Now we are three!

Now we are three. That is to say – three years old. And we are Skylight Press. A brain child of my daughter Rebecca along with kindred spirit Daniel Staniforth, based in the USA,  and we recently got together to celebrate the occasion.

 In some respects Skylight is a reincarnation of my old Helios Books imprint that was active in the 1960’s and had much the same aims. Back in those pioneer days of antique technology I sought to produce quality esoteric books, which for example  included neglected monographs by Israel Regardie, such as  “The Art of True Healing”, out of print for thirty years; the first works of the then unknown William G Gray with “The Ladder of Lights”, “Magical Ritual Methods” and "The Rollright Ritual";  a reprinting of Dion Fortune’s “The Cosmic Doctrine”, to say nothing of my own first venture as an author - “A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism”.

I managed to stagger up to a list of about a dozen books, all set at enormous expense in heavy metal with hundreds stored in my attic, though this is very much put into the shade by Skylight’s tally of some sixty books in its first three years. Much helped by modern technology but still created and sustained by hard graft and dedication, comprising the professional design and typographical skills of Rebecca backed up by the promotional, editorial and general office slog of the astute and indefatigable Daniel.  My own role is simply to advise (when requested) and sit back in wonder at what can be done with the marvels of new communication technology in the right hands.

And what a great buggy ride it has been, just riding shotgun with the Skylight Press. Apart from getting my own esoteric autobiography “I Called It Magic” out into the world, along with a number of old titles that had fallen by the wayside in difficult times (“The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend”, “The Magical World of the Inklings”, “A History of White Magic”, “Magical Images and the Magical Imagination” etc.,) it has been great to see a stimulation of the dynamics of the faery tradition  - not only my own works on Melusine but the remarkable insights of Wendy Berg’s “Red Tree, White Tree” and practical follow up “Gwenevere and the Round Table” to say nothing of Steve Blamire’s “The Chronicles of the Sidhe” and “The Irish Celtic Magical Tradition” with more to come.

But that is not all – Dion Fortune’s old adage, by which she lived her esoteric life was to follow the three fold way of Hermetic magic, the Green Ray and the Christian mystical tradition. On the Hermetic front Skylight has plainly produced a winner with Golden Dawn initiates in Peregrin Wildoak’s “By Names and Images” with Nick Farrell’s “The Magical Imagination” seeming set to follow suit. While the best dynamics of the mystical tradition have been well represented with books by my old sparring partner the Rev. Canon Anthony Duncan, “The Christ, Psychotherapy & Magic” and “The Forgotten Faith- the witness of the Celtic Saints” – and be on the lookout for some more remarkable eye openers from him in the coming weeks – not least my joint effort with him “Christ and Qabalah”.

Of course Skylight has not only been active on the esoteric front but has developed a list of modern literary fiction as a result of Daniel’s academic contacts and perceptive foraging, not least of which is the remarkable iconoclastic Iain Sinclair’s “Ludd Heat” that had quite an influence on the award winning novel “Hawksmoor” by Peter Ackroyd. It is what psycho-geography is all about from the sharp end! So watch out too for “Suicide Bridge”.

 

My own interests tend naturally to the borderland shared by literary and occult fiction and what an eye opener it has been to discover Alan Richardson’s remarkable gifts as a novelist in addition to being a first class biographer of Dion Fortune. “Winsley Hill” is a moving tale of a naturally psychic young farm worker, Rosie Chant, exploited by an academic psychic researcher. Set in a real location, a plateau near Bath with chronicles of old light ever stirring on the hill it comes to a remarkable magical climax as she celebrates her 100^th year.  Conversely, he  has a reputation for taking no prisoners when it comes to lampooning psychic pretentiousness – of which there is, as ever, no shortage these days. “The Fat Git – the Story of a Merlin” is a riveting burlesque of modern magic. Read it if you dare!

 

 Anthony Duncan has also shown a remarkable gift as an esoteric novelist with the spooky “Faversham’s Dream” – that is based upon actual present and historical circumstances, whilst for anyone who wants to feel their flesh creep our re-issue  of Margaret Lumley Brown’s 1919 novella “Both Sides of the Door” can hardly be bettered, particularly as it is closely based on fact – and the opening up of her remarkable psychic powers by experimenting with an Ouija board in what turned out to be a remarkably haunted house near the old public gallows at Tyburn. Rebecca has also taken the trouble to research the district and locate where it actually was. I was a great friend and student of MLB's at the old Society of the Inner Light and she has been rated as possibly the most gifted clairvoyant of the 20th century.

Alas, it is not possible to mention every writer that has graced the Skylight list over the past three years but they are all on display – with links to their respective web sites – on the Skylight Press site.

 

As an old pro who has been involved with publishing in one way or another over the years I am ever struck with the uncertainty of the game. There is a close connection with trying to make money by backing horses. You never know what is going to exceed all expectations, nor what is likely not to be the runaway winner that you thought. One book that stands out in this regard is Hugh Fox’s “Immortal Jaguar” which I was quite convinced would rock or equal the reputation of Carlos Castenada. It is an amazing account of the powers and visionary experiences unleashed by nibbling magic mushrooms in Peru under local instruction – part memoir, part archaeology, and a visionary trip that opens up to a dazzling world of the Immortals. Yet also something of a cautionary tale as on his return to academic life in the US he found that having a shamanic gift that he was is unable to switch off can be something of a liability. Fascinating stuff.

 

The Faery Gates of Avalon re-opened!

Just reissued by Skylight Press.

This is a mind blowing re-take on the function of the ladies of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table.

The knights of King Arthur's Round Table - Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval and Gawain - first appeared in the works of Chretien de Troyes, who cast into Old French stories told by Welsh and Breton story tellers which had their origin in Celtic myth and legend.

Chretien wrote at a time when faery lore was still taken seriously - some leading families even claimed descent from faery ancestors! So we do well to look again at these early stories, for they were written not so much in terms of mystical quests or examples of military chivalry but as records of initiation into Otherworld dynamics.

And those who initiated the knight heroes were faery women, in the role of guides, guardians or lovers. In this respect a study of the ladies of Arthurian legend can prove to be more instructive than the adventures of the knights, whom they lured onto quests that were in reality initiations into Faeryland.

What is more, by going to the well spring of Arthurian tradition to unveil these original principles, they can be regenerated today. Opening the faery gates can have its reward not only in terms of personal satisfaction and spiritual growth but as part of a much needed realignment of our spiritual responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth.

"The fusion of the natural with the supernatural was so complete amongst the Celts that the two worlds are found in constant juxtaposition" [Anne Ross - "Pagan Celtic Britain"]

"...the passage between the worlds can only be made in love and respect, not idle curiosity" Wendy Berg - "Red Tree, White Tree"}

 

For further details go to www.skylightpress.co.uk

 

Opening up those Faery Gates!

