Arthur Edward Waite

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Arthur Edward Waite (1857 - 1942) was an occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Born in America, and raised in England, A.E. Waite joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1891 and also entered the Societas Rosicruciana in 1902. When he became Grand Master of the Order in 1903, changing its name to the Holy Order the Golden Dawn (or possibly the Independent and Rectified Rite of the Golden Dawn), many members rejected his focus on mysticism over magic, and a rival group, Stella Matutina (Morning Star), split off at the urging of poet William Butler Yeats. 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. 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 of occult texts on subjects including divination, Rosicrucianism, freemasonry, black and ceremonial magic, Kabbalism and alchemy; he also translated and reissued several important mystical and alchemical works.

Waite is best known as the co-creator of the popular and widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck. This was notable for being one of the first decks to illustrate all 78 cards fully, not just the 22 major arcana. Golden Dawn member Pamela Colman Smith designed the cards, and they were first published in 1910.

Selected works

• The Book of Ceremonial Magic (revised and expanded from his 1898 Book of Black Magic and of Pacts) (1913)
• A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (1920)
• A Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910)
• The Holy Kabbalah
• The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail
• The Real History of the Rosicrucians
• The Secret Tradition in Alchemy
• The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry