Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot: Ace of Cups...A Comment

Padma, thank you for that. I find it interesting that it mentions Melchizedek in relation to the Molten Sea. I haven't read the whole thing. It looks like something that might take some time to read and digest. Was there something in the article that you thought was particularly relevant?

Abrac, I was trying to find correlations between the Freemasons and the Catholic Church - I thought the views on page 5 were interesting - and then I thought that since it was a comparison between the two ideologies, that somewhere in there, the Cup symbolism would surely be mentioned!

In any case - yes, a very interesting document, I want to read it as well! (though as you say - not a speedy read!) still, a lot could be teased out that could possibly supplement Waite's theories, as I see this was published in the same year as his deck? (1909).

Heindel was influenced by Rudolph Steiner, and, according to R.A. Gilbert in A.E. Waite, Magician of Many Parts, "Waite was intensely curious as to Steiner’s role in the Rosicrucian movement on the continent..." and "Later in 1912 Steiner himself visited London and Waite had a long talk with him (through an interpreter)..."

I agree, this document deserves a good study. I'm in the middle of a couple of other projects I want t get done but hope to get back to it soon.

I am glad to have helped in any way!

Waite wrote that he was concerned NOT with an microcosmic Christianity, external and 'limited like our personality', but with a macrocosmic Christianity, 'united indissolubly in the heights with the cosmic altitudes of University Religion' [similar to Campbell's mono-myth]. This was what Waite called the 'Oversoul of Religion', behind all forms and laws it seeks to exalt only. 'It is the sense of the infinite within the Great Mysteries.'
The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, p. 635.

To reduce this grand vision of Waite's to "Catholicism" misses the point entirely.

Secrets of the Waite Smith Tarot

Teheuti said:

Wherever did you get that impression? It was a sin for Catholics to be a Mason, there's no reference to his attending Mass, his comments on organized religion are quite scathing, his references are all to a "mystical Church" which is Christian but certainly not Roman Catholic. I would never have called Waite a Catholic (except perhaps when he was quite young and attended a Catholic school).

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I
And he wrote books on Kabbalah, Grail, and Freemasonry. I am certain that the Suit of Cups includes elements of all this, especially the Grail. Consider the man with the spear in the background of the 6 of Cups. Consider the Knight of Cups, the seeking Grail Knight. Consider the Ace of Cups that magically feeds and heals those who serve it, downstreaming its living waters. It is as much the Grail as it is the Cup of the Mass. Moreover, Waite looked to the spiritual energies behind the pictured archetypes, to uplift the soul to the Divine, not forcing specific religious dogmas. Or so it seems to me.

Parzival said:

I
And he wrote books on Kabbalah, Grail, and Freemasonry. I am certain that the Suit of Cups includes elements of all this, especially the Grail. Consider the man with the spear in the background of the 6 of Cups. Consider the Knight of Cups, the seeking Grail Knight. Consider the Ace of Cups that magically feeds and heals those who serve it, downstreaming its living waters. It is as much the Grail as it is the Cup of the Mass. Moreover, Waite looked to the spiritual energies behind the pictured archetypes, to uplift the soul to the Divine, not forcing specific religious dogmas. Or so it seems to me.

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Waite's book The Holy Graal, published the same year as the deck, demonstrates some significant parallels to the Minor Arcana.

Teheuti said:

Waite wrote that he was concerned NOT with an microcosmic Christianity, external and 'limited like our personality', but with a macrocosmic Christianity, 'united indissolubly in the heights with the cosmic altitudes of University Religion' [similar to Campbell's mono-myth]. This was what Waite called the 'Oversoul of Religion', behind all forms and laws it seeks to exalt only. 'It is the sense of the infinite within the Great Mysteries.'
The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, p. 635.

To reduce this grand vision of Waite's to "Catholicism" misses the point entirely.

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If Abrac initially went too far in one direction ('Hardcore Catholic' is not a proper description of Waite in adult years), you are here giving the impression that you are on your way too far in the other direction (but this might be just a wrong impression due to the shortness of your text).

Waite was a lapsed Catholic and his disciple Evelyn Underhill was a practicing Anglican. Both retained a positive view on many aspects of Roman Catholicism (especially the mystics and the Mass) although not practicing Catholics. If you study the rituals for Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, written in 1915 onwards, the borrowings from Roman Catholic liturgy are very noticeable. It is of course perfectly possible to hold the Roman Catholic mystics in high regard, and be inspired by them, without being a member of the same church.

I agree with you, that the impression given by several of Waite's books is that Waite adhered to a variety of Christianity for which the historical aspects of the Bible were entirely overshadowed by the mystical reality Waite believed they signified. A similar view may be found in John Tauler, Jean de Bernieres-Louvigny and Louis Claude de Saint Martin, although less absolute in Tauler's thought.

Waite definitely felt that Catholics had some things right - probably more than any other religion. But, having grown up Catholic in the old days of the Latin mass I know well the constraints of belief he went well beyond. Sure he drew from the Catholic mass and the writings of some of the Catholic mystics but his rituals also draw heavily from Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn rituals of which the Catholic Church did not approve.

"Hardcore Catholic" may have been a poor choice of words. "Hardcore Catholic Mystic" might be better. But the point I was trying to make is Waite was known to have been involved in Catholicism, mystic or otherwise, all his life and the evidence for Smith's involvement doesn't come till later in her life, after the W-S tarot was made.

Besides Waite's quote from the Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry that I've posted at least twice elsewhere, where he identifies himself as a "Catholic Mystic," there's also this from The Holy Kabbalah (1929), p. xxxiv. "The doctrine of Tsure and the Mystery of Shekinah are the root of my concern in Kabbalism. They are not of my concern solely for that which they signified in a Theosophical School of Jewry but for whatever may belong therein to the life of Catholic Mysticism here and now." Clearly he identifies as Catholic and is keenly interested in Catholic Mysticism. Whether he's "lapsed" is beside the point, to me at least. I don't care about the official "Church's" opinion. I'm interested in how Waite viewed himself.