Do you prefer The Hermetic Tarot over the Rider Waite tarot? – Quora

The Hermetic Tarot

The Rider Waite Tarot Deck

(A2A) I own both decks: for my own particular reasons I prefer using the Hermetic Tarot over Rider-Waite, and usually end up recommending it to others (I even bought a copy of the Hermetic Tarot as a Christmas present for my girlfriend!)

Because I am keenly interested in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Hermetic Tarot is my go-to deck, because it is an actual GD deck. It closely follows the designs specified in Book T, which is the Golden Dawn’s inner order teachings on the Tarot; it includes the astrological attributions of all 78 cards; and each card features divine and angelic Hebrew names which reflects the Qabalistic associations thereof. It is thus an ideal deck to complement Golden Dawn teachings.

The Rider-Waite deck, whilst not completely incompatible with the Golden Dawn, is not GD-specific, despite the fact that A E Waite and Pixie Coleman-Smith were both (at one time) GD members. The Rider-Waite deck is more generic in outlook. It is thus perfectly suitable for people who just want to use it for Tarot divination: the fact that it is fully illustrated in colour makes it especially suitable for giving readings to clients. So although I prefer the Hermetic Tarot, that’s not to say the Rider-Waite deck is not a good deck in its own right.

Source: Alex Sumner’s answer to Do you prefer The Hermetic Tarot over the Rider Waite tarot? – Quora