Tarot Cards UK - How a London Artist Created the World's Most Famous Deck

Tarot Cards UK: The Untold British Story Behind the World's Most Famous Tarot Deck

Most people who buy tarot cards in the UK have no idea they are holding a piece of British history in their hands. The most famous tarot deck ever created, the one that has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and inspired virtually every modern tarot deck in existence, was designed in London by a British artist, published by a London publishing house, and born from a secret occult society that held its meetings just minutes from the Thames.

This is not ancient Egyptian history. This is not a mysterious Italian tale. This is a London story. And when you buy tarot cards in the UK today, you are part of a tradition that stretches back to a single translation, a secret society, and a remarkable woman who changed divination forever but never received the credit she deserved.

How Tarot Cards First Arrived in Britain

Tarot cards had existed in Europe since the fifteenth century. Italian noble courts used them as a card game called tarocchi, and by the 1700s they had become tools for divination across France and southern Europe. But Britain had almost no contact with tarot until the late 1800s. The cards were incredibly rare on British soil and most people in England, Scotland, and Wales had never seen one, let alone used one for a reading.

That changed in 1886 when a scholar named Arthur Edward Waite translated the work of French occultist Eliphas Levi into English. This single act introduced the entire concept of tarot to Britain for the very first time. And because tarot cards were so rare in the country, British occultists found themselves with something extraordinary. A completely blank slate. There were no established British traditions to follow, no fixed designs to copy, no rules about how the cards should look or what they should mean.

Britain could reimagine tarot from the ground up. And that is exactly what happened.

The London Secret Society That Transformed Tarot Forever

Two years after Waite's translation introduced tarot to Britain, three Freemasons founded a secret society in London on 12 February 1888. They called it The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Its first temple, Isis-Urania, was established in the heart of the city and would go on to become what scholars now consider the single most significant influence on Western occultism in the twentieth century.

The Golden Dawn attracted some of the most brilliant minds of the Victorian and Edwardian age. The poet W.B. Yeats was a member. So was the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. The actress Florence Farr, the writer Arthur Machen, and many other notable figures of the era passed through its doors. Unlike the Freemasons, the Golden Dawn admitted both women and men as equals, which was remarkably progressive for Victorian Britain.

At the centre of the Golden Dawn's teachings was the tarot. Members studied the cards intensely, explored their connections to the Kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, and ancient symbolism, and developed entirely new ways of understanding what each card meant. The terms Major Arcana and Minor Arcana, the symbolic framework that tarot card readers still use today, much of this was developed or formalised by members of the Golden Dawn in London during those final years of the nineteenth century.

Two of those members would go on to create the most important tarot deck the world has ever seen.

The Scholar and the Artist Who Changed Everything

Arthur Edward Waite was born in America in 1857 but was raised and educated in England. He was a poet, a prolific author on occult subjects, and eventually rose to become Grand Master of the Golden Dawn. Waite had a vision that went beyond the closed world of secret societies. He wanted to create a tarot deck that would bring the deep symbolism of the Golden Dawn's teachings to a wider audience. A deck that anyone could pick up and read intuitively, without years of esoteric training.

To bring his vision to life he needed an artist. He found one in a fellow Golden Dawn member who happened to be one of the most talented and underappreciated artists of her generation.

Pamela Colman Smith was born at 28 Belgrave Road in Pimlico, London, on 16 February 1878. Known to her friends as Pixie, she had spent parts of her childhood in Jamaica and New York, absorbing the folklore and storytelling traditions of each place. She was an artist, an illustrator of over twenty books, a writer of Jamaican folklore, a stage and costume designer, a publisher who ran her own press focused on women writers, and a passionate suffragette who created posters and illustrations for the women's suffrage movement.

Smith moved in London's most creative and influential circles. She was friends with the poet W.B. Yeats, the Dracula author Bram Stoker, and the celebrated actress Ellen Terry. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz exhibited 72 of her watercolour paintings at his famous Gallery 291 in New York, making her the first non-photographic artist to show there. She also had synesthesia, a condition that allowed her to see vivid colours and visions when she listened to music. Hearing Chopin would transport her to a moonlit garden. Beethoven dropped her into a landscape of ruined towers. She was no amateur illustrator. She was a serious, accomplished, and deeply original artist.

It was Yeats who introduced Smith to the Golden Dawn, which she joined in 1901. There she met Arthur Edward Waite. And in 1909, Waite commissioned her to illustrate a complete 78 card tarot deck that would change the history of tarot cards in the UK and across the entire world.

The Six Months That Revolutionised Tarot

Working from her studio in Chelsea, London, Smith completed all 78 illustrations in just six months between April and October 1909. She drew each image in black ink and then hand-painted them with opaque watercolour. Waite gave her detailed symbolic instructions for the 22 Major Arcana cards, specifying the imagery and esoteric meaning he wanted for cards like The Magician, The High Priestess, and The Tower. But for the 56 Minor Arcana cards he gave Smith almost complete creative freedom.

This is where she made history.

Before Smith's deck, the Minor Arcana cards in virtually every tarot deck in existence were simple and repetitive. The Three of Cups showed three cups. The Five of Swords showed five swords. There were no scenes, no people, no stories. Reading these cards required memorisation of abstract meanings because the images themselves told you nothing.

