Review by Valerie Sylvester
The first deck most beginning tarot readers encounter when starting out on their tarot journey is the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, (which I’ll refer to as “RWS” after this initial mention). It’s often the “default deck”, the one that people learn the basic meanings of the cards from. It also serves to illustrate many tarot books and websites, and most experienced tarot readers have some familiarity with it, even if they don’t use the deck regularly. Many new Tarot decks are published each year; quite of few of these decks are based in some way upon the RWS deck.
The Rider Waite-Smith Tarot Variations
With so many variations of the Rider Waite-Smith Tarot in publication, how can you be certain which ones will truly be close to the ‘original’ 1909 tarot known as the Pamela A deck? Which ones are worth of your money, and which ones are not? Is it even possible to get close to the real original?