Margaret Ithell Colquhoun was born in Shillong, Eastern Bengal and Assam, British India, the daughter of Henry Archibald Colebrooke Colquhoun and Georgia Frances Ithell Manley. Colquhoun was educated in Rodwell, near Weymouth, Dorset before attending Cheltenham Ladies' College. She became interested in occultism aged 17, after reading Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema.

Colquhoun gained admission to the Slade School of Art* in London in October 1927, and was taught by Henry Tonks and Randolph Schwabe. While at the Slade, she joined G.R.S. Mead's Quest Society, and in 1930 published her first article, "The Prose of Alchemy", in the society's journal.

In 1929, Colquhoun received the Slade's Summer Composition Prize for h...