Arthur Edward Waite Forgotten Essays - Book Second

Book Second: From the Forward - THE MYSTICISM OF A. E. Waite

IT happens that when one seeks for the three writers of the most important and significant books on mysticism recently published in England, one immediately calls to mind Dean Inge, Miss Evelyn Underhill, and Mr. A. E. Waite. The first two have in common with one another more than either has with the third. Employing a loose classification, the attitude of Dean Inge towards mysticism may be termed philosophic, that of Miss Underhill scientific, and that of Mr. Waite sacramental. Both Dean Inge and Miss Underhill are associated with the Established Church, but Mr. Waite, while he stands apart from all formal religion, is avowedly sympathetic towards Roman Catholicism.

The importance of youthful influences may have been overstressed in recent years, but anyone who attempts to define Mr. Waite's position in the literature of mysticism and neglects to give due consideration to the early influences of this writer is willfully throwing away an important key. It cannot be denied that Dean Inge, although the severest critic of the modern age, with the possible exception of Mr. Chesterton, is nevertheless as much a product of it as Mr. Wells or Mr. Shaw; while of Miss Underhill, it can be said that she is perfectly at ease with current scientific and philosophic speculations. But Mr. Waite stands apart from the life of to-day. His spirit, inasmuch as it pertains to any historical period, unmistakably belongs to the Middle Ages.

A conception of the Middle Ages which assumes this period to have been wholly one of superstition and unreason is current. Such a false conception is not intended here. It is not contended that the mind of Mr. Waite lacks logic, nor that he is incapable of analytic and synthetic thought. Indeed, the purpose of this essay is to indicate that Mr. Waite's most important achievement is his acute analysis of the mystic's position. The contention is that, although the method of scientific thought is employed by Mr. Waite, the general outlook of modem man is undeniably foreign to him. His mind is calmer, more reposeful than that of the modem mind, and above all he has certitude and conviction.

We are told that Mr. Waite was scarcely out of his teens when one day, while browsing around a second-hand bookseller's, he came across a copy of Eliphas Levi's Dogme et Rituel de I'haute magie. No one who has read this amazing concoction of truth and charlatanism, written in a cunning and fascinating style, can doubt the nature of the impression which it made upon the sensitive mind of Arthur Waite. The glamour of magic is incomprehensible to those who have not sensed it, but to those others who have come under its spell, the very symbol suggests unseen worlds. There can be little speculation as to the effect which magic had upon Mr. Waite in these early days, but it is only necessary to study his writings to discover the extent to which his thought was bound up with ancient magic.

Mr. Waite is a voluminous writer and has produced many scholarly and illuminating books, but those which are the most significant and certainly the most relevant to my present purpose are two-The Occult Sciences and Lamps of Western Mysticism.