Anna Kingsford

-Born 1846 in Essex, England.

-Publishes her first book in 1863 (aged 17).

-1867 Anna is active for women’s rights. Also marries
this year.

-1868 – studies at Lichfield Theological College. Anna
writes stores and a long pamphlet on women’s suffrage.

-1870 – baptised in Roman Catholic Church to avoid duties
of a clergyman’s wife.

-1872 – Anna acquires the *Lady’s Own Paper* in London.

-1873 – meets Florence Fenwick Miller (prominent
feminist) and also Edward Maitland – a humanitarian writer and occultist.

-1874 – begins medical course.

-1875 – Theosophy Society founded in America by Helena
Blavatsky and Henry Olcott.

-1877 – Anna active against vivisection. She receives
illuminative dreams which continue for ten years. Maitland visits mediums and
writes *The Soul and How It Found Me* –
Anna makes him withdraw it from circulation.

-1878 – British Theosophical Society formed.

-1880 – Anna graduates as a doctor of medicine. Maitland
makes visits to mediums and séances.

-1881 – Anna and Maitland study Hermetic works at British
Museum. Anna’s thesis *The Perfect Way in*
Diet *is published. And the two deliver ‘The Perfect Way’ lectures in*
London.

-1883 – Anna is appointed president of the British
Theosophical Society. She lectures against vivisection and for vegetarianism in
Switzerland and later Scotland. She also disagrees with A.P. Sinnett over the
direction of the society.

-1884 – Anna meets Helena Blavatsky in London. Anna and
Maitland resign from office in the Theosophical society and form the Hermetic
Society. She also tours her anti-vivisection talks in England.

-1885 – Anna and Maitland deliver Hermetic Society
lectures in England. Anna also gives lecture tours.

-1888 – Anna dies 22nd Feb, aged 41. The
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is established. Anna’s *Dreams and Dream Stories* are published.

-1889 – Publication of *Clothed With the Sun* – Anna’s mystical illuminations.

-1896 – Maitland publishes a biography of *Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters and Diary*.[1]

When she married a theological student, she made the
condition that she be free to follow her own career. She applied herself to
social causes dear to her heart. During early married years she wrote on
women’s rights. Her medical career was motivated by her interest in health, but
also her desire for credentials for her campaign against vivisection and in the
promotion of vegetarianism. Her husband supported her in studies and career,
but stayed in the background. Edward Maitland became her co-worker in her
causes. She obtained her medical degree in 1880, having the distinction of not
performing any vivisection during her course.[2]

From 1877 onwards Anna received mystical illuminations,
which formed the basis of The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ, published
in 1882. This is a major work on Hermetic philosophy, also called Esoteric
Christianity. Other Pilgrims on the mystical path recognised her importance and
appointed her president of the British Theosophical Society in 1883. Due to
factionalism, namely an ongoing dispute with Helena Blavatsky, she left the
group and formed her own pivotal group – the Hermetic Society, which influenced
Samuel MacGregor Mathers, a founder of the legendary occult society, the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Mahatma Gandhi was impressed with her
spiritual teachings, and distributed her mystical books in South Africa in the
1890s. Mary Greer called her the magical mother of the Golden Dawn. Pert
describes Kingsford as a mystic on par with Meister Eckhart and William Blake.
Countless theosophists, mystics and other seekers of enlightenment have found
inspiration in her works. Kingsford also contributed significantly to the
histories of vegetarianism and animal rights, and campaigned for dress reform.[3]

Some interesting rumours were disseminated concerning
Anna Kingsford, most notably, that she killed two French vivisectors with black
magic. But also that in past lives, was she Mary Magdalen, Joan of Arc and Anne
Boleyn.[4]

Anna Kingsford and Annie Besant manifested
dissatisfaction with a restrictive Victorian lifestyle and a certain personal
restiveness that caused each in her own way to break the mould of conventional
womanhood. The occult permitted women the exercise of a “masculine temperament”
and provided an intellectual and spiritual outreach that were difficult to find
elsewhere; a viable context in which women could explore that aspiring,
questing nature while enjoying the felicities of like-minded companionship.[5]
Kingsford and Besant embraced unconventional domestic arrangements, pursuing
independence and fulfilment. Kingsford travelled with Maitland instead - this
model of powerful women with subservient men was absent in Christian
spiritualism but dominated the occult branch.[6]

Kingsford, although supporting women’s suffrage all her
life, she increasingly assumed a spiritualist championing of equality in which
she argued for the balance of feminine and masculine principles in men and
women alike. Similarly Kingsford favoured the full development of woman’s
femininity as part of the necessary spiritual development of any female
incarnation on this earth.[7]

[1]Alan
Pert, *Red Cactus: The Life of Anna*
Kingsford *(New South Wales: Books and Writers, 2006) vi-ix.*

[2]Alan
Pert, *Red Cactus: The Life of Anna*
Kingsford *(New South Wales: Books and Writers, 2006) 1.*

[3]Alan
Pert, *Red Cactus: The Life of Anna*
Kingsford *(New South Wales: Books and Writers, 2006) 2.*

[4]Alan
Pert, *Red Cactus: The Life of Anna*
Kingsford *(New South Wales: Books and Writers, 2006) 3.*

[5]Alex
Owen, *The Place of Enchantment*
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010) 89-90.

[6]Nicholas,
Bromell, ‘Living in the Borderland: Three Spiritualist Lives in Late Victorian
Britain’ (Michigan: Bell & Howell, 2000) 70-71.

[7]Alex
Owen, *The Place of Enchantment*
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010) 93.