She Drew These Cards

A Women’s History Month tribute to Pamela Colman Smith

Photo by Viva Luna Studios on Unsplash

It’s March, which means it’s Women’s History Month, and in celebration, I want to spotlight the woman in the history of tarot: Pamela Colman Smith.

Today, tarot is a space largely shaped, represented, and inhabited by women. It’s likely that women have always been the primary practitioners of kitchen-table divination, but when tarot had its big breakout moment in the cultural zeitgeist of the early 1900s, men were the gatekeepers and the ones who took the credit. So much so that the most widely used and recognized tarot deck in history bore no credit at all for the artist who brought it to life.

This Women’s History Month, I’m excited to bring Pamela Colman Smith to the front of the class for the recognition and applause she deserves.

Pamela Colman Smith

Who Was Pamela Colman Smith?

Born in London in 1878, Pamela’s father was Charles Edward Smith, an American businessman from Brooklyn, and her mother was Corinne Colman, the sister of the American landscape painter Samuel Colman.

Her family moved to Jamaica when she was around eleven, and she grew up between Kingston, Brooklyn, and London. Her multicultural upbringing shaped her in ways that set her apart from most of her contemporaries.

It’s worth noting that many accounts of Pamela, including some within the tarot community, describe her as Black or biracial. The historical record doesn’t support this. She was white. Getting it right matters because misrepresenting her identity, however well-intentioned, is its own kind of erasure. Her story is remarkable enough on its own terms!

Nicknamed “Pixie,” she was known for her magnetic personality and eccentric taste. She studied art at the Pratt Institute in New York, then returned to London.

The early 1900s were a golden age for occult studies and mysticism.

In response to the mechanization of the industrial revolution, artists and intellectuals sought meaning in spiritual explorations beyond the church.

There were all kinds of private clubs and societies in this late Victorian to early Edwardian era. So, as Spiritualism, Theosophy, and ritual magic became fashionable, secret occult societies began to form.

They offered initiation, hierarchy, and the thrill of hidden knowledge.

In a world where science was explaining away mystery, these groups promised that mystery still existed, and that you could be let in on it. They were also, frankly, a little glamorous. Membership signaled that you were unconventional, serious, and interesting.

At the center of this world was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888.

It synthesized an ambitious range of traditions — Kabbalah, Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology, Egyptian mysticism, and tarot — into a single structured system of initiation and study. What also set it apart was that it admitted women as full members, on equal footing with men.

For 1888, that was genuinely radical. It drew some of the most brilliant and unconventional minds of the era — W.B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and the actress Florence Farr. And Pamela Colman Smith, who was introduced to the order by Yeats himself.

The Deck That Changed Everything

In 1909, Arthur Edward Waite, a fellow Golden Dawn initiate, commissioned Pamela to illustrate a new tarot deck.

He wanted a deck in which every card was fully illustrated. Until this point, throughout the history of tarot, decks primarily had illustrations only on the Major Arcana and sometimes the court cards. Waite provided guidance for the Majors, making some changes to the traditional order (swapping Justice and Strength) and aligning them with the Zodiac. For the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana, he essentially handed her the pen and stepped back.

Smith completed the artwork in just six months, between April and October 1909. The illustrations were most likely done in pen and ink, possibly over a pencil underdrawing. The original drawings are lost, so this cannot be determined with certainty.

The result is the deck we recognize today as the tarot. It’s the reason I was drawn to tarot in the first place.

Her artistry is simple and clear, yet rich with symbolism. She managed to capture the ineffable with a clarity that words cannot.

The deck was published in December 1909 by the Rider Company. It is the most influential tarot deck ever created, with an estimated 100 million copies sold in more than 20 countries.

The Part That Stings

Despite the magic of her art, Pamela was paid only a one-time flat fee and was given no public credit. For most of the twentieth century, the deck was simply called the “Rider-Waite.”

In the 1970s, there was a revival of tarot interest, and millions of copies of her deck were sold to a whole new generation. Still, most people had no idea who had channeled our spiritual truths into those cards.

Little is known about her romantic life, although Smith never married or had children. It’s certainly possible that she preferred women; scholars have speculated about her relationships with housemate Nora Lake, as well as Smith’s close friend, actress Edith Craig, who was definitely a lesbian.

She died on September 18, 1951, in Bude, Cornwall.

She had stepped away from the Golden Dawn and converted to Catholicism, and largely from the art world too. When she died, her possessions were auctioned off to settle her debts. Her gravesite is unknown.

Her Name, Finally

Things are changing. The deck is increasingly being called the Rider-Waite-Smith, and in this space I call it the Smith Rider Waite, because I think she deserves top billing. Her name is being said. Her story is being told.

As someone who uses her images every single day in my work, I find Pamela deeply moving to sit with. The cards she drew are my vocabulary. They are the pictures I reach for when I am trying to help someone find language for what they are feeling. Every reading I give, every newsletter I write, this whole practice I have built — it lives inside the visual world she created.

My regular newsletter is called The Draw (sign up here). It always felt like the right name: the draw of the cards, the draw of curiosity, the draw toward something you can’t quite name yet. But this month, I keep thinking about the other meaning. She drew. The present tense made past. Pamela Colman Smith sat down, picked up her pen, and drew 78 images that have outlasted her name, her credit, and her grave marker.

Thank you for your attention to this remarkable woman. Happy WHM. Class dismissed!