Methodology & Sourcing

Artwork licensing

All 78 card images on ArcanaWell are the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite and originally published by the Rider Company (first printed 1909, with the accompanying Pictorial Key to the Tarot text following in 1910). Every scan was sourced directly from Wikimedia Commons's curated, public-domain "Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck" collection — the complete 78-card set, not a partial or mixed-source selection. Two representative examples:

Why these images are public domain: the deck was first published in 1909, well over 95 years before today, so it is public domain in the United States regardless of the artist's death date. Separately, illustrator Pamela Colman Smith died in 1951 — more than 70 years ago as of 2022 — so the artwork also entered the public domain under the life-plus-70-years rule used by the UK, the EU, and most other jurisdictions worldwide starting in 2022. Wikimedia Commons hosts these specific scans under a public-domain mark for exactly this reason (cleaned-up reproductions of a public-domain 1909 work, with no new copyrightable authorship added). We do not reference or reproduce any imagery from copyrighted modern decks (e.g. the Thoth deck or contemporary illustrated reinterpretations) anywhere on this site — every card image is this same original 1909 Pamela Colman Smith artwork. Files are converted to WebP, capped at a consistent size, and given explicit width/height on every page to protect layout stability; alt text on each image is the same specific artwork description our content team wrote for that card. All 78 are included in our image sitemap.

Astrological & numerological correspondences

The planet, zodiac sign, and element listed on each card page follow the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's tarot attributions, as codified in Israel Regardie's published Golden Dawn materials and widely reused across Rider-Waite-Smith-tradition tarot literature. These are the same correspondences underlying most modern RWS-based tarot references, not a system we invented.

Where tradition genuinely disagrees

We'd rather note real disagreement than smooth it into a false consensus. Two points worth flagging directly:

Strength/Justice numbering (VIII/XI): the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (used throughout this site) numbers Strength as VIII and Justice as XI. The Thoth deck and some earlier esoteric sources swap them (Justice VIII, Strength/Lust XI) to preserve a stricter zodiac-order sequence. We use the RWS numbering throughout, since RWS is the deck being illustrated.
The Fool's planetary attribution: Golden Dawn assigns The Fool pure Air; some later 20th-century systems assign it the planet Uranus instead. We follow the original Golden Dawn Air attribution and note the Uranus variant on the card's own page.
Birth-card-calculator methods: our free tool uses the single-final-reduction method (sum every digit of the birth date, then keep reducing until the result lands in the 0–21 range). Some tarot numerology writers additionally use an intermediate two-card "pair" reading for certain totals — the exact mechanics of that variant differ enough between sources that we've deliberately left it out rather than present a specific version as settled fact.

How content is written

Every card, spread, and guide is individually researched and written — never generated by filling a sentence template with a swapped-in name. Structure (section order, heading pattern) is deliberately consistent across cards for readability; the actual sentences are not reused between entities. See our full uniqueness process in the site's internal quality standards, referenced in our about page.