Free Will & Fate Quote by Arthur E. Waite

Waite opens by pre-emptively managing suspicion: the “strangely” isn’t an apology so much as a strategic flinch, a way of disarming readers who already associate fortune-telling with parlor tricks, superstition, or outright fraud. The phrase “at this day” plants the line in a modernizing world that prides itself on progress; he’s acknowledging that an educated audience, in an era intoxicated with science and rationality, will judge an occult topic as an anachronism. That’s not weakness. It’s a lure. By voicing the reader’s skepticism first, he steals its momentum and recasts himself as clear-eyed rather than credulous.

The real pivot is “what appears at first sight and simply” - a neat little trapdoor. Waite signals that surface impressions are precisely the problem: the method is “well-known,” even “simple,” but only if you stop looking. This is the classic esoteric move, dressed in Edwardian politeness: the promise that the popular version is a degraded husk, and that he can restore depth, lineage, and meaning to something mass-circulated.

Context matters: Waite is writing from within late-19th/early-20th century occult revival culture, where tarot and ritual symbolism were being reframed as spiritual technology rather than carnival prophecy. The intent isn’t just to defend fortune-telling; it’s to reposition it. He’s asking permission to take the unserious seriously, while quietly suggesting that modernity’s certainty may be the real superstition.