The Faery Gates of Avalon (just re-issued by Skylight Press) is an invaluable guide to the meaning and power of the faery tradition as it appears in the main works of the medieval trouvére Chrétien de Troyes. Widely recognised as the first of the Grail romanciers, Chrétien wrote into his poetic tales a large amount of material dealing with the Realm of Faery. Sometimes, as in Erec and Enide, this material is concealed, whereas in other tales the faery elements are clearly visible. Chrétien falls into the long line of initiate-poets and authors. His narrative visions of the land of faery present a series of transformative initiatory scenarios that can be entered in waking dream-vision and drawn upon according to our level of skill and experience.

The Faery Gates of Avalon opens with a brief introduction to Chrétien, his life and associations with the faery tradition, and to how some of his tales are connected to Welsh redactions in the Mabinogion. Then follows a summary of the main scenes in four of Chrétien’s works: Erec and Enide, Lancelot and Guenevere, (or Knight of the Cart), Yvain (Knight of the Lion) and Le Conte du Graal. The latter given two chapters devoted to Perceval and Gawain, respectively, who are the two major hero figures in the tale. In addition to the clear and concise summaries, each of these chapters contains masterful insights into the main images and magical sequences of Chrétien’s faery world.

Gareth Knight’s book is no mere theoretical treatise, however, but a highly practical work. As Gareth says: “Chrétien’s romances can act not merely as works of reference on faery tradition, but as devices for tuning consciousness toward reception of such contacts ourselves.”

Additional practical help is given in the final two chapters. Chapter Seven deals with the key characters, locations and situations in Chrétien’s faery realm. Here we read of the significance of questing heroes, faery partners, helpers and guides, guardians and adversaries, and mystery centres and their custodians. Chapter Eight, entitled, “Reopening the Faery Gates”, presents a visionary sequence that can be followed in meditation, but which is open-ended in a way that allows each of us to create our own “continuation” just as Chrétien’s unfinished Conte du Graal sparked a number of literary continuations. No matter what level we are at, however, Gareth Knight’s Faery Gates of Avalon stands alone as the definitive guide to our journeys.

Last word on Melusine???

The Book of Melusine of Lusignan: In History, Legend and Romance

 Edited by Gareth Knight  ISBN 978-1-908011-67-1  Publ: Skylight Press

Mr. Knight, you have done your lovely lady Melusine proud! Taken together, the three volumes mentioned, culminating in this book, are the fullest exposition of the legend, lore and history of Melusine and her “serpentine bloodline”. This is the definitive academic and romantic work on Melusine in the English language.

I wonder if you have ever seen the wonderful Mediaeval illustrations from the “Tres Riches Heures” of the Duc de Berry? If you have, and have seen the picture representing March, you will have seen the Chateau de Lusignan, and perhaps noticed what looks like a golden dragon flying above the tower on the right hand side. This is no dragon proper, but a winged serpent, one of the forms taken by the castle’s foundress, the Faery Melusine. Sadly the Chateau no longer exists as shown in the picture; it was burned to the ground in 1575. However, the legend of Melusine was documented by Jean d’Arras, the Duc’s secretary, and this story has survived in various incarnations since the 14^th Century.

Gareth Knight has long been fascinated by the serpent-tailed Melusine, and has investigated her links with the history of her descendants, the lords of Lusignan. He has previously published “Melusine of Lusignan and the Cult of the Faery Woman” (RJ Stewart Books 2010) a short monograph on the legend, and has subsequently made a masterly translation of the evocative 20^th century novel “ The Romance of the Faery Melusine” by Andre Lebey from the French. (Skylight press 2011)

However, as Mr. Knight says in his introduction to this latest book, “I think she deserves better.” And so he has edited a book of source material which gives the reader a more rounded picture of his muse, much of which is translated from the French for the first time. This new material will be invaluable to the scholar, not least in his masterly comparison of core texts.

 We have several versions of the legend, followed by material Gareth Knight has collated about the castle, the town and the church at Lusignan, an area that is well-known to him after visiting there with his family. There is nothing like going to the actual sites where these mythical events took place, one makes a connection with the land and the forces that have been playing out down the centuries. It may sound fanciful to say that it is as though Mr. Knight  met the Lady Melusine on her own terms, however it is clearly a labour of love as well as a labour of scholarship.

 I was particularly interested in the final two chapters, where Gareth Knight answers such questions as “So what” or “Why does this story, and similar tales, matter?” Or more usefully, “What happened next ? What is the relevance of these far-off histories today?”

 Simply, that we can see the results of an Ideal, that of the other-worldly marriage being enacted upon a particular place on Earth, in historical time, and the repercussions thereof.  As usual, things did not go quite to plan; however, sometimes apparent failure is a part of a particular process, as any student of comparative myth will know. Melusine founded a remarkable dynasty, a dynasty that left the realms of legend to enter that of history. The first of these essays is “A Historical Outline of the Lords of Lusignan” and is scholarly and historical. The second essay is more speculative, perhaps, and explores the links between families who seem to have married into the world of faery, and sheds fresh light on relationships between seemingly disparate myth cycles.

 Mr. Knight, you have done your lovely lady Melusine proud! Taken together, the three volumes mentioned, culminating in this book, are the fullest exposition of the legend, lore and history of Melusine and her “serpentine bloodline”. This is the definitive academic and romantic work on Melusine in the English language.

 Review Editor – Inner Light Journal

 

Melusine flies in!

Beltane seems an appropriate time to be able to announce publication of my latest – and probably last – work on Melusine of Lusignan.

“The Book of Melusine of Lusignan in History, Legend and Romance” is a natural follow up to my previous monograph for R J Stewart  “Melusine of Lusignan and the Cult of the Faery Woman” in 2008 and my translation of André Lebey’s “Romance of the Faery Melusine” (Skylight Press, 2011).  It is a big bumper bundle of material upon Melusine that I now present, mostly translated from the French.

I begin with a short account of the story of Melusine as told by the Abbé Vergnaud, a  parish priest at Lusignan, who wrote for the general enquirer and above all for his parishioners. As well as a succinct account of her legend his interspersed pastoral comments have a certain old world charm if somewhat at odds with modern secular sentiments.

He serves as a good introduction to the complete story as rendered in the first English translation of the romance in about 1500-1520. The rhymed Middle English is I regret not likely to be much more comprehensible to the modern reader than if it had been left in the original French. As a sample: “For of fo fair A swete creature approcheth non ille, but ay al goodnesse, fro you may noght come but good auenture…..” and so on. However, I have used the gloss of the eminent Victorian scholar Walter Skeat to make it all accessible from which you can track through the whole story in full detail – including the remarkable adventures of Melusine’s ten sons.

