I've been celebrating Pamela Colman Smith's birth month 🎂 In the summer of 1909 she illustrated the century's bestselling tarot deck that set the standard for the cards' symbolism and design. Born in London to parents from Boston and New York, educated at Pratt Institute, influenced by Japanese prints, Jamaican and Irish folklore, Catholicism, Shakespearean theatre 🎭, synesthesia 🎶, and the East Sussex seaside, Pamela is a legend!

Through chronic illness her images have been the best medicine, an antidote to never-ending experimental treatments. In her fairytale world of kings, queens, castles, and sailing ships— a mythic landscape so reminiscent of my beloved coastal Massachusetts— I've found safety and charm. Her illustrations are little windows to my soul, where my lived experience intersects the universal. Her art has certainly made an indelible imprint on my psyche and transformed my consciousness. I am forever indebted to her creativity.

So I can't help but wonder if Pamela painted herself in the High Priestess. She holds eternal secrets to understanding esoteric mysteries and accelerating healing subconsciously; her intuitive imagination receives messages in sensory energies. She is the feminine essence of kundalini, life force energy. Pamela glorifies its nobility in one of my favorite essays. "Find eyes within," she implores, "look for the door into the unknown country. 'High over cap' on a fairy horse- ride on your Quest— for what we are all seeking— Beauty. Beauty of thought first, beauty of feeling, beauty of form, beauty of color, beauty of sound, appreciation, joy, and the power of showing it to others." ✨

💙 Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot

📸 Pratt Institute Libraries, 1912, taken right after Pamela's 33rd birthday

📖 Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot, by Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin

🙏 Should the Art Student Think? The Craftsman magazine, 1908