Waite's Lovers In his poem "Of True and False Marriages" (1), Waite uses as his talking point Matt. 19:6, "What therefore God hath joined together..." He first asks an obvious question and his musings prove insightful: Whom hath God join'd? Think you, his flesh to hers Whom stratagem from other arms purloin'd While simple passion is so quickly past Or courts remain to utter their decrees? But think you any marriage of the flesh? If God does join together, certainly the condition does not arise from the machinations of suitors, the heat of purient passions which quickly dissipate, or the warrants and licenses issued by states and countries. In fact, any marital association which derives from mundane sources cannot be viewed as "God join'd". He continues: True, they shall part not when their earth is dead Who, few and rarely, in their souls are wed. Waite does believe that a condition pertains which can be described as a wedding of the souls. He writes here that this condition persists after death! In his final study of the beloved Zohar, after describing the order in which pre-existent souls descend he writes, "What is much more important is that all souls awaiting incarnation are arranged in pairs; the one who is destined to animate a male is by the side of one who is to animate a female, so that those who are united below have been united previously above..." (2). Continuing from "Of True and false Marriages": Past doubt, eternity, assuming these, Transfigures the old bonds or welds afresh; But their true souls how few on earth have found, Much less with others have their own been bound, And skin-deep wedlock- with the joys it brings- Scarce counts among indissoluble things. He adds the acknowledgement that mundane wedlock is a source of joy, but qualifies it as existing in a separate and inferior order. Soulmates are extremely difficult to find, most of humanity not even in realization concerning the nature of their own soul. Alas, the souls which once God join'd, through some Deep-seated mischief, to divorce have come; And it is only when desires within From height exceeding height some lustre win; From space-immensities of winter's clime- Cold, inaccessible and clear- Or great distractions fallen on the sea, Bring subtly-quickening intimations near, That pasts withdrawn in worlds of memory- Beyond all deeps of time- Send faint reports- though bands of sense enfold- Of great free unions which obtain'd of old. The bond of soulmates (the wedding of the souls) has been somehow defeated in our present condition, though all is not lost. With God's blessing, old memories can awake and lead us ultimately to this mystical goal. Waite speaks directly of these memories. After briefly contrasting two views of manifestation he writes of the manifested soul, "In either case he would bear, as one might think, within him at least unformulated vestiges of his antecedent state, of the immemorial past in God which was once his mode of being, and our mystic consciousness of a Divine Presence within us, attained in certain manners or degrees and by the following of certain paths in life, is at once a witness thereto and an earnest of a restoration to come, because it proclaims our surviving kinship with our source." (3) In fact, Waite believed that soulmates pre-exist together from creation, that during manifestation they would find each other (at least during the final "transmigration"), and after physical death would continue their journey together. In "The Book of the Holy Graal" (4) he reuses this symbolism, but this time the idiom is overtly Christian. Beata, who bears the host and Quaestor, who bears the wine, have entered a joint mystical experience: Thus were they open'd and replenish'd thus Within them. Each to one another given Forecast not then concerning future lots And waking life together. They inwove At root, in essence, knowing that the bond Was not in holy house or place of dream Welded, but that which had for ever been Though only now discovered. Upon attaining their mystical state, Beata and Quaestor become aware that the bond they share is not based on their associated experiences or high state of consciousness, but has existed since creation. And later, at the conclusion of another mystical union, Waite extends the scene to include a familiar pose: After these words the kind of silence fell Which indicates the end of things attain'd, Or their suspension for some given time. The hearers look'd into their Master's face And saw how joy was also peace therein. He link'd their hands together, rose and then Standing behind them rather than between, While they two drew together, his own hands Extended, blessing silently, and left By the ascending path between the trees: The trees received the Master out of sight. (5) Here the blessings flow from the Mystical Christ. In the Lovers card, Shekinah blesses. In discussing the Zohar pt. 1, folio 50a-b (6) he writes, "Finally, and this, which is assuredly most strange, and within my experience of sacred literature, an unique counsel, has been cited already: when man has in view the Shekinah at the moment of his conjugal relations the pleasure which he experiences is a meritorious work." Much earlier he had written, "The love of man and woman in purity may become, ...a School of Divine Love, so that the body of desire is transmuted. The integration of two personalities in one consciousness by love would be, I think, an unknown door to God." (8) In a footnote to this passage he writes, "There is another point of view on which it is possible to touch here only under reserves, obscurely and as if from a great distance. That secret mystery of union which is accomplished, by a certain hypothesis, between man and woman mystically can be no other than a deep intercourse in mystical consciousness, seeking the same term. This again is the "narrow way" back, and its term is Divine Union attained in common. It is a work upon the Immanence, at first hidden but afterward manifested in the two natures jointly. It is the uttermost attainment open to human love." Thus in the PKT, Waite identifies the card as that of human love and the departure from traditional symbols as a recourse to first principles, those first principles being "the uttermost attainment" open to it. And again, in "The Holy Kabbalah" after identifying the Mother as the Shekinah, Metatra (as against male Metatron), Elohim (as against the male Yahweh) and the Supreme Mediatrix, he again touches on the symbolism of his cards to illustrate his point. "The mystery of the whole subject is the now familiar dogma that the Mother in transcendence abides with the male only in so far as he has constituted himself a house by his attachment to the female: there must be local habitation, and a union below to offer a point of contact with the union that is on high, and then the Divine Mother pours down her blessings therefrom- that is to say, on male and female in equal measure. So is the male below said to be encompassed by two females, and all the ways of blessing in the two worlds are open before him. He reads the Secret Doctrine in the womanhood on earth, and it is read to him by her who sits between the Pillars of the Eternal Temple with the Book of the Secret Law lying open on her sacred knees." (9) 1. The Collected Poems of Arthur Edward Waite, Rider, 1914, pp. 14ff 2. The Holy Kabbalah, University Books, 1960, p. 239 3. Lamps of Western Mysticism, Knopf, 1923, p. 290 4. Watkins, 1921, p. 61 5. ibid., p. 117 6. The Zohar, Soncino Press, 1984: "Esoterically speaking, the supernal Mother is found in company of the male only at the time when the house is prepared, and the male and the female are joined. Then the supernal Mother pours forth blessings for them. Similarly the lower Mother is not found in company with the male save when the house is prepared and the male visits the female and they are joined together; then the lower mother pours forth blessings for them. Hence the man in his house is to be encompassed by two females, like the Male above". 7. The Holy Kabbalah, p. 386 8. The Way of Divine Union, Rider, 1915, p.291 9. The Holy Kabbalah, p. 387