Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot
Hello All
Thank you so much for your interest in the book. We have spent several years researching it and invested several thousand pounds in acquiring licenses to publish new photographs of Pamela, her life, work and the sources of many of her tarot images.
The research took place in archives, private collections and museums worldwide, with site visits and new discoveries on the design and intent of the whole deck. Without giving too much away, I think we demonstrate clearly and without question, to put the whole matter to rest, that Pamela designed the Minors by herself at the very least.
We also draw on unpublished writings by Waite on Tarot that we discovered when working on "Abiding in the Sanctuary".
As we have mentioned on Facebook, during the course of this recent research, 40 new illustrations and poetry by Pamela were discovered, and the archive involved have been in recent discussions with an Art Historian as to how best to present that work.
Our book contains 106 photographs and images that support our research and we do hope to demonstrate that the "secrets" in the title are indeed totally new facts which will change the way everyone sees this most iconic of decks.
Those who have seen our presentations (and kept the 'secrets') at TAROTCON events over the last year have agreed that they will never see that deck in the same way again.
We also include a "How to Read Tarot" section as it is a practical book also, and sections on how we imagine Pamela might have read the cards (she likely didn't) and how Waite read the tarot amongst other divination tools, with examples of his reading style.
The whole book is new material, such as a chapter on Waite's work with the Faerie tradition and how that is based on the Tarot in a surprising fashion. It also allowed us to reverse-engineer some of his writings to provide a new "Waite Faery Oracle" system that may take readers by surprise - Waite was a lush romantic at heart!
We will be launching a new Waite-Smith website very shortly (which is presently in development) that will include much of the material we have been teasing for a year on Facebook, for those who are not on that social platform.
So far, only a few people have seen the whole of the new book, one of whom is Mary K. Greer, who writes, ""Astonishing revelations of Pixie Smith's contributions to the Tarot! A truly fresh perspective on the iconic Waite-Smith Tarot based on outstanding new research. Masterful, and not to be missed."
With regard to our prior book, "Abiding in the Sanctuary", there has been a lot of discussion of its enigmatic and astonishing images, just not so much in the public domain.
The "Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot" book has one more teaser to be released, the website, and by then it will be published by Llewellyn Worldwide on April 8th 2015.
Both Marcus Katz and myself hope that it of interest to everyone who cares about the life and work of both Pamela and Waite, in whose life we have been living during the summer of 1909 for the past few years.
Tali