As a Glastonbury resident, in recent years I’ve increasingly noticed the use of the “Glastonbury is the Heart Chakra of the World” idea in the advertising of all kinds of events, retreats, conferences etc, as a definite marketing ploy to encourage people to feel that this is a special place that will amplify whatever may be on offer. There’s usually a picture of the Tor involved. I had begun to feel a bit cynical and got a broad sense that the origins of this idea, what could be termed the context in which it arose, were unknown to many of those making use of it. I’ve also seen articles on Earth Chakras that have pillaged an original source, the work of Robert Coon, wholesale, with no acknowledgment and that has annoyed me for sure. Now, in Glastonbury, there is discussion as to whether the Global Heart Chakra has somehow moved elsewhere. This process began with an article that bore a number of indications that it was AI produced, and that stimulated a response in me a tad more intense than annoyance. It has also amused me that one local enthusiast for the Glastonbury Heart Chakra idea has recently become obsessed with the apparently malevolent influence of Aleister Crowley in the town. I get the feeling he probably isn’t aware of the profoundly Thelemic sensibilities of its two original proponents.

I’ve written about all of this at length in the past, in my Avalonian Aeon, The Glastonbury Zodiac and Earth Mysteries UFOlogy, and the Signs and Secrets of the Glastonbury Zodiac anthology. I thought that 7/7 Uranus into Gemini might be a suitable expansive time to repurpose that material in a new version as a little lesson in the history of ideas and also because these ideas are inspirational to the max and there is no need to feel that one has to endorse them in their entirety in order to get something good from them.

I believe context to be important so I’ve presented the Global Chakra ideas of Robert Coon within an account of his wider work, which links in with the famous 1987 Harmonic Convergence, and how his Glastonbury Omega Point concept can be better appreciated with a look at the work of Oliver Reiser.

This is a long read. It’s far out stuff. I feel that it may be time for more people to start properly feeding on it again.

 

ELLIPTICAL NAVIGATIONS TOWARDS THE OMEGA POINT & WORLD SENSORIUM

In Voyage to Avalon Robert Coon described himself as ‘an immortalist philosopher who has been initiated into all major World Religions and has unified Cabalistic Invocation, ley-line and earth chakra research, and astrology into the Magickal Art of Celestial Alchemy.’ His visionary work has placed the Somerset star temple within a global mystical context, providing a perspective that has been hugely influential in terms of how Glastonbury is seen as a sacred site and an acceptance of the bewildering blend of influences it seems to comfortably accommodate.

Coon is a lineal descendent of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, famously visited by an angelic being named Moroni who led him to uncover inscribed tablets. By some mystical process Smith was able to decipher the script and thereby create the Book of Mormon. It told the wild tale of the Lost Tribes of Israel going walkabout and crossing the Atlantic to settle in the Americas. Much scorn has been heaped on the idea but it seems to broadcast across the psychic airwaves in a manner suggestive of a weird truth.

This family heritage proved useful on July 1st 1967, at the peak of the Summer of Love, when Robert Coon was living in Boulder, Colorado. In Voyage to Avalon he recalled how, just after midnight, ‘a Physically Immortal human from the Realm of Shambhalla instantly and fully materialised within my room. He was not a shimmering vision, but rather a rock solid, Clear human being as real as you or me. This man wore a white robe, held a wooden staff in one hand, had long white hair and beard. He looked incredibly ancient – yet had the radiant Flesh of Eternal Youth.’ This being was none other than the Prophet Elijah, who has apparently also manifested as Merlin, Hermes Trismegistus, and Enoch.

Coon affirmed that this event served to initiate him into the Melchizedek Priesthood. He was also allegedly empowered to reactivate Aleister Crowley’s magickal order, the AA (Argenteum Astrum), which he referred to as the Omega Point Foundation.

