Arthur Edward Waite

Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942) was an American-born British writer on the occult, raised in London by his widowed mother and educated largely in the British Museum reading room. He wrote and translated a long shelf of books on alchemy, the Kabbalah, Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians, ceremonial magic and the Holy Grail, taking a historical and mystical rather than a practical approach. A member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later founder of his own order, he is best remembered for the Rider-Waite tarot deck of 1909, designed with the artist Pamela Colman Smith. Devil-Worship in France exposed the Taxil hoax against the Freemasons.