Clothed With The Sun: Being the Book of the Illuminations of Anna Kingsford (Forgotten Books) - Softcover

Gray, James Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1606201891 ISBN 13: 9781606201893

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2008

Synopsis

Anna Kingsford was an extraordinary 19th Century woman. She was one of the first women in Britain to become a medical doctor, edited a feminist newspaper, and served as president of the Theosophical Society. She knew Helena P. Blatavsky, Eliphas Levi, and many other primary figures in Occult and Esoteric circles of the time. She was a principled vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist, and opposed foxhunting. She was considered one of the inspirations for the Golden Dawn, a ritual magic secret society which was one of the sources of modern neo-paganism, although she did not live to join it. In particular, the equality of the sexes in the Golden Dawn is acknowledged as her contribution.

Anna Kingsford claimed to be in contact with fairies as a child. As an adult she had channeled visions, both waking and in lucid dreams, in which she tapped esoteric knowledge imparted by angelic beings, travelled in time, and witnessed shamanistic visions of a vast cosmos alive at every scale of creation. These 'illuminations', as she called them, were exhausting and sometimes terrifying. Her close collaborator Edward Maitland worked with Kingsford to record her illuminations in this book, published after her death.

Much of the channeled and revealed literature of the 19th Century is surreal fantasy, invented pseudo-histories, or pure free-association. By contrast, Anna Kingsford's illuminations are consistent, coherent, and display a deep understanding of occult traditions. Her theology could be described as Gnostic Christian Polytheist. She had a radical feminist viewpoint which seems fresh even today, one in which a Goddess figure, the 'Sophia' of the Essenes, Gnostics and early Christians has a central role:

For the woman is the crown of man, and the final manifestation of humanity.

She is the nearest to the thr

About this edition

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1606201891
• ISBN 13: 9781606201893
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294