THE WAY OF DIVINE UNION (H/B) by A. E. Waite (Ed. R.A. Gilbert)

In The Way of Divine Union, A.E. Waite, describes the exalted nature of the goal of the mystic, and of our limited capacity for attaining it. ‘It is understood’, he noted, ‘that the ineffable union which is the end of mystic life is the integration of the self-knowing spirit of man in the eternally Self-Knowing God, knowing and being known therein. This is the attainment of God, and it is the great work . . . for those who are called thereto, but it is not completed here.’ Also, such attainment here and now, ‘is possible for brief periods only … So far as it is possible to discern, the absolute union of our higher consciousness'.

In other words, when we experience such an exalted state we must return to this earthly life – and with a price to pay. He write elsewhere, "There is a state beyond the images, a repose of inward being, apart from action in the mind. …. When it is entered there is no sense of beginning, middle or end, for the state is timeless. It is only on coming out therefrom that the external correspondence in event is found to be exceedingly short. . . . The state is not entered and one does not come out therefrom: we are simply in it and subsequently we are not in it, but amidst a terrible experience of lost beatitude in reality".

Arthur Edward Waite was born in 1857, Brooklyn, New York. He was a poet and scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Waite joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in January 1891. He became a Freemason in 1901, and entered the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1902. In 1903 he founded the Independent and Rectified Order R. R. et A. C. He wrote occult texts on subjects including divination, esotericism, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and ceremonial magic, Kabbalism and alchemy. However, The Way of Divine Union is his masterpiece!