The serene Universal Waite Tarot is perfect for meditation and readings. The deck is a soothing, eye-appealing complement to the traditional Rider-Waite deck. The drawings of Pamela Colman Smith have been beautifully recolored by Mary Hanson-Roberts.
A More Revealing Look at the Images As a tarot reader & instructor, I have used several decks, favoring the Rider-Waite deck for over 10 years. However, the more eye-pleasing coloring of the Universal Waite Tarot has brought out a lot of details that were much more difficult to see in the original deck. I use the deck now in my on-line and in-person tarot workshops and find that the improved clarity of the images translates into improved clarity of students’ tarot readings. The rich symbolism of this deck makes it easy to interpret intuitively without prior study yet, still offers a wealth of deep, esoteric knowledge for advanced readers.
Softer colours, not so harsh I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I’ve never liked the original Rider Waite deck. To me reading them was like trying to absorb road directions from an incoherent person who was hitting you over the head with a board — the information got lost in the unpleasantness of the experience. I did not like the way the figures were outlined in black, the colours looked too primary and unrealistic and I found the human figures devoid of personality.