Where did Waite get his Minor Arcana iconography?

Richard

......The majors and Aces illustrate his mystic philosophy, so he was more concerned about those being just the way he wanted them.
The Aces? Yes, the Ace of Cups is certainly special, but the others look very ordinary. The Aces of Wands and Swords are almost identical to those of the Marseille. Waite had the hands coming out of fluffy clouds, which is a Golden Dawn thing.
 

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Richard

This is a follow up of my previous post. After noting the remarkable similarity between the Aces of the Waite and Marseille decks, I remembered that the same is true of the Majors. This is not just conjecture; it can easily be verified.

Waite believed that a Secret Tradition accounted for the Majors, but they became somewhat corrupted as they evolved as part of a game deck. The Waite deck rectified the historical Majors. It may be that the Aces were part of this same Tradition as the Majors. (It is impossible for me to look at the Marseille Ace of Swords without thinking of Kether, the Qabalistic Crown, the Sephirah with which all of the Aces are associated.)

So perhaps it is correct to lump the Tarot Aces together with the Trumps.
 

Zephyros

In my opinion he did play a role in the creation of the Minors, at least in some which he considered more important. The Two of Cups and Ten of Pentacles are often cited as examples of his more obvious handiwork, but I feel that in cards such as the 2 of Wands; 4,5,7 of Cups and 2 of Swords all betray at least elements Waite would have told Smith to include.

The globe, for example, on the Wands card doesn't seem, at least subjectively, to be something that would be on the card unless the decks's background is considered, and not simply a device came from being given meanings to work with. The Moon on the Swords card, unobtrusive as it may be, actually makes the whole picture since it is the only example I can think of that the astrological attribution is displayed, making the whole card an astrological glyph. Heck, even the island looks like Libra.

There are more examples, and this is without even going into Mary Greer's findings on the Masonic symbolism involved. I don't think the creation of the Minors was any kind of extreme, either with him dictating them or her working alone. I don't think their partnership was anything as close as that of the Crowley/Harris one, but PCS certainly wasn't working in a vacuum. I don't know why he would choose to downplay his involvement in a large part of his own project, though.
 

Richard

.....I don't think the creation of the Minors was any kind of extreme, either with him dictating them or her working alone. I don't think their partnership was anything as close as that of the Crowley/Harris one, but PCS certainly wasn't working in a vacuum. I don't know why he would choose to downplay his involvement in a large part of his own project, though.

I agree.

Robert Place jumped to an unwarranted conclusion. As Mary Greer has remarked:
"Because PCS said almost nothing about the deck and never refers to Tarot elsewhere, it is easy for people to make up what she thought and did. Place is not an expert on this deck, nor on Waite, and himself has many errors in his discussion of the deck - including the method of printing, which is totally wrong. The rest of Place's book is excellent, but please don't use it as a guide to the Waite-Smith deck. Most of his insights on the cards can be found in earlier books."​