Rider-Waite Deck:

In 1910, The Rider Publishing Company introduced a deck created by Arthur E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith that has come to be known as the Rider-Waite Deck. The deck became extremely popular and is now one of the, if not the, most used and recognized Tarot decks.

Numerous other decks have been loosely based on the Rider-Waite Tarot deck and have been published from the mid-20th century through today. They are sometimes called Rider-Waite-Smith clones. However, the term is misleading as they are not exact copies but variations.

Other Modern Tarot Decks:

Other decks created since the time of the first publishing of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck in 1910 vary in their card imagery. The variety is almost endless, and continues to grow yearly. Below are just some of the various Tarot decks available today:

• The Thoth Deck (extremely colourful)
• B.O.T.A. Tarot Deck (black line drawings on white cards. This is an unlaminated deck intended to be coloured by its owner).
• The Golden Dawn Tarot Deck
• The Tree of Life Tarot Deck (symbolic)
• The Cosmic Tarot Deck
• The Tarot of the Cat People (a deck complete with cats in every picture).
• The Tarot of the Witches Deck
• The Aquarian Tarot Deck
• The Motherpeace Tarot Deck
• The Tarot of Baseball Deck
• many, many more

These modern decks change the cards to varying degrees. For example:

• The Motherpeace Tarot is notable for its circular cards and feminist angle (the mainly male characters have been replaced by females).
• The Tarot of Baseball (has suits of bats, mitts, balls and bases; "coaches" and "MVPs" instead of Queens and Kings and Major Arcana cards like "The Catcher", "The Rule Book" and "Batting a Thousand").
• The Silicon Valley Tarot (has Major arcana cards include The Hacker, Flame War, The Layoff and The Garage; the suits are Networks, Cubicles, Disks and Hosts; the court cards CIO, Salesman, Marketeer and New Hire).
• The Robin Wood Tarot (This deck retains the Rider-Waite theme while adding some colorful Pagan symbolism).

The use of Tarot for divination and as a store of symbolism, has inspired the creation of Oracle card decks for inspiration or divination. Although obviously influenced by Tarot, they do not follow the traditional structure of Tarot. They lack any suits of numbered cards, and the set of cards differs from the traditional Major Arcana. These decks contain images of:

• Angels 
• Faeries
• Goddesses
• Power Animals
• many, many more

Rider-Waite, Aquarian Tarot, Morgan-Greer Tarot, Ukiyoe, and Swiss 1JJ decks are copyrighted to and published by US Games Systems.

	Web www.tarotology.com