DEJA WHITEHOUSE

Frieda Harris and the Divine Giraffe: Frieda Harris’s Esoteric Journey and its Influence on Her Artwork

After working for 25 years as a business analyst and training consultant, Deja Whitehouse is now a post-graduate research student at the University of Bristol, under the supervision of Ronald Hutton.  Her research topic is In Search of Frieda Harris – from a Victorian Childhood to the Swinging Sixties, which explores various aspects of Harris’s life in comparison with some of her female esoteric contemporaries.

During 2017, Deja was engaged by the Warburg Institute to catalogue the Frieda Harris correspondence held in the Yorke Collection.  She has produced an edited consolidation of the Harris-Crowley correspondence and Crowley’s diary extracts, a bound version of which is available on request from the Yorke Collection.

Her paper, Rolling Stone Orchard – the Artist’s Wartime Retreat, was published in Chipping Campden History Society’s Journal Signpost, Issues 7 and 8, as a companion piece to Richard Kaczynski’s article Cartomancy in the Cotswolds (Signpost Issue 6).

Deja has given presentations on Frieda Harris and Crowley at the Theosophical Society in Edinburgh (March 2017), the Glastonbury Occult Conference (February 2019) and the Magickal Women Conference (London, June 2019).

Frieda Harris and the Divine Giraffe: Frieda Harris’s Esoteric Journey and its Influence on Her Artwork

Frieda Harris is best known for her collaboration with Aleister Crowley on The Book of Thoth, and her incredible Tarot paintings that accompany the work.  Nevertheless, it has to be understood that Crowley commissioned Frieda to carry out the work in accordance with his specific requirements.  In Frieda’s own words: ‘The Tarot Cards were a map of inquiry but they did not satisfy me.’[1]

This talk will explore what Frieda meant by this and how she expressed her own spiritual vision in her artwork.

As the wife of a Liberal M.P., it is remarkable that Lady Harris should risk her social standing, her reputation and her marriage by involving herself with someone already designated ‘the wickedest man in the world.’  Whilst conforming outwardly to the social conventions expected of an upper middle-class wife and mother, Frieda enjoyed comparative freedom to pursue her personal interests, especially her painting, actively encouraged by her husband.  By the time Frieda met Crowley, she was already sixty years old, and established as an accomplished artist, exhibiting under her own name and that of her Surrealist alter-ego, Jesus Chutney. She had also read extensively on a wide variety of esoteric subjects and was familiar with Greek mythology and British folk stories.  Crowley was the catalyst that enabled her to bring all these diverse strands together and I believe the Thoth Tarot was the first instance when Frieda intertwined art and esotericism in her paintings.

However, as will be argued in this talk, Frieda’s spiritual journey both pre- and postdates Crowley, in what she described as ‘my task of finding a satisfactory God.’[2]

[1] Harris to Crowley, 20th November [1945], Warburg Institute, Yorke Collection NS37.
[2] Frieda Harris, Soufflé for Ganesha, quoted in Paul Ashford Harris, Odd Boy Out, , (Edgecliff, NSW, Australia: Ventura Press, 2018),  pp 274-275.