The Pictorial Key To The Tarot Annotated

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot is a divinatory tarot guide, with textual content with the aid of using A. E. Waite and illustrations with the aid of using Pamela Colman Smith. Published at the side of the Rider tarot deck, the pictorial version (launched 1910, dated 1911) accompanied the fulfillment of the deck and Waites (unillustrated 1909) textual content The Key to the Tarot. Both Waite and Smith have been individuals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Waite turned into very involved with the accuracy of the symbols used for the deck, and he did lots of studies into the traditions, interpretations, and records at the back of the playing cards. The book (which Waite himself called "a monograph") includes 3 parts. Part I, "The Veil and Its Symbols", is a quick evaluation of the conventional symbols related to every card, accompanied with the aid of using records of the Tarot. Waite brushed off as baseless the perception that the Tarot turned into Egyptian in origin, and mentioned that no proof of the playing cards exists previous to the fifteenth century. Part II, "The doctrine of the Veil", consists of seventy-eight black and white plates of Smiths illustrations for the Rider-Waite deck, and a dialogue of the particular symbols selected for every card. Waite drew upon the sooner Tarot of French occultist Elisha's Levi, at instances keeping his changes to the conventional deck (as with the Chariot card, which each Waite and Levi the photograph being drawn with the aid of using two sphinxes, in preference to horses), at different instances criticizing him (as with the Hermit card, which Waite notion Levi misinterpreted). Part III, "The Outer Methods of the Oracles", issues topics of divination with the playing cards, such as an outline of the well-known Celtic Cross Tarot layout, which the book helped popularize. In 1918, an American author, L. W. de Laurence posted a precise facsimile replica of the book below the title The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of Divination, Illustrating the Greater and Lesser Arcana, without giving any credit score to Waite.