Arthur Edward Waite

Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) was a British occultist and author, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who devised the symbolic program of the tarot published in 1909 and known as the Rider-Waite-Smith. He published its companion, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, in 1910. He rejected the theory of an Egyptian origin for the tarot. His exact role in designing the scenes, compared with that of the illustrator, is still debated.