An enormous cosmic download was communicated that was to be released to the world in astrologically determined stages over the coming decades until 1993. What rapidly developed was a vision of the birth of the Aquarian Age from a location in Southern England. The “global heart chakra” would open there and an “Omega Point” be activated that would lead to the unfolding of the Planetary New Jerusalem and the widespread attainment of physical immortality! Within a few months Robert had narrowed it down to the specific location of Glastonbury, a place that he had never visited. The big event there was scheduled for 1984, 17 years in the future. There was much to be accomplished in the interim.

Robert Coon’s work was astrologically determined to an exceptional extent. He attached considerable importance to what he called the Melchizedek cycle. This is a twelve year phase relating to Jupiter that begins with the one year period that the planet is in Aries. In recent years these have been, 1963, 75, 87, 99, and 2011. It would be a major inner cycle in the unfolding of his global magick. He came to believe that his work had been partly set up in 1963 when the Melchizedek immortals, Coon’s version of the Secret Chiefs, conferred to set-up three astrologically determined events at Mount Shasta. These triple culminations of Pluto-Uranus in Virgo conjunctions ‘activated the New Age movement in California’.

Some of the details that appeared during the summer of ’67 concerned the Aztec calendar. The American poet Tony Shearer had met a mysterious woman in Mexico whilst on a free-floating mystical journey who had introduced him to Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, and the Mesoamerican calendar systems. He looked twenty years ahead to August 1987 as a time of major transformation when the ancient deity would effectively return. Shearer went on to publish a long evocative poem entitled Lord of the Dawn on the subject that was initially published in 1971. His communication of these ideas to Jose Arguelles led to the creation of the “New Age Woodstock”, the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. Robert Coon was aware of Shearer’s work from the outset and found that it was in complete harmony with his own.

 

 

Both men’s visions placed great significance on the Tree of Life concept and took inspiration from the same Mexican site. At Santa Maria del Tule there is a legendary record-breaking Cypress tree that has been adopted as a Mexican national icon. Somewhere between two and three thousand years old and still very much alive and growing, it is believed to be perhaps the oldest and largest living thing on the planet. The gnarled trunk displays shapes that over the years have been interpreted as a variety of animal forms. This has led to it coming to be known as the Tree of Life. Its timescale encompasses the Maya and Aztec civilisations, through the conquest, to the present day. A mythology existed in the area that the historical Toltec era Quetzalcoatl had visited there shortly before his departure westwards into the ocean and promise of return.

 

 

The Tree of Life became the centre of Shearer’s Quetzalcoatl poetry through which he expressed the calendrical period characterised by thirteen heavens and nine hells leading to a culminating moment in 1987. Robert Coon likewise thought of a return of Quetzalcoatl, envisaging a male dragon force that circles the planet being activated on the same date from El Tule and another major Mexican site, Palenque. He also began working on a thirteen-sphere Enochian Cabala that would later be presented in his book Voyage to Avalon.

In January 1971 Robert Coon publicly proclaimed that Glastonbury is planetary heart chakra and that the global Omega Point would be activated at Easter sunrise 1984 atop the Tor along with a female dragon energy, complementary to the male, that likewise circles the world. This was not put down in writing at that point.

On Christmas Day 1973, as Comet Kohoutek passed behind the sun, Robert has said he had his only meeting with Melchizedek. The instructions he received began his great global chakra work with the ‘Shasta-Great Pyramid-Glastonbury formula’. This was ‘opening the Heart of Gaia so that the feminine Rainbow Serpent current could flow without restriction around the world.’

The most well-known and influential New Age prayer is probably Alice Bailey’s Great Invocation, part of the gigantic corpus of work supposedly dictated to her by the inner plane contact Djwhal Khul. It begins,

‘From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.’

Widely used throughout the New Age movement, it has, for example, been publicly recited in Glastonbury at the time of the full moon regularly since the seventies. The Findhorn Foundation give it considerable status

Robert Coon believed he had composed a replacement and the circumstances are of considerable interest and relevance to his Glastonbury work. On September 5th 1975, during one of the Melchizedek Cycle years, he was at Excalibur Hill on Mount Tamalpeis near San Francisco, a location he considered to be energetically linked to Shasta. It was the new moon in Virgo and the day of the Jewish New Year. A group of light spheres appeared to him that he believed were manifestations of immortal beings from the Jewish lineage including Enoch, Melchizedek, Elijah, and Moses. They stayed with him for an hour and did all kinds of strange stuff on his inner being.