Smith changed all of that. She painted full dramatic scenes on every single card. The Three of Cups became three joyful figures raising their cups in celebration. The Ten of Swords showed a fallen figure with ten swords in their back against a dark sky with dawn breaking on the horizon. The Six of Cups depicted a tender moment of nostalgia as one figure offered flowers to another. For the first time in the history of tarot, every card told a visual story that anyone could read intuitively just by looking at it.

She drew inspiration from the fifteenth century Italian Sola Busca tarot, photographs of which had been displayed at the British Museum in 1908. She also wove in influences from her theatre background, her knowledge of folklore, and her own extraordinary imagination. Some of the figures in the cards were modelled on her real friends. Actress Ellen Terry's daughter Edith Craig appears as the Queen of Wands, and the actress Florence Farr, her fellow Golden Dawn member, appears as the figure in The World card.

In December 1909 the completed deck was published by William Rider and Son of London from their premises at 164 Aldersgate Street. The first printing was extremely limited, featuring a distinctive roses and lilies pattern on the card backs. A much larger printing followed in March 1910 with improved card stock. The deck was simply labelled Tarot Cards and came with a small guide written by Waite called The Key to the Tarot.

It was the first tarot deck to be mass produced in England. It was the first to feature fully illustrated scenes on all 78 cards. And it would go on to become the most successful and influential tarot deck in history, with over 100 million copies now in circulation across more than 20 countries.

Smith was paid only a flat fee for her work and received no royalties whatsoever. In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz she described the project as a big job for very little cash. Her name did not appear anywhere on the deck or its packaging. For decades it was known simply as the Rider-Waite Tarot, named after the publisher and the man who commissioned it, completely erasing the woman who actually created every single image. It was not until the late twentieth century that tarot scholars and the wider community began pushing to call it the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, finally giving Pamela Colman Smith the credit she had always deserved.

What Happened to the Woman Who Created Modern Tarot

After completing the tarot deck, Smith continued her art career but struggled financially. She illustrated Bram Stoker's final novel, The Lair of the White Worm, in 1911. That same year she converted to Catholicism. After the First World War she received a small inheritance and moved to Cornwall, eventually settling in the coastal town of Bude where she shared a home with her companion Nora Lake.

Smith died on 16 September 1951 at the age of 73. She was penniless. Her personal effects, including her paintings and drawings, were sold at auction to pay her debts. She was buried in what is believed to be an unmarked grave, as she lacked the funds for a headstone. The relevant burial records were later destroyed in a fire, making it impossible to locate her final resting place.

The original printing plates for her tarot deck were destroyed during the Second World War. Yet her artwork lives on in every tarot deck sold in the UK and around the world today. The images she painted in her Chelsea studio over those six months in 1909 have become the visual language of modern tarot. Virtually every tarot deck created since, whether traditional or modern, whether gold foil or minimalist, draws on the visual framework that Pamela Colman Smith invented.

Why This History Matters When You Buy Tarot Cards in the UK

When you purchase tarot cards in the UK today you are buying into a tradition that is uniquely and undeniably British. The modern tarot deck as we know it was not created in medieval Italy or mystic Egypt. It was created in London in 1909 by a London-born artist, commissioned by a British scholar, published by a London publisher, and rooted in the teachings of a London-based secret society.

The tarot cards UK shops sell today, whether they are traditional decks that follow the classic Rider-Waite-Smith imagery or modern interpretations like gold foil tarot decks and luxury tarot sets, all trace their visual DNA back to that extraordinary moment in Edwardian London. Every time you see a Magician standing at his table with the infinity symbol above his head, every time you see a Tower struck by lightning, every time you see a woman in the High Priestess card seated between two pillars, you are looking at images that were first drawn by a British suffragette in a Chelsea studio over a century ago.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London now holds a set of the original Rider-Waite-Smith deck in their permanent collection, recognising it as a significant piece of British art and cultural history. What was once dismissed as a niche occult curiosity is now acknowledged as a landmark work of British illustration.

The global tarot market has grown enormously in recent years, with industry estimates suggesting the market is worth well over a billion pounds and continuing to expand year on year. Interest in tarot cards in the UK has surged, driven by a new generation discovering tarot as a tool for self-reflection, creativity, and personal insight. Modern tarot decks come in an incredible variety of styles and price points, from classic beginner-friendly tarot decks with guidebooks to luxury gold foil tarot card sets and complete tarot ritual kits that include everything you need to start reading.

At Divine Warrior we are proud to be part of this living British tradition. Our tarot card collection includes decks for every stage of your journey, from the Traditional Arcana Tarot Cards with Guide Book for those just starting out, to the Luxury Gold Foil Tarot Card Ritual Set for experienced readers who want to create a complete ceremonial reading experience. Whether you are looking for your first deck or adding to a growing collection, every tarot deck we sell connects you to a history that began right here in the UK.

Tarot cards did not just arrive in Britain. Britain reinvented them. A London secret society gave them their modern symbolic framework. A London-born artist gave them their visual language. A London publisher gave them to the world. And every time someone in the UK picks up a tarot deck today, that story continues.

Browse our complete tarot card collection at Divine Warrior and find the deck that speaks to you. Because when you buy tarot cards in the UK, you are not just buying a set of cards. You are holding a piece of British history in your hands.