Stuart R. Kaplan

Stuart R. Kaplan’s work is directly responsible for much of the revival of interest in tarot in the late twentieth century. In addition to distributing and publishing numerous tarot decks including the Rider-Waite, Stuart was the author of Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling, The Encyclopedia of Tarot Volumes I–IV, Tarot Classic and Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story. He passed away on February 9, 2021, just a few weeks shy of his 89th birthday and just as he was beginning work on an interview for the Almanac’s Merry Meetings feature. Stuart left behind a legacy of passion for and knowledge of the esoteric arts, particularly tarot. Here Jennifer Kaplan and Lynn Araujo graciously share some of his career highlights and his major contributions to the understanding of tarot.

The tarot renaissance Stuart ignited in America began with a serendipitous visit to the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1968. On the last day of the fair he came across a small exhibition booth belonging to AG Müller & Cie of Neuhausen, Switzerland. In a previous interview Stuart shared this story. “They had a Swiss 1JJ Tarot deck tucked away in a corner of the booth along with the range of Swiss playing cards that they manufactured,” he remembered. “I picked up the deck and had no idea what it was except that it seemed interesting. The images on the cards intrigued me. I am a researcher at heart, and I planned to study each of the images on the 22 Major Arcana in hopes of unraveling their meaning and learning about the origin of the images. I negotiated the rights and ordered 5,000 decks,” he recalled. “AG Müller wasn’t selling that many Tarot decks in an entire year, and they thought it was surprising that anyone would want to purchase so many Tarot decks, but I saw some possibilities in distributing them in the States.”

Stuart began selling the deck to bookstores in New York City. Henry Levy—a buyer for Brentano’s—suggested that Kaplan write a book about the cards to explain what they meant and how they could be used as his customers needed more information. The result was his first book on tarot, Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling. It presented a very brief introduction to the history of the cards, a description of each card’s divinatory meaning and instructions for seven different spreads. At a time when there were only a few widely available books on tarot, it found a ready market. “It was reprinted more than twenty times and sold over 700,000 copies, which still amazes me given its simplicity,” Stuart mused.

The Swiss 1JJ Tarot also sold well. It’s an unusual deck with an unusual title: JJ stands for Jupiter and Juno, the names of two Roman deities. “In deference to the Catholic Church, AG Müller changed the title on The Popess and The Pope cards to Juno and Jupiter, and they named the deck Swiss 1JJ,” Kaplan explained. The deck, which derives from the Tarot de Marseilles, was first produced in the 1830s by Johann Georg Raunch. In 1965 the Swiss card game firm, AG Müller, issued a reprint with cleaner lines.

Tarot Classic

The success of the Swiss 1JJ deck along with Stuart’s growing interest in the history of tarot led him to collaborate with AG Müller to publish Tarot Classic, a Marseilles-style deck based on 18th century woodcuts by Claude Burdel. To go with that deck—published in 1972—Stuart wrote a longer, more detailed and more fully researched book. “I was anxious to write a second book that had some meaningful substance about tarot, and Tarot Classic was the result,” he remembered. The Tarot Classic book, also published in 1972, has a much more extensive essay on the esoteric background of tarot, touching on important figures such as Antoine Court de Gébelin, Etteilla, Papus and others. “I am an obsessive researcher,” Stuart explained. “I purchased all the books written by these authors and dozens more, and I read everything I could find.” Stuart mentioned that he had even located and purchased the nine volume set of Court de Gébelin’s Le Monde Primitif, published in Paris in the 1770s and 80s, which includes the important 1781 chapter “Du Jeu des Tarots.” This essay marked the beginning of tarot’s acceptance by European occultists as an esoteric system of knowledge, as well as an occult tool. It also fueled Stuart’s love of collecting, which was a lifelong passion beginning with Indian head pennies as a shy, skinny kid in the Bronx.

Rider-Waite

Stuart’s research for Tarot Classic stirred his interest in Arthur E. Waite and the Rider-Waite Tarot. “I was not aware of the Rider-Waite when I initially imported the Swiss 1JJ deck,” he admitted. But all that would change. “With the surprising success in the first several years of importing and selling some 200,000 tarot decks—the Swiss 1JJ and Tarot Classic—I was interested in expanding the range of Tarot,” he continued. Donald Weiser, president of the occult and esoteric imprint Weiser Books, suggested that Kaplan investigate the status of the Rider-Waite Tarot. As he discovered, the rights were held by Hutchinson Publishing, successor to Rider & Company, under rights granted from the National Trust in the U.K. Kaplan wasted no time. “I went to London,” he remembered, “and negotiated the rights for worldwide distribution.”

After its publication in 1970, the Rider-Waite deck would come to be the cornerstone of U.S. Games Systems’ line of tarot and the single most popular tarot pack in the world. In explaining the Rider deck’s great popularity, Kaplan pointed out that before this deck, all others except the Sola Busca had minor arcana cards in which the “pip” cards—ace through ten—showed only a geometrical arrangement of the suit signs, much like numbered playing cards. To illustrate the Rider deck, Waite hired illustrator and occultist Pamela Colman Smith to draw the tarot images. Kaplan explained that, “The presence of full images on the forty pip cards of the minor arcana sets apart the Rider-Waite deck from all prior decks,” and recognized that the vibrant, fully pictorial artwork was the reason for the Rider-Waite tarot’s popularity. As Kaplan learned more about Colman Smith and her contributions to the tarot and beyond, he felt she never got the recognition she deserved both in the world of tarot or the wider world of art. Pamela Colman Smith died penniless and lonely on September 18, 1951.

Pamela Colman Smith

Kaplan’s interest in Colman Smith’s career began when he came to understand how important her intuition had been in the creation of the Rider-Waite tarot. Many people credit Waite with telling Colman Smith what scenes to put on the minor arcana cards. Others suggest that The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—an occult society to which both Waite and Colman Smith belonged—directed her creativity. But as Kaplan was fond of pointing out, several of the cards are copied from the Sola Busca deck. This suggests that Colman Smith must have seen the complete set of photographs of that deck that had recently been acquired by the British Museum. Furthermore Waite published his own descriptions of minor arcana cards, and some of them were far more vague and general than Colman Smith’s concrete imagery. “It wasn’t so much Arthur Edward Waite or the Golden Dawn,” Kaplan concluded. “I think it was more Pamela Colman Smith and her own intuition that did the deck.”

In the 1980s Kaplan began collecting everything he could find about Pixie—as Colman Smith’s friends knew her. He loved to tell this story: “I traveled to Bude and ran full-page ads in the local newspapers advertising to purchase any of the former belongings that were sold at auction after her death,” he remembered. “Fortunately, I was able to locate some of her books, paintings, letters, and other personal belongings. I have her birth and death certificate, her will, her personal visitors book, her Missal, reviews by art critics of her early paintings, the original, complete sets of The Green Sheaf and A Broad Sheet (periodicals that featured her artwork), and many hand-colored plates from her publications.” Kaplan even acquired a sorrowful poem that Colman Smith wrote late in life, revealing how unhappy and isolated she was. It is simply entitled simply Alone. Kaplan’s love for poetry and quotes was well-known by his family and friends. As long as his children can remember, he carried a well-worn poem in his wallet called “Don’t Quit” by John Greenleaf Whittier, copies of which adorn the walls of U.S. Games.

Determined to share with the tarot world all he had discovered about Pamela Colman Smith, Stuart included a biographical essay about Pixie in volume III of his Encyclopedia of Tarot. Later the article would be expanded into a book co-authored with Lynn Araujo, The Artwork & Times of Pamela Colman Smith as part of a set celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Rider-Waite deck. The book included over 100 examples of her non-tarot art. The set featured the Smith-Waite Centennial Edition Tarot Deck which is reproduced from the original 1909 deck. It marked the first time Coleman Smith’s name was attached to the deck she created, and a tribute to the woman whose creativity and intuition continues to inspire millions of people around the world.

In 2018 Stuart realized a dream with the publication of Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story. Exhaustively researched and authored by Kaplan, Mary K. Greer, Elizabeth Foley O’Connor and Melinda Boyd Parsons, the book is a comprehensive collection of works by and about Pamela Colman Smith with pages of color images of Pamela’s non-tarot art from his private library. Always thoughtful with every detail, Stuart chose green cloth to feature Pixie’s favorite color for the limited edition and stamped her initials and signature in gold foil on the cover and slipcase. Stuart finished the book under the thoughtful gaze of Pixie, whose 1906 oil portrait by Alphaeus Philemon Cole hangs in his office.

