Call It The Rider-Waite-SMITH, Please

Today is the last Sunday in March, which is Women's History Month. I thought it fitting to close out with a repeat of a previous column celebrating the woman at the heart of tarot, Pamela Coleman Smith, whose designs make up the famous Rider-Waite-Smith deck and whose name is often unfortunately, heinously, criminally left out of the deck's name.

You can still see her on the cards, though. Look on each for a small monogram of a “P” crossed with a looping “C” and “S.” It looks like a cross between a sigil and a logogram, and it is the signature of Pamela Coleman Smith.

You can find it easily in the lower right of the Three of Cups, the card that celebrates the richness of deep friendship. Smith chose to illustrate that card with three women dancing in joy and abundance and camaraderie, their golden chalices held high, and so now that card has become synonymous with the power of female relationship.

Pamela did that.
 
The Rider-Waite-Smith, also called the RWS, is the most famous of the tarot decks. Its images are well-known in popular culture. What is less well-known is how revolutionary those images are, how they completely transformed tarot interpretation. As the illustrator for the deck, Smith created pictorial scenes not just for the major cards—the heavy hitters like Death and The Fool—but also for the pips, the numbered cards. By portraying the minor arcana in this way, Smith removed the separation between the "big" cards and the "little" ones, making the more mundane moments of our lives, the nostalgia and ennui and first heart-flutter of romance, as important and worthy of contemplation as the milestones.

She created scenes and peopled them with with dynamic characters, allowing the reader to literally imagine herself in the cards. Her background as a theatre major shows in these stagings, which are clear enough to get right to the heart of each card's energy, but intricate enough that the reader can layer her own life on top of them and read the details—here a white dog, there a handful of roses—as personal revelation.

As Smith herself explains in an article entitled "Should the Art Student Think?":

"Note the dress, the type of face; see if you can trace the character in the face; note the pose. . . . First watch the simple forms of joy, of fear, of sorrow; look at the position taken by the whole body. . . . After you have found how to tell a simple story, put in more details. . . . Learn from everything, see everything, and above all feel everything! . . . Find eyes within, look for the door into the unknown country."

The door into the unknown country. Yes indeed.

It's one of the great unfairnesses that Smith received very little compensation for her work, and even less recognition for helping create what has become the most accessible and popular tarot deck of all time. As she wrote to her mentor, Alfred Stieglitz, "I have just completed a big job for very little cash!" Even her name got dropped from the deck, which is why I both write and speak that SMITH now in all caps.

She was a multi-faceted person—a synaesthetic artist and member of The Order of the Golden Dawn who eventually converted to Catholicism. She published writers like William Butler Yeats in the magazine she founded, had her work exhibited at top notch galleries, worked as an illustrator for Bram Stoker, and yet she died penniless.

She was a fervent supporter of women's suffrage, lending her voice and her talents to the cause. Little is known about her romantic life except that she never did marry, preferring the company of women, it seems. She was eccentric, brilliant, generous, and lived a life of adventure and whole-hearted creative joy.

So when you speak of the tarot, be sure to give Pamela Colman Smith her due. Say her name loud and proud. 

In honor of her, and as a gift for you, I offer the Three of Cups this week. May you find joy and support and abundance among your tribe, and may you always know the love of good strong creative women.

For Further Reading:

The BBC's Bio of Pamela Colman Smith (with fascinating footnotes)

"Giving Thanks to Pamela Colman Smith" on Little Red Tarot

"Pamela Colman Smith" at Wikipedia (also with interesting footnotes and further source reading

Holly Voley's Website devoted to Pamela Colman Smith

This Week's Writerly Tarot: The Three of Cups

For me, the tarot is the Swiss Army knife of divination— I think that's one of the reasons I return to it again and again, finding new uses and meanings and purposes every time I do. Last week, I explained how divination wasn't fortune telling, for there is no locked and fixed future as long as we have free will. Our choices will always unfold new destinies for us.

This active, fertile tension between choice and fate is why I sometimes ask the Universe to choose a card for me (my usual practice here on the blog) and why I sometimes choose for myself, picking a card that resonates with an energy that I would like to explore or that I want to honor with my attention and intention.

This week's card—the Three of Cups—falls into the latter category. See, I just returned from UU Womenspirit, a gathering of women honoring the Feminine Divine through song and circles, workshops and worship. Arthur Waite's description of the Three of Cups describes this energy perfectly: "Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another. Divinatory meanings: The conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfillment, solace, healing."

Yes. Exactly that.

So I chose this card to honor my return home, my cup running over, my heart enriched with memory and connection and gratitude for these women who shared space with me, who held space for me, who opened up new vistas and viewpoints and revelations.

I returned home to community too, my fellow Mojito Literary Society members, writers and poets and creatives of all sorts who are always there to provide support and connection and juice. I previously wrote about the need for such writerly connection as expressed in the Three of Cups—you can find that here—but we all need reminding. As I wrote then:

"We humans raise our glasses for lots of reasons: to toast, to honor, but also to pledge. That's what the three women are doing in this card — pledging and promising to be there for each other, and to hold each other to that pact. To help each other remember. And re-member."

This week, re-member with your community, with the people who keep you sane and joyful in your work, who remind you of who you are, who toast your successes and console you on your losses. Who are your connection to what matters: your own circle of belonging.

I raise my chalice to each and every one of you. Thank you for joining me on this tarot journey, however you come to it. I am glad to have you.

This Week's Writerly Tarot: The Three of Cups

I'd been trying to have coffee with a writer friend for a few months, but our schedules never cooperated. Sickness and work also complicated things until last week, when a slice of free time opened up and we shared a few hours of writerly commiseration and camaraderie over a nice Ecuadorian blend. As I laughed and talked, I was reminded yet again of why the Three of Cups is such an important card for us writers.

It signifies community, specifically the close-knit circle of like-minded friends. People you are comfortable laughing with. Of course, these are the same friends who will be there during tears, but the Three of Cups symbolizes the happy times, the shared joy, a time of, as described by tarot creator Arthur Waite, "plenty, perfection and merriment."

But there's a deeper octave to this card. Sure, it's good to take a break and celebrate life with your friends. It's hard to consider this a necessity. We writers are a solitary lot because there is so much work to be done — the inbox! the deadlines! the blogs that need writing! And since we're upper management in this endeavor, allocating time to enjoyment seems frivolous. But it is vital to our work, and even more vital to our hearts (which, of course, are necessary for our work).

There is a sense of promise to this card as well. We humans raise our glasses for lots of reasons: to toast, to honor, but also to pledge. That's what our women are doing in this card — pledging and promising to be there for each other, and to hold each other to that pact. To help each other remember. And re-member.

So this week, call up a friend for a shared hour of conversation. Start a new collaborative project with a fellow creative. Celebrate your people, your community, your tribe. Celebrate connection.