Arthur Edward Waite

A British scholar and historian of occultism and mysticism. Waite was born on October 2, 1857, in Brooklyn, New York, and brought to London, England, by his family when he was an infant. He was educated in Roman Catholic schools. As a boy, he cherished an affection for "penny dreadfuls," the romantic popular pulp literature of the day.

Waite grew up during the first European renaissance of occultism which stretched from the end of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I, and his personal friends included Arthur Machen and Ralph Shirley. He also met William Butler Yeats, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Rudolf Steiner, Wynn Westcott, Algernon Blackwood, and Aleister Crowley.

Waite regularly contributed to Shirley's Occult Review, and for some twenty years he edited anonymously its monthly "Re-view of Periodical Literature." During this period he acquired a knowledge of the major current developments in occultism all over the world.

He was also a Freemason and authority on Masonic writings. He was responsible for the first British publication of many important occult and mystical texts. He translated and publicized the writings of occultist Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant).

In 1891 Waite joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn but quit in less than a year believing his time was better spent studying and translating alchemical texts. He developed a negative attitude toward all magical ritual and believed that rituals differed primarily in the amount of black magic they contained.

Waite became a devoted mystic and in the wake of the collapse of the Golden Dawn in 1915, he founded the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. He believed that suitably constructed rituals, which he endeavored to write, that had a dramatic form but were of a religious (devotional) rather than magical (manipulative) format, could assist the mystical quest.

Waite was involved in the transition from the first to the second generation of the occult revival. He was a productive occult writer and produced some historical texts and translations. Because he critiqued the magical endeavor, he was disliked and denegrated by occultists, and orthodox mystics distrusted him because of his association with the occult. Recovery of his work has been assisted by the efforts of Robert Gilbert, who has produced a biography and a bibliography of his writings.

Through the twentieth century, Waite was known for his work with Pamela Coleman-Smith in the production of a deck of tarot cards (the Waite deck) and his commentary on the tarot, The Key to the Tarot (1910). Both the deck and the book remain popular in spite of the numerous new divinatory tarot decks that have been produced in the late twentieth century as expressions of the Wiccan and New Age movements.

Waite died May 19, 1942.

Sources:

Gilbert, Robert A. A. E. Waite: A Bibliography. Wellingbo-rough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press, 1983.

——. A. E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Crucible, Thorsons, 1987.

Waite, Arthur E. Azoth; or, The Star in the East. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1893.

——. The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. London: George Redway, 1898. Revised as The Book of Ceremonial Magic. London: William Rider, 1911.

——. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. London: William Rider & Sons, 1924.

——. The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail. London: Rebman, 1909.

——. The Key to the Tarot. London: William Rider, 1910.

——. The Occult Sciences. London: George Redway, 1891. Reprint, Secacus, N.J.: University Books, 1974.

——. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. London: William Rider, 1911.

——. The Real History of the Rosicrucians. London: George Redway, 1887.

——. Shadows of Life and Thought. London: Selwyn and Blount, 1938.

——. Studies in Mysticism and Certain Aspects of the Secret Tradition. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906.

Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite in the early 1880s
Born	October 2, 1857(1857-10-02)
Died	May 19, 1942 (aged 84)
Nationality	American
Known for	Rider-Waite Tarot deck
Spouse(s)	Ada Lakeman, Mary Broadbent Schofield
Children	Sybil Waite
Parents	Captain Charles F. Waite, Emma Lovell
Relatives	Frederika Waite

Arthur Edward Waite (October 2, 1857 – May 19, 1942) was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. As his biographer, R.A. Gilbert described him, "Waite's name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of western occultism — viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of proto-science or as the pathology of religion."^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Author and scholar 3 Tarot deck 4 Other works 5 References 6 Sources 7 External links

Early life

Waite was born in the United States.^[2] Waite's father, Capt. Charles F. Waite, died when he was at a very young age, and his widowed mother, Emma Lovell, returned to her home country of England, where he was then raised.^[3] As they were not well off, Waite was educated at a small private school in North London. When he was thirteen, he was then educated at St. Charles' College.^[4] When he left school to become a clerk he wrote verse in his spare time. The death of his sister, Frederika Waite, in 1874 soon attracted him into psychical research. At twenty-one he began to read regularly in the Library of the British Museum, studying many branches of esotericism.

