Kickass Women in History: Pamela Colman Smith

Pamela Colman Smith was an amazing artist, and her illustrations of the Rider-Waite tarot deck are not only iconic but also transformed the ways people thought about the cards. She may or may not have been multiracial, and may or may not have been a lesbian. She was an ardent suffragette. She never had children. She started her own press. And few of her contemppraries knew what to make of her.

Smith was born in London in 1878. When she was ten years old, the family moved to Jamaica, where Smith’s father had a job. Pamela was deeply influenced by Jamaican culture. Her frequent moves between London, New York, and Jamaica helped her define herself as an “exotic outsider,” a persona she cultivated for the rest of her life.

Smith became known for her miniature theatre creations and performances, and her oral and written retellings of Jamaican and Celtic folk stories. She was the costume, program, and set designer for the Lyceum Theater in London and became good friends with Bram Stoker, who was the business manager of the theater during that time (he, of course, went on to write Dracula). Through her theater work she became friends with many of the leading poets and artists of the day, including poet William Butler Yeats and actress Ellen Terry.

With the support of Yeats, Smith launched her own magazine, The Green Sheaf. Yeats also connected her with Arthur Edward Waite, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization that studied magic and the occult. Waite hired Smith to illustrate a tarot deck suitable for divination. Tarot decks had been used in Europe for a variety of games since around 1450. They were (and still are) decks of cards similar to the 52-deck playing cards most often used today. In the past, and still today in France, Tarot cards were primarily known as gaming cards, but starting in the eighteenth century they also started to be used for fortune telling.

Waite wanted a version of the Tarot for fortune telling that would mesh with the philosophies of The Order of the Golden Dawn. Waite hired Smith to illustrate a deck that would have 22 cards representing major themes (The Major Arcana) and 56 suit cards (The Minor Arcana). No one knows exactly how the deck was designed, but it seems likely that Waite gave Smith some instructions and she put her own spin on them. She was probably the major designer of the minor arcana cards. Her deck was also one of the only decks to have story-like images on every single card. The deck was so popular that in English-speaking countries it helped cement Tarot cards firmly as a fortune telling tool.

Smith never married or had children. There are no records of her expressing a particular sexuality; however, she lived with her “flatmate” Nora Lake for over twenty years. While she is best remembered today for the tarot deck, she also poured her energies into art, theater, the suffragette movement, and supporting the art of other women through her magazine. She died at the age of 73 in 1951.