The Grand Dame
by Yuri Leitch
Title
The Grand Dame
Artist
Yuri Leitch
Medium
Drawing - Pencil
Description
This is a portrait of Margaret Murray (1863-1963) based upon a photograph of her when she was one-hundred years old; and it is an illustration for Book One of The Chronicles of Ogus.
Margaret Murray was an Egyptologist and Archaeologist at University College London. She worked with the famous Archaeologist Flinders Petrie. She wrote many books but is best know for her books about Witchcraft - 'The Witch-Cult in Western Europe' and 'The God of the Witches'. She was a big influence upon Gerald Gardner (the founder of Wicca) and she is affectionately remembered as the Grandmother of Wicca - she wrote an introduction to one of Gerald Gardner's books and they were friends.
Margaret Murray dealt with much conservative Christian rejection of her Witch-Cult theory, but the modern pagan world owes much to her presentation of the pagan 'Old Religion' of pre-Christian Europe.
In 1963, when she was one-hundred years old she published her autobiography, wonderfully entitled 'My First Hundred Years'; then she died later that same year. Intellectually sharp until the very end, in her biography she wrote about Death,
'It is only the old who have had a long experience of the changes and chances of this mortal life that can see or hope to expound the meaning of the shadows of the coming events which cast those shapes before them on the path on which the world is advancing. Each great advance in knowledge is followed sooner or later by drastic alteration in the outward form of religion, whereby the childish beliefs and legends are discarded, and a higher and purer view of the great over-ruling Power is obtained.
This is the faith in which I face the coming of that passing into the unknown which we call Death. It is that to each human soul there is given a piece of work to do with the choice to accept or refuse. If accepted and carried out to the best of one's ability the reward will be a removal to some higher sphere of activity and responsibility. If refused, and the soul chooses to go its own wilful way, it returns again and again until the lesson is learned. It is my firm belief that, though the physical body may change and decay, and fear that disunion which we call Death, yet the mind and soul of each individual passes on to some higher knowledge, some closer approach to the Almighty Power, in which we live and move and have our being.'
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January 23rd, 2021
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Comments (6)
Kay Brewer
I love tributes people who lived long enough to be truly the smart ones. And when I can read all about them in the artist's description. Voted this entry in the Billboard contest. Hope this helps get you over that 100 mark. l/f