When Waite was almost thirty years old, he married Ada Lakeman (also called 'Lucasta') and they had one daughter, Sybil Waite.^[5] Some time after Lucasta's death in 1924, Waite married Mary Broadbent Schofield. He spent most of his life in or near London, connected to various publishing houses, and editing a magazine The Unknown World.

A.E. Waite joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in January 1891 after being introduced by E.W. Berridge.^[6] He became a Freemason in 1901,^[7] and entered the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1902. The Golden Dawn was torn by further internal feuding until Waite's departure in 1914; later he formed the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross,^[8] not to be confused with the Societas Rosicruciana. By that time there existed some half-dozen offshoots from the original Golden Dawn, and as a whole it never recovered.^[9]

Author and scholar

Arthur Edward Waite in later years

Waite was a prolific author with many of his works being well received in academic circles. He wrote occult texts on subjects including divination, esotericism, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, black and ceremonial magic, Kabbalism and alchemy; he also translated and reissued several important mystical and alchemical works. His works on the Holy Grail, influenced by his friendship with Arthur Machen, were particularly notable.^[10][11] A number of his volumes remain in print, the Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911), The Holy Kabbalah (1929), A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1921), and his edited translation of Eliphas Levi's Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual (1896) having seen reprints in recent years.

Tarot deck

Waite is best known as the co-creator of the popular and widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume, the Key to the Tarot, republished in expanded form the following year, 1911, as the Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a guide to Tarot reading^[12]. The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot was notable for being one of the first tarot decks to illustrate all 78 cards fully, in addition to the 22 major arcana cards. Golden Dawn member Pamela Colman Smith illustrated the cards for Waite, and the deck was first published in 1909.

Other works

• Waite, Edward, Inner and Outer Order Initiations of the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn, Canada:Burnaby, 2005. ISBN 0-9735931-7-2.
• Waite, Arthur Edward, Israfel: Letters, Visions and Poems, London:Allen, 1886.
• Waite, Arthur Edward, A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (Ars Magna Latomorum) and of Cognate Instituted Mysteries: Their Rites, Literature, and History, New York:Wings Books, 1994. ISBN 0517191482.
• Waite, Arthur Edward, Theories As to the Authorship of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes, Whitefish, MT:Kessinger Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1425332900.
• Waite, Arthur Edward, The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail: Its Legends and Symbolism Considered in Their Affinity with Certain Mysteries of Initiation and Other Traces of a Secret Tradition in Christian Times, Amsterdam, the Netherlands:Fredonia Books, 2002. ISBN 1589639057.

References

1. ^ Gilbert, R.A.A.E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts, Wellingborough, Northhamptonshire, 1987, p. 361.
2. ^ "Arthur Edward Waite". Kheper. http://www.kheper.net/topics/Hermeticism/Waite.html. 
3. ^ "Arthur Edward Waite". Controverscial. http://www.controverscial.com/Arthur%20Edward%20Waite.htm. 
4. ^ "Arthur Edward Waite". Everything2.com. http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1674656. 
5. ^ "Arthur Edward Waite". NNDB. http://www.nndb.com/people/958/000050808/. 
6. ^ King, Modern RM, page 52
7. ^ Arthur E. Waite
8. ^ Arthur Edward Waite by Lee Prosser
9. ^ Howe, Ellic,The Magicians of the Golden Dawn, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972
10. ^ Waite, A.E., Shadows of Life and Thought: A Retrospective Review in the Form of Memoirs, London: Selwyn and Blount, 1938
11. ^ Gilbert, R.A., A.E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts, Wellingborough, Northhamptonshire, 1987
12. ^ Waite, A.E., The Key to the Tarot, London, 1910

Sources

• King, Francis X.. Modern Ritual Magic: The Rise of Western Occultism (2nd ed.). 

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Arthur Edward Waite

• Short Biography
• "The Masonic Career of A.E. Waite", AQC Vol 99 1986
• Genealogy and links
• Works by Arthur Edward Waite at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Arthur Edward Waite at sacred-texts.com (plain text and HTML)
• [1]

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