The ministrations of each light being in turn resulted in one line of the new Invocation of the Omega Point being produced. Coon did not believe it was a kind of telepathic transmission but a product of his own attuned higher consciousness. The final thirteen lines equalled Bailey’s original.

 

‘Know, Oh Universe, that I Love You

With All the Grace, and with All the Power, of the Love of Messiah…

That my awareness is Eternally caressing all Forms of Reality,

Sharing this Bliss in the most Beautiful and Creative Manifestations…

 

Let my Heart be possessed by the Spirit of Truth! Let my

Existence be Dedicated to the enlightenment of All Consciousness

Throughout the Universe! Let my Enthusiasm be a Light of Love

and Truth for all to Feel! Oh Let my Touch be the Highest

Manifestation for the Will Divine!

 

Let my every Action transform this Reality into Greater and

More Loving Perfections! Let my Body be the Most Sacred Temple

Of Truth! The Omega Point is Here! Clarity of Vision

Has been Redeemed throughout the Universe!’

 

Robert Coon’s poem was due to spiritually supersede Bailey’s during the centenary of the Theosophical Society the following month. This event served as the midway point in the process leading from the July 1967 download to the Glastonbury Omega Point in 1984 which was to specifically feature the use of the Invocation.

The so-called Melchizedek Cycle years do not exactly coincide with the Gregorian calendar year. The Invocation was received in a year running between March 1975 and March 1976. Towards the end of that cycle, during the time of the appearance of Comet West, Coon was in El Tule burying a ruby and an emerald magickally set to activate eleven years later at the moment of sunrise on August 17th 1987.

Working with a profound belief in the possibility of physical immortality and that a planetary throat chakra is focused in Cairo, Robert Coon’s  mission was to ensure that, ‘ the archetypal thought of Physical Immortality, the Key Word of the Aquarian Aeon, was energized within the collective consciousness of humanity.’  Timing was of vital importance in this grand plan and two major magickal acts would be involved.

Coon believed that it was vital for him to be in Cairo at the time of the 1979 Autumn Equinox. This was partly inspired by studying strange prophecies derived from the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, in particular by Adam Rutherford, who although meticulous in his adherence to genuine measurements, could readily be described as a Bible nut and fellow traveller of the likes of Jehovah’s Witness founder Charles Taze Russell, who had earlier used the pyramid to support an extreme evangelical prophesying. Basically, the epoch of the Second Coming of Christ would begin in 1979 ushering in a millennium lasting until 2979. The material had very specific locations within the pyramid linked to it. The entrance to the Queen’s Chamber marked the 1979 moment.

Robert Coon set out to be there at the exact moment of the prophecy. He felt that a new era was set to unfold and it would involve a shift in consciousness which he linked with his major concern, Immortalism. Following on from the prophetic moment in the pyramid, he would then immediately set out to rediscover and ‘realign’ the Stele of Revealing, an Egyptian funerary item of great significance in the magickal system of Aleister Crowley located in Cairo Museum, and recite an appropriate invocation in its vicinity. This was accomplished on September 24th.

 

 

A deliberate magickal link between Egypt and Glastonbury, the throat and heart chakras, was made when Robert came to Chalice Hill a few weeks later on October 7th 1979. This was all part of the bigger picture of preparation for the Global Omega Point in 1984.

At this juncture, the concept of the Omega Point needs to be examined to fully appreciate the expansiveness of Robert Coon’s vision of Glastonbury. Teilhard de Chardin was probably the most influential and extraordinary Catholic thinker of the twentieth century. His ideas brought him into repeated conflict with the Vatican. In The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard postulated a further strata of the life of the planet above the biosphere that he called the noosphere, the “thinking layer”. The collective mindstuff of expanding humanity is creating an ever more powerful field of consciousness around the planet. It seems that, ‘evolution is an ascent towards consciousness — therefore it should culminate forwards in some sort of supreme consciousness’. Every consciousness can centre everything partially upon itself, can centre itself upon itself and is ‘being brought more by this very super-centration into association with all the other centres surrounding it.’ ‘Because it contains and engenders consciousness, space-time is necessarily of a convergent nature. Accordingly it’s enormous layers, followed in the right direction, must somewhere ahead become involuted to a point which we might call Omega, which fuses and consumes them integrally in itself.’

If the Vatican didn’t rush to embrace these expansive ideas, there were many that did. They seemed to express something generally present in the zeitgeist airwaves. Oliver Reiser was a Professor in the Philosophy department at Pittsburgh University for fifty years. He wrote a book on the Glastonbury Zodiac entitled This Holyest Erthe that was published in 1974. I can’t really imagine a British philosopher producing a book on such a subject that mentioned Atlantis and quoted Blavatsky as an authority. A lot of the so-called history in the book could be considered a bit dubious.  It’s only a short work but perhaps takes the Zodiac corpus to its most extreme and extraordinary expression in a way that enhances appreciation of the potential significance of the Omega Point.

Thanks to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis it’s no longer thought to be wildly eccentric to believe that our planet can be considered to be a living organism. Ecological studies have increasingly shown the awesome level of interconnectedness of all the many systems that function in the world. Many have found the contemplation of this interconnectedness to be a doorway to a form of mysticism.

What function do human beings serve in the midst of all this? Our consciousness is the most specialised yet seen here. Are we in effect part of a bigger picture of the planet evolving, coming to consciousness of itself and its place in the Universe? Is our apparent individuality, our separation, an illusion? Are we somehow the cells of a global brain? Reiser was speculating along these lines quite a while before the New Agers took it on board. He’d been influenced by Teilhard de Chardin. He also tried to see the unfolding of the history of human cultures within the frame of that bigger picture.

Here’s a condensed sample of Reiser’s mind at work. It’s worth reading over it a few times.

‘For a complete theory of any complex social phenomenon one requires a full-blown philosophy of history and theory of man…..This will be a non-linear and wholistic interpretation. In that more complete statement two facets will receive further elaboration: (1) there will be an organismic theory of the earth as a living entity, with human society as a part of that evolving creature; and (2) there will be a theory of the origin of human consciousness in terms of its bi-polar sources in (1) the human nervous system, and (2) the radiation belt (or psi field), the two poles generating the “world sensorium”- the guiding field which controls the psychosocial evolution of mankind.

‘On the side of the earth organism, we have long argued the case for the doctrine of the evolution of a giant earth-creature, the idea that the earth is indeed a living being, with the plant and animal kingdoms forming (functionally) the entoderm and ectoderm of the giant earth-egg, with the human race constituting the maturing nervous system of the embryo and individual persons serving as the “neuroblasts” of the creature. We have urged that the eastern and western hemispheres are analagous to the right and left lobes of the human brain, together constituting the armature of an earth dynamo spinning out the lines of force (“wires”) of the coming electromagnetic society.

‘Accordingly the planetary cortex of the electromagnetic society gives rise to its radiation-belt “elecroencephalograms.” These are the lines of force of the psi-field that are associated in cause-effect relations (feed-back) with the two halves of the earth-armature and the subordinate ganglia of the global cogitatorium. The evolving system of life is operated by the energy of the sun (as the ancient Druids knew), which elaborates the essential substances (e.g., chlorophyll) that the earth-egg requires.

‘The human beings (neuroblasts) of the differentiating forebrain are not yet the perfect neurons they will later come to be. This, of course, implies that human history, the rise and fall of nations, the migrations of peoples, cultural diffusions, and the rest, are phases of the rhythmic pulsations of the planetary electroencephalograms, playing like electric signs over a bank of lights.

