The Rider-Waite Tarot is the definitive tarot deck for beginners, in large part due to its immense popularity, as well as its true ease of availability.  It is the easiest deck, in my opinion, to learn with because of the tremendous number of publications available that are illustrated with these cards.  I highly recommend it for beginners for this very reason.  You can purchase the Rider deck in just about any bookstore in the country, even the ones in the malls.

The artwork is simple and after a while a large number of serious readers outgrow this deck, although I still read with it after 12 years.  The artist, Pamela Colman Smith, was actually a tremendously talented painter and illustrator, and I believe there must have been limits placed on her work for these cards
to be as basic as they are. I've seen other things she painted, and her work could be extremely intricate. I would be willing to bet almost everyone who has done readings for clients has had the Rider deck at some point in their career.  I still have mine!

The Universal Waite is a rendition of the same deck as the traditional Rider-Waite, only the original artwork is hand colored by Mary Hanson-Roberts in a soft pastel colored pencils theme.  I thought I would prefer this deck to the original, especially since I use her Hanson-Roberts tarot almost exclusively for readings.  However, I found that my feelings on the deck, once having seen it, were much the same as when Ted Turner colorized Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.
 
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The Golden Rider is another version of the Rider-Waite, only instead of the flat yellow and blue backgrounds, there are more vibrant colors and richer hued backgrounds used.  It looks like the artist, Francois Tapernoux, actually took heavy oil paints and painted right over the original paintings.  A lot of rich color is there, but the detail is lost to the weight of the paints.  The cards are bordered in metallic gold.

The Albano-Waite deck is yet another version of the Rider-Waite, only colored in a bold and bright color scheme by Frankie Albano.  This deck has the highest amount of different colors used, so you will see that the cards are not just colorful but almost carnival-like.  There seems to be a waxy look to the colors, as if the detailing bled at the printers.  The little booklet states that this is a facsimile edition of the originals by Frankie Albano, who was apparently unable to be found at the time of reprinting.

I just acquired the Pocket edition of the Rider recently, the card designs are identical to the original but the cards themselves are about business-card size.  There is an even smaller version available, the miniature version.  The details seem finer in the smaller card size, but I'm not sure if this is due to the size of the picture or that this is a more recent printing than my original Rider, which is twelve years old now.  I also have a copy of the Giant Rider deck, which is exceptional for use in teaching, as a visual aid.  It also makes a nice coffee table deck.  You can see a comparison of the sizes here.

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Reviews Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace