We are not a Unity

Posted on March 12, 2013 by

An extract from my Avalonian Aeon featuring some important ideas from the teachings of Gurdjieff, as presented by PD Ouspensky in his great work, In Search of the Miraculous.

Gurdjieff’s critique of the general state of humanity seems pessimistic at first. He stated that most of us can be said to be asleep in a trance of distraction. Each of us believes in a unique individuality but, on closer examination, most cannot demonstrate any real unity of functioning. We are full of small separate personalities. One part may proudly proclaim the intention to stop smoking, take up a regime of exercise, follow some idealised spiritual path etc. The “I” that likes to smoke or overeat or take drugs, be sexually deranged and so on, will later on assert its own claims and the lofty talk will be worthless. We have many I’s. They can all be “caliph for an hour”. Work on oneself involves the conscious cultivation of a “magnetic centre”. It is the responsibility of this aspect of oneself to seek out those influences conducive to the maintaining and expansion of its function.

What does that mean in the real world? The feeling of it can be better grasped by looking at it alongside another of Gurdjieff’s teaching ideas. Ouspensky discusses the concept of “food.” He takes it beyond the usual definitions. As well as what we eat in the normal sense, the case is made for regarding air as food. If anyone thinks it isn’t, try living without it for a while. Most stimulating of all was the classification of “impressions” as food. What we input through our senses can nourish or poison us. To take an extreme example, a person feasting everyday on splatter movies, hardcore porn and horror, someone who regularly read the literature of hate, racism etc, would be thoroughly poisoning themselves. Contrariwise, a person who immersed themselves in great art, literature, music, and the religious classics of the world, with a view to changing themselves for the better, would be getting some kind of higher food vitamins and protein. Although just what constitutes appropriate input is hugely debatable and variable, the basic principle is a call to some sort of conscious awakening. Gurdjieff suggested that once this process was really in motion, somehow one magnetically attracted to oneself the necessary higher influences. The world was full of them, but to the average tranced-out sleepwalking person they were all but invisible.

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Circlemakers

Posted on March 20, 2012 by

 

 

Here is another teaser for my upcoming work Aquarian Phoenix. This is a drawing by Glastonbury artist Yuri Leitch of my design, inspired by some of the widely varying responses to the legendary 1991 Barbury Castle crop formation. I will be featuring its story in the context of a look at the phenomenon composed with a Robert Anton Wilson style model agnosticism.

The piece will feature an extensive consideration of Andrew Collins orgone work alongside ideas concerning alchemy, and the Face on Mars.

I’m perfectly willing to accept the probable human authorship of the geometric design but am sympathetic to the cosmic trigger effect it had on a number of people.

There will be a number of other pencil drawings by Yuri in the book.

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Aquarian Phoenix

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

 

 

 

I am currently engaged in writing Aquarian Phoenix, the follow-up companion volume to Avalonian Aeon. It is part of my creative process to create the covers for my books before they are finished in order to get a feeling that they are already essentially complete in hyperspace and I just have to download them into 3D manifestation. It is a profound luxury to be able to engage the services of Glastonbury-based artist Yuri Leitch to execute my designs.

The book will include a dizzying wide spectrum of esoteric subject matter including the background behind the writing of a number of books by historical mysteries researcher Andrew Collins. His ground-breaking work on the fallen angels emerged from visionary experiences including material concerning the Nephilim in Britain (and I don’t mean the band).

Millenial fever, crop circles, the Giza plateau and the search for the Hall of Records, Quetzalcoatl and the Harmonic Convergence, X Files conspiracism and UFOlogy, Shambhala, Atlantis, Glastonbury and its alleged terrestrial zodiac, the Circle of Perpetual Choirs, the theme of the artist as magician, and a whole bunch more of contentious topics are placed in a meta-perspective through comparative research and the stories of my personal experiences.

The writing process is an intense one. This is why my blog posts here have been few in number so far. Expect to see manifestation this summer. Following that a lot more will be going on here.

In the meantime, I do have some more radio interviews lined up that I will publicise here as they happen.

 

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Interview on Secret Sun Radio Mystery Hour

Posted on March 12, 2012 by

 

 

 

I have recently spoken with Christopher Knowles at some length on a wide variety of esoteric concepts for his Secret Sun Radio Mystery Hour.