From there we are in a position to take on the background to the story via “An Essay on Melusine” by the distinguished French scholar, Louis Stouff, probably still the definitive academic work on Melusine despite being written ninety years ago. He covers all aspects of the romance, including the identity of the original author, who commissioned him and why, along with his sources, and the cultural, geographical and historical background to the romance.

Following that I have collected some interesting odds and ends about the Castle, Town and Church at Lusignan, that were all traditionally built by Melusine with considerable faery assistance. The first from a 19^th century history of the House of Lusignan and the rest from the local church bookstall and tourist bureau when I last visited Lusignan – including some photographs I took when I was there.

Finally I attach a couple of articles of my own. The first covering my research into the remarkable history of the Lusignan family during the 12^th century, when two of them became Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem. This leads on naturally to a somewhat speculative investigation of other rulers of Jerusalem with traditions of having faeries in the family. This includes the descendants of a countess of Lorraine, who married the faery Knight of the Swan, who later appears as Lohengrin in the Grail stories, amidst the puzzling activities of Philip, Count of Flanders, who provided Chrétien de Troyes with the mysterious manuscript upon which he based his Conte del Graal.

All gives much to ponder on, and as contemporary Avalonian Ian Rees has recently observed: “Melusine is a fascinating and intriguing figure, bridging as she does the human and faery worlds and in an odd way the worlds of Avalon and Jerusalem…As  someone who lives in Glastonbury and who works regularly in Jerusalem I see much potential in what is being offered to us in what can seem like a quaint story of faery ancestry.”

I have done what I can over the past few years to lay the evidence out for the English speaking world. For details of this latest effort go to the website of Skylight Press – www.skylightpress.co.uk.

Talking about myself...

RECENT CHAT WITH DANIEL STANIFORTH OF SKYLIGHT PRESS

It strikes me that your work is now coming to a second perhaps third generation of readers who perhaps aren't quite as aware of your background.  You have retired from public service but continue to be a prolific author on quite a few fronts.  Tell us a little bit about how you work and what you are up to these days.

Third generation? Yes, sounds a bit awesome. Especially when I reflect that my first book, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, and still going strong, was written fifty years ago. Having reached my ninth decade most of my esoteric activities these days are done sitting at a computer keyboard. And a lot easier that is, I must say, compared to the old days of hammering away at a secondhand typewriter with three carbon copies jammed in the roller. Correcting a mistake was a real hassle, a messy job with an India rubber applied to all copies. I feel lucky that people still seem to want to read my work and that Skylight Press is there to design it so well and distribute it.  

It has come to my attention that you are a pianist and lover of music, particularly Jazz.  Is music an escape or release from your work or is it a part of the mystical experience?  What are your listening or playing habits?

The best thing about music making is doing it along with other people. I led a traditional jazz band in my misspent youth, spent summer weekends playing flugal horn and glockenspiel with a local brass band in my middle years, and until recently filled the piano chair in a rehearsal big band playing anything from Count Basie to Stan Kenton. I also had a go at writing band arrangements, somewhat a bit off the beaten track, such as modern jazz or old ragtime numbers for the brass band, including a cheeky version of “The Stripper” (never to be played on Sunday afternoons or at church fêtes!).

I still play the piano a bit at home, and would be what might be called an improvising musician – never playing anything the same way twice. As for listening, I like any jazz from ancient to modern – pianists Jelly Roll Morton to Thelonious Monk, and with a particularly soft spot for cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Classical music does not do a lot for me although I have recently been smitten by the astonishingly gifted and lovely virtuoso Alison Balsom playing baroque trumpet.

You have written on the Oxford Inklings, the various texts of the Arthuriad, and more recently have translated works from mediaeval French literature.  Coming from a literary background myself I also notice a lot of literary allusions in your esoteric work, often the Romantics and Victorians (with Coleridge seeming to be a particular favourite).  Can you elaborate on where this might come from and whether or not you have a conscious approach to the literary realm?

The magical imagination has been best demonstrated and theorized about by nineteenth century romantic poets – a fact I learned from the former Hawkwood College principal Bernard Nesfield-Cookson, from the poet Kathleen Raine, and from reading What Coleridge Thought by anthroposophist Inkling Owen Barfield. I simply took the hint and plunged in.

I have always had a leaning toward the French and when I retired from work took an external BA degree in French at the University of London which gave me the ability to translate a few interesting texts – introducing the faery Melusine of Lusignan to the Anglosaxon world and getting closer acquainted with early Arthurian romancers such as Chrétien de Troyes. 

My introduction to your work was through Experience of the Inner Worlds, which was first published almost 40 years ago.  Recently, you have worked on quite a few new editions of texts from your early days, which must be quite an experience.  Can you tell us what it is like going back to these works?  Do you feel that you have changed or grown across the arc of your books?

The one I would really like to get back to is A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism as it is showing its age in some respects – most of the occultism is all right but there are some embarrassing social comments which I would no longer identify with. I was able to go some way to make amends with a new Introduction to the paperback edition in 2000, although I am not sure that many people read Introductions!

As for my later works, it may sound a bit complacent or conceited but I have not found much need to revise them – in fact I have been quite awed by my former erudition. Did I really read and comment on all the works of C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield for The Magical World of the Inklings?  So in all honesty  it is not so much with a big head as realizing I might have passed my best! Not likely to pull off that kind of thing again, any more than doing unscripted weekend workshops off the cuff. Time to pull in the horns a bit and play to what remain of my strengths. And I share the experience of Dion Fortune in having, more than once, picked up a book and read it with interest before realizing it to be one of my own!

Many readers might not know that you spent many years working in the publishing trade both as a submissions editor for a large publishing house and a proprietor of a small press.  A lot has changed since then.  How do you see the current publishing world in comparison to those days?  What advice would you give to an aspiring writer in your field?

I think large publishing houses are much the same apart from getting larger and multinational in place of the old family firms that had thrived for the previous couple of hundred years and more. When I was with Longmans it was still run by the family since its foundation in 1724. In the modern world a middle sized publishing firm finds it hard to make ends meet.

          On the other hand small publishing is a lot easier with the advance of technology making short print runs feasible, and with increased distribution and promotion opportunities via the internet. In my early days when printing was done with slugs of hot metal in a Lynotype machine the only way I survived was by scrounging money from generous benefactors and having a specialist mail order bookshop on the side as a customer base. Mind you,  publishing is still not as easy as it might look!

          As for advice on writing – read a lot and write a lot. Read the very best in your chosen genre, whether it be highbrow literature, journalism or pulp fiction. And write at least a thousand words every day – most of it will be rubbish for the first hundred thousand words or so but paper is cheap and recyclable. Above all enjoy it, don’t give up the day job and be lucky! Very lucky! If getting rich is your object you might do better to play the national lottery. Chances are about the same, and you can use the money that you might have wasted on a creative writing course.

Much of what you write is sought out by what seems to be a robust 'specialty' or 'niche' audience of practitioners, theorists, students and neophytes.  But in a mainstream sense it is all lumped together in the 'New Age' or 'Mind Body Spirit' sections along with Alien conspiracy theories and blissed-out Angel picture books.  What is your sense of your readership - who do you write for?

I suppose I more or less write for myself. A personal quest to research into something and hope a reasonable number of like minded souls might care to pay the cost of a book to be looking over my shoulder, so to speak. Which is not a very good formula for earning a living but I have only ever looked upon it as a congenial hobby. The esoteric world is a very fragmented one – with almost as many “isms” as there are readers to go round. Just look at the shelves on a specialist occult book shop. And then cast a glance at the occult shelf of a big book store to see a smattering of elementary books geared to the lowest common denominator.

As perhaps the foremost 'elder statesman' in the Western Mystery Tradition and yourself a part of Dion Fortune's legacy do you have strong notions of lineage within the community?  Is there a core of new writers and thinkers to be excited about or have things become too diffuse in our digital age of 'anything goes'?

As to lineage I suppose that I am a Dion Fortune man. I was bowled over by her books when I first came upon them, and learned my occultism in the society she founded, and have continued on from there as the path has opened at my feet – for details of which see I Called It Magic, my esoteric autobiography. Some people now talk of a “Dion Fortune/Gareth Knight tradition” so I suppose I must have done something right. However, the tradition is wider than that, and flourishing in many ways with some very bright people coming through. For specific examples of which consult the list of authors at Skylight Press!

Finally - people often comment on the vast range of your subject matter and expertise - can you give us an inkling as to what you're working on at the moment?  What new topics can we expect?

Currently girding up my loins to cope with the proofs of my forthcoming blockbuster The Book of Melusine of Lusignan in History, Legend & Romance. On the translation front I am two thirds of the way through another book by André Lebey, L’Initiation de Vercingetorix  a fascinating evocation of the Celtic world of two thousand years ago, probably to be called Druids against Caesar.

As for the next bit of original work I am teetering on the edge of an ambitious and possibly foolhardy attempt, if I should live so long, to cast some esoteric light on the modern scientific world, or scientific light on the modern esoteric world, with the provisional title of Stellar Alchemy & Magical Harmonics. Might as well aim high and end with a Big Bang rather than a whimper. 

Camelot Revisited

One of my earlier works has recently reappeared in a new edition, namely The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend.  There is an involved and fascinating history to this book and to its origins. It was first published in 1983 following a quite remarkable workshop I conducted at Hawkwood college in 1981.  As Caitlín Matthews, who was there at the time, reported – “It was truly an awesome and splendid thing that we did. The power which we invoked was both visible and perceptible to every sense: the candles on the altar shimmering with a radiance greater than their own. None of us wanted to leave: we were gripped, not by fear, but by longing to remain. One by one the company dispersed to bear into the world the substance of what we had experienced, and to continue the work of the Round Table within our own sphere of life.”  The whole event is reported in somewhat more detail in my esoteric autobiography I Called It Magic.

            This series of workshops was part of an initiative based on the principle of the Externalisation of the Hierarchy to take into the public domain certain techniques that I had learned in the Society of the Inner Light, and from working with the occultist W.G.Gray in the late 1960’s, (whose biography, by the way, The Old Sod, by Marcus Claridge and Alan Richardson is a remarkable insight into the ways (and peccadilloes) of an earlier occult generation).

However, the theme of this particular Arthurian weekend, and much of the power behind it, was largely based on a Society of the Inner Light script called The Arthurian Formula. This had originated as a series of trance communications received by Dion Fortune between April 1941 and February 1942, assisted by her old Golden Dawn mentor, Maiya Tranchell-Hayes, and later supplemented by her remarkably gifted successor Margaret Lumley Brown. The script had formed the basis of the inner work of the Society for the following twenty years in a project known as the Redemption of the Archetypes. Although all was highly secret in those days, in 2006 I was able to edit a published edition of The Arthurian Formula, with an amount of supplementary material on Atlantean and Faery traditions.

But when it comes to the matter of revisiting Camelot, a lot depends on what route one is taking to get there. We need to bear this in mind to avoid being confused by what may appear to be direct contradictions in interpretation. Atlantean? Faery? Celtic? Malory? Mabinogion? Chretien de Troyes? Lancelot/Grail?

The Arthurian Formula, and by extension, The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend is largely based on Le Morte d’Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory, a classic of early English literature published in 1485, and upon which Atlantean theories were grafted by Dion Fortune and Margaret Lumley Brown and their inner contacts.

Atlantean speculations had their heyday in the 1920’s, the ground having been laid in 1892 by a retired American politician Ignatius Donnelly with Atlantis: The Antediluvian World as part of a serious scientific proposition. That is to say whether such a catastrophe as a lost continent was geologically likely or possible, along with comparisons of flora and fauna and human culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Theories were taken seriously enough for the British Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone (unsuccessfully) to seek government funds to send a ship to test some of them out, and for the explorer Colonel Fawcett (also tragically unsuccessfully) to seek remains of a civilisation antedating ancient Egypt in the Amazon jungle. The respected occult researcher Lewis Spence  published a series of works on the subject during the 1920’s and Dion Fortune was familiar with all of these, so that the outlines of the tradition were replicated in The Esoteric Orders and their Work (1927). The more esoteric strands stemmed from Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), the clairvoyant researches by W. Scott-Elliot in The Story of Atlantis (1893), and Rudolf Steiner’s  Atlantis and Lemuria (1911).

Most of the scientific theories seem to have been sunk  by more recent oceanographic studies and the theory of tectonic plates, but the tradition of a lost continent lives on as a scenario that appeals to the popular imagination, and in a way has resurfaced with J.R.R.Tolkien’s evocation of Numenor in The Silmarillion. Not published until 1977 but which may have been written as far back as the early 1920’s, not that Tolkien seemed to rely on anything beyond his own mythopoeic imagination – and nothing wrong with that! And it is quite possible to build a workable Mystery tradition upon them.

Dion Fortune’s long term interest in the matter of sexual polarity as exemplified in her novels and in her early psychological work is also plainly shown in The Arthurian Formula in an analysis of the domestic problems experienced by Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot, and in which the king’s half sisters Morgan and Morgawse play a questionable role.  

