Arthur Edward Waite was a British poet and scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on the occult and Western esotericism. He was the co-creator of the Rider–Waite Tarot. As his biographer R. A. Gilbert described him, "Waite's name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of Western occultism—viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of protoscience or as the pathology of religion." Vikipedi