Rider-Waite Clones
Tarot Decks In Categories:
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

Fusions, Art Twists and Improvisations

The first row shows the RWS itself, the following rows show variation decks, in descending order by degree of closeness to the RWS. There is a number showing a closeness ranking I explain in an article in Llewellyn's 2005 Tarot Reader (North American Release August 2004).

For those students whose journey begins with Rider-Waite, these decks might be considered intermediate decks, since appreciation of them is enhanced by prior knowledge of the Rider-Waite. Yet the amount of new symbolism is not so great that an entirely new learning curve must be embarked upon to understand them.

They are different enough that if you are trying to study symbolism from a book discussing the Rider-Waite itself, and it is your first encounter with Tarot, you might find yourself confused. But if you do have that foundation of knowledge, these decks will probably be more interesting than closer clones, because they are adding something new - or stripping out whatever symbolism the artist thought unnecessary to highlight something minimalistically.

If you are buying a deck for your first tarot class, and the teacher asked you to bring a Rider-Waite Clone, these aren't the best ones to choose from.

Deck	Judgment	Five of Cups	Ten of Swords
Rider-Waite (62)
Moon Garden (32)
Stone (31)
Spiral (30) Book
World Spirit (30)
Connolly (29)
Aquarian Tarot (27) Book
Hudes (27)
Nigel Jackson (26)
Light and Shadow (24)
Gendron Tarot (23)
Londa Tarot (23)
Blue Rose Tarot (22)
Gilded Tarot (22)
Dali Universal Tarot (22) Book
Revelations Tarot (21)
Melissa Townsend (19)
Cosmic (16)

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This site is a subsite of my main tarot site, containing mini-reviews of more than 100 decks.