‘We hold that consciousness is a manifestation of a feed-back polarity between the human cortex and the environing “radiation belts” of a “world sensorium,” this latter being our substitute for the Noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin. These postulated fields – or psi-belts – have their “magnetic moments”…synchronicities between levels or planes of action-patterns, which are the secular-historical events occurring over the surface of the earth and reflecting a kind of electromagnetic induction. The field-aspects constitute the akashic records which provide the prototypes that may constitute the morphogenetic images in the various eras of human endeavour and achievement.’

Reiser pondered on the Aquarian phoenix, trying to divine its possible message for the emerging age. A problem seems to appear. ‘How is it possible, at one and the same time, for the Tor Hill to be Mrs. Maltwood’s “Phoenix” and Mr. Russell’s “labyrinth”?’ The resolution is contained in perhaps the most far-out single sentence ever penned on the mystery of Glastonbury. ‘Is it possible that the labyrinth will turn out to be the morphogenetic field pattern for the embryogenesis of the World Sensorium?’ What does that mean?

Reiser believed that human awareness cannot be separated from the radiation belts of the World Sensorium, the global brain. This brain uses us to become conscious of itself. The whole process unfolds through mathematical laws, geometric forms. The Tor maze may model a brain pattern. It could be a place where the World Sensorium expresses itself in a manner that brings humans into an increased accelerated relationship with itself. They may become consciously attuned to it. Any form of interaction at all helps the process along. The maze could be seen as the brain of the Aquarian phoenix. The consciousness attainable through it represents the blueprint, the morphogenetic field pattern, the shape of the coming epoch. It has lain comparatively dormant but now is the time of its activation. The embryogenesis of the World Sensorium, the coming to birth and maturity of the planet’s consciousness can be crucially affected by whether or not the Aquarian phoenix is able to fulfil its total potential function.

Robert Coon believed that the global Omega Point, which he conceived of as being small as a sub-atomic particle, was activated from Glastonbury Tor during a rare conjunction of Mercury with Easter Sunday sunrise in 1984. In the visionary realm, a crystalline green emerald rose opened within the hollow hill. He positioned himself to be part of the human side of the process. From that moment, ‘The Spirit of that Summer of Love in 1967 has now been reborn in 1984 as the Phoenix rises from the Heart of Glastonbury.’  Fundamentally, ‘the Messiah is the Global Omega Point activated at sunrise of Easter 1984 on Glastonbury Tor. We each partake of union with the Messiah to the degree that we dedicate our Hearts, Wills, and Actions to the unfoldment of the Great Truth of Everlasting Life now radiating eternally from the Heart of Ancient Avalon.’ A perfect expanding circle of clear sky seemed to appear directly above the Tor and continue radiating outwards for days. This phenomenon was supposedly visible from satellite photographs.

 

 

The rainbow serpents mated at Wesak, the Scorpio full moon, in May 1987 in the Andes, primarily focused on Lake Titicaca. This was the last major preparatory process before the Harmonic Convergence. Robert Coon was strongly involved, serving as the focus for some large groups of people in Glastonbury, on the Tor, and in the Abbey, at different times of the day. In his estimation, ‘At Sunrise of 17th August, 1987, the Living Quetzalcoatl arose from El Tule to activate a new 52 year Heaven cycle on earth.’ Coon has never endorsed the work of Arguelles. He emphasised the Aztec as opposed to Mayan calendar and made no mention of 2012 in his general prophetic blueprint. Working with his own Melchizedek Cycle he noted that Jupiter was in a stationary position in the last minute of the final degree of Aries, the culmination of the process he was attuned to, at the moment of the auspicious sunrise.

 

 

 

 

 

In New Age and Armageddon Monica Sjoo took Robert Coon to task for ignoring the feminine in his Glastonbury Harmonic Convergence work. In his defence it needs to be remembered that as part of the 1984 Tor Omega Point event, he believed that a great female dragon current that encircled the planet had been activated. Harmony of male-female polarity was implicit in his concept of the two dragons.

