Steps To The Crown ~ by Arthur Edward Waite

Elven said:

The book itself has seem better days, and has been a nutritional supplement for some small creature

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Joseph Fort Newton said:

The Secret Doctrine.
II

Perhaps the greatest student in this field of esoteric teaching and method, certainly the greatest now living is Arthur Edward Waite, to whom it is a pleasure to pay tribute. By nature a symbolist, it not a sacramentalist, be found in such studies a task for which he was almost ideally fitted by temperament, training, and genius. Engaged in business, but not absorbed by it, years of quiet, leisurely toil have made him master of the vast literature and lore of his subject, to the study of which he brought a religious nature, the accuracy and skill of a scholar, a sureness and delicacy of insight at once sympathetic and critical, the soul of a poet, and a patience as untiring as it is rewarding; qualities rare indeed, and still more rarely blended. Prolific but seldom prolix, he writes with grace, ease, and lucidity, albeit in a style often opulent, and touched at times with lights and jewels from old alchemists antique liturgies, remote and haunting romance secret orders of initiation, and other recondite sources not easily traced. Much learning and many kinds of wisdom are in his pages, and withal an air of serenity, of tolerance; and if he is of those who turn down another street when miracles are preformed in the neighborhood, it is because, having found the inner truth, he asks for no sign.

Always he writes in the conviction that all great subjects bring us back to the one subject which is alone great, and that scholarly criticisms, folk-lore, and deep philosophy are little less than useless if they fall short of directing us to our true end B the attainment of that living Truth which is about us everywhere. He conceives of our mortal life as one eternal Quest of that living Truth, taking many phases and forms, yet ever at heart the same aspiration, to trace which he has made it his labor and joy to essay. Through all his pages he is following out the tradition of this Quest, in its myriad aspects, especially since the Christian era, disfigured though it has been at times by superstition, and distorted at others by bigotry, but still, in what guise soever, containing as its secret the meaning of the life of man from his birth to his reunion with God who is his Goal. And the result is a series of volumes noble in form, united in aim, unique in wealth of revealing beauty, and of unequalled worth.[5]

Beginning as far back as 1886, Waite issued his study of the Mysteries of Magic, a digest of the writings of Eliphas Levi, to whom Albert Pike was more indebted than he let us know. Then followed the Real History of the Rosicrucians, which traces, as far as any mortal may trace, the thread of fact whereon is strung the romance of a fraternity the very existence of which has been doubted and denied by turns. Like all his work, it bears the impress of knowledge from the actual sources, betraying his extraordinary learning and his exceptional experience in this kind of inquiry. Of the Quest in its distinctively Christian aspect, he has written in The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal; a work of rare beauty, of bewildering richness, written in a style which, partaking of the quality of the story told, is not at all after the manner of these days. But the Graal Legend is only one aspect of the old-world sacred Quest, uniting the symbols of chivalry with Christian faith. Masonry is another; and no one may ever hope to write of The Secret Tradition in Masonry with more insight and charm, or a touch more sure and revealing, than this gracious student for whom Masonry perpetuates the instituted Mysteries of antiquity, with much else derived from innumerable store-houses of treasure. His last work is a survey of The Secret Doctrine in Israel, being a study of the Zohar,[6] or Hebrew A Book of Splendor," a feat for which. no Hebrew scholar has had the heart. This Bible of Kabbalism is indeed so confused and confusing that only a golden dustman" would have had the patience to sift out Its gems from the mountain of dross, and attempt to reduce its wide-weltering chaos to order. Even Waite, with all his gift of research and narration, finds little more than gleams of dawn in a dim forest, brilliant vapors, and glints that tell by their very perversity and strangeness.


[5] Some there are who think that much of the best work of Mr. Waite is in his Poetry, of which there are two volumes, A Book of Mystery and Vision, and Strange Houses of Sleep. There one meets a fine spirit, alive to the glory of the world and all that charms the soul and sense of man, yet seeing past these; rich and significant thought so closely wedded to emotion that each seems either. Other books not to be omitted are his slender volume of aphorisms, Steps to the Crown, his Life of Saint-Martin and his Studies in Mysticism; for what he touches he adorns.)

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Elven said:

Thankyou jmd Im really happy this little book came to me - I found this free email book on the net ...

just a piece about Waite ...


Blessings Elven x

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