978-1951) was an artist and illustrator who illustrated books by such authors as Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats. She was a folklorist, particularly of Jamaican folklore, where she had spent several years growing up. She was known for painted synesthetic visions which came to her while listening to music. She also supported the suffrage movement in the UK at that time.

She was introduced by Yeats to the Order of the Golden Dawn, a Wiccan spiritual tradition which she joined in 1901. She then took a commission from fellow Golden Dawn member Arthur E Waite to design a 78 card tarot deck. Waite and Smith co-designed the date, while all the art work was done by Smith. The design of the major arcana cards are thought to be from verbal instructions given by Waite, and the designs of the minor arcana cards were likely conceived by Smith based on meanings provided by Waite, and influenced by the artwork on early Italian tarot decks. She did not benefit financially from the popularity of her deck, which would have eased a financially difficult later life.

But was she lesbian or queer? It seems highly likely that she was. She left her entire estate to Nora Lake, a woman with whom she lived for the last 20 years of her life.

She was a supporter of women’s suffrage and had several friends who were known to be lesbian or gay. She never married, had children, or had any long-term relationships with men. Most of the people she interacted with were women, she spent a lot of time in women’s communities and spaces (source). Her last name incorporated her mother’s last name as well as her father’s. But did she actually come out publicly and say she was a lesbian in the late 1800s and early 1900’s? No.

What we do know is that she designed the most popular and iconic Tarot Card deck in the world with her contribution to that work only recently being recognized. I like to think of it as the Pamela Colman Smith Deck.

Images

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith#/media/File:Pamela_Colman_Smith_circa_1912.jpg