A Garden of Symbols: What the Rider-Waite Images Mean
AdminThe Rider-Waite deck is known for the fact that almost every card contains a scene. Pamela Colman Smith introduced images that were absent from older decks, which made the cards readable without detailed interpretation. The deck can be studied like a garden: walking its paths, stopping at individual plants and noticing how they relate to one another.
One reason the deck has lasted so long is its density. Every detail means something: the color of a garment, the position of the hands, plants at the feet, clouds overhead. These details recur across different cards, and once you learn to recognize them, the links between cards become visible on their own.
A few examples
- The Sun: a child on a white horse under sunflowers. Clarity, joy, openness.
- The Star: a naked figure pours water into a pool and a stream. Hope and renewal.
- The Fool: a dog at the traveler’s feet. Instinct that warns or follows.
The Sun in this deck is one of the clearest images. A child on a white horse under sunflowers looks carefree, but the sunflowers are not accidental: they turn toward the light, just as a person seeking clarity does. The white horse has traditionally been linked with purity and free movement. Together these details create a picture of openness that needs no long explanation.
The Star is an image of quiet hope. A naked figure pours water into a pool and a stream, and stars shine above. There is a lot of water here and little bustle: the card seems to say that renewal happens calmly, without pressure. That is why it is often chosen for meditation and for rituals of restoring strength.
Color and composition
Smith worked with bright but not garish color. Yellow, red, blue and white recur across different cards, creating the deck’s color logic. Sunny yellow is linked with clarity and warmth, red with action and passion, blue with depth and calm. Once you notice these repetitions, the cards begin to speak to one another.
Composition also works for meaning. Figures often stand at the center while the background recedes into depth, creating a sense of space. Horizons, roads, walls and mountains set the direction of movement. If you compare several cards in a row, you will see that composition alone suggests whether a card is about rest or movement, solitude or encounter.
How to study the garden
By studying one image a week, you learn to see the structure of the whole deck. The cards then become a garden you can walk through many times and notice new details each time. It is convenient to begin with the Sun and the Star: they have a lot of light and clear symbols, and that is good training for the eye.
Every detail in the deck means something, but not every detail means the same thing to everyone.
Try writing down what you see in each card before reading its meaning. After a few weeks your notes will reveal personal connections: for example, you may notice that white always feels unsettling to you, or that the sunflowers remind you of childhood. This is a personal dictionary of the deck, more valuable than any book.
It is also important that many symbols are read differently in different traditions. For example, a color or a plant could mean one thing in one era and something quite different in another. If you check several sources, you will see the differences and understand that a symbol lives in its context.
For more on how Smith worked with the images, see the Battersea Society article, and for the deck and its history, see the Wikipedia article.
Sources
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