For a hundred years students of esoteric lore have struggled to fathom the writings of Arthur Edward Waite. Many have given up all hope of understanding these "Waitey Tomes" because they can't figure out what he is trying to say or even why he is trying to say it. I recall a similar feeling after reading four pages on Knorr von Rosenroth in Waite's THE HOLY KABBALAH which contained absolutely no information on von Rosenroth or his writings!
However, there is a simple explanation for all this confusion: Arthur Edward Waite was NOT writing in English! The language he used appears to be English to the untrained eye but actually it is an obscure dialect known to philologists and antiquarians as "West Anglican Curmudegon" (W.A.C.). This patois uses a modified English vocabulary restricted to words of no less than five sylables and follows a rigid rule that no statement can be made without a descriptive clause added to qualify and further define each noun and verb employed in ALL its possible ramifications. Punctuatuion is expanded to accomodate this requirement. This grammatical structure is difficult to follow until one realizes that Ciceroian Latin construction is being used in place of English sentance structure. (Latin students will recall that Cicero was the inventor of the run-on sentance.)
As a useful illustration I will translate a simple English sentance into West Anglican Curmudgeon. Note how each noun and each verb in the English sentance is expanded and qualified in W.A.C. Once understood this is an easy sub-language to master, enabling you to expand short articles in English into 500 page books in W.A.C. once you get the hang of it.
English: "The BOY WALKED to the STORE and BOUGHT a LOAF of BREAD."
W.A.C.: "At some unspecified time and at an equally indeterminate location, it has been alleged by sources we may presume to credit -- at least within the parameters of this discussion -- that a male, suppossedly well under the term of his majority, did (and being so described, we can assume funded for the purpose), make his way via peram- bulation to a commercial establishment where we are to suppose provisions were to be obtained, and having so arrived, is further said to have purchased for an undisclosed sum a standard measure of baked goods; most probably bread as the term loaf has been suggested in this context but not confirmed -- yet we can, for all practical purposes, concede the probability that the quantity of victuals may not have exceeded this single increment in light of the routine nature of the errand, the lack of auxiliary conveyance implied in the means of transit described, and the restricted pecuniary allotments most commonly assigned to those of such tender years, but to reach any more specific conclusions based on the few facts available would perhaps be imprudent."
I hope this makes Waite easier to understand and appreciate.
Good Magick! (If one may presume to attribute or assign a beneficial quality to such a multiferious and obscure. . . Oh, to hell with it!)