Arthur Edward Waite’s “The Book of Black Magic” represents an exhaustive guide to the occult, looking at lore, magick, occultist history, ceremony, and much more. It contains a large number of magical spells and occult writings taken from a variety of sources, and it constitutes one of the greatest overviews of occultism by one of the most influential figures in Western occultism. Arthur Edward Waite (1857 – 1942), more commonly referred to as A. E. Waite, was an British scholarly mystic and poet. He was a prolific writer on occult and esoteric subjects who also co-created the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.