The Sorcerer's Apprentice Esoteric Forum

[Infoburst: AJ is quite right. The ones we sold as 'pocket or miniature' Rider Waites were the smaller ones which were about 4 x 8 cm and it was these to which I was referring. To my mind their only advantage was that you could take them with you anywhere and, if necessary, even do a fortune spread on your knees on a train or bus etc., BB Denise W. ]

I didn't say they weren't any good for divination I said they weren't any good for magical purposes (i.e. too small/impractical to be used as symbol/meditation cards). We cannot tell from here how a client is going to use their cards -for divination or for meditation. Because the Rider was the first deck with the possibility of using the cards as meditational gateways to the pathways to the tree of life they need to be of a size which you can see without strain from a cross-legged position or seated in front of an altar and the smaller cards aren't large enough for that. Have you tried shuffling the regular sized pack end on? That works for me, even with Crowley's thoth deck. ;-) BB Denise W.

[Infoburst: Hi Alan, Well I see I have kicked over a rat's nest of possibilities here. Firstly can I ask anyone contributing to this thread to say in which country they purchased their cards as obviously we only have partial knowledge of U.S editions? Rights issues were different in the U.S. to the U.K. and different boxes and back designs were used from edition to edition. The oldest Rider-Waite pack I and Marabas remember had the Fortuna card printed on the front of the box but on checking our little 'museum' here I found a 1993 edition pack with Temperance on the front! The oldest Rider-Waite pack we have (from the late 1970s has blue cross-hatching on the back of the cards (v.traditional). The current printing on our shelves has Fleur de Lys on the backs instead and so does the 1993 edition I mentioned. The later editions too all seem to have an Orouborous snake on the 'fly' card but the oldest pack doesn't! I reckon we need some Tarot historian who has kept track of the various editions to enlighten us, though it makes no difference magically, it is still a most necessary pack. BB Denise W.

Hi John, Marabas says that the Rider Deck is so important that it has been in pretty well continuous imprint since the early 1970s when the current revival of interest in magical things spawned a market large enough to support it. There were some poorly printed early American packs produced by novelty companies on shoddy unplasticised stock which used to fall apart after a few dozen uses and these tended to be the pale coloured ones. (N.B. This is not a crack at American production methods - these cards were purposefully made down to a price). In the U.K. the cards were produced by the Rider publishing Company throughout (hence the name Rider-Waite Blue Pack which is the term sometimes used by occultists over here to distinguish the Rider Waite deck - it has always been provided in a cosmic blue box with the Fortune Card on the front as per tradition) and the quality of their stock and printing has been proved excellent. BB Denise W. ]

Hi, We used to stock the pocket Rider but they were really a novelty -far too small to be of any use magically - and they weren't that much cheaper than a full size pack so to me there seemed little point. They went out of print some time back. We will probably stock again if they become available. BB Denise W. P.S. You can order a full-size Rider pack by

going to our equipment list and scrolling down to Tarot:Rider.
http://www.sorcerers-apprentice.co.uk/equiplst.htm ]

[Infoburst: Hi James, Marabas says the Rider Pack was the first pack to illuminate (symbolise) all 78 cards. Prior to this you had 22 trumps (picture cads) and 56 'normal' Tarock cards (i.e. 1-10, page, Jack, queen, king) but with Tarock symbols on them (discs, swords,clubs etc instead of diamonds,hearts,etc). These suit/minor arcana cards each had a significance but meanings traditionally varied. Waite did the marvelous job of illustrating the minor arcana so that the pictures showed what the meanings were; as well as deepening their occult significance in relation to QBL. Thus ALL modern occult packs have been pale reflections of the Rider pack but with various artistic styles overlaid. In many instances these 'new' packs were the result more of artistry than occult knowledge and some of them are symbolically and technically inept so you should start with the Rider persevere with it until you understand more about magical tarot and then when you are in the know make your choice from the other packs available. The Crowley tarot is large because the cards were intended for meditation/focus during rites more than for divination. Anyone who can't find a way of shuffling isn't trying hard enough! BB Denise W. ]