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Happy Birthday to Pixie, Mother of Modern Tarot Art

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“Note the dress, the type of face; see if you can trace the character in the face; note the pose. . . . First watch the simple forms of joy, of fear, of sorrow; look at the position taken by the whole body. . . . After you have found how to tell a simple story, put in more details. . . . Learn from everything, see everything, and above all feel everything! . . . Find eyes within, look for the door into the unknown country.” - From an article written by Pamela Colman Smith in the July 1908 volume of The Craftsman

Did you know the artist behind the most iconic tarot deck was a black* woman born of American and Jamaican roots in turn of the century England?⁠ As mentioned in my instagram stories, I'm not here to educate anyone but I am here to share, so here's a quick invitation to learn more about the Mother of Modern Tarot.

Born on this day [2/16] in 1878, Smith was known as Pixie and illustrated not only the gorgeous Major and Minor Arcana of the tarot deck most of us learned when first reading tarot, but she illustrated and wrote several books. ⁠I have her Annancy Stories in my eBook queue for when I'm ready to dive into turn of the century Caribbean folk tales.

She's an honorary ancestor of mine and I feel kindred to her search for spirit and meaning via art, practice, and community. Though our paths are a bit in reverse since she practiced Catholicism later in her life whereas I started in Parochial school and am now much more into the stories that my Tarot decks tell me than the bible did...⁠What’s surprising to me is how late in life I realized Pixie was a black woman, especially since I’ve been ‘into Tarot’ since my teens and nearly all of my favorite decks are highly influenced by her standard-setting work on the Ride-Waite-Smith deck. While Black folx are not a monolith, an overwhelming number of Black Diaspora put more stock in Christian icons like Jesus and the Bible and unfortunately see even simple esoteric practices like Tarot as "evil". I won't dive into that colonized back story, but it does help explain why even I didn't think to research the finer details of who designed the standard bearing deck. It’s also highly likely that I never knew Smith was a black woman because to this day, folx who sell and use the deck leaver her name off when mentioning it as the “Rider-Waite” deck and focusing on the two white male ‘creators’. Check the resources below for links about that erasure.

I've long felt that while I love story and the art of storytelling, I'm not the best at it. It's why I love Tarot to this day and own about 14 decks [Including a small number of Oracle decks and Lenormand decks]. For me Tarot is simply a way to tell ourselves stories as we make sense of the world and events surrounding us. When Pamela the Pixie advises us to "Learn from everything, see everything, and above all feel everything! . . . Find eyes within, look for the door into the unknown country." it's the easiest way to dive into story telling with Tarot and explore the unknown within us all.

*There has always been dispute about Pixies race and thx to the folx pointing me to Courtney Alexander’s @dust2onyxtarot posts noting that the both of Pixie’s parents where White. I'm leaving this up for now till I can absorb these newer to me references but the fact remains that Pamela's ethnicity was always a topic of conversation / controversy and I'm still happy to claim her as an honorary ancestor for her artistry, storytelling, and willingness to seek her own answers. Hope that helps in your own research and I encourage you to dig into both Courtney Alexander’s referenes and the many books detailing Pamela as her contemporaries described her. We know that Cultural Appropriation goes back centuries, and it is very possible that Pamela either ignored or perpetuated the ambiguity of her race for several reasons. I’m glad for these continued exchanges and am equally glad we can each reach our own conclusions. More to come when I have time!