Ithell Colquhoun
…was an ancestor of mine, apparently. And now I’ve recently discovered she was quite a prolific occult author and surrealist painter. And I was just talking about creating a Tarot deck–not for public consumption, of course, but to help me memorize the Tree of Life and its correspondences to the Tarot, the planets, and the archetypal keys of all hidden knowledge.
From The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Blog:
Particularly noteworthy is Colquhoun’s mention of an oral tradition regarding sexuality within the original HOGD as well as in the Alpha et Omega. Colquhoun also mentions that, in her opinion, the sexual aspects should appear in the highest grades of any occult fraternity, including the projected Third Order of the original Golden Dawn, as is presently the case in the Third Order of Mathers’ Alpha et Omega.
Colquhoun further discusses actual rituals pertaining to sexual polarity performed by early members of the Golden Dawn. In particular, she discusses at length the unpublished “Lilith” ritual of A.E. Waite that she found at the Warburg Institute. Finally, Colquhoun also discusses issues pertaining to Golden Dawn ritual and tantra groups regarding sexual polarity and the role of women in both tantra groups as well as in the original Golden Dawn.
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April 29, 2010 at 7:44 am
Ithell Colquhoun was quite visionary in her understanding of the role of sexuality in the Golden Dawn. Certainly not enough has yet been published about her art. Thank you for publishing this.
April 29, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Thank you for reading. I believe I am related to her, as she’s of the same clan as my father’s, so her writings are especially important to me. The fact that she was also a painter and looked deeply into the role of sexuality in magickal practice is also very interesting. She reminds me a bit of Alice Bailey. Will continue to dig up more information on her, and I’ll post that at a later date.
August 1, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Golden Dawn Manuscripts and Where to Find Them…
Where can a scholar go to find the original Golden Dawn manuscripts him- (or her-) self? So for example one does not have to rely on books of dodgy provenance? For this reason I present the following…….