What is Alchemy? E-Book

Arthur Edward Waite

• Herausgeber: Edizioni Aurora Boreale
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The exaltation of the base nature in man, by the development of his latent powers; the purification, conversion, and transmutation of man; the achievement of a hypostatic union of man with God. Not only was all this the concealed aim of Alchemy, but the process by which this union was effected, veiled under the symbolism of chemistry, is the process with which the literature is concerned, which process also is alone described by all veritable adepts. The man who by proper study and contemplation, united to an appropriate interior attitude, with a corresponding conduct on the part of the exterior personality, attains a correct interpretation of Hermetic symbolism, will, in doing so, be put in possession of the secret of divine reunion, and will, so far as the requisite knowledge is concerned, be in a position to encompass the great work of the Mystics. The power which operates in the transmutation of metals alchemically is, in the main, a psychic power. That is to say, a man who has passed a certain point in his spiritual development, after the mode of the Mystics, has a knowledge and control of physical forces which are not in the possession of ordinary humanity.

Leseprobe

Τεληστήριον

ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE

WHAT IS ALCHEMY?

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: What is Alchemy?

Author: Arthur Edward Waite

Publishing Series: Telestèrion

Editing and preface by Nicola Bizzi

ISBN e-book version: 979-12-5504-096-5

Cover image: illustration from the Splendor Solis, an alchemical text

attributed to Salomon Trismosin, 1582

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

© 2022 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato

[email protected]

www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE AND THE SECRETS

OF THE WESTERN MYSTERY TRADITION

By Nicola Bizzi

Arthur Edward was a British poet, writer, Freemason, esotericist and one of the greatest scholars of the Western Mystery Tradition. As his biographer Robert Andrew Gilbert described him, «Waite’s name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of western occultism viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of proto-science or as the pathology of religion».

He was born in Brooklyn, New York. Waite’s father, Capt. Charles F. Waite, died when he was very young, and his widowed mother, Emma Lovell, returned to her home country of England, where he was then raised. They were well enough off to educate Waite at a small private school in North London. When he was 13, he was educated at St. Charles’ College. When he left school to become a clerk he wrote verse in his spare time. In 1863 Waite’s mother converted to Catholicism but Arthur would become an Anglican. The death of his sister Frederika Waite in 1874 soon attracted him into psychical research. At 21, he began to read regularly in the Library of the British Museum, studying many branches of esotericism. In 1881 Waite discovered the writings of the French esotericist Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant).

When Waite was almost 30 he married Ada Lakeman (also called “Lucasta”), and they had one daughter, Sybil. Some time after Lucasta’s death in 1924, Waite married Mary Broadbent Schofield. He spent most of his life in or near London, connected to various publishing houses and editing a magazine, The Unknown World.

From 1900 to 1909, Waite earned a living as a manager for Horlicks, the famous manufacturer of malted milk.

Waite joined the Outer Order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in January 1891 after being introduced by Edmund William Berridge, a medical doctor in London, homoeopathist in the United States and occultist. In 1899 he entered the Second order of the Golden Dawn and became a Freemason in 1901, being welcomed into the English regular Freemasonry (UGLE, United Grand Lodge of England).

Here are some stages of his Masonic itinerary: in 1902 he was Master Mason, Royal Arch and member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA); in 1903 (in Switzerland) he became a Beneficent Knight of the Holy City (Chevalier Bienfaisant de la Cite Sainte) in the Rectified Scottish Rite. Waite believed that the Rectified Scottish Rite, more than any other Masonic Rite, represented the “Secret Tradition” of mystical spiritual illumination. In 1909 Waite became Knight of the Rose Croix, 18th degree (Ancient & Accepted Rite, an English and self-styled “Christian” version of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) and from 1910 to 1911 he was Venerable Master of his Lodge. In 1935 became Knight Kadosh, 30th degree of the Ancient & Accepted Rite. Waite was interested in the higher degrees of Freemasonry and saw initiation into Craft Masonry as a way to gain access to these rites.

According to some scholars Arthur Edward Waite, around 1896, would have unmasked the mystification of Leo Taxil (1854-1907). Taxil was a former Freemason who from 1885 made “revelations” on Masonic Satanism then largely publicly denied by himself in 1897.

In 1903 Waite founded the Independent and Rectified Order R. R. et A. C. This Order was disbanded in 1914. The Golden Dawn was torn by internal feuding until Waite’s departure in 1914; in July 1915 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 became a highly regarded author and many of his works were well received in the esoteric circles of his time. He wrote texts on subjects including Divination, Esotericism, Freemasonry, Ceremonial Magic, Kabbalism and Alchemy; he also translated and reissued several mystical works and also wrote about the Holy Grail, influenced by his friendship with Arthur Machen (Arthur Llewellyn Jones), a Welsh author and mystic.

A number of his volumes remain in print, including The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911), The Holy Kabbalah (1929), A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1921), and his edited translation of Eliphas Levi’s 1896 Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual (1910), having been reprinted in recent years. Waite also wrote two allegorical fantasy novels, Prince Starbeam (1889) and The Quest of the Golden Stairs (1893), and edited Elfin Music, an anthology of poetry based on English fairy folklore.

In the book Devil-Worship in France or the Question of Lucifer (Edinburgh 1896), Waite (not yet a Freemason, but already a theosophist and member of the Golden Dawn) denies the existence of Masonic Satanism denounced by ex-Freemasons Leo Taxil and Domenico Margiotta. Waite’s pivotal argument is: if Masonic-Luciferian circles described by those authors really existed, then Waite himself and the other English “transcendentalist mystics” (including, Waite specifies, are high-ranking British Freemasons) would have learned of it. Now, since those occultists and Freemasons say they know nothing, then it means that those circles do not exist... In reality, according to the opinion of the Italian priest Paolo Maria Siano, that book by Waite would suggest the existence of an at least intellectual “Luciferism” in English-speaking esoteric circles. According to Waite, «the cult of Lucifer, the morning star, is not really a cult of the Devil (...).The Luciferian cult considers Lucifer a good spirit, therefore this cult lacks the essence of diabolism that is the intention to worship evil spirits (...).Those who they venerate Lucifer as the Principle of good are called Luciferians or Palladists…» (cf. Devil worship in France, pp. 20-21).

In 1938 Waite published in London his autobiography, Shadows of Life and Thought, in which he remembers his 1879 publication of early poems, in particular Descent of Lucifer.

Waite is best known for his involvement with the Rider-Waite tarot deck, a widely popular deck for tarot card reading, first published in 1910, with illustrations by fellow Golden Dawn member Pamela Colman Smith. Waite authored the deck’s companion volume, the Key to the Tarot, republished in expanded form in 1911 as the Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a guide to tarot reading.