Catch it here

http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2012/03/secret-sun-radio-mystery-hour-paul.html

The main theme is probably the effect of landscape on the human psyche. Glastonbury inevitably is cited as a prime example. I also discuss Robert Graves and John Cowper Powys. A few tales of the presence of Aleister Crowley in the history of psychic questing are told and I conclude with the genesis of Andrew Collins book The Cygnus Mystery and how it led to his remarkable discoveries beneath the Giza Plateau.

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Arthur and Osiris: a mood in a Glastonbury sunset

Posted on October 5, 2011 by

Death of Arthur by James Archer

I have suddenly felt inspired to post a piece initially written in Spring 2009 after having just returned from Egypt to Glastonbury in bloom. I found myself irresistibly musing upon one of the more fanciful ideas concerning the towns’ most famous associations.

In Mysterium Artorius I briefly dealt with the comparisons made by Lewis Spence between Arthur and Egyptian Osiris. After being killed by his treacherous brother Set, Osiris (who is portrayed as initially an Earthly monarch of great wisdom and power) was taken on a boat across the Nile by the mourning sisters Isis and Nepthys to a western paradisiacal land of bountiful fruit and grain, to reign as a lord of departed souls and await his resurrection. The Nile was identified with Osiris. He was known as Lord of the Fish in this aspect. At a certain stage in its inundation the river becomes red with soil, considered to be the blood of Osiris and this stimulated the fertility of the land in a Grail-type manner. The role of Mordred, echoes that of the treacherous Set. The whole scenario is full of incestuous tensions. Arthur’s departure with the ladies on the vessel to Avalon, the otherworld western apple isle, and the promise of return, seem to rather strongly echo the Egyptian story. To think of Arthur as Lord of the Dead can be a very potent idea. In this role he is ruler of the ancestors, all of them, from the Stone Age to the Somme and beyond. Arthur awaits times of national emergency to return as saviour. Osiris navigates the underworld to help the sun to return each morning. In the early stories Arthur journeys to the otherworldly realm of Annwn in a magical boat. Is there maybe something similar here to the nightly boat of Osiris? It’s very easy to see all this as tenuous.

Osiris by Judith Page

Are we talking about some kind of archetypal myth in a Jungian sense or can there possibly be a physical link between Britain and Egypt that carried the tales? Many mystics and magicians, psychics and visionaries for a century or so now, have felt some kind of Egyptian presence in the English landscape, usually interpreting this to indicate real travellers. This has ranged from the kind of crank etymology where the presence of the letters RA together in any place name are taken as proof it was a former Egyptian settlement to the more credible archaeological speculations in Lorraine Evans Kingdom of the Ark that examines the remarkable old tale that Scotland was named after the daughter of an a Egyptian Pharaoh.
Dion Fortune, reviver of the mysteries of Isis and extoller of Arthur’s Avalon of theHeart, was a forerunner of this blend, living at times near the foot of Glastonbury Tor just a few hundred yards from where I am writing this.
The incredible magical psychic saga of the Green Stone, described in the Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman book of the same name and Andrew Collins’ Seventh Sword tells of refugees from the fall of Akhenaten coming to Britain already knowledgeable though prior contact with Megalithic priests of its sacred sites including Glastonbury and Avebury. Their presence lingered in the airwaves until a reawakening in the modern era. Could Egyptian vessels really have travelled to Britain? Might they have followed the path of the sunset in search of Amenta, their realm of the dead?
When I first moved to Glastonbury in 1995 I was startled to discover just how many people were dedicated to Egyptian mysteries in one way or another. There was (and still is) a strong Fellowship of Isis presence. A lot of people are convinced of past-life associations. Some could feel themselves to be former monks of both Glastonbury Abbey and Karnak with their interlinked mysteries of sacred geometry. The tumultuous period of the heretic ruler Akhenaten and his family that included Tutankhamun was a particular favourite. I even got an informal discussion group together to see what might happen if a number of such people all gathered together. This was the nineties though. Space aliens and New World Order conspiracism seemed to be the preferred topics of conversation.
The Albion Egyptian connection can’t be historically proven but that’s not the point. There’s a powerful evocative mood around all this that speaks of magic. Inspiration and beauty are its fruits. It’s been a perfect spring evening and the sun is beginning its descent as people gather on the Tor to watch it. As the darkness gathers and the stars come out, the ancient myths blend together as one and from that Grail the coming mysteries of the 2012 hoedown will flow.

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Harbingers of World Change

Posted on September 14, 2011 by

The great Alton Barnes 1990 pictogram. Photo Lucy Pringle.

 

 

Long time, no blog post.

What have I been doing?

First and foremost, the birth of my second son at the start of August made a bit of a difference to my writing schedule!

Secondly, after nearly a year of working on a Dion Fortune centred book that will be a companion volume to my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus, I have suddenly had a series of synchronicities and general indications that I need to return to Aquarian Phoenix, the follow-up to Avalonian Aeon. The material already written is full of 2012 related themes so it seems a good idea to try and actually finish it and get it published before that much anticipated year has come and gone. It’s going to be unashamedly far-out in all the best ways, dealing with Glastonbury, Giza, Shambhala, Quetzalcoatl,and a Zechariah-Sitchin-free wealth of Nephilim material from the work of Andrew Collins. All of this will be focused around psychic questing and the seven Meonia swords.

Here then is a little taster of the work in progress, a section quite near the beginning that deals with the early nineties expansion of the crop circle phenomenon.

 

It was an event that rapidly attained mythic status, making verification of some of the details difficult to establish. The location was the quiet Wiltshire farming village of Alton Barnes, a few miles away from the famous megalithic sites of Avebury and Silbury Hill. During the early hours of the morning of July 12th 1990, the local dogs began barking and would not stop. Some accounts mention a thunderous rumbling sound in the sky, possibly suggestive of a low-flying plane. Farmer Tim Carson was moved to investigate his fields around 2.20am. He was aware of a vague anomalous shape in the wheat. Daylight revealed a scene that would soon be shared across the world via an immediately ravenous media. It was a huge crop formation consisting of circles, keys or tridents, rings, and straight lines, in a design that appeared both meaningful and inexplicable. The scale and design exceeded all previous manifestations. A uniform flatness of the indented crop, coupled with the clockwise swirling in the circular sections, added to the mystery. Local car batteries were now suddenly dead. It was as if a force field was emanating from the mysterious pictogram. TV crews, so it was said, found their equipment malfunctioning within it.

Strange circles had been appearing in summer fields with increasing regularity during the eighties. The subject had begun to intrude into popular consciousness. Theories ranging from rutting hedgehogs and plasma vortex whirlwinds to ETs had been put forward. 1989’s summary of the action so far, Circular Evidence by Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews, became a major publishing success. The Alton Barnes pictogram was a quantum leap in the phenomenon that made conventional naturalistic explanations seem unlikely.

In the weeks ahead, the Carson farm opened itself up to a remarkable influx of visitors drawn from across the world. A most peculiar mood was apparent. There was widespread euphoria. Strangers readily conversed. A kind of contact-high was in evidence. Simply setting foot in the temporary temple seemed to induce an altered state of consciousness. In some, these changes were to prove radical.

The agri-glyph seemed to be a message in some tantalising unknown language that many felt they somehow recognised and were strangely moved by. The image was rapidly spread through the media across the planet. Led Zeppelin featured it on the cover of their Remasters compilation album.

In the coming decade, what came to be generally known as Crop Circles would function in a similar way to the UFO phenomenon during the sixties, serving as a strange trigger effect whereby a whole expansive package of unusual ideas were activated. In fact Warminster, Britain’s major focal point for classic sixties UFOlogy, was remarkably adjacent to the main Wiltshire matrix. Some minds immediately leapt to Extra-Terrestrial conclusions. The ingenuity involved in interpretation was considerable.

 

 

 

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Peak Experiences & New Existentialism: Maslow & Colin Wilson

Posted on July 22, 2011 by

Antenna by Adam Scott Miller

 

The great British cult polymath philosopher Colin Wilson celebrated his 80th birthday in June. His prodigious output has included a dizzying variety of subject matter since his first book The Outsider in 1956. Starting from an investigation of the psychology of famous mavericks, ranging from Nietzsche to Lawrence of Arabia, the dancer Nijinsky and the mystic Gurdjieff, Wilson later went on to cover the occult and paranormal, serial killers, UFOlogy, ancient civilisations, literature and  sexuality. He sometimes experimented with pulp-fiction formats to produce crime and science fiction novels that served as vehicles for his greater ideas that could be broadly termed (after the title of one of his books) a New Existentialism. 

For those interested in personal development and higher states of consciousness, and what that means in everyday moment-to-moment terms, perhaps the most accessible zone in Wilson’s vast corpus concerns his friendship with Abraham Maslow and the fruitful ideas this produced. 

Here is an extract from the section The Psychology of Thelema in my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus. It can hopefully serve as a little taster for those who might want to investigate Wilson and Maslow more. It is also the foundation of the presentation on the subject I shall be giving in Glastonbury on August 10th. (See Events )

Witness by Adam Scott Miller

 

American psychologist Abraham Maslow realised that the theories of Freud and Jung had been developed through studying people who considered themselves to be sick or to have problems of some kind. The same kind of attention had never been given to those who felt healthy, sane, and fulfilled. Maslow decided that this potentially meant that the various psychoanalytical approaches might be unbalanced or incomplete and undertook research to rectify this. 

Abraham Maslow

 

He discovered that people from all ages, genders, and backgrounds reported what he came to call “peak experiences,” a phrase that has passed into general cultural vocabulary. In all kinds of different circumstances, a sudden feeling of extraordinary well-being and elevated sensibilities might descend on people. For example, a young drummer talked of occasions when, after extensive practising, he suddenly found himself in a superb focused state where it was if the drums played themselves. There are now so many reports of similar phenomenon in sport that a whole literature and psychology has grown up around it. A mother preparing breakfast for her husband and children went into a state of profound joy and fulfilment when a ray of sunshine suddenly lit the scene. It seemed to simultaneously illuminate her higher emotions. She felt profound gratitude for what her everyday consciousness had started to take for granted. Once peak experiences were discussed, people began to remember many others. They also started to have new ones with increasing regularity. The psyche responds readily to all intimations of transcendent wholeness. 

This sort of thing would be called gratuitous grace by Catholics. They are often simple transient versions of the states recorded by the more famous mystics. Maslow believed that the ground can be prepared for them but they can’t really be induced to order. The preparation involves meeting the demands of what he called the Hierarchy of Needs.  We have primal desires for food, shelter, and breeding. Freud developed a whole theory of human behaviour and the nature of society on the basis of these factors, feeling they were sufficient to explain everything. Maslow believed that if the basic needs are met, there is another dynamic that arises and also requires urgent fulfilment. He called it “Self-Actualisation”. People need to have a sense of inner worth, of distinct individuality, of growth. Some kind of creativity seeks expression. Denial of these urges produces alienation, inertia, all manner of dysfunctional grief. 

Colin Wilson at the time he became famous as a 24yr old for his cult-classic The Outsider.

 

Colin Wilson knew all about this problem. His first book, cult classic The Outsider, was a study of the self-destructive path of many confused artistic types who had sought an outlet for their inner dynamism in a society that could not adequately accommodate them. The painter Van Gogh, the dancer Nijinsky, and philosopher Nietzsche, were all examples of intense talents that imploded. Their urge to super-consciousness came up against consensus pessimism, a major symptom of the sleepwalking trance of humanity that Gurdjieff had explained to Ouspensky. Wilson went on to write an Outsider series. One of them, The Age of Defeat, attracted the attention of Maslow in 1959 and the two began to correspond. Wilson had railed against the sense of doom and despondency that characterised European cultural thought. It led to people feeling passive, insignificant, and unable to lead a happy life or make a difference in the world. Colin Wilson considered this to be a fundamentally flawed and dangerous attitude. It could be summarised in the modern world as the “everything’s bollocks, let’s get the beers in” syndrome that I had even seen in evidence in university professors. Maslow told a story about how he had once asked one of his student classes which one of them would make significant contributions in their field in the future. None had raised their hands. “If not you, who will?” They got his point. 

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Colin Wilson speaking on Peak Experiences and Maslow.

 

Eventually Colin Wilson wrote one of his most important works, New Pathways in Psychology, on “Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution.”  Where Wilson diverged from Maslow was in his belief that we don’t have to wait for the peak experiences. We have many ways to cultivate them as part of intentional self-actualisation, a kind of new existentialism. The study of the psychology of health and sanity should form a vital part of any education. 

In 2009, Colin Wilson returned to the subject, producing Super Consciousness, his considered verdict on over fifty years of pondering these vital topics.

It’s most useful to contemplate how these issues have also been dealt with by the American cultural institution of Self-Help books. Long before Maslow, in 1908, Napoleon Hill was challenged by the fabulously wealthy philanthropist steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to dedicate twenty years studying what the most successful people across the whole spectrum of life in America had in common. The result was the Law of Success, a gigantic compendium of functional intelligence with practical guidance in its achievement. Hill’s most famous and contentious work was Think and Grow Rich. This must-read text can be seen as the foundation for subsequent popular works such as The Secret with their central idea of the Law of Attraction. It could very easily be seen that the process of inner training necessary to cultivate it successfully might be considered as a form of applied intentionality. I leave it for the interested reader to see how these various ideas can cross-fertilise eachother for our greater benefit.    

 

For a doorway into Colin Wilson’s thought

www.colinwilsonworld.co.uk

To check out the magnificent artwork of American visionary Adam Scott Miller visit

www.corpuscallosum.cc

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Occult of Personality podcast interview on Crowley book.

Posted on July 20, 2011 by

 

I am very pleased with an interview that is now available on Greg Kaminsky’s Occult of Personality podcast.

It deals mainly with the contents of my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.

I get to talk about the enigmatic man himself, his concept of the Aeon of Horus, and the controversial topic of Nazi occultism.

This section lasts just over an hour.

Listen to it here.

http://www.occultofpersonality.net/paul-weston/

Dion Fortune by Yuri Leitch

 

For members of the site, there is a second part where I discuss Dion Fortune and the magical Battle of Britain. This includes some new material from the book I am currently writing and a pathworking visualisation entitled A Glastonbury Qabalah that is based on the 1940 workings and is featured in Mysterium Artorius.

 

 

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Isis of Avalon: Glastonbury full moon vision

Posted on July 15, 2011 by

Cosmic Isis by Judith Page

 

Here is a piece originally published in the Spring 1997 edition of Glastonbury’s Avalon magazine. It also features in an expanded context as an important part of the narrative in my book Avalonian Aeon.
I am posting it on the day of a full moon in acknowledgement of the time of year and to affirm the virtues of voracious reading. If you feed your head for years on end with all manner of input it may eventually coalesce in a manner that transcends the sum of its parts.

I originally subtitled the piece A Hermetic collage. The form of its construction is such that it weaves together quotes from a variety of sources that were all part of the inspirational blend that generated the vision in the first place.

Priestess in Crowley Thoth tarot deck.

 

In July 1992, after a long, intense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses, I sought in the Book of Thoth for a key to understanding. There I beheld the Priestess of the Silver Star. Through the body of my imagination I then found myself in the tower, the pylon, the gateway atop Glastonbury Tor at night with my back to the town, gazing upon the enchanted landscape.

A full moon beamed out and gradually seemed to form the headdress of a figure I recognised as the glorious vision of Isis recorded by Apuleius in the Golden Ass. This work, from the late second century AD presented a detailed image of Isis from a time when she had become the most successful goddess of the Roman Empire having assimilated aspects and visual attributes from many of the other goddesses of the ancient world. At a time shortly before the triumph of Christianity she represents the essence of the old goddess culture before it was suppressed.

Nonetheless, through the secret heresies of the western Hermetic tradition and the natural experiences of people of all kinds, something of the vision infused and inspired continuity of veneration of the divine feminine until its gradual re-emergence in more recent times. Seeing her in giant form vibrating awesome power in the Glastonbury landscape proved to be a doorway to a great threshold crossing in my life.

This dynamic energy of an ancient tradition is a living presence in Glastonbury that delights in being imagined, contemplated on, and conjured forth. It is all of the vision of Apuleius and more. From the heart chakra of the world, full of grace, she calls, particularly at times of the full moon and the silver star, to a planet poised on the edge of an abyss of confusion, dispersion, and dissolution, offering a loving path to understanding, wisdom, and the radiance beyond space.

I present now my meditation of the moon in full with an invitation to those who may feel a response to perhaps recall it at the appropriate times. The nature of its composition is such as to show the many elements present in my life which enabled such imaginings to occur and gave them their flavour. It is also intended to affirm that “flavour” as a deliberate magickal act.

See if you will.

Glastonbury Tor at night. A hooting of owls. Distant barking of dogs. In the great deep soundless, boundless sea, of infinite space and infinite stars, the silver moon is rising, riding through scudding clouds that clear, leaving the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky. As the hour of the high full moon draws near, beyond the deepest pools of emptiness, infinitesimal ripples in the creative silence of the first cause stir forth a wave, a motion, an emanation.

