Dr. Deja Whitehouse: Frieda Harris’s Perception of Divinity

Although Frieda Harris is now widely recognised as the ‘artist executant’ of Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth, far less is known about Harris herself. In this lecture, Dr Deja Whitehouse will talk about Frieda Harris’s early influences, what led her to Crowley, and discuss their relationship and Harris’s own perceptions of Thelema and the Divine.

 Following a 25 year career in business analysis and training consultancy, Deja Whitehouse returned to academia in 2016, and completed her PhD at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Ronald Hutton in January 2020. Her thesis, In Search of Frieda Harris, explores various aspects of Harris’s life in comparison with some of her female esoteric contemporaries. During her studies, she completed a three month engagement at the Warburg Institute cataloguing the Frieda Harris correspondence held in the Yorke Collection, and produced an edited consolidation of the Harris-Crowley correspondence held in the Yorke Collection and the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library.  Deja has presented her research at the Theosophical Society in Edinburgh (March 2017), the Glastonbury Occult Conference (February 2019), the London Magickal Women Conference (June 2019), Trans-States 2 Conference, University of Northampton (September 2019), Treadwell’s Occult Bookshop, London (January 2020), and contributed to online lecture series for Treadwell’s (August 2020) and the Magickal Women Summer Salons, (September 2020).  

Donations appreciated and may be made via Paypal to: treasurer@oto-austria.at