Wendy Berg, however, has set a number of other hares running with remarkable pair of books, one theoretical the other practical,  Red Tree, White Tree and Gwenevere and the Round Table, with the suggestion (buttressed by at least a couple of respectable academic works) that the main problem at the court was not that King Arthur fancied faery women to humans, but that the queen herself was a faery. And following up on this suggestion, my own researches into the first Arthurian romancer, Chrétien de Troyes, have convinced me that faery elements played a major role in Arthurian legend, and that far from the emphasis being on chivalrous knights rescuing human damsels in distress, the damsels were more likely to be feisty faery women initiating a mortal knight into inner world planes and adventures. Such is my theme in The Faery Gates of Avalon.

The routes to Camelot taken by Wendy Berg and myself were, respectively the early 13^th century Lancelot/Grail cycle, and the late 12^th century romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Not that Sir Thomas Malory was ignorant of this material, for his Le Morte d’Arthur was a free translation of much of it. But he was a down to earth English knight with an outlook influenced by the culture of his day, that celebrated 14^th century codes of chivalry as exemplified by Henry V, the hero of the battle of Agincourt in 1415.

Quite a natural tendency one has to say, for each generation is likely to see ancient material in its own light, and he certainly tells a good story, if a somewhat prolix one at times. Fast forwarding for some four hundred years we find the 19^th century Idylls of the King by Lord Alfred Tennyson tends to feature the Camelot ladies as languorous Pre-Raphaelite maidens and the knights as decent Victorian chaps whose  characters could well have been formed on the playing fields of Eton. 

Nonetheless, before one gets too patronising it should be said that the most powerful working of that 1981 Hawkwood weekend was based upon a reading straight out of Tennyson!  

Our cultural attitudes today might well be characterised by a neo-Celtic influence. When The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend first appeared, it did attract some criticism for being largely based on Malory rather than more direct Celtic material such as The Mabinogion. But although the Mabinogion was translated by Lady Charlotte Guest as far back as 1838-49 there was not a lot of esoteric commentary on it at the time of the publication of The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend.

However this was soon put to rights by the end of the decade with major works by Caitlín Matthews Mabon and the Mysteries of Britain (1987) and Arthur and the Sovereignty of Britain (1989); John Matthews on Gawain – Knight of the Goddess (1990); The Grail Seeker’s Companion (1986) by John Matthews and Marian Green; and R.J.Stewart’s The Mystic Life of Merlin and The Prophetic Vision of Merlin (1986) drawing upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth century History of the Kings of Britain  and Vita Merlini. Most if not all of these writers were present at that Arthurian weekend – not that I lay claim to inspiring them, but simply that we were all part of a current that began to flow strongly in the 1980’s. And if there is one thing I have learned about practical occultism it is that, like small boat sailing, it is all a question of learning how to go with the winds and the tides – inner or outer. How to pick them up, use them to best advantage, and not be wrecked by sailing too close to the wind!

Looked at in this way, revisiting Camelot is like a voyage to a mystical island  through a network of various shoals and channels, deeps and shallows, that each are navigable with a bit of luck and skill, as long as you don’t stop en route to argue the toss as to which way might be the one and only true. For the best compass is your own character, motivation and intuition.

On that memorable occasion in 1981 when, upon impulse from I know not where, I took up a hunting horn and blew three long blasts at the end of an evocative reading, I had no sooner done so than it seemed as if great doors opened in the West bringing a waft of sea air, and even spray. A mighty figure of the King came through the doors, crowned, with short golden beard, robed, and with the great hilt of the sword Excalibur very prominent, impressive with its jewelled work, in its mighty runed scabbard. With the king came Queen Guinevere, Lancelot, Gawain, Tristram and all the knights and ladies. Larger than life they took up their positions about the Table Round. In the centre rose a column of incense smoke with astral rainbow colours manifesting as the powers of the Grail, the Cauldron, Merlin and Nimuë. The rest can be read up in Chapter 15 of I Called It Magic.

All images that could well come out of illustrations by Arthur Ransome rather than what any historical 5^th century Arthurian dux bellorum might have been like. But like Atlantis, these images well up from the universal mind, rather than any physical historical scenario. For there are many interconnecting spheres that we inhabit, beyond the physical one we are currently anchored to in our outer lives.

And such images from them, once experienced, are never forgotten. But you need to have been there when the gates were opened, to experience the power. Although those gates have by no means since been shut. As was announced at the time from an inner plane source “A light has been rekindled tonight that has for too long been extinguished.”  It still shines if you go and look for it.

Likewise: “The sword is unsheathed and should be kept on the altar in that way.” It too is still there, if  you know how to find your way to the mystic chapel. By the crystal boat of the magical imagination.

Saint George rides in!

One thing that brightened the turn of the years 2012/13 for me was the reappearance from Skylight Press of my little book Magical Images and the Magical Imagination in a sparkling new edition. An interesting work this, first published by an heroic little American publishing enterprise, Sun Chalice books, back in 1998 and 2003, run by an old colleague of mine Colstone Brown.  And not least because I consider it one of the best books I have ever written, containing in a small compass the distillation of nigh on fifty years of esoteric experience in easy to follow terms. Armed with this and a determination to follow through there is arguably little need for any other book if you want to know what magic is all about. An assessment supported by the fact that since it went out of print a decade ago it has sold several thousand in pirated form. Now at last it is restored to the  bounds of respectability and supplemented with additional material on Qabalistic pathworking and the Tarot.

            However, when it comes to magical images there is ever an element of surprise, and on seeing the new edition I was immediately struck by the evocative picture on the front cover – an icon of St George. Not that the image of St George appears within the compass of the book, but on due reflection he certainly is far from out of place in this graphic pole position, and raises some interesting points in terms of magical imagery and its function.

            Despite his legendary accretions as a slayer of dragons he was in fact a real person, an officer and tribune in the Roman army in the time of the Emperor Diocletian. His father had served the emperor well and this young Greek followed in his father’s footsteps and became quite a favourite of the emperor. (We use the term Greek in the wider sense insofar that he was born around 280 A.D. to noble Greek parents, his father from Cappadocia in Asia Minor and his mother from Lydda, currently in Israel, southeast of Jerusalem).

            Unfortunately for George, who had been brought up as a Christian, in 302 Diocletian took it into his head to go in for a little religious persecution, insisting that all soldiers in the army should make a sacrificial offering to the Roman gods. The young Christian tribune objected, and although the emperor tried to avoid a confrontation, offering him gifts of land, money and slaves if he would comply, in the face of St George’s public defiance he felt he had no other option than to persecute him in the accustomed manner. After ingenious forms of torture (then performed in public rather than in private in our more enlightened times) George was eventually despatched by having head cut off on April 23^rd 303 outside the walls of Nicomedia.

