BY T MEITHRAS
The Sainthood of Woman: our on-going project of creating a new, Thelemic Gnostic Mass to explore the Alchemical Mysteries of transformation and rejuvenation from a different perspective, while celebrating and enthroning the role of Woman in the tradition, has attracted some interest exactly as we expected.
Here we offer a non-definitive list of the mythical and historical figures of female Adepts we are establishing communion with:
Innana, Mary Magdalene, Circe, Aisha, Demeter, Penelope, Helen of Troy, Hatsheput, Nerfertiti, Cleopatra, Hypatia of Alexandria, Sappho, Wu Zeitan, Qutulun, Salome, Bathsheba, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Sei Shonagon, Morgan Le Fay, Vivian of the Lake, Gwenhwyfar, Kundry, Fatimah bint Muhammad, Esclarmonde de Foix, Lucrezia Borgia, Hildegard von Bingen, Queen Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Caterina of Siena, Jane Leade, Ada Lovelace, Christina of Sweden, Isabella Cortese, Marie le Jars de Gournay, Miriam the Jewess, Caterina Sforza, Marie Meurdrac, Elizabeth Aldworth, Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Berthe de Courriere, Ida Craddock, Marie Laveau, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatski, Hilda af Klimt, Georgiana Haughton, Anna Mary Bonus Kingsford, Emma Hardinge Britten, Moina Mathers, Florence Farr, Rose Kelley (Ouarda), Dame Leila Ida Nerissa Bathurst Waddell (Laylah), Mary D’Este Sturges (Virakam), Leah Hirsig (Alostrael), Dion Fortune, Annie Besant, Ithell Colquhoun, Regina Kahl, Jane Wolfe (Estai), Emmeline Pankhurst, Mae West, Pamela Colman-Smith, Frieda Lady Harris, Sojurner Truth, Anais Nin, Frida Kahlo, Marie Curie, Marjorie Cameron, Helen Parsons-Smith, Phyllis Seckler (Meral), Nema.
The names we will canonise in time will appear in the text of Liber LVI when the time is right for its publication. At the same time, we are exploring other avenues of devotion as well.
As for the list of male Gnostic Saints of Liber XV, this too is not to be considered exhaustive, but rather a celebration of some of the brighter Stars who helped to Perfect, and Manifest, the Feast we partake with the Holy Spirit.