The most widely used deck came from a guy named Arthur Edward Waite. He was born in New York and after his sister’s death, he became interested in the occult and became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Freemasons and the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. He also turned up as an ignominious character in Aleister Crowley’s Moonchild which was unfair as Waite contributed a lot to occultism, translating many esoteric texts and publishing many books.

Summary

There’s a seminal character in Western Esotericism, whose impact is not mirrored by the meagre amount of research that has been done on him.

An occultist who helped magicians and witches understand the importance of symbolism and the mysticism underlying every magical endeavour. He’s best known for his involvement in the creation of the Rider-Waite tarot deck.

Welcome to an episode on Arthur Edward Waite’s biography.

Hello everyone, I’m Doctor Angela Puca, and welcome to my Symposium.

I’m a PhD and a university lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of magic, esotericism, and all things occult.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Regulus, a kind friend and supporter of the Symposium who commissioned this video. Thank you so much for sponsoring this video and I truly hope you enjoy it!

Before diving into Waite’s biography, I have to premise that Arthur Edward Waite is understudied in academia and there is hardly any scholarly material on his life and work. Hopefully, in the future, we’ll get a better understanding of this character thanks to more academic studies on the topic.

For this video, I will have to rely on primary sources, and on the works by the biographer of Waite, Robert Gilbert, often cited in academic scholarship when Waite is, alas, only briefly mentioned.
Waite’s life was rather eventful and so I’m going to limit the discussion by focusing on the moments in his life which seemed to have been most impactful on his esoteric journey.

Interestingly, Waite wrote a lot about his biographical events himself, yet not quite accurately, as Gilbert will argue (Waite, 2010).

Arthur Edward Waite was a prolific author and translator of occult texts (Gilbert, 1983). He published numerous books on various esoteric topics as well as his own poetic endeavours. Waite, himself, looked upon his studies of the occult or of ‘The Secret Tradition’, as he preferred to call it, as of subsidiary importance to his poetry, from a literary point of view. He thought of himself, after all, as ‘the exponent in poetical and prose writings of sacramental religion and the higher mysticism'(Gilbert, 1987, p. 13).

He was never recognised as a scholar by the academic world, but he still attempted to be a comprehensive analyst of the history of occultism in all its many branches. Even sympathetic scholars, such as Gershom Scholem, who mentioned Waite in his ‘The Secret Doctrine in Israel’ as knowledgeable and insightful on topics like Kabbalah, then goes on to add that it is regrettable that this knowledge comes with an uncritical attitude towards facts of history and philology.

Moving on to his biography, Arthur Edward Waite was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 2nd of October in 1857 and died in London on the 19th of May in 1942.

His father was a captain in the American merchant marine and died at sea while his mother was the daughter of a wealthy London merchant involved in the East India trade. She returned to England shortly after her partner’s death with the two-year-old Arthur and his infant sister Frederika. Both were illegitimate children, for their parents were never married. This was quite a controversial situation to be in – at the time – and led mothers and children to live in poverty and be rejected by their families. This rejection seems to have prompted the conversion of Waite’s mother to the Roman Catholic church.

His sister’s death in 1874 was a painful turning point for Waite as he began taking part in seances, which will reveal to be his gateway to the world of the occult. Indeed, Waite left aside Catholicism and committed himself to Spiritualism first and the Theosophical thought along with Martinism shortly after. Interestingly, he never truly abandoned Christianity, which will remain extremely influential – especially in its mystical, non-dogmatic interpretations in his esoteric life.

Waite entered the Outer Order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in January 1891, introduced by E.W. Berridge. The Golden Dawn was a secret society of would-be magicians founded in 1887 by Westcott, (Dr., W. R.) Woodman and (S. L.) MacGregor Mathers, based on manuscript rituals written in cypher (Gilbert, 1986). Waite’s first encounter with the order was short-lived, as in 1893 he withdrew from the Golden Dawn, to then join it again in 1896. Waite stayed much longer this time and progressed within the Order, until his definite departure in 1914.

Waite, however, was not exclusively a member of the Golden Dawn, as his multifaceted interest in the occult led him to seek involvement with other traditions and orders. In 1901, he became a Freemason and later joined the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1902.

Shortly after, Waite established his own order; the Independent and Rectified Order R. R. et A. C. in 1903. This was an esoteric Order that only survived for 11 years. In 1915, he then founded the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, inspired but not to be mistaken for the Societas Rosicruciana, which was one of the few groups that were formed as a result of the internal feuds that emerged within the Golden Dawn and led to its progressive downfall.

And they say the modern magic community is litigious! Even in the early 20th century, the internal fights were pretty brutal!

Notable is the relationship between Waite and Aleister Crowley. The two were proper “frenemies”, well that was the case from Crowley’s side, who harboured a mixture of admiration and spite towards Waite. The latter seemed to be quite unfazed by Crowley’s remarks.

You can tell what Crowley’s views of Waite were by reading what Crowley wrote to a friend in 1945, ‘If it had not been for Waite, I doubt if humanly speaking, I should ever have got in touch with the Great Order.'(Gilbert, 1987, p. 11)

Nice, ha? Hear the rest!

‘Waite certainly did start a revival of interest in Alchemy, Magic, Mysticism, and all the rest. That his scholarship was so contemptible, his style so over-loaded, and his egomania so outrageous does not kill to the point of extinction, the worth of his contribution.’

Ahem… thanks? I guess?

On other occasions, Crowley heaped venomous personal attacks on Waite. He indeed turned Waite into a character in his novel Moonchild and called him ‘Edwin Arthwait’, a character that he described as ‘a dull and inaccurate pedant without imagination or real magical perception’ (Crowley, 1971).

Woah! If that’s not love, I don’t know what is!

Crowley’s view may have been inspired by Waite being more interested in mysticism than he ever was in the kind of magic deployed to alter mundane circumstances or to institutional religions. For Waite, it was all about knowing and experiencing the arcane and the symbolic nature of our existence, to ultimately achieve the ‘Divine Union’: the reunion of ourselves with the divine source that lies as a spark within each human being.

In fact, his biographer described our Arthur Edward Waite as someone who ‘saw what others before him had not seen, that there can be no final understanding of mystical experience without an appreciation of the traditions, outside the confines of the Church, that preserved those practices that bring mystical experience within the reach of every man and woman (Gilbert, 1987, p. 12).

Lastly, I am only going to briefly mention his involvement in the creation of one of the most known and used Tarot decks today, first published as Rider-Waite Tarot Deck in 1910 and illustrated by the artist and member of the Golden Dawn Pamela Colman Smith. This topic is so luscious that I’m going to dedicate an entire video to it. So, stay tuned for that one!

What do you think? Any thoughts on the topic? Let me know in the comments, I’m eager to know!

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REFERENCES
Crowley, A. (1971) Moonchild, New impression edition., New York, Red Wheel/Weiser.

Gilbert, R. A. (1983) A E Waite A Bibliography, First Edition., The Aquarian Press.

Gilbert, R. A. (1986) ‘The Masonic Career of A. E. Waite’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, vol. 99.

Gilbert, R. A. (1987) A.E.Waite: Magician of Many Parts, First Edition., Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, Aquarian Press.

Waite, A. E. (2010) Shadows of Life and Thought, Kessinger Publishing.

First uploaded 7 Jun 2021