In Waite's books on Kabbalah he discusses a doctrine that's very different from conventional Biblical theology and could explain the "Secret Law of Providence" mentioned in the PKT. It's also in Jacob Boehme and others. The gist of it is Adam was tempted and sinned
before the woman came on the scene. After Adam sinned, the woman was created as a preventative measure to help him avoid sinking further into the depths of Hell (as Lucifer before him had done). They were placed in the garden, and this time the woman was tempted and lapsed. At this point God said, and I'm paraphrasing, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head!" (Genesis 3:15) This is generally regarded as a prophecy of Christ, who was born of a woman. There's no record of Adam and Eve having sex before the Fall, so the assumption is they started procreating after the Fall. This is what Waite means when he says, "It is through her imputed lapse that man shall arise ultimately." Her lapse was what started procreation, which in turn brought the Christ. While Waite acknowledges the validity of other religions, he was absolutely convinced that Christianity was the perfect way and that Christ's incarnation (the second Adam) holds the key to humanity's redemption.
Dr. Hans Lassen Martensen, in
Jacob Boehme—His Life and Teaching, gives a very good summary of the whole thing:
"According to Böhme, Adam had already sinned prior to the creation of Eve. Namely, Adam was originally androgynous, or the unity of man and woman, which does not imply that he was hermaphrodite. Adam was a higher unity of man and woman—a union of severity and gentleness, strength and beauty, which union was subsequently sundered into the contrast between man and woman. Certainly, he had a bride. But this bride, this wife of his youth, to whom he became unfaithful, was the pure, chaste maiden, the heavenly Sophia, Wisdom, that dwelt in him. For, as Theosophy so frequently re-iterates, Wisdom, the Idea, can, at the same time, diffuse itself throughout all created space, can pervade, and most subtilely permeate all things, and can also concentrate itself, and dwell absolutely in one individual soul. In union with this heavenly spouse, Adam was to have multiplied himself in a supernatural way, and was to have produced out of himself beings like himself, in whom the maiden could dwell. But when Adam assembled the animals and gave them names, he saw that they were paired; he was then seized with an earthly lust to propagate himself in a "bestial" fashion. Then the Sinful Fall had already commenced; for he had now set his imagination upon the natural world and the nature-spirit, "spiritus mundi," over which he was to have been highly exalted. The heavenly, pure, modest, and chaste Virgin departed from him, and returned into the æther; the Divine Image grew pale; and Adam became absolutely powerless. Then the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon him. For God saw that, if a greater calamity and crime was to be averted, if Adam was not to sink still lower, there was no other expedient than that of giving him a woman as his helpmeet. Thus, Adam slept away from the heavenly world, and awoke in the earthly.
During his sleep a great change had occurred. The woman had been taken out of his side, out of his rib. God had closed up the place with flesh, which flesh leads us to think of the belly, which is the most fleshy part of the human body (Κοιλία, 1 Corinthians, vi. 13), where the difference between male and female is specially localized. During the slumber, He had made hard bones, and had brought into separation the organs that belong to sexual distinction as well as those that belong to the vegetative processes. When Adam awoke from sleep, the heavenly maiden had vanished. But there stood beside him the woman, the wife, Eve. Eve was lovely and graceful, but she was a “cagastric” person, i.e., she was subject to the influence of the stars, the elements, and the spirit of nature; she was an earthly woman. Adam also had become earthly, and she suited him. They mirrored themselves in one another. He set his imagination upon her; she set hers upon him. They did not, however, notice as yet that they were naked; this they did not discover until the sin was complete. Eve allowed herself to be deluded by the serpent, into which creature the devil had insinuated himself, in order to be able to tempt and seduce her. She ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, and gave her husband thereof. When they had tasted this fruit unto death, and now both of them had death in their life, they could no longer remain in Paradise.
From this time forth, they begat children, and lived in manifold earthly miseries and troubles in this great world, to which they had surrendered themselves, and by the spirit of which they were now constrained. They consoled themselves, however, with the promise, as yet dimly understood, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head!" Nor was the relation to the maiden, the heavenly Sophia, in every sense abolished. For she, the heavenly, chaste, modest, and pure maiden, could not forget her favourite, her Adam. Sometimes she displayed herself to him by night as a constellation shining before him at an infinite distance, reminding him of the eternal, heavenly, paradisiacal regions, stirring in him wondrous yearnings and mighty thoughts. Sometimes she sought him at lonely hours, and met him in solitary paths; just as even now she seeks those true lovers who are willing to prepare for her an abode in their hearts.
In this scenario, the woman indeed is no conscious temptress, but a vehicle of Divine Providence.