I recieved my order today with tarot card packet crumbled up.

I dont understand why Fishpond do not label their orders as fragile.

Easily the most recognisable of the Tarot decks this deck is a must have for serious students of the history of Tarot.

If you want to learn the Tarot as an art then there are far prettier and more intuitive decks out there. This set tends to look rather drab in a sixties cartoon book kind of way. If you want to learn some magick history then this card set and the accompanying book present some worthwhile clues.

Pamela Colman Smith was the artist and was not paid for the work. She received direction from Arthur Edward Waite of Golden Dawn fame. So why is it called the Rider-Waite Deck? Rider were the original publishers and the association has resulted in the long standing naming convention.

Paradoxically Arther Waite in the accompanying book suggests that historically the lesser arcana (our modern day card pack) was traditionally used for fortune telling. But only hints at the original purpose of the major arcana, seeming to me to suggest that it was used seperately from the minors for much longer as a memory/meditation tool associated with the Kabbalah.

If i could i would give it two ratings one as a Tarot Pack (2/5), the other in conjunction with the book as an insight into 19th/20th century mystic schooling (4/5). I fear many will find the message in the accompanying book lacking in serious substance and miss the subtlety of the hints given. Yet a student of Kabbalah will not go astray by adopting this set as his/her first tarot deck.