The dove and the wafer

In the tradition

In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the romance the picture follows, a dove comes down every Good Friday and lays a white wafer on the Grail, renewing its power. The dove is the Holy Spirit of the Gospels, which came down "like a dove" at the baptism of Jesus.

Waite, who published a book on the Grail in 1909, the year the deck appeared, calls the dove an intimation of what may lie behind the Lesser Arcana. Modern readers often take the five streams falling from the cup as the five senses.

Sources

• A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
• Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival (early 13th century). The Grail romance in which a dove brings a wafer to the Grail every Good Friday.
• Various, The Bible (King James Version 1611; the Latin Vulgate, 4th century). The source of much of the Temple, Eden and Revelation imagery in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

Updated October 9, 2026.