“Up went her violin, and the bow crossed it. It might have been the swords of two skilled fencers, both blind with mortal hate. It might have been the bodies of two skilled lovers, blind with immortal love. She tore life and death asunder on her strings. Up, up soared the phoenix of her song; step by step on music’s golden scaling-ladder she stormed the citadel of her Desire. The blood flushed and swelled her face beneath its sweat. Her eyes were injected with blood.”
Leila Ida Nerissa Bathurst Waddell (1880 – 1932) became a famed Scarlet Woman of the notorious magicKian Aleister Crowley, and also a powerful historical figure in MagicK and Thelema. Aleister Crowley based two of his short stories on Leila – “The Vixen” and “The Violinist.”
External link:
“The Violinist” (The Equinox – Vol. 1. No. IV.)