A silvery cloud of pale moon mist now forms a shimmering pillar that spans the space from moon to earth. Beneath the heaven tree of stars hung with humid night blue fruit, it vibrates with energies of flux and reflux. Within an aura of a lambent flame of blue it begins to coalesce into a human form, becoming ever clearer, until revealing itself as Isis of Avalon, Queen of Heaven, Spirit of the Moon, whose cosmic love and inspiration radiates eternally. Here is the mistress of the tides, the secret silent tides of death and birth, tides of men’s souls, and dreams and destiny, tides that are rising in our hearts and minds.

The tresses of her hair are long and thick and stream down softly, flowing and curling about her divine neck. She wears as a crown twelve stars entwined with many garlands of flowers. At its centre on her forehead shines, white and glowing, a round mirror-like full moon disc. To its right and left it is supported by the furrowed coils of rising vipers with ears of corn bristling beside them. Her tunic is of many colours, woven of the finest linen, gleaming multi-coloured, at first glance with snowy whiteness, then yellow like a crocus, rosy-red like a flame. She is bedizened with gold, jewels, and pearls. Her cloak is deep black, glistening with sable sheen. It is cast about her, passing under her right arm and brought together on her left shoulder. Part of it hangs down like a shield and droops in many a fold, the whole reaching to the lower edge of her garment with tasselled fringe. Here and there, along its embroidered border, and also on its surface, are scattered sequins of sparkling stars. In their midst the full moon shone forth like a flame of fire. All along the border of this gorgeous robe there is an unbroken garland of all kinds of flowers and fruits. In her right hand she carries a bronze sistrum rattle. In her left, a golden cup, an alchemical Grail, from which rises a snake. Her soft feet, not hurting the little flowers, are shod with sandals woven of the palm of victory. Perfumes of resinous woods and gums waft through the air. Out of the timeless she has come down into time. Out of the un-named she has come down into human symbols. In the land that has called her, amidst the people whose hearts she alone can fill, she is calling forth the flame of the hearts of all. Thus she abides. A thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Extending her right arm, she shakes her sistrum, sounding soft celestial bells. From it, like falling stars floating to earth, a sparkling shower of crystalline moon blessings descends, touching the whole of the sacred landscape, resonating through its multitudinous aethyrs, all touching, all penetrant. The Tor maze begins to glow a gentle gold that pulsates as if emerging from just beneath the ground. The moonlit sparkling Abbey hums as the face of Isis of Avalon is also seen in the Mary Chapel. All across the land falls the glory of the stars into the hearts of men. The Chalice Well, its cover open, reflects in its water the holy face as the ground seems to exhale in a great relaxation. Spreading out and touching the Wearyall Hill thorn, to Bride’s Mound and beyond, out in all directions the gratuitous grace extends, until finally, the outlines of the signs of the Glastonbury Zodiac light up and energise. The sense of dimensions dissolves.

The Tor is no longer visible in its physical form. There is simply a void of stars in which shine the outline shape of a great phoenix. Within it is the golden form of a maze, a brain, the morphogenetic field pattern for the embryogenesis of the world sensorium. It is resonating and communicating with the sun behind the sun. Ursa Major’s seven stars appear through the maze heart of the phoenix for a brief moment. The image of the Tor and the surrounding landscape and night sky then emerge. The maze remains, glowing and pulsating around the slopes. The larger shape of the phoenix is also still visible, lit up across the ground.

Aquarian phoenix morphogenesis by Chandira

 
In the sky above the Tor, a blue point of light appears and grows bigger, beginning to descend. It becomes more clearly visible as a shimmering egg floating down slowly towards the Tor, as Isis of Avalon beams her grace upon it. Within it can now be seen a foetus, upside down, its left forefinger touching its mouth. A babe in an egg of blue. The New Aeon, the New Age. Coming to birth as its devotees in Glastonbury send healing and magick out unto the entire world and beyond; yea out unto the entire world and beyond.

Haindl tarot Aeon trump. Glastonbury Tor in background.

 

Thank you Apuleius, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Robert Graves, John Cowper Powys, Hermann Haindl, and many others besides.
“Isis of Avalon” is the name of an Iseum of the Fellowship of Isis focused by Celia Thomas.

 

 

 

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Lunar Music Suite by Steve Hillage from the 1976  album ‘L’ produced by Todd Rundgren. A mystical psychedelic rock masterpiece that provided a piece of the Hermetic collage.