            His suffering and fate were not without consequence, insofar that his bearing so impressed Diocletian’s wife, that the empress Alexandra herself converted to Christianity and suffered a similar fate. After his death  the future saint’s body was returned to his mother’s town of Lydda where it eventually to become enshrined in a cathedral dedicated to him.

            However, this was but the beginning of a wide and interesting supernatural career, becoming a patron and protector in the affairs of men. One event struck me quite forcibly when I was investigating the history of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and its possible Faery and Holy Grail connections. As is well known, the Grail story has a central motif of a maimed king whose fate is closely connected with the state of the country that he rules. There was indeed such a king in an actual country at much about this  time, in the form of Baldwin IV, the leper king of Jerusalem, whose kingdom was in fast decline through the internecine power struggles of the time. He came to the throne in 1174 at the age of thirteen and in a condition that some thought more dead than alive – although he survived until the age of 24 sustained by heroic faith in his duty and his cause.

            It so happened that Count Philip of Flanders was making a play for power at this time. This was the lord who provided Chretien de Troyes with the original manuscript from which he produced the Le Conte del Graal. Count Philip had turned up at Jerusalem with the idea of marrying a couple of his vassals to sisters of the leper king, possibly invading Egypt, and also with a couple of nieces in tow who were direct descendants of the first rulers of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I – who were credited with faery connections via Ida of Lorraine from the Knight of the Swan. (For further details of which consult my forthcoming Book of Melusine of Lusignan in History, Legend & Romance from Skylight Press).

            Be all this as it may, the situation in the autumn of 1175 was that Philip had gone storming off to the north of the Holy Land in something of a spat and drained all the forces of the Kingdom away from Jerusalem, which the great Muslim military leader Saladin, then ruler of Egypt, saw as a golden moment to strike against Jerusalem and wipe this Crusader kingdom off the map for ever. Hence he swarmed up from Egypt with a vast army of 26,000 troops  confident of an easy victory against the young Leper King who, with most of his forces drained away by Philip of Flanders, could muster less than 600 knights and perhaps a few thousand infantry.

            Possibly suffering from over confidence, and possibly from letting his troops run riot, including desecrating the shrine of St George at Lydda, Saladin suffered a crushing defeat, ninety percent of his army were wiped out, and he only saved his own skin by having a racing camel upon which to flee back to Cairo. The victorious Christian army of the Battle of Montgisard put down their miraculous victory in part to having a relic of the Holy Cross with them, before which the young king prostrated himself before going into battle, and also, significantly, the aid of St George, who was witnessed fighting on the side of the Christians. Which would no doubt teach the infidels not to mess with his shrine again!

            Oddly enough, St George is known and respected by Muslims to this day in the Middle East, as well as venerated by Christians.  He has with them the reputation of being able to cure insanity, and a 19^th century traveller, Elizabeth Finn, reported that they commonly called him El Khudder – “The Green” although she did not know why, although green is of course regarded as a very holy colour in Islam. Interesting therefore to see that, coincidentally, the main colour cover of the new edition of Magical Images and the Magical Imagination should happen to be green!  Even at present shrines of St George can be a focus for Christians, Moslems and Jews – each in their own way – the Jews associating one of his dedicated sites with the birth place of Elijah.

            Which leads us to the question of how the saint spread his influence far and wide, to include being patron saint of England – as well as of Georgia, Catalonia and Aragon amongst other kingdoms. His red cross flag was adopted by England and the City of London in 1190 as a device for their ships to seek protection from the Genoese fleet in the Mediterranean at the time of the Crusades – he being also a patron of the city state of Genoa.

The historical chronicler Froissart also mentions St George being evoked by the English in the Hundred Years War with France, famously recorded in Shakespeare’s  Henry V.  And who, who has seen the film, can deny something of a thrill as Sir Laurence Olivier cries “God for Harry, England and St. George!” as he urges his troops once more into the breach at Harfleur?

            However, why, where and when did the dragon slaying come in to the saint’s military record? In the fully developed legend a dragon had made its lair by a spring near a city, possibly in Libya, so that the citizens were unable to access water unless they offered the dragon some sheep to eat. When they ran out of sheep the required offering was a maiden,  chosen by lot, until the king’s daughter drew the short straw. As she was offered up it so happened that St George was passing by, who slew the dragon and rescued her. In gratitude for which all the citizens of the town converted to Christianity.

            The maiden is frequently shown on Greek icons, as indeed on the one on my book, standing in the background as St George deals with the dragon, and pious commentators equate her with the empress Alexandra, wife of the emperor Diocletian. Others see the dragon as Satan, or as unredeemed elements within ourselves. You can make your own choice.

However it would seem that the roots of the imagery go deeper than that, and it is possible to see here a version of the ancient myth of Perseus and Andromeda, or even an earthly manifestation of the archangel Michael. There is indeed a tradition of two military saints, St George and St Demetrius, being representatives of the archangels Michael and Gabriel, the first on a white horse, the latter on a red.

Nor is there a faery connection missing, for in the late romance Huon of Bordeaux, the eponymous hero enjoys some miraculous escapades in the Muslim world, aided by no less than Auberon, the faery king, whom he met in the forests of middle Europe on the way. Auberon later appears as Oberon in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream although without reference to the startling assertion, insisted upon in Huon of Bordeaux, that the faery king was the twin brother of St.George – both having been born of a liaison between Julius Caesar and Morgan le Fay! One does not have to take this too literally of course, although if one probes a little behind the dynamics of magical images one may well find evidence of archetypal links between human and faery traditions that may not be so ludicrous as might first appear.

For my part, I am content to have the image St George fortuitously

emblazoned upon the front of the new edition of Magical Images and the Magical Imagination, in the hope that he may discourage the internet pirates effectively as his flag discouraged the pirates of the Mediterranean eight hundred years ago! 

Ronald Heaver & the Purifying Fire

In The Hidden Adept & the Inward Vision R.J.Stewart has produced the story (as far as it is known) of Ronald Heaver, a remarkable adept closely associated with Glastonbury and the Garden Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea in Jerusalem. A whole generation of spiritual teachers were influenced or inspired by him – including Peter and Eileen Caddy, founders of the Findhorn Community, Sir George Trevelyan founder of the Wrekin Trust, Ruth Nesfield-Cookson, latterly of Hawkwood College , David Spangler, and even, quite remarkably, William G Gray, not one to be easily impressed, but who regarded him almost with awe and remarked that he was “one of the Old Ones” .


Born in London in1900 Ronald Heaver was sent to a preparatory school at Taunton in Somerset where on half-day holidays he liked to climb a local hill from which Glastonbury Tor could be seen fifteen miles away. The distant view of the Tor held an irresistible fascination for him, although a decade was to pass before he learned about the legend of Joseph of Arimathea founding the first Christian church there. Nor could he foresee the time when he would be intimately concerned with what is known as the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea in Jerusalem.

