COLQUHOUN, Ithell.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Sword of Wisdom. First US edition, first printing, of the first definitive history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its founder Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Colquhoun was a celebrated artist and occultist who was expelled from the English Surrealist Group for refusing to abandon her occult research. A voracious scholar, the Golden Dawn was a long-standing focus of her research.Colquhoun (1906-1988) is now "recognized as one of the most interesting and prolific esoteric thinkers and artists of the twentieth century" (Hale). Her artistry and occultism were intertwined throughout her life: while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, she joined the Quest Society, which fostered an freethought approach to the study of religion, philosophy, and science. As she evolved as an artist, her fascination with the unconscious saw her draw on a dizzying array of esoteric traditions. "Colquhoun was at once an artist and a magician, a mystical Christian, a scholar, and practitioner of the occult with a deep knowledge of both Eastern and Western religions. She immersed herself in Druidry, goddess worship, freemasonry, tarot, Theosophy, and the Kabbalah, and argued that all matter must bear a trace of the creator and so must be considered living" (Higgie, p 175).Provenance: Steve Nichols, editor of The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun (2007), unmarked as such.

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