Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities)

This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women's scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told. Amy Hale is an anthropologist and folklorist specializing in contemporary esoteric history, art and culture. Co-edited collections include New Directions in Celtic Studies, and The Journal of the Academic Study of Magic 5. She has written widely on surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, and is the author of the Colquhoun biography Genius of the Fern Loved Gully Acknowledgments 6 Contents 7 Notes on Contributors 10 List of Figures 13 Chapter 1: Introduction 14 Rationale 15 Definitions and Constraints 19 How This Book Is Organized 25 Bibliography 29 Part I: Race, Place, and Othering 32 Chapter 2: Mrs. Rosa Frances Swiney: Imperial Feminism and Eugenics in Theosophical Evolutionist Thought 33 Entangled in the Empire 35 The Natural Law of Isis the Mother 38 Divine Motherhood, Race and Eugenics 44 Global Sisterhood 49 Conclusion: “A Famous Champion of Her Sex”? 52 Bibliography 53 Chapter 3: The Myth of Pamela Colman Smith’s Blackness: Ethnic Impersonation in the Modern Esoteric Milieu 57 Biography, and the “Gelukiesanger” Persona 60 Speculative Blackness 63 Society Pages: New York Family 66 Life in Jamaica, and Black Impersonation 67 Politics of Folklore, and Smith’s Precedents 70 Annancy Stories in Context 74 Closing Thoughts 79 Bibliography 81 Chapter 4: “Eastern Methods”/“Western Bodies”: Dion Fortune’s Shifting Positions on Yoga, 1929–1940 84 Introduction 86 The Western Tradition 89 Yogas of the East 90 “Eastern Methods and Western Bodies” 92 Racial Dharma 93 Racial Bodies: Etheric and Biological 95 Cross-Cultural Incompatibility 96 The Mystical Qabalah 97 The Circuit of Force 100 Sinister Yogis of the West 100 Eastern Methods, Western Society 101 Yoga of the Goddess 102 The Sacral Center 104 Caution and Synthesis 107 Conclusion 108 Bibliography 112 Part II: Locating the Feminine 117 Chapter 5: The Devil Wears Pink: The Representation and Role of Woman in the Occultism of Maria de Naglowska 118 Bibliography 137 Chapter 6: The Power of Beauty: Eleanor Kirk’s Feminine Esotericism 141 Foundations for Kirk’s Practical Esotericism 144 Eleanor Kirk’s Esotericism 149 Conclusions 154 Bibliography 156 Chapter 7: Painterly Desire: Ithell Colquhoun’s Other-than-Human Art 158 Colquhoun: Artist–Writer–Magician 160 Esoteric Aesthetics: Negotiating Other-than-Human Relations 163 Watercolor–Gender–Spirituality 169 Fluid Epistemologies 172 Conclusion: Other-than-Human Art 174 Bibliography 175 Part III: Rethinking Influence, Power, and Authority 178 Chapter 8: Doreen Valiente: Unmotherly Mother of Modern Witchcraft 179 Encountering Doreen Valiente 180 Magical Beginnings 182 A Career in Magic 184 Discovering Witchcraft 185 In Search of Authenticity 187 Crafting a Nature Religion 188 The Politics of Authenticity 191 Writing the New Religion 194 Penetrating the Veil 195 Feminist Witchcraft 197 The Culmination of a “Career in Magic” 199 Illustrious Ancestor 200 Bibliography 202 Chapter 9: The Crucible of Modernity: Florence Farr and the Esoteric Woman 206 The Crucible of Modernity: Florence Farr and the Esoteric Woman 206 Biographical Background 209 Shaw and the Unwomanly Woman 210 Wizardly Women 213 Egyptian Magic: Calling Isis 219 Sunset in Ceylon 226 References 228 Chapter 10: Madeline Montalban: Magus of the Morning Star 233 Biography 235 Journalism and Work at Prediction 237 Occult Milieu and Orders in the mid Twentieth Century Britain 239 Order of the Morning Star 246 The Angel Lucifer 252 Conclusion 254 Appendix 256 Order of the Morning Star Angelic Correspondence Course Chapters 256 Unlisted Order of the Morning Star Course Material 257 Also referenced 257 Bibliography 257 Chapter 11: ‘The Seeker’: Frieda Harris’s Quest for Esoteric Fulfillment 259 Resources 282 Archive Collections 282 Bibliography 283 Chapter 12: George Yeats: Amanuensis to Inner Plane Spirits 285 Bibliography 304 Part IV: Embodiment 305 Chapter 13: “Telling the World’s Fortune”: Eileen Garrett, Psychic Medium and Pioneer Parapsychologist 306 Introduction 306 Biography 307 Psychical Research, Spiritualism, and Parapsychology 309 Bondage, Visions, and Freedom 313 The Birth of Parapsychology and Eileen Garrett 316 Contradictions and Conclusions 321 Bibliography 325 Chapter 14: How to Make a Magician: Kabbalah, Psychotherapy, and the Mechanics of Syncretism in Colette Aboulker-Muscat’s Waking Dreamwork 327 The Waking Dream: Discursive Construction 330 The Divinized Self 333 Self-Fashioning and Divine Power in Kabbalistic Texts 338 Making the Magician: Power, Ritual, and Ethics 344 Conclusions: Comparative Cosmopolitanisms 349 Bibliography 354 Chapter 15: Dion Fortune and the Temples of the Numinous 359 Bibliography 374 Chapter 16: True Knowledge of God Obscured in Mind and Body: Hildegard of Bingen’s Medical and Religious Understanding of Adam’s Fall 376 Gender and the Fall 382 Adam, Eve, and Esoteric Knowing 385 Conclusion 389 Bibliography 390 Chapter 17: Concluding Thoughts: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses 392 Index 395