Robert Coon’s first major published work on the Glastonbury Zodiac was the superbly titled Elliptical Navigations through the Multitudinous Aethyrs of Avalon in 1983. This was later updated to Voyage to Avalon. Anthony Roberts wrote an introduction in which he said that, ‘The opacity, facilitated by the jewelled prose, is a necessary initiatory construct that is designed to trigger the psychic synapses … and so enable the reader to soar into the glittering realms of “another reality.”’  This prepares the reader for a unique journey into the Zodiac, which Coon considered to be ‘a Great Synchronicity Machine weaving myths and legends from past, present, and future’.

Mystical poems, surreal juxtapositions of apparently unconnected but magickally cohering information, and outlandish prophecies, are woven in and out of expositions of a thirteen-sphere “Enochian Cabala”. A vital part of the alchemical Coon blend is his acceptance and advocacy of the work of Aleister Crowley. There’s a powerful Thelemic flavour throughout. He is also a great lover of literature with an appreciation of John Cowper Powys. The mix has not been to everyone’s taste but from the moment I first read Elliptical Navigations in 1989 I was vastly entertained and inspired.

Over the years Coon spent a tremendous amount of time visiting the Zodiac sites and researching them in local libraries and museums. Mary Caine made a few adjustments to the Maltwood images of the effigies. Coon continued this procedure. The most notable example is in Scorpio. Katharine Maltwood had confessed to considering her delineation of the figure as being the least satisfactory. Mary Caine made major changes to it that virtually amounted to a new version. Coon dumped them both in favour of an eagle. This sort of manoeuvre lends fuel to the critics who would say that if it’s really there in the first place then you just can’t validly do that kind of thing. Maltwood and Caine thought in terms of landscape engineering by real people. Coon tends to feel that natural forces are at work, albeit divine ones, and the emergence of the Zodiac is not a finished process. The figures are changing in the present day. People do interact with them and help them along but something more mysterious is involved.

Katharine Maltwood and Mary Caine didn’t really offer up any suggestions about what one could actually do with the Zodiac. In a 1993 booklet, The Glastonbury Zodiac, Robert Coon stated that ‘Things can be done in this area that on the macrocosmic scale connect and work out into greater dimensions, so I have always worked with it from the view point of what can be done working with Zodiac can be useful for planetary healing, for spiritual evolution on the earth.’ In many of his works he recommends visiting sites at times of new and full moons and when the sun enters the Zodiac signs. So, to be clear about what that means, if it was a full moon in Leo, try and be somewhere good in the Leo figure, ideally at the exact time, even if that might be in the middle of the night. At the exact moment when the sun enters a particular sign, be somewhere on it and maybe ding a Tibetan bowl and offer up prayers and invocations to appropriate deities and angels and so on. Perhaps a whole year could be spent completing the circuit. It seems inevitable that interesting processes would be triggered by such actions.

Whatever one’s opinion on Immortalism, Coon does seem to have validly identified a number of its motifs in the Glastonbury mythos. We have Arthur himself, dead but not dead, waiting to return. There’s the Aquarian phoenix, reborn from its ashes. Joseph of Arimathea is powerfully connected with resurrection and brought the alchemical cruets of that process with him. The New Jerusalem blueprint can be seen as an important precursor to the physical resurrection seemingly spoken of in Revelation.

Robert Coon’s Global Chakra and Omega Point theories are probably the most important new developments in Glastonbury Zodiac exposition. In yogic systems, a subtle internal anatomy is believed to be present in seven primary centres, known as chakras, located along the spinal column and up into the brain. They are normally symbolised as lotus flowers, of different colours, with varying numbers of petals, and a series of associations like the spheres of the Qabalah. Cultivating a harmonious flow of life-force through them, thus ensuring their proper opening and functioning, is an essential part of the inner yogic arts. The concept of global chakras provides a context with which to understand Glastonbury’s place in the larger picture of the world sacred sites and how they might relate to each other. Such locations are believed to be places of interface with the deeper levels of the mysterious planetary organism. Ley lines have been likened to the meridians of acupuncture, showing subtle channels for the circulation of the life-force around Gaia’s body. The planetary chakras concept has now become a mainstay of New Age thinking although few credit Robert Coon with being one of its original advocates.

