A. E. Waite was an American-born British poet and scholar who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider–Waite tarot deck.
He came to know through is life, which was from 1857 to 1942, that the majority of religion was just used for politics and then got far enough to discover that authentic spirituality happened through a secret tradition which had been passed down verbally from one keeper of secrets to another. Being dispersed among various esoteric and occult traditions, texts, and practices. Providing a higher level of self development, knowledge, understanding, and dare we say the slight pop occult or even woo word “enlightenment.”
After discovering both Gnosticism and Hermeticism, he joined a quite ridiculous amount of mystery tradition and secret societies. Probably more than anyone else before or since: on the 4th of March, 1903, he wrote in his diary: “If my receptions go on at this rate, I look shortly to be the most initiated man in Europe.” In 1902 alone he joined at least nine different secret societies: the Holy Royal Arch, the Knights Templar, the Knights of Malta, the Swedenborgian Rite, the Mark Degree, the Red Cross of Constantine, the Secret Monitor, the Ancient and Accepted Rite, and the Early Grand Scottish Rite which was probably quantity over quality.
He became a known fixture in especially The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and a prolific writer. So much to the point that it’s hard to do any serious esoteric study of texts without coming across one of his works. Here they are in their entirety.