I've been lecturing on this topic for years including line-by-line parallels between Waite's material and descriptions of the Minor Arcana.
First, PCS was a trained professional book illustrator. She depicted scenes in stories that conveyed the essence of the author's intent - a great skill in its own right. In her theatrical designs, she created the scenic backgrounds and costumes - the visuals that tell us at a glance what situation we've stepped into when the curtain rises. She had synesthesia - she saw music, and the process she described shows how it trained her to accept the images that arose in her mind without changing anything - excellent training for her psychic skills.
Waite, who knew the British Museum curators well, was probably informed the minute the Sola-Busca deck arrived. Perhaps he thought: "Scenic minors - what a great idea! Now, where can I get an artist capable of doing this?"
We emphasize Waite because we have lots of information about all the Tarot books he studied and related materials he translated, how he used the Tarot in his Fellowship, and what he thought of the Tarot and how he interpreted the cards. We have not a single word about PCS's involvement in Tarot (if there was any beyond the art). Her only comment was it was a very big job for very little cash. She did not have direct access to the Inner Order teachings on the Tarot.
I believe Waite gave Smith the meanings from Etteilla and Chambers, along with his notes from the GD approach. Then I think he told her the stories he wanted illustrated. He was supposedly a mesmerizing ritualist and had a photographic memory (noted by several of his friends - as he used to entertain them with stories he knew in great detail).
The Grail and the Minor Arcana – The Evidence
1) Waite published a major book on the Grail, The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal (HCHG), the same year as the deck was published (1909).
2) In HCHG, Chapter 9 is entitled “The Hallows of the Graal Mystery Rediscovered in the Talismans of the Tarot.”
3) In this chapter, Waite unambiguously says the Tarot suits ARE the Grail Hallows: the Cup, the Lance, the Sword and the Dish from Christ’s Passion. “They are in the antecedents of our playing-cards—the old Talismans of the Tarot.” He describes this realization as a major illumination: “a spark from heaven . . . to open another horizon,” and the connection made as “the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound” (HCHG).
4) Waite also explains, “the correspondence of certain Tarot symbols with those of the Holy Graal . . . [have a] consequence,” that is, an import that he refuses to discuss in HCHG.
5) Waite only refers in HCHG to the Lesser Arcana (never the Majors), saying, for instance, that “the Sephirotic attributions [number cards] . . . are especially remarkable . . . [and] certain secret schools have developed their scheme of symbolic interpretation to a very high point.”
6) In The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (PKT) Waite says, “There is always the possibility that some minor arcana of the Mysteries may be made public with a flourish of trumpets . . . [but] neither in root-matter nor in development has more been put into writing, so that much will remain to be said after any pretended unveiling.” And later, “There are vague rumours concerning a higher meaning in the minor cards, but nothing has so far transpired, even within the sphere of prudence which belongs to the most occult circles. . . . It has never yet been translated into another language, . . . [setting] apart for their proper business those matters that are of another order. . . . In many of the Lesser Arcana there are vague intimations conveyed by the designs which seem to exceed the stated divinatory values. . . . The combined systems of cartomancy have indicated only the bare heads of significance attaching to the emblems in use.” While Waite otherwise denies that the Minor Arcana represent anything other than fortune-telling, there is a feeling in these denials that he ‘doth protest too much.’
7) Waite tells us that the Ace of Cups is “an intimation of that which may lie behind the Lesser Arcana” (PKT).
8 ) He says that the Knight of Swords is Galahad (PKT).
9 ) The King of Cups is depicted in the RWS deck with a fish around his neck [i.e., the Fisher King].
10) The suit of Cups contains a great many pictorial elements specific to Waite’s short retelling of Robert de Boron’s Grail story, The Metrical Romance of Joseph of Arimathea. Waite believed this to be the earliest written Grail story as it was the first to connect the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper with earlier Arthurian myths—establishing the whole tradition of the Holy Grail and its journey to Avalon.
11) The same descriptive wording sometimes appears in both Waite’s version of Robert de Boron’s story and in Waite’s description of Minor Arcana cards (PKT), referring to similar elements in both.
12) The suit of Swords illustrates exactly the Hiram Abiff story as told in the Masonic Master Mason (3rd Degree) initiation ritual, including pictorial details that appear in the Masonic illustrations of the story. The order of cards and the sequence of scenes in both these stories are nearly identical.
13) Waite's description of the Masonic initiate in The Encyclopedia of Freemasonry matches the suit of Pentacles. The Masonic allusions in this suit have been noted by many.
14) Pamela Colman Smith’s art, in the Minor Arcana especially, uses the faux-medieval style and other conventions found among other late 19th & early 20th century British Grail and Arthurian illustrations—marking these works as an easily-recognizable visual genre. See The Camelot Project.
15) In Waite’s 1933 revision, The Holy Grail, a part of Waite’s chapter on the Grail and Tarot becomes the summary of Book XI: “The Ritual Hypothesis.” Here Waite speculates on the Grail myths as the basis for *ritual pageants that he says he is well-qualified to devise.* As a pageant is “a public entertainment consisting of a procession of people in elaborate, colorful costumes, or an outdoor performance of a historical scene,” Waite seems to have envisioned the Minor Arcana as a quaternity of ritual pageants. This is further substantiated by the number of Minor Arcana scenes that appear to be set on a stage or platform. Here is Waite’s description from HCHG of such a pageant in an early Grail romance that obviously showcases the Court Cards:
“When the questing knight pays his first visit. . . . The procession enters the hall in single file, and consists in succession of a page, or squire, who carries the mysterious Sword which will break in one danger only, of another squire who bears the Sacred Lance from which the blood issues, and then of two squires together, each supporting a ten-branched candlestick. Between these there walks the gentle and beautiful maiden who lifts up the Holy Graal in her two hands; she is followed by another maiden, who carries the Silver Dish. The procession passes twice before the couch on which the King of the Castle reclines.” HCHG, p. 139.
16) In an article, “The Tarot and the Secret Tradition,” in The Occult Review Vol. XXIX, No. 3; March, 1919, Waite explained:
“I have said, now long ago, (1) that there are vague rumours concerning a higher meaning in the minor cards but (2) they have never yet been translated into another language than that of fortune- telling. . . . In any case, the four suits of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles have two strange connexions in folk-lore, to one of which I drew attention briefly in The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. So far as my recollection goes, I have not mentioned the other in any published work. The four Hallows of the Holy Graal are (1) the Graal itself, understood as a Cup or Chalice, being the first Cup of the Eucharist; (2) the Spear, traditionally that of Longinus; (3) the Sword, which was made and broken under strange circumstances of allegory; and (4) the Dish of Plenty, about which the Graal tradition is composed, but it is understood generally as the Paschal Dish. The correspondence of these Hallows or Tokens with the Tarot suits will be noted, and the point is that albeit three out of the four belong to the Christian history of relics they have an antecedent folklore history belonging to the world of Celtic myth. This is a subject which I shall hope to carry farther one of these days.”
Waite’s central contention, to closely paraphrase what he tells us in The Holy Graal, is: The Cup corresponds to the spiritual life. It receives the graces from above and communicates them to that which is below. But the meaning behind the Grail has lost its sacred significance in the external world. As a result, we are spiritually isolated and conscious of our loss. The same story of loss is told everywhere, though never in the same way. But a story also continues, from age to age, that somewhere, sometime, the missing Word, the key to our Existence, will be restored.
The Minor Arcana are clearly four stories of what Waite called the Loss; it is in the Major Arcana that we find what Waite then designated as the restoration, which he called “the Path of Attainment.”