Eden Gray

Eden Gray, born Priscilla Pardridge on June 9, 1901, in Chicago, was an American actress and writer on esoteric tarot. She was the daughter of Albert Jerome Pardridge and adopted the professional name Eden Gray after relocating to New York in the early 1920s to pursue an acting career.

Gray's Broadway career spanned from 1920 to 1933 and included appearances in productions such as Dangerous Corner, Doctor X, The Age of Innocence, What the Doctor Ordered, and Number 7, among others. Her screen work included the films Lovers in Quarantine in 1925 and The Man Who Lost Himself in 1941. During World War II, her acting career was interrupted when she served as a lab technician with the Woman's Army Corps.

Beyond the stage and screen, Gray built a second career centered on the occult and metaphysical. In the 1950s she opened a bookstore in New York called Inspiration House Publishing, which specialized in occult and metaphysical literature. She also earned a Doctorate of Divinity degree from the First Church of Religious Science in New York. Her book Tarot Revealed, an introductory work on the tarot published by Inspiration House in 1960 and later reprinted by Signet Books in 1969, was among her earliest written contributions to the subject. Through her subsequent books, including A Complete Guide to the Tarot published by Bantam Books and Crown Publishers in 1970 and Mastering the Tarot published by Crown Publishers in 1971, Gray played a significant role in shaping contemporary interest in esoteric tarot during the 1960s, particularly regarding the Waite-Smith Tarot deck and the Fool's Journey interpretation of the tarot trump cards.

Gray was married to Lester Cohen and had a son, Peter Gray Cohen, also known as Peter Gray. In 1971 she moved to Vero Beach, Florida, where she became a member of the Vero Beach Art Club, Riverside Theater, and Theater Guild. She died on January 14, 1999, at IRM Hospital in Vero Beach at the age of 97.