The first published reference I’m aware of that specifically refers to global chakras and their locations, and giving Glastonbury as the heart, is in Kenneth Grant’s The Magical Revival, published in 1972. This amuses me, as Grant is a leading exponent of Thelemic magick, having known Aleister Crowley personally in the later years of his life, and some of his later books are amongst the most hardcore works of the Left Hand Path one could ever hope to come across, enough to give most New Agers a fit of the vapours. Coon is clear that he developed his ideas independently and his list of sites is different from Grant’s although both share the same Glastonbury designation.

 

Kenneth and Steffi Grant (artist for cover).

 

 

I feel that a brief look into Grant’s presentation is very worthwhile. It is all but unknown in New Age Circles compared to Coon but has plenty to commend it. Grant was not just an occultist but a great enthusiast of Hindu Advaita Vedanta.

Firstly, Grant stated that the base chakra is ‘concentrated in an occult centre in California that is only now becoming dynamic; it will prove to be a magazine of tremendous power during the evolution of both man and the planet in the present Aeon of Horus’. This is Mt Shasta, which has indeed become a major zone of New Age manifestation. The sexual centre is located somewhere in the region of ancient Sumeria, a cult centre of the Yezidis. The solar plexus centre is not directly named. Two centres serve as the world’s heart chakra. One is in a mountain beneath the ocean off the coast of Peru, the other is at Glastonbury. The throat centre is Cairo. The third eye region is trans-Himalayan: Shambhala.

 

 

Grant located his thousand petalled lotus crown chakra at Arunachala, a sacred mountain in southern India. The beliefs about this holy hill are most striking and can be fruitfully compared with the Tor mythology. The famous Himalayan Mount Kailash has been referred to as the abode of Shiva. Arunachala is considered to actually be Shiva, who says in the Skanda Purana that coming within a thirty-mile radius of Arunachala ‘shall by itself suffice to burn off all defects and effect union with the Supreme’. Its name is taken to mean form of light, meaning unmoving fire or light. This is suggestive of Shiva’s subtle form. It is believed that a column of light runs down the centre of the hill from an infinite height above. Other channels of subtle energy are also present. A scripture dedicated to the hill states that it’s true form is the Sri Chakra yantra. This is a geometric design. In esoteric Hinduism a yantra reveals the true nature of the deity it represents and the method of its invocation. The New Jerusalem geometry could be considered to be a kind of yantra.

 

 

 

If the archaic site has become known in the west, it’s mainly due to its association with the twentieth century saint, Ramana Maharshi, who spent most of his life at the foot of the mountain. He actually considered Arunachala to be his Guru. One could say that the mountain has revealed itself to the modern world through his vehicle. Sri Ramana is known as a supreme exemplar of the philosophy known as Advaita Vedanta that affirms no separation between the individual and universal consciousness. The suggestion is that there’s nowhere to go and nowt to do because we’re already there if we did but know it. The Maharshi conveyed the reality of this realisation through his overwhelming presence, quite often in silence. Indeed, he tends to be associated with silence and the realm of the formless. This is the Arunachala transmission of unmoving fire or light.

 

 

Beyond that though, some strange phenomenon accompanied his relationship with the holy hill. Speaking of its inner light beam, Kenneth Grant states in Outer Gateways, ‘Down this column, as down a pathway cut through space by the beams of the full moon, swarm the unearthly siddhas who, while upon earth, reside within the caverns of the hill’. These are mysterious inner plane dudes of vastly ancient provenance who can manifest in whatever way they choose. Maharshi said that ‘A number of siddha purushas live on this mountain. It is perhaps with a desire to see me that they come and go assuming various shapes.’ Strange lights have been seen over Arunachala and have often given the impression of being under some kind of conscious control. When Maharshi died, a bright light was seen moving slowly across the sky that then appeared to enter the hill. The Indian Tripurarahasya has a tale of a hill containing an entire universe within it. Someone who gets inside returns to find aeons of time have passed. Think of faery lore and the shining ones of the hollow hills and the recent links with UFOlogy so excellently elucidated by Jacques Vallee and John Michell. Think of Glastonbury Tor.