At the age of sixteen, after one of his brothers was killed in the Battle of the Somme, he succeeded in “wangling himself” under-age into the Royal Naval Air Service, and after only three and a quarter hours of dual instruction made his first solo flight. Joining a squadron in France, his Sopwith Camel was shot down in a dog fight with the von Richthofen “flying circus” and he crashed over enemy lines. Despite being a target for machine gun fire he emerged from the wreckage unscathed apart from a badly sprained leg, although the shock to his spine was to cause bouts of paralysis in later life.

He was a prisoner of war until 1919 and then after demobilisation experienced a spiritual transformation whilst walking over Westminster Bridge – resonant with Wordsworth’s poetic lines inspired by the same location in 1802: “Earth has not anything to show more fair…” It had him exclaiming “All this is new. I have never seen life through these eyes before…” and led a few weeks later to him realising the force of the words of St Paul in the second epistle to the Corinthians: “He that is in Christ Jesus is a new creature. Old things have passed away, all things have become new.”

He was particularly struck by the principle that a spiritual experience would happen first, and necessary confirmation follow afterwards, a principle that he held to in later life with visitors to his Sanctuary of Avalon. No prior instruction was given but visitors were simply invited to sit there in silence for a short time and then debriefed on what they had experienced. A typical experience was of being in a vast interior space apparently extending to infinity in a deep silence that was a living presence in itself.

But Ronald Heaver was in for a shattering experience of a different nature, seven years after the one on Westminster Bridge. One which seemed to imply a close attachment to the group soul of the nation. On May 3rd 1926 newspapers came out with headlines about the General Strike – “Last night paralysis swept over the country!”. Coincident with this he became completely paralysed himself and was given only 48 hours to live.

However he did survive, only to be told he would never walk again, but he simply refused to accept this, in light of the Biblical assurance that those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength and “mount up with wings like eagles.” And although under orthodox medical treatment he made no progress at all, after he rejected it he progressed by his own methods to a remarkable recovery. Within two years he was driving a car to Barcelona and back to prove that he had really regained personal independence.

Nine years after his paralysis, at the age of 35, he became unexpectedly appointed to an executive position in the British Israelite movement, which led to his involvement in negotiations to preserve the site in Jerusalem discovered by General Gordon who claimed it to be the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea and thus true site of the Holy Sepulchre.

All this led to a wide sector of spiritually related activities in which Ronald Heaver became involved, central to which appears to have been a thaumaturgical talisman – traditionally associated with Glastonbury and Joseph of Arimathea – that had been in the possession of the Order of Essenes – and that Ronald Heaver was empowered to bury at the site of the Garden Tomb, where it remained for 21 years until, by a series of coincidences, returning to England in 1955. The sequence of synchronicities involved make this strange tale quite compelling, and R.J.Stewart’s book provides as much supporting testimony as is known - including Heaver’s own account.

More intriguing still is a connection with an investigation of telluric energy sources in pre-war Austria at much the same time, in which Heaver also became involved. This was a subject of clandestine interest to the great powers as clouds of war were beginning to gather, the traces of which are enmeshed in a complex web of military intelligence, alternative science, alchemy, and spiritual intention. Recently discovered coded telegrams in the Austrian national archive may yet throw some light on all this.

That there were also deep spiritual matters involved is suggested by Heaver’s initiative to set up National Days of Prayer during the 2nd World War. He really had quite extraordinary contacts in government and even royal circles. And the War was arguably a fundamental struggle against “spiritual wickedness in high places” beyond the perceptions of most human politicians and power brokers involved.

In the late 1950’s he set up house at Castle House, Keinton Mandeville, in Somerset, midway between Cadbury, a traditional site for King Arthur’s Camelot, and Glastonbury. Here, with his close associate Polly Wood, he set up a “Sanctuary of Avalon”, with the declared intention that its spiritual influence was to counter “nuclear Armageddon” – a very real threat in the Cold War at that time.

Sparsely furnished, with just an altar and a few chairs, the place held no more than ten or twelve people and was dedicated on St Michael’s Day 1960 to Silence and the Power of the Divine Name. It was said to have been constructed in silence and over the years, as no word was ever spoken therein, the spiritual power that built up was tremendous. A hint of the nature of the power that filled the Sanctuary is carved on Ronald Heaver’s gravestone in the churchyard at Keinton Mandeville: Aesch Mezareph - or the Purifying Fire. Aesch meaning “fire” and Mezareph a transformation through purification within an enclosed or sealed vessel.

The process in the sanctuary was described simply as “the means whereby people may find their spiritual path for themselves.” The discovery was made by sitting in silence there for a few minutes, which could directly inspire, empower and transform an individual, even if with little or no former spiritual or esoteric experience. A radiant power of lucid inspiring authority brought them swiftly into a clarity that could endure subtly over a long time.

R.J.Stewart avers that his own visits as a young man in his twenties substantially changed the course of his life. And that receiving what he describes as a Fire Temple initiation there in 1980, (the year of the adept’s death), he inherited, with his partner Anastacia, a spiritual partnership that was started by Ronald Heaver and Polly Wood, that mediates the powers of a new Sanctuary of Avalon via physical sanctuaries in quiet locations in Britain, America and elsewhere.

A.R.Heaver occasionally made critical remarks about what he regarded as outmoded forms of occultism and magic. In his view, a true “New Age” had no need of such redundant trappings, and he was certainly capable of powerful invocatory work on his own terms. It is thus somewhat intriguing to learn that a number of British occultists, including the contentious and redoubtable W.G.Gray, much involved with such trappings, visited him with harmonious accord.

As a former colleague and publisher of W.G.Gray myself, from whom I learned a great deal, and as one who has devoted a life time to work of a similar nature, either with my own group or in public workshops or with the Society of the Inner Light, I do not feel that the traditional magical arts are necessarily redundant, although ever capable of revision and development. One of which I think is a distinction between Kabbalah and Qabalah, the original Jewish mystical tradition and that tradition as modified by modern Gentile esotericists. There is room for both of course, and Heaver was evidently an adept at the former.

My old sparring partner over forty years, the Reverend Anthony Duncan, (1930-2003), poet, mystic and shepherd of souls, made a crucial distinction I think in differentiating between “inner planes” and “inner space”. The first the “psychic nuts and bolts” of the created world, the second the Void within the Mind of God in which the created universe is projected. In modern Qabalistic theory this is familiar as the Ain Soph Aur – the Limitless Light, which it is perfectly possible to contact without having to scramble up all the Spheres in between in a complex ladder of initiation. These few lines by Anthony Duncan, and which I think might be endorsed by Ronald Heaver, show the way forward, banal as it may seem.

