waite kabbalah books any good?

jmd

oops, sorry Holmes, I hadn't noted your post.

It does indeed seem that these two books are but different publications of Waite's large, and recommended, book on the Kabbalah.

Kessinger publications reprints wonderful older books whose copyrights have expired. They tend to be photographic reproductions of various quality (depending on the original), with a similar binding for all their books (I own a few of them, and would suggest going direct to Kessinger which, after all, specialises in such esoteric mail order reprints).

I have not read this book of Waite's cover to cover (though over the years, I have probably covered most of it). It is one of the few non-traditional Jewish Kabbalistic books that Gershom Scholem mentions with some approbation (most others he is quite derisory thereof).

It does not, from memory, cover in the least why the Justice and Strength cards have been inversed, for it is not a book on Tarot. Likewise, his books on Freemasonry do not cover such. Waite tends to keep his subject matter reasonably focussed, even if they come together in the initiatic order he established after the Golden Dawn.

For what they are, as classics in the Western esoteric tradition, and from someone who's influence is very much the equivalent to what Eliphas Levi has been half a century before in France, his books are certainly worth having on one's shelf and referred to!

With regards to the Kessinger version, then, I would only first check to see if it is indeed Waite's last published edition.
 

Laurel

I read Waite's book cover to cover back in 1996 and haven't owned a copy since. For a historical perspective of how Kabbalah evolved from the early Merkabah (sp) traditions to the occult revelation, its simply stellar. However, its very long and very dry.
Gershom Scholem (sp) covers much of the same territory in his books on the history of kabbalah, in a style of writing that is a little less dense and wordy.

Laurel