To return to Robert Coon’s work, Mt Shasta is the base chakra. Lake Titicaca is the sexual centre, Uluru or Ayers Rock in Gondwana/Australia, the solar plexus, Glastonbury the heart, Great Pyramid the throat. The third eye is not fixed. He refers to a ‘mobile Shambhalic focus’ which he believes to be currently active at Glastonbury. The crown chakra is Mount Kailas simply designated as Himalayan. Other New Age versions have put Shasta as the crown. It is, of course, not a concept responsive to archaeological investigation.

The “Planetary Christ Body” had returned at the Easter 1984 Omega Point event and been in the womb until Harmonic Convergence. A further process lasting decades to bring it to birth was activated during the big year of 1987. This involved a huge grid of sites that constituted the “Planetary New Jerusalem”. Six additional sites to the fixed continental chakras constitute the “12 Planetary Gates of the New Jerusalem”. They are located on Bali, Palenque, Mount Fuji, Haleakala Crater Hawaii, Lake Taupo-Tongariro in New Zealand, and Table Mountain near Capetown South Africa. Of these 12, 8 are “Driver Wheels”, 4 are “Spinner Wheels”; the Great Pyramid, Table Mountain, Lake Taupo and Haleakala. A 13th gate was set to open in Russia during the nineties. Further unfolding of this data ultimately leads to a total of 156 sites finally fully activated as a complete New Jerusalem global grid by 2065. The grid is the body of Christ. The process of its creation shows the expansion of the Omega Point into an Omega Sphere. “These 12 sites were anointed by the liberated Spirit of Quetzalcoatl”. These details were published in a 1990 booklet, Glastonbury and the Planetary New Jerusalem.

 

 

Fundamental to all this work was the meta-concept of Aeon shift. With the start of each new astrological age, the focus of the energies of the time moves thirty degrees of longitude, or a twelfth of the circumference of the Earth, to the west. The age of Taurus was initiated around the Altai Mountains region. It was the beginning of what could be termed the Shambhalic initiative. The Zoroastrians presided over the start of the fire age of Aries from modern day Iran. At the start of each period there are deliberate connections made between the preceding and upcoming locations. The Piscean epoch was birthed in a longitudinal corridor that contains Jerusalem, Mt Sinai and the Great Pyramid. The Persian Magi are stated to have been present at the nativity of Christ. Joseph of Arimathea came to Glastonbury and not only brought the dispensation for the dawning Christian era but also staked out the location of the inception of the Aquarian Age. At this moment in time people will be going back and forth between Glastonbury, the Great Pyramid and Jerusalem. The next epoch of Capricorn will be anchored on the north-east tip of Brazil. The mobile Shambhalic focus shifts with the aeons across the globe and is currently conjunct with the Glastonbury heart chakra for the activation of the “Aquarian Aeon of the Immortal Child”.

With Robert Coon’s work we seem to have come a long way from Katharine Maltwood and the High History. We must remember though, that Maltwood was thoroughly imbued with Theosophical Ideas of Secret Chiefs and Mystery Schools, and that the Somerset Star Temple was a product of their work. She would also have probably appreciated the idea that its emergence into our modern consciousness might be astrologically determined and very much part of a greater global mystical work.

Bibliography

Coon, Robert, Elliptical Navigations through the Multitudinous Aethyrs of Avalon, Excalibur Press, Somerset, 1984.

Coon, Robert, Voyage to Avalon, Griffon Gold Publications, Somerset, 1986.

Coon, Robert, Glastonbury and the Planetary New Jerusalem, Excalibur Press, Glastonbury, 1990.

Coon, Robert, The Glastonbury Zodiac, Avalon, 1993.

Coon, Robert, The Cairo Working, Glastonbury, 1997.

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