Talk:Rider–Waite Tarot

message: Well this is very wrong.... the egiptian tarot is the oldest one ... and it looks like it is very well documented as being given to humanity by hermes trismegistus... and that there are conections vith the hebrew alphabet: 22 major arcans - 22 leters in hebrew alphabet
:You are correct in titling your remark an uninformed comment. There is no historical basis for an Egyptian origin for the tarot, which emerged in Italy as a playing card game, most likely inspired by similar games known to the Ottoman Turks. It was through association with gambling as a game of chance that tarot came to be used as a method for assessing an individual's luck or fortune. Dice, dominoes and even mah jong tiles have been used in the same way. Italian fashions in allegorical symbolism in secular art contributed the striking emblematic design of the trumps. Occult associations were not grafted onto the playing card deck until the 19th century, some five hundred years after the cards were invented. 68.0.100.180 (talk) 09:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Almost ten years between the original post and the reply. A new WP talk page record? --5.65.87.152 (talk) 19:04, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: uninformed comment

message: Some factual errors I noticed in the Rider-Waite article:
1. 'The subjects remain close to the earliest decks, but usually have added details.' -- I'm unsure what exactly is meant by subject. The earliest decks were very different from even the later Marselleis family designs, and Waite's deck was a radical departure from those decks.
2. 'Significantly, Waite had the Christian imagery of older tarot decks' cards toned down—the "Pope" card became the "Hierophant," the "Popess" became the "High Priestess."' -- This change predates Waite. I'm not sure where and when the cards were first given these titles, but the cards are listed with these titles in the Golden Dawn document Book T, the creation of which predated Waite's deck and to which Waite certainly had access.
3. 'Several decks, such as the Universal Waite deck, simply copy the Smith line drawings, but with more sophisticated coloring.' -- The Universal Waite Deck is not a simple recolorization. Additions are made to all of Smith's original designs in addition to the recolorization of the cards.
4. 'In 1910, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite was published...' -- This book was preceeded by the Key to the Tarot published in 1909, an earlier edition of the book that omitted the pictures of the tarot cards.
5. 'Rider-Waite clones' -- This term is informal and I doubt any good citation will ever be found for its usage. The term, however, doesn't refer to the ease of readability but rather having a strong structural  and symbolic similarity to Waite's deck. The list of clones is rather limited and several of the decks are actually just Rider-Waite decks with additional pictures or recolorings. 
6. "The Tower" card (that's supposed to come right after The Devil) is missing.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anahatalie (talk • contribs) 06:22, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Major arcanum 12 The Hanged Man appears to be missing. BTLizard (talk) 09:50, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Errors in the Rider-Waite article 

message: "The minor arcana are also, like the earlier Sola Busca Tarot, fully illustrated with designs created by Pamela Colman Smith" - sounds as if the 15th century Sola Busca Tarot were illustrated by Smith, which they obviously weren't. I'd fix it, but I can't decide what point the writer was trying to make. Irish Melkite 11:56, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification Needed 

message: * I came to the edit page for a similar reason, but decided to visit the talk page instead, as any attempt at disambiguation (in my case I wanted to add a tag asking which decks were being referred to as predecessors e.g. without Christian symbolism on the Hierophant and High Priestess cards) is going to run into the following issue : the best possible link to another wiki page detailing the history and evolution of the Rider-Waite deck is going to be this link, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot#Gaming_decks . Note that the section heading is "Gaming Decks". The problem of remaining encyclopedic and neutral in our wording when referring to something used for religious purposes with a link to a page called "gaming decks" is a complicated problem and I do not believe a lone editor should make this decision. The history of the Tarot is what it is, and I am not at all suggesting being revisionist or shying away from the history. I am merely stating that some discussion needs to take place among multiple editors before we can rightly call any cleanup to this article superior to what is up there currently. I don't share Irish Melkite's concern over preserving the original author's intent, except of course that the original author likely ran into many similar problems on the road to producing the article as stands that we'd only encounter when attempting to edit this page ourselves.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.58.62.172 (talk) 00:58, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: 2021

