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Informação: Texto original
inglês, fora do site, em:
http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/kingsford.htm O texto possui caráter biográfico, e está principalmente orientado para mostrar como “Ela foi um personagem importante na criação dos antecedentes que levaram o ocultismo moderno a encorajar a participação igualitária de mulheres e homens em organizações como a Golden Dawn e a O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis)”.
Podemos ler no texto, por exemplo, que: “Aleister Crowley era muito consciente da influência e da importância
de Anna Kingsford para o ocultismo de seu período. Em sua introdução ao primeiro
volume do Livro Quatro, ele escreveu que Kingsford tinha feito mais no
mundo religioso do que qualquer outra pessoa tinha feito por gerações. Ela, e
somente ela, tornou a Teosofia possível, e sem a Teosofia o interesse mundial em
assuntos similares jamais teria sido despertado. Esse interesse é para a Lei do Thelema o que a pregação de João Batista foi para o
Cristianismo”. Leia abaixo o texto completo em Html, em inglês: Anna Mary Bonus Kingsford
Esotericist, Visionary,
Hermetic Mystic
Inductee of the Order of the Eagle, Anno IVxii
by Paradoxos Alpha
Anna Kingsford (nee Bonus, 1846-1888 e.v.) was prominent among mystics and
theosophists in the 1880’s. Politically active throughout her adult life, she
was a feminist, vegetarian, and most especially an anti-vivisectionist. To
bolster her authority in the cause of anti-vivisectionism, she pursued and
achieved a medical degree through the university in
Kingsford served a term as President of the
Aleister Crowley was very much aware of Kingsford’s influence and importance to
the occultism of his period. In his introduction to the first volume of Book
Four, he wrote that Kingsford had done more in the religious world than any
other person had done for generations. She, and she alone, made Theosophy
possible, and without Theosophy the world-wide interest in similar matters would
never have been aroused. This interest is to the Law of Thelema what the
preaching of John the Baptist was to Christianity.
Similarly, in General Principles of Astrology, he observed that Kingsford
was "disposed of an initiating force sufficient to transfigure the thought of
half the world. [...] She was doubtless the head of the battering-ram that broke
in the gates of the materialist philosophy of the Victorian Age."
“In the midst stands Deity erect, His right hand raised aloft, and from Him
pours the light of light. Forth from His right hand streams the universe,
projected by the omnipotent repulsion of his will. Back to His left, which is
depressed and set backwards, returns the universe, drawn by the attraction of
His love. Repulsion and attraction, will and love, right and left, these are the
forces, centrifugal and centripetal, male and female, whereby God creates and
redeems.”
Kingsford distinguished between the man Jesus and the historically repeatable
phenomenon of "Christs" or fully-realized adepts. Her doctrines emphasized a set
of archangels which were identical with deities of Hellenic paganism, and were
set in presidency over the planets.
Along with her talk of attaining to the condition of "Christ," it is clear from
other indications that Kingsford nursed messianic aspirations. Kingsford and
Maitland developed an idea of historical Apocalypse, which treated 1881 as the
beginning of the "Age of Michael" and a new spiritual regime, according to the
calculations of Trithemius. Despite the protestations of modesty by Maitland in
his "Preface" to Clothed with the Sun, it seems that Kingsford did
view herself in some sense as the "woman clothed with the sun" from the twelfth
chapter of the final book of the Bible, just as Crowley would later identify
himself with the Great Beast of the thirteenth. In the sixth appendix of The
Perfect Way, Kingsford explained various points of apocalyptic symbolism,
including "the Abomination of Desolation" and the precession of the equinoxes.
Kingsford’s other ideas about the "Aeon Jesus" and the feminine component of
deity were transmitted through her friend Lady Caithness to influence Jules
Doinel, founder and first patriarch of the Église Gnostique which was an
antecedent rite of the Thelemic Gnostic Catholic Church in O.T.O.
Not the least of Kingsford’s accomplishments was her infusion of a
self-conscious feminism into the occultist organizations of the late nineteenth
century, with a pronounced influence on the founders of the Golden Dawn. She was
an important player in setting the precedents that led modern occultism to
encourage the equal participation of women with men in such organizations as the
Golden Dawn and the O.T.O. Indeed, one might fairly say that Kingsford’s work
led quite directly to the fact that the Order of the Eagle now exists to
recognize women who have contributed to the principles and work of O.T.O.
A woman of high and intense energies, Kingsford’s health was never robust. While
struggling with her final illness, she wrote in her diary,
“I had hoped to have been one of the pioneers of the new awakening of the world.
I had thought to have helped in the overthrow of the idolatrous altars and the
purging of the temple; and now I must die just as the day of battle dawns and
the sound of the chariot wheels is heard. Is it, perhaps, all premature? Have we
thought the time nearer than it really is? Must I go, and sleep, and come again
before the hour sounds?”
Kingsford was a fervent advocate of the theory of reincarnation, but it is not
necessary to suppose her return after death to appreciate her importance to the
work of Thelema.
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED WORKS OF ANNA KINGSFORD Addresses
and Essays on Vegetarianism Astrology
Theologized: The Spiritual Hermeneutic of Astrology and Holy Writ (editor) Clothed
with the Sun The Credo
of Christianity and other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity Dreams
and Dream Stories Health,
Beauty and the Toilet The The The
Virgin of the World of Hermes Trismegistus (editor) BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES (abridged list) Butler,
Alison. "Magical Beginnings: The Intellectual Origins of the Victorian Occult
Revival." Limina 9, 2003. pp. 78-95. Godwin,
Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Greer, Mary
K. Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Maitland,
Edward. Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work. (3rd edition)
Washington,
Peter. Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon.
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