Rider-Waite Symbolism Decoded: The Hidden Language of the World's Most Famous Tarot Deck

BY NICOLE LAU

The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, published in 1909, looks deceptively simple—colorful illustrations of figures in recognizable situations, easy to read intuitively even without prior knowledge. But beneath the accessible surface lies an extraordinarily dense symbolic language: every color, every number, every animal, every gesture, every landscape element carries precise esoteric meaning drawn from Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, and the Hermetic tradition of the Golden Dawn. Understanding this symbolic language transforms the deck from a collection of evocative images into a complete map of human consciousness.

This guide decodes the primary symbolic systems embedded in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

Color Symbolism in Rider-Waite

Pamela Colman Smith used color with extraordinary precision. The major color associations in the RWS deck include:

• White: Purity, spiritual truth, the divine. The white horse of Death, the white lily of the Magician, the white garments of the Fool—all signal spiritual purity and connection to higher truth.
• Red: Passion, will, desire, the active principle. Red roses appear throughout the deck as symbols of desire and earthly passion; red garments signal active, outward-directed energy.
• Yellow/Gold: Solar consciousness, intellect, divine illumination. Yellow backgrounds (The Fool, The Sun, Judgement) signal moments of divine light and conscious awareness.
• Blue: Water, the unconscious, emotion, depth. Blue garments and blue water appear throughout the deck as symbols of emotional and intuitive intelligence.
• Purple/Violet: Spiritual authority, royalty, the integration of red (passion) and blue (spirit). Purple garments signal figures who have integrated earthly and spiritual dimensions.
• Green: Growth, nature, the fertile earth, the heart. Green landscapes signal abundance and natural vitality.
• Black: The unknown, the unconscious, death and transformation, the fertile void. Black garments often signal figures connected to mystery and the hidden dimensions of reality.
• Gray: Neutrality, balance, the liminal space between opposites. Gray skies and gray stone appear in cards of transition and uncertainty.

Number Symbolism

The RWS deck's numerological system draws from both Pythagorean numerology and Kabbalistic gematria:

• 0 (The Fool): Pure potential, the void before manifestation, infinite possibility
• 1 (The Magician): Unity, will, the active principle, the point of beginning
• 2 (The High Priestess): Duality, polarity, the threshold between opposites
• 3 (The Empress): Creativity, fertility, the synthesis of opposites into new form
• 4 (The Emperor): Structure, stability, the foundation of manifest reality
• 5 (The Hierophant): Mediation, tradition, the bridge between divine and human
• 6 (The Lovers): Harmony, choice, the integration of opposites through love
• 7 (The Chariot): Victory through will, the mastery of opposing forces
• 8 (Strength): Infinite power through gentleness, the lemniscate of eternal flow
• 9 (The Hermit): Wisdom, solitude, the inner light that guides through darkness
• 10 (Wheel of Fortune): Completion and new beginning, the cycle of fate

Animal Symbolism

Animals in the RWS deck carry specific symbolic weight:

• The white dog (The Fool): Instinct, loyalty, the animal nature that accompanies the soul on its journey—or the warning voice that the Fool ignores
• The lion (Strength, The World): Leo, solar energy, the passions that must be integrated rather than suppressed
• The eagle (The World, Wheel of Fortune): Scorpio, the highest expression of the water element, the soul that has transcended its lower nature
• The bull (The World, Wheel of Fortune): Taurus, earth, the stable foundation of material reality
• The angel/human (The World, Wheel of Fortune): Aquarius, air, the human capacity for reason and spiritual aspiration
• The snake (The Lovers, The Magician's belt): Wisdom, transformation, the kundalini energy, the knowledge of good and evil
• The white horse (Death, The Sun): Purity, the vehicle of transformation, the soul's journey
• The crayfish (The Moon): The unconscious emerging into awareness, the earliest stages of consciousness