 

 

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The Secret Life: some thoughts on Streiber and Castaneda

Posted on July 14, 2011 by

An article by Christopher Knowles on his Secret Sun blog entitled Netherworld inspired me to ponder again on themes that are of considerable importance to me. The piece concerned the way in which some imagery and ideas concerning the ET mythos has a disturbing power that seems to stem from a deep recognition of something that defies rational analysis. Indeed some of its expressions may appear entirely dubious. Nonetheless, the strength of emotional response it stirs indicates it expresses a profound truth. The quest to understand what that means may be crucial for our understanding of our true nature and place in the bigger scheme of things.

Check it out here

http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2010/10/netherworld.html

I had a few thoughts on these issues immediately. Joseph Campbell surveyed the world’s mythology and isolated the common elements of the core myth of the story of the hero and did us all a great service.

My feeling is that a core myth also lies as the heart of the deep level of response to some of this “alien” material. There may be no one single source that completely reveals it and we have to dredge it up but I am inclined to think it will have a Gnostic tone in some way as so much great sci-fi does.

It will carry that poignant sense of something already familiar. It may reveal we have a multi-dimensional life, or at least a life where some of the most fundamental action is often happening out of our conscious awareness until some strange set of wake-up calls starts to reveal it.

I was also reminded of a short but fundamental section, that I feel deals with the same mystery, entitled Intimations in my Avalonian Aeon. I was a bit saddened to have to edit the Castaneda references out of the published version so I’m happy to post the original piece here again. 

In November 1987 I read Communion by Whitley Streiber. This famous work, which was later filmed, tells the story of the author’s alleged encounters with extra-terrestrials. Everyone I knew who had read it seemed to be polarised by extremes of response. There were some who detested it and lost no opportunities to mock it. An episode involving an anal probe, featured in the movie, was the cause of much hilarity. Others used it to fortify their religious beliefs about the space brothers’ intervention on Earth.

The book had a profound impact on me but not for any of the usual reasons. I felt it was probably the best contactee account that I’d read, but I wasn’t overly concerned with determining whether or not it was “true”. I was intrigued to learn that Streiber had been involved in a Gurdjieff group for a lengthy period but that was just another fact for the data bank. What stirred me at great depths of my being was a theme that ran through the book that I felt to be supremely evocative in the manner of some archaic myth that hints at the hidden realms of one’s deeper life.

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From the Communion movie with Christopher Walken as Whitley Streiber

 

In the course of the story, Streiber had a series of experiences that stimulated memories of events that his conscious mind had no recollection of. These events were by no means trivial. As they were uncovered it became clear that they represented the most important, the most fundamental events of his whole life. Gradually he began to realise that the life he thought he was living was not his real life at all. The other, forgotten life was, in fact, more “real”. It was the hidden dynamic of his true destiny and had, in effect, been “living” him. This realisation, this process of catching up on himself, created a turn around in his sense of self that permanently mutated his feeling of identity.

 

 

 

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 The part of the movie that is most remembered. Things get a bit intense.

 

I recognised the theme as one I had already encountered a variant of and been strangely moved by before. It had been in Carlos Castaneda’s The Eagle’s Gift. This was the sixth in the famous sequence of the author’s adventures in shamanic sorcery apprenticed to don Juan. In this book, Castaneda told a story of experiences that led him to uncover buried memories of magical episodes that took place in another realm of perception, but were nonetheless anchored to actual physical locations and dates in time. These events constituted a coherent teaching and were of great importance. Somehow it was possible to live through such a process but have no conscious awareness of it in later memory. When the time was right and ripe certain subtle cues served to begin the reawakening.

Castaneda has had his doubters and denigrators over the years. As with Streiber, some are extremely hostile. I’d surveyed the critical literature and carried on reading each new work regardless. What mattered was what the books called forth from within me. That was the test of the potency of the magic they embodied. And that theme of the secret life touched some part of me very deeply.

Seeing it restated in Communion led to me pondering it again. I wondered if there was a similarly mysterious, secret coherent dynamic, functioning from some other realm outside of the range of my normal perception that was somehow “living” me? During an obvious phase of major change in my life, I was open to such possibilities and hoped I was ready to pick up on any clues to lead me on.

My 30 minute Blog Talk Radio presentation, Introduction to Avalonian Aeon: Synchronicity and Destiny, begins with the material in this post and expands upon it to indicate the way in which the mystery began to reveal itself to me.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/paul-weston1/2011/06/13/intro-to-avalonian-aeon-synchronicity-and-destiny

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