Tarot of the Witches

Kaplan introduced two modern tarot decks in the 70s that would become iconic for the era but also timeless in their artistic appeal. Popular designer and illustrator David Palladini had created tarot artwork for Morgan Press. Stuart added the deck to the U.S. Games Systems catalog in 1970 and it has remained a bestseller for over fifty years. Three years later in early 1973 U.S. Games secured worldwide rights to a tarot deck created by another contemporary tarot artist—Fergus Hall. Stuart collaborated with the artist to adapt the colorful deck to be later know as Tarot of the Witches, aka The James Bond 007 Tarot. Stuart wrote both the “Little White Booklet” for the deck and the Tarot of the Witches Book. Years later Stuart loved sharing the story of his involvement with the project. On February 13 at the London office of Eon Productions he and his wife Marilyn met with Fergus Hall and Edwin Nigg of AG Müller, who would be printing the deck. They also met Harry Saltzman, the co-producer of the James Bond film Live and Let Die for which the deck was being used. Though Stuart had the opportunity to watch the filming of the movie starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour, instead he spent the day with Fergus Hall who “described in considerable detail each painting and the author is indebted to Mr. Hall’s courtesy and patience in expressing many of the feelings he sought to portray as he created each symbolic tarot card.”

Stuart wrote the following insights about the Tarot of the Witches:

The High Priestess card in the tarot deck is one of the most compelling cards of the twenty-two Major Arcana. The High Priestess is the source of great knowledge and divine wisdom. She is a queen in the highest sense of the word and the protector of the Witches’ coven. The ideal coven consists of six perfect couples—six males and six females plus the High Priestess. In some covens the High Priestess also has a personal emissary. Five of the six couples, ten persons in total, are represented in the tarot pack by the pip cards numbered one to ten in any of the four suits of the Minor Arcana. The last couple, represented by the king and valet (jack), are usually a warlock and witch in training. They assist the High Priestess represented by the queen and her personal emissary, the knight. Thus, the coven is usually represented by thirteen persons, sometimes increased to fourteen by the addition of the personal emissary to the High Priestess. In ancient times the complete coven was similar in number to the fourteen cards found in each suit of the tarot deck—the pip cards numbered 1 to 10 plus four court cards, the valet, knight, queen and king. Today there are only thirteen cards in each suit of modern playing cards, similar in number to the thirteen persons in most modern covens. The magick circle is the holy place of worship and knowledge. The circle contains within its bounds powerful and compelling forces. When an initiate stands at the threshold of the magick circle it represents the passage of darkness and ignorance into the light of perception, knowledge and wisdom. The magick circle is the place where the High Priestess resides. She blesses and presides over her coven with wisdom and divine perception.

The Encyclopedia of Tarot

With his natural curiosity and quest for knowledge piqued by what he discovered in writing his first books, Stuart threw himself into researching and learning everything he could about the history of tarot. Writing The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volumes I–IV gave him the rare opportunity to meet hundreds of talented tarot artists and authors from different countries and all walks of life. It also allowed him to personally enjoy their immense talent which he loved. He and his wife Marilyn traveled numerous times to Europe where they reveled in the generous company of creative tarot artists and authors, art historians, tarot collectors and readers. Together they purchased many items that would later become part of the Stuart and Marilyn R. Kaplan Playing Card Collection. Like the beloved album of Indian Head pennies he collected as a young boy, Stuart treasured each item for its unique beauty and story and many were featured in the encyclopedias.

He would take the train into New York City from Connecticut to work at the cramped Park Avenue office of U.S. Games Systems, where he packed decks, sold decks and wrote about decks. After the day in the city, he would return home where Marilyn had dinner and a kind word waiting, then retire to the living room to work on the encyclopedias. Like his father before him Stuart wanted to create something that he built himself and if he were to fail or succeed it would be his responsibility with no one else to blame. In addition to an incredible work ethic he was fueled by Mallomars, coffee ice cream and Lipton tea. The first encyclopedia was printed in 1978 and brought together every major theory and interpretation, every recognized tarot deck and all knowledge relating to the symbolism, origins, iconography and interpretation of the cards that Stuart could find. He realized each volume of the encyclopedia brought more opportunity for research and learning about tarot, a passion that never waned. Stuart’s energy and creative vision is carried forth by all the fellow travelers in the new age community and he was continually humbled by the love and respect shown to him.

His dedication in The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume IV reads:
To the people who make the world of tarot: artists, scholars, dreamers, booksellers, writers, collectors, magicians…to all believers.