About Finbarre Snarey

Finbarre Snarey, tarot researcher, journalist and creator of CardMeanings.com

I’m Finbarre Snarey, a tarot researcher, journalist and creator of CardMeanings.com.

I have worked with tarot for more than thirty years, with a particular interest in the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition and the ways tarot functions as a living practice, a storytelling system and a tool for conversation.

I created CardMeanings.com as a handy reference guide to all 78 Rider-Waite-Smith tarot cards. Each guide brings together the symbolism of Pamela Colman Smith’s artwork, A. E. Waite’s original 1910 text and my own interpretations of the cards that I have gathered together from research and readings over the decades.

My wider work explores what happens when tarot moves beyond the reading table. I created Tarot Interviews, an audio interview format in which tarot cards generate questions for writers, musicians, artists and other creative figures, and Tarot DMs, a written interview format conducted through mobile messaging apps.

I am also the founder of the British Tarot Archive, which documents and preserves material connected with the history and practice of tarot in Britain.

In Spring 2026, I coordinated a community submission documenting Rider-Waite-Smith tarot reading practice in the UK for the UK Inventories of Living Heritage. I also presented my paper, Tarot Reading as Living Heritage: Documenting Contemporary Rider-Waite-Smith Practice in the UK, at Tarot Cultures, a conference organised by Goldsmiths, University of London.

CardMeanings.com is part of this wider body of work: documenting the cards, tracing the traditions behind their meanings and providing a clear, useful guide to interpreting them today.

Elsewhere