Landscape and Architectural Symbolism

• Mountains: Spiritual achievement, the heights of consciousness, the challenges that must be overcome. Mountains appear in the background of many cards as markers of the spiritual journey's difficulty and reward.
• Water: The unconscious, emotion, the flow of feeling and intuition. Rivers, pools, and seas appear throughout the deck as symbols of the emotional and intuitive dimensions of experience.
• The two towers (The Moon): The threshold between the known and unknown, the gateway to the unconscious. The same towers appear in the background of The Death card—the sun setting between them.
• The garden (The Empress, The Lovers): Eden, the fertile unconscious, the natural abundance of the earth before the fall into self-consciousness.
• The cliff (The Fool): The threshold of the unknown, the leap of faith, the moment before experience begins.
• The wreath (The World, The Chariot): Victory, completion, the laurel crown of achievement.

Gesture and Posture Symbolism

• The raised right hand: Active will, blessing, the direction of energy outward into the world. The Magician's raised wand, the Hierophant's raised fingers—both signal the active, outward direction of spiritual power.
• The downward-pointing left hand: "As above, so below"—the Hermetic principle of correspondence between the divine and earthly realms. The Magician's downward-pointing finger completes the circuit between heaven and earth.
• The crossed arms: Integration, completion, the holding of opposites in balance. The World dancer's crossed wands signal the completion of the journey.
• The seated posture: Authority, stability, the grounded power of one who has arrived. The Emperor, the High Priestess, the Hierophant—all seated figures signal established authority.
• The walking/moving posture: Journey, process, the ongoing nature of the quest. The Fool, the Knight cards, the figures in the numbered pip cards—movement signals that the work is in progress.

The Lemniscate and Other Recurring Symbols

• The lemniscate (infinity symbol): Appears above the Magician's head and in the Strength card. It signals the infinite flow of energy, the eternal cycle that has no beginning or end, the integration of conscious and unconscious.
• The pentagram (The Star, The Hierophant's vestments): The five-pointed star of the elements—earth, water, fire, air, and spirit—the symbol of the human being as microcosm of the universe.
• The rose: The soul, desire, the beauty that emerges from the earth. White roses signal spiritual purity; red roses signal earthly passion. The Magician holds a white lily (purity of will) and red roses (earthly desire) together.
• The wand, cup, sword, and pentacle: The four magical tools corresponding to the four elements—fire, water, air, and earth—and the four dimensions of human experience: will, emotion, thought, and material reality.

Reading the Symbolism in Practice

Understanding the RWS symbolic language transforms how you read the deck. When The Moon appears, you're not just reading "confusion and illusion"—you're reading the specific quality of consciousness that emerges when the crayfish of the unconscious crawls from the pool, when the dog and wolf howl at the reflected light, when the towers mark the threshold between the known and unknown. The symbolic precision makes the reading richer, more specific, and more useful.

For practitioners ready to develop this kind of deep symbolic fluency with the Rider-Waite deck, the 30-Day Tarot Practice Workbook provides a structured framework for building card literacy through daily practice—including exercises specifically designed to develop attention to symbolic detail.

For practitioners who want to work with the RWS symbolic language through structured spread work, 50 Tarot Spreads: A Visual Guide provides a comprehensive library of layouts that draw out the symbolic richness of the deck through carefully crafted positional questions.

The practice of tarot journaling is the most effective way to develop symbolic fluency—recording which symbols catch your attention, what associations they evoke, and how your understanding of the deck's symbolic language deepens over time. The High Priestess Tarot Journal provides a dedicated space for this kind of sustained symbolic study and practice documentation.

For me, the joy of reading the RWS deck is in noticing how its symbols speak to each other across cards, and that's what I keep coming back to in my own study. The 30-Day Tarot Practice Workbook has been a quiet anchor in that process, the Tarot Journaling Prompts a gentle guide to the inner questions each symbol raises, and the 52-Week Tarot Journey a steady companion through the cycles of meaning that unfold over time. For those moments when the symbols themselves feel like a threshold, the Shadow Work Tarot and Jung and the Archetype offer a deeper resonance with the unconscious patterns they reveal. These are the resources that have quietly deepened my own relationship with the deck's language.