My point about Lady Frieda Harris and the Milford Track was that Frieda was unusually adventurous throughout her life, well beyond her wearing trousers and red henna in her hair when it was really 'not done'. Yesterday I spent several hours with a friend who is also Frieda's grand-daughter, and there's no doubt in my mind that Frieda was highly adventurous.
Frieda's artistic talent had been nurtured by the best training available, at the Slade, and by the time she was 60 and met Crowley, her artistic ability was very well matured.
At a stage of her life when Frieda was free of family concerns, she also had complete financial and actual freedom to explore Projective Synthetic Geometry as fully as possible with two expert tutors in the method while she was painting these images.
I'm told Frieda even visited Germany in the course of creating the Thoth images, to further her skill in of this method of painting. For the record, the Thoth images were painted in gouache, which her grand-daughter, who is also a London-trained artist, so would know, has confirmed to me.
Apparently most of Frieda's first versions of her Thoth Tarot paintings were accepted by Crowley immediately. There were only a relative handful of the images on which they both wrestled for quite some time to achieve results as perfect as they could conceive together.
As Tarot lovers we are very fortunate indeed that the exceptional combination of Frieda's matured artistic talent, and Aleister Crowley's very experienced philosophical genius, along with the dedication and perseverance of them both, has left such an enduring legacy as the Thoth Tarot deck.
*Z*