Virginijus Poshkus has successfully undertaken the task of re-colorizing an iconic tarot deck and enhancing the beloved artwork created by Pamela Colman Smith. His carefully chosen palette of vibrant color brings new energy and radiance to the 78 cards of the Rider-Waite® Tarot. The updated look replaces Smith’s thick, black outlines with subtle shading that gives depth to the familiar scenes. Radiant Rider-Waite’s enhanced brightness highlights the traditional symbolism that readers rely on for insightful readings. The card backs have also been given the fresh new look of a star-filled deep, blue sky. Radiant Rider-Waite® Tarot includes an instruction booklet with an Introduction by Stuart R. Kaplan.
What customers are saying about Radiant Rider-Waite
The new Radiant Rider-Waite Tarot is the latest offering in a long line of historically accurate decks from Stuart R. Kaplan based upon the illustrations of Pamela Colman Smith. For this very pretty new deck, the artist Virginijus Poshkus was selected to re-color the drawings.
To describe the colouring of these cards as radiant is not an overstatement, as they are indeed shining and glowing, brilliant and luminous, and truly beaming with happiness. The cards have a clean, white border all around the images, with the numbers on the top in Roman numerals for the Major Arcana and spelled out in capital letters on the Minors. The titles and suits are in capital letters, in the same very pleasant typeface, also centered on the bottom of the cards.
The cards themselves have a nice feel, as they are printed on good cardstock, and are plastic-coated and durable. They are easy to handle and shuffle, being sized at 2 3/4" by 4 3/4" overall. The packaging is in a standard size box, printed in complimentary hues of orange and blue to highlight the radiant color values of the cards within, and featuring the Fool and Magician cards from inside. The instructions are familiar, featuring an introduction by Stuart R. Kaplan, and follow the standard format used for all decks from U.S. Games in the Rider-Waite tradition, which is both helpful and convenient for every purchaser of these cards. I was very pleased to be able to add the new Radiant Rider-Waite to my personal collection. Virginijus Poshkus has done an excellent job of radiantly re-coloring the images, which will make them easy to read and use for beginners and the advanced student, and they should soon prove to be a favorite of collectors worldwide.
—Peter Cowen, Aeclectic Tarot
Some people may feel that an "update" to a deck is unnecessary, that too many versions of the same thing amounts to overkill. I often find that new versions do have something to offer, and that this is the case with the Radiant Rider-Waite Tarot.
In the original version of this deck, there is an emphasis on the black outlining of the art, which to me takes away the ability to connect with the cards. The standard Rider-Waite was my first deck, and was almost immediately supplanted by the Morgan-Greer deck, a Rider-Waite clone that I could connect with much more easily.
The Radiant Rider-Waite, had it been my first deck, would have been the deck that I stayed with for professional readings. I like the fact that the intense black lines have been discarded, and the crisp white border with the card number at the top and the title at the bottom. The back of the cards, carrying the image of a starry sky, is also far preferable to the diamond pattern of the standard Rider-Waite deck.
The coloring is much more intense, with more of an orange overtone to the yellows. In some instances (the Fool, for example) there appears to be an aura of light around the figure(s) in the card. You really have to look for this, and I do not feel that it takes away from the ability to use this deck at all.
The Empress ends up with more of an orange sky behind her, but the plant life is distinctly green, rather than the yellowish tone carried by the standard deck. The deletion of the black lines does seem to have affected the facial expressions on the figures in the cards - bringing them out, making them more evident.
The rather gray background of the Hermit becomes an intense blue, which I feel adds rather than detracts from the card. The same holds for the intensifying of the color for the veil behind the figure of Justice. The sun over the mountain behind the figure of Temperance now holds the image of triple crown, which does seem to belong there. The Moon is another card that distinctly benefits from the increased intensity of the coloring of the sky.
The stained glass window behind the figure in the Four of Swords becomes much more of a point of focus, and the little salamander in front of the seated King of Wands has his fifteen seconds of fame.
I find the Radiant Tarot to be a deck well worth adding to my collection, as well as one to offer as a choice of decks for my clients.
— Bonnie Cehovet, Aeclectic Tarot
Rider-Waite® Tarot Deck
The cards were drawn in 1909 by Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite. Smith's vibrant drawings transformed the standard tarot deck.
"A unique feature of the Rider-Waite deck, and one of the of the principal reasons for its enduring popularity, is that all of the cards, including the Minor Arcana, depict full scenes with figures and symbols. Prior to the Rider-Waite Tarot, the pip cards of almost all tarot decks were marked only with the arrangement of the suit signs -- swords, wands, cups, and coins, or pentacles. The pictorial images on all the cards allow interpretations without the need to repeatedly consult explanatory text. The innovative Minor Arcana, and Pamela Colman Smith's ability to capture the subtleties of emotion and experience have made the Rider-Waite Tarot a model for the designs of many tarot packs." -- (from The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume III)
Rider-Waite Tarot was named one of the Top Ten Tarot Decks of All Time by Aeclectic Tarot.
Pamela Colman Smith
Born February 16, 1878, in Middlesex, England to American parents, Smith's childhood years were spent between London, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica. During her teens, she traveled throughout England with the theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Thereafter, she began formal art training at Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, graduating in 1897.
Smith returned to England, where she became a theatrical designer for miniature theatre, and an illustrator -- mainly of books, pamphlets and posters. Around 1903, she joined the Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1909, under the guidance of Arthur Edward Waite, she undertook a series of seventy-eight allegorical paintings described by Waite as a rectified tarot pack. The designs, published in the same year by William Rider and Son, exemplify the mysticism, ritual, imagination, fantasy, and deep emotions of the artist.
Arthur Edward Waite
Born in America in 1857, Waite was raised and educated as a Catholic in England. Beginning at the age of 21, Waite pursued research and writing on psychical and esoteric matters. Soon after joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he became the Grand Master, and redirected the focus of the order from magic to mysticism. The Golden Order, whose structural hierarchy was based on the Kabbalah, is considered the single greatest 20th century influence on the occult. Waite was a prolific author of occult texts, works on the Holy Grail, and the body of mystical knowledge, which comprises the basis of modern Tarot. He is best known as the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, first published in 1910.
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