Waite, Arthur Edward

Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942) Author, mystic, magician, alchemist, and occultist/Arthur Edward Waite is probably best remembered as the cocreator of the popular Rider-Waite TAROT card deck. He was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and was active in both Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

Waite was born on October 2, 1857, in Brooklyn, New York, to Captain Charles F. Waite of the U.S. Merchant Marines and Emma Lovell, the daughter of a wealthy merchant involved in the East Indian trade. Captain Waite died at sea on September 29, 1858, leaving his wife with a baby and pregnant with their second child. After delivering Waite’s sister Frederika, the three returned to London. Emma and Charles had never married, as her family objected to the match. They did not welcome her return with two illegitimate children, forcing Emma to live in the poorer sections of north and west London. As further renunciation of her parents’ unyielding rejection, Emma converted to Roman Catholicism and raised her children in the faith.

Emma devoted her means to young Arthur’s education, however, sending him to small private schools in North London then to St. Charles’s College, a Catholic institution in Baywater. Waite worked as a clerk after graduation, writing poetry and editing a small magazine called The Unknown World, eventually pursuing writing and literary criticism full time. After his sister Frederika died in 1874, Waite began to spend even more time in the Library of the British Museum, reading and searching for the answers that he could not find in Catholicism. He eventually stumbled upon the writings of Eliphas Levi and believed he had found his life’s direction. In 1886 Waite published his first major work on the occult: The Mysteries of Magic, a Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi.

Waite married Ada Lakeman, known as “Lucasta,” in 1883, and they had one daughter, Sybil. While at the Library Waite had met Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, a cofounder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but he did not like Mathers and was initially unimpressed with the order. However, in January 1891 Waite and Lucasta joined the order as neophytes at an initiation ceremony held in Mathers’s home in Dulwich.

Waite never really agreed with Mathers; nevertheless, by April 1892 he had risen to the level of Philosophus. He left the order in 1893 but returned in 1896. By 1899 Waite had entered the Second Level of esoteric knowledge and was studying to receive the top degrees. The Golden Dawn, however, began a downward slide in 1897 with the resignation of Dr. William Wynn Westcott as head and the assumption of the order’s leadership by actress Florence Farr. Controlled by Mathers from Paris and unable to manage effectively, Farr allowed standards to slip, precipitating the decline of the entire London order.

To compensate, Waite joined the Runymede Lodge of Freemasonry on September 19, 1901, becoming exalted to the degree of Holy Royal Arch on May 1, 1902. That same year he joined the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Joining the Masons and the Rosicrucians was a canny move, as many of his new fraternal brothers had been former critics of his books and positions, and despite the internal haggling and splinter groups within Golden Dawn, Waite assumed the mantle of Grand Master in 1903.

Waite’s first act as Grand Master was to change the group’s name to the Order of the Independent and Rectified Rite. Many of the members objected to the name change and to Waite’s preference for mysticism over Magic, leading to the formation of yet another group, the Stella Matutina (Order of the Morning Star), at the urging of poet William Butler Yeats. After years of disputes, Waite dissolved what was left of the Golden Dawn in 1914.

Waite wrote more than 70 books, articles, lectures, and journal contributions during his lifetime, covering subjects from alchemy to Theosophy. He had been attracted to Theosophical philosophy early on but mistrusted the movement’s founder, Madame Helena P. Blavatsky. Some of his works are still in print, including The Holy Kabbalah, the New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, and The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. The Book of Black Magic remains one of the best examinations of magical Grimoires.

He is best remembered, however, for the publication of the Rider-Waite deck of the Tarot. In 1909 Waite had published The Key to the Tarot and needed an illustrator for the book and cards. He persuaded artist Pamela Colman Smith, a member of the Golden Dawn, to illustrate the cards; they were the first deck to have illustrations for all 78 cards, including the Minor Arcana as well as the Major Arcana, and for using the drawings to suggest the Divination meanings of the cards. Occultists embraced the deck when it appeared in 1910, and it remains a favourite Tarot deck today. Waite also popularized the 10-card Tarot divination spread entitled Celtic Cross.

By the start of World War I, Waite had separated from his wife Lucasta and lived with his secretary on Penywern Road in Earl’s Court, London. He moved to Ramsgate, Kent, in 1920. Lucasta died in 1924, allowing Waite’s marriage to Mary Broadbent Schofield in 1924. Waite spent his remaining years in Kent. He died, relatively unknown, on May 19, 1942, during World War II. He is buried in the churchyard at Bishhopsbourne, where his grave is covered in a tangled growth of the deadly nightshade plant, a rather ironic ending for one whose early life as an occult celebrity ended in obscurity.

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