Phoenixmasonry's Annual
Fundraising Raffle
Our fundraiser this year is a 40 year old set of
prints depicting the three Masonic Tracing Boards (see below) as executed by Lady Frieda
Harris, best known as the artist who designed Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot
deck. Tickets are $5.00 each or 5 tickets for $20.00. Simply click
on the PayPal donate button below and we will snail mail you the correct number
of tickets for the money you have donated. We will close ticket sales on
June 15th, 2018 and draw and notify the winning ticket holder the very next
day! Please note that Phoenixmasonry, Inc. is a registered 501(c)3 tax
deductible charity and your donation amount can be deducted from your 2018
Federal Income taxes. Our EIN is 59-3594071 You can also donate by
check or money order made payable to Phoenixmasonry, Inc., 504 Plantation Drive,
Havana, Florida 32333. The deadline for snail mail entries June
10th, 2018. This would make a great gift for the Freemason in
your life. Thank you for your support!
Masonic
Tracing Boards
These three (3) high quality
prints (13 3/4 inches wide x 19 1/2 inches tall) which were made in 1976 from
the original hand painted tracing boards of the Entered Apprentice, FellowCraft
and Master Mason degrees. The originals were painted c.1938 by Lady Frieda
Harris for the Co-Masons, a Masonic rite of which she was an active member.
Founded at the end of the 19th Century her Order is still active today. It may
be noticed that the sword is very prominent in the Entered Apprentice board.
A sword, aside form being used by the tyler to protect the lodge, is also used
to direct energy from the Infinite, through the Master Mason, to the candidate.
The Fellow Craft board was painted upon polar graph paper, as might be used by
astronomers, the guide lines being left to show through to suggest the canopy of
heaven. Lady Frieda Harris was being taught projective geometry by members of
Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society and the those principles find
expression in her designs for the three tracing boards. Classical Euclidian
geometry assumes parallel lines never meet. As artists first explored
perspective, projective geometry developed utilizing the apparent disappearing
point on an infinitely distant horizon. Projective geometry flowered in the 19th
Century, and its relationship with the infinite aroused the interest of
spiritually awakened thinkers like Goethe, then Rudolf Steiner and so his
British followers who taught Lady Harris. She may have felt that she was
utilizing a new system of geometry to reformulate the tradition tracing board
designs in a manner that was suitable for a new stage in human consciousness. In
the English speaking world co-masonry came to be headed by Theosophists like
Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater whose world view was one of continually
progressing human consciousness. In esoteric matters, Lady Harris accepted as
her teacher another who saw himself as the prophet of new Aeon in the religious
development of humanity. However both both Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophists and
the co-masonic theosophists strongly disapproved of this teacher, the notorious
Aleister Crowley. However there is good reason to surmise that these tracing
boards are entirely the work of Frieda Harris alone, and that Crowley had no
part in their design. She did reinterpret the traditional tarot pack designs
under his direction, also utilizing projective geometry, creating the Crowley
Thoth Tarot. This is one of the most popular tarot packs nowadays, but was
largely unknown until the 1970s. The 1960s counter culture found in Crowley
something of a hero. His tarot pack was then published for the first time and
through that people discovered the artwork of Frieda Harris. It was in this
context that in 1976 the owner of her tracing boards arranged for them to be
professionally photographed and 500 reproductions made to the exact same size as
the originals using the offset litho printing process. This was done to the very
best standards producing high quality reproductions on thick art paper that
will be very color fast. The set being raffled here has been stored all this
time and not handled in any way. There is some very minor discoloration to the
edge of the discoloration to the edge of the paper but this is very unobtrusive
and would not be seen at all if framed. They have never been displayed and there
are no pin holes or glue marks to the back.
Click on
the images below to see enlarged photographs.
The First Degree Tracing
Board
The Second Degree Tracing Board
The Third Degree Tracing
Board
This board suggest the influence
of Projective Geometry. Below one of the first diagrams from a book written by
Olive Whicher, who taught Frieda. It shows how Projective Geometry can be used
to generate a matrix of rhomboids on a plane:
Lines drawn from the left and
right points on the horizon create the sides of the rhomboids, or tiles in the
Tracing Board. The wonder is that their diagonals (shown with dotted lines) all
point to the same circled point on the horizon, exactly midway between the
generating points. But this is not what Frieda draws. She distorts the matrix of
tiles so that if one imagines the diagonals they cross at various points up the
central ladder, signaling the ladder transcends the plane - which, of course, is
its purpose. Planes in fact, as signaled by similar lines coming
from the top corners.