message: The pictures of the different cards of the major arcana are not the Rider-Waite tarot deck. They are the Universal Waite deck... I know its not a big difference but it should at least be marked that way if not changed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.186.111.49 (talk) 06:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, no. They weren't the Universal Waite deck either. They were recoloured versions produced by one of the editors here so as to avoid copyright infringement of the US Games 1971 version of the deck. I've just replaced all the images with images from a 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is most representative of the original artists' intentions, and have the benefit of being in the public domain. I've explained this all in a bit more depth at Talk:Minor Arcana/Archive 1#Copyright infraction. Cheers, Fuzzypeg★ 00:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Why is it missing a card?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.171.129.224 (talk) 15:33, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Nine of Wands, to be exact. ZtObOr 00:28, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  That's not the Rider Deck 

message: What gives? It looks like someone has been repeatedly "cleaning up" by removing cards, at least judging by a quick glance through the history. 198.109.173.45 (talk) 20:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  There's a whole bunch of cards missing here 

message: Unfortunately, efforts to present all sides seem to have resulted in giving equal prominence to corporate disinformation and uninformed people as to accurate information.  There's no real legitimate controversy that forms of the cards published prior to 1923 are out of copyright in the United States, and that according to the current version of U.K. law, the cards did not go out of copyright in 2012... AnonMoos (talk) 03:01, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Latest "controversies" presentation of copyright status

message: Pamela Colman Smith died 18 September 1951, 70 years ago as of 18 Sep of 2021. Should the Copyright status section be updated with more information? Has anything changed?  Technoabyss (talk) 16:37, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently it's the first New Years after the 70th anniversary of death, which would be Jan 1st. 2022.  That's when Commons is going to undelete its files, anyway... AnonMoos (talk) 06:35, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Was Pamela ever the copyright holder or was it the Rider Company?  139.138.6.121 (talk) 18:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the latest iteration of UK copyright law, it apparently doesn't matter -- her death date determines the copyight expiration date regardless. AnonMoos (talk) 20:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyright status as of 2021

message: Commons images undeleted on January 3rd... AnonMoos (talk) 21:45, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: 2022

message: I feel this section does not have a clear purpose. Is this a section about the post-Rider publication history? Or what is currently available on the market? Or an advertisement for U.S. Games?
The section begins with "The success of the Rider-Waite deck spawned numerous reproductions by other companies" which seems to imply this is about the publication history. However there is only two U.S. Games decks mentioned.
Because by whatever definition, U.S. Games is certainly not the only "other company" that produces Rider-Waite at any point in time. Notably others such as University Books, Lo Scarabeo or AG Muller certainly count as "other companies". There is also newer independently published decks such as the 1909 Art Restoration Deck which is relevant to the topic of copyright, and the timing of its passing as part of the history of the Rider-Waite deck, and when I tried to add this deck somebody marked it as spam, while it is a commercial product (like all Rider-Waite decks in history including the U.S. Games decks) it is relevant to the subject of this section. If no links to any commercial products is allowed, then certainly by only quoting the marketing pages of U.S. Games and to link to their marketing pages is also a form of advertisement by this logic?
Or would the main article of the Rider-Waite tarot deck benefit from having this "advertisement section" removed altogether? Surely having only U.S. Games mentioned and excluding other companies also presents an incomplete publication history.
If U.S. Games is given special treatment because of its size or something else, what is the reasoning? Unless this is explicit, there should be no reason to exclude any other "editions by other companies" from being added to a section with the same title.
37.156.72.236 (talk) 18:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct, the section had only links to commercial sites and I deleted it for that reason. The section could be recreated if references to reliable secondary sources could be found, like a book on the history of tarot decks, etc. – cheers, Epinoia (talk) 18:36, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  US Games isn't afforded "special treatment".  They retain copyright on *their* rendition of the deck.  Many other publishers have similar style Pamela Smith decks too.  139.138.6.121 (talk) 18:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  On the section "Editions by other companies" 

message: A request to lowercase the terms Major Arcana and Minor Arcana has been underway for awhlle and may interest editors here. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:58, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Talk:Major Arcana#Requested move 20 August 2021]]​

message: The link to the Waite article doesn't seem to work. Sophontologist (talk) 16:37, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lost Link