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Arthur Edward Waite (October 2, 1857 - May 19, 1942) |
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| Arthur Edward Waite was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. | |
| A.E. Waite joined the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn in 1891, became a Freemason
in 1901, and entered the Societas
Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1902. The Golden Dawn was torn by
further internal feuding until Waite's departure in 1914. A year
later he formed the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, 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.
Waite was a prolific author with many of his works being well received in academic circles. He wrote occult texts on subjects including divination, the occult, 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. 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. 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 reading the Tarot. 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 1910.
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