Frieda Harris

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Frieda Harris , née Marguerite Frieda Bloxam (* 1877 in London ; † May 11, 1962 in Srinagar , India ) was an English artist, politician's wife and late companion of the occultist Aleister Crowley . She gained fame through the design of the Crowley Thoth Tarot .

Life

Frieda Harris was born in London in 1877 as the daughter of a surgeon. Her birth name was Marguerite Frieda Bloxam. In 1901 she married Percy Alfred Harris , a liberal politician. Since he had been ennobled as a baronet in 1932 , she was allowed to use the courtesy address Lady Harris , but preferred the self-name Lady Frieda Harris . The couple had two sons. In 1937 she met Aleister Crowley, with whom she worked until his death in 1947. According to John Symonds , Harris was initiated into the A∴A∴ order and given the name Tzaba "Hosts". In 1937 Harris began taking lessons in projective synthetic geometry based on the ideas of Johann Wolfgang Goethe as reflected in the teachings of Rudolf Steiner , Olive Whicher and George Adams . In 1938 Lady Harris became Crowley's "student" and also a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis , who, due to her earlier initiation in a co-masonry, entered directly into the IV ° (fourth degree) of this order. Harris had plans to go on a lecture tour to the United States and exhibit the original paintings of the Thoth tarot deck in 1948, but this did not materialize. After the death of her husband in 1952, Frieda Harris lived in India .

She died on May 11, 1962 in Srinagar. She bequeathed her original paintings of the tarot cards to Gerald Joseph Yorke , who gave them to the Warburg Institute along with many other Crowley materials he had collected over the years . Yorke, however, kept several alternate versions of the maps and some preliminary studies, which he later sold through bookseller Harold Mortlake.

Crowley tarot

In 1939 she began working with Aleister Crowley on the redesign of the 78 tarot cards, in which Crowley's entire magical ideas should be reflected. Work on these maps was originally only supposed to take six months, but actually took five years. The original paintings of the maps are now in the Warburg Institute , which is affiliated with the University of London .

The maps were first depicted in 1944 in a limited edition of the Book of Thoth . It was not until 1969, after the deaths of Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley, that the tarot deck was first published in card form.

Works

  • Aleister Crowley (Author), Frieda Harris (Illustrator): The Book of Toth, A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians. (= The Equinox. Volume III, No. 5). Weiser Books, York Beach ME 2000, ISBN 0-87728-268-4 . (First print 1944, reprint 1969)
  • Aleister Crowley, Frieda Harris: Aleister Crowley Toth Tarot Standard. Königsfurt-Urania , Krummwisch 2008, ISBN 978-3-86826-504-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Symonds, John (1973). The Great Beast: the life and magick of Aleister Crowley. St Albans, Herts .: Mayflower.
  2. ↑ Projective synthetic geometry in Lady Frieda Harris tarot paintings
  3. ^ Occult Art Gallery
  4. ↑ Lon Milo DuQuette : Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot. Red Wheel / Weiser, LLC, San Francisco, 2003, ISBN 978-1-57863-276-3 , p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Harris, Frieda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bloxam, Marguerite Frieda (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English artist, politician's wife and late companion of the occultist Aleister Crowley
DATE OF BIRTH 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1962
Place of death Srinagar , India