134 - Tarot.- Waite (A. E., Pamela Colman Smith, Illustrator.) The Key to the Tarot, book and accompanying 78 card tarot deck, likely Pam B version with an earlier book, cards very good overall with light edge and thumb wear, soiling to edges, surface creases, book with original gilt stamped cloth and titling, textbook detaching but complete, soiling, toning, corners bumped, housed in a later wooden box, London, William Ryder and Son, 1910-[1931].

Tarot.- Waite (A. E., Pamela Colman Smith, Illustrator.) The Key to the Tarot, book and accompanying 78 card tarot deck, likely Pam B version with an earlier book, cards very good overall with light edge and thumb wear, soiling to edges, surface creases, book with original gilt stamped cloth and titling, textbook detaching but complete, soiling, toning, corners bumped, housed in a later wooden box, London, William Ryder and Son, 1910-[1931]. *** An exceedingly rare example of an early Ryder-Waite Tarot; perhaps the most influential Tarot deck of the 20th century and beyond. Arthur Waite, then a prominent occultist and aesthete, worked in tandem with artist Pamela Colman Smith to create a deck that appealed both to the esoteric and aesthetic communities of post Fin de siècle Europe and America. Notably, Smith illustrated all the Minor Arcana with the same detail as the Major, creating a symbolically lavish and beautiful new interpretation of the Tarot deck. We believe this to be a Pam B version with a Pam A book. The book is dated 1910, with William Ryder and Son Limited stated as the publisher and bears the Gilt stamped Ouroboros motif on the front panel. The cards show the 'cracked mud' pattern on the rear with The Sun card lacking the extra undulating line at the top; a signifier of a early Pam B deck produced in 1931.