Balaam’s Dog



The Lord, who made an ass articulate

in Holy Writ has, in these latter days

inspired my dog who, noticing my state

observed: “You seek our Lord in many ways;

you meditate for hours, breathe Yoga breath,

contort yourself in postures and awake

your inner depths to nightmare and near-death,

perform the Dhikr, and contemplate, and make

an inner Tantric sound; and go to bed

exhausted and tormented in the dark.

You make of Love such heavy work!” she said.

“With all these arrows, do you hit the mark?

Our Lord is here,” she said. “Can you not see?

Our Lord is Love, and loving. Just like me!”





The Hidden Adept & The Inward Vision – the Story of Ronald Heaver, Polly Wood and the Sanctuary of Avalon by R.J.Stewart is published by R.J.Stewart Books, 2012.

The Qabalistic Cube of Space and the Tarot

Many years ago, when I wrote A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism the sources for my material were my immediate predecessors, that is to say Dion Fortune and senior members of the Society of the Inner Light over the years. Back beyond them was published work by Israel Regardie and the pioneers of the Golden Dawn tradition since its inception in 1888, such as MacGregor Mathers, A.E.Waite, Dr Wynn Westcott, and the notorious if knowledgeable Aleister Crowley.

It was not until I showed a copy of my book to a clerical friend, the Rev. Anthony Duncan, that I was somewhat disconcerted when, fired with enthusiasm, he went back to earlier sources as expressed in Professor Gershom Scholem’s classic work Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.

This did not augur too well in light of Professor Scholem’s views on modern occultism, as expressed right from the start: “From the brilliant misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Alphonse Louis Constant, who has won fame under the pseudonym of Eliphas Levi, to the highly coloured humbug of Aleister Crowley and his followers, the most eccentric and fantastic statements have been produced purporting to be legitimate interpretations of Kabbalism. The time has come to reclaim this derelict area and to apply to it the strict standards of historical research.”

He did however have grudging appreciation for A.E.Waite whose The Secret Doctrine in Israel (later incorporated into his The Holy Kabbalah) he conceded did represent a serious attempt to analyse the symbolism of the Zohar – although marred by a sloppy grasp on facts of history and philology and, through being ignorant of Hebrew and Aramaic, unable to study the texts in the original.

The Zohar, or Book of Splendour, is the medieval book from which our familiar diagram of the Tree of Life springs. Written by a Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon, between about 1275 and 1305, it is extremely long, about 2400 pages in the original, only half of which are included in the standard five volume English translation.

It is a rambling story about an ancient holy man, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, wandering about Palestine in the 1st and 2nd centuries, conversing with his relations, friends and disciples about holy things – seeking direct knowledge of God through the holy books of the Torah – the first five books of our Old Testament.

As they considered the Torah to be, not only the word of God, but written in the language which God spoke, they were happy to take any sentence, phrase or even word as a starting point to weave the most bizarre sounding mystical speculations. Several pages are devoted simply to the first word of the holy text: Berashith – usually translated in our Bible as “in the beginning”. As Professor Scholem states, under the touch of Moses de Leon the most unpretentious verses of Scripture could acquire a most unexpected meaning.

But whatever may have seemed divine revelation to Moses de Leon I must confess has been impenetrable to me. Largely because there is a fundamental difference between the aims and assumptions of medieval Jewish Qabalists and those of modern Gentile occultists.

Yet despite Professor Scholem’s disapproval we should not be browbeaten into thinking that our Qabalistic house has been built on shifting sand. It is simply a case of having been built on a different part of the beach! And is solid enough in its own right. One man’s chalk is another man’s cheese – and vice versa.

Most occultists are not mystics, if we define the word mystic to mean one who seeks direct experience of, even divine identification with, God. As my mystical friend Anthony Duncan observed, most occultists are not seeking direct experience of the Creator, but rather knowledge and experience of what He has created. What we like to call the Inner Planes, the psychic and intuitive “nuts and bolts”of Creation, which is not far away from what some psychologists call the Collective Unconscious, or some occultists the Astral Light.

We prefer to seek how best to live and work in the City of God rather than take tea with the Architect. As characters on a Universal Stage we are seeking to learn our lines and play our parts as best we can, rather than interview the Playwright. (Even if the Playwright did, in Christian belief, provide a role for Himself – and a somewhat unpleasant if charitable one – in the event of the Divine Incarnation.)

From this closer definition of terms it could be argued that Dion Fortune’s “Mystical Qabalah” might have been better named. For it is Moses de Leon and his friends who are exponents of the Mystical Qabalah. Dion Fortune’s line of expertise might more accurately be termed the Philosophical, Psychological or even Magical Qabalah.

So it appears that Qabalistic mystics and occultists are playing a different game on the same pitch, marked out with the lines of the Tree of Life. And as far as Professor Scholem’s views are concerned, there is no reason to concede that we don’t know the rules. We are simply playing to different ones.

But it may be worth taking a brief look back through history to see just how and when the pitch was marked out. In which case three big names come to mind Abraham Abulafia, Moses de Leon and Isaac Luria. Not that, as in our own day, there were not umpteen small groups, each with their own agenda, doing their own thing. There are different facets to ancient Jewish Mystical Tradition as there are to the modern Western Mystery Tradition.

If we trace Qabalistic tradition back far enough back we find ourselves in Old Testament territory with visions such as that of Ezekiel. From such, Merkabah mysticism was derived, that is to say visions of the Throne of God, which, if regarded as mobile, could also become the Chariot of God. We have reflections of that today, at some considerable cultural remove, in the Tarot Trump of the Chariot and of a selection of other throned figures – Emperor, Empress, Hierophant, High Priestess, and the balancing figure of Justice.

Later the Qabalistic mystics turned to old esoteric literature, such as the Book of Enoch and descriptions of the hekhaloth (palaces or heavenly halls) through which the mystic must pass on the way to the Throne of Divine Glory. One interesting aspect of this that gels with modern esoteric experience, after the manner of R J Stewart’s UnderWorld Initiation, is that in almost all the later writings the visionary journey is called a “descent” rather than an ascent. But whatever the direction of journey, there is a parallel between this Jewish vision and the beliefs of the early Gnostics. The idea of the seven heavens through which the soul returns to its original home, either after death or in a state of ecstasy, is certainly very old and possibly universal.

After about 1200 A.D. Qabalists began to emerge as a distinct group in Jewish culture with considerable prominence in parts of Spain and southern France. An important figure to emerge was Abraham Abalufia (a kind of proto Christian Rosencreutz) born in Saragossa in 1240, who left home at the age of 20 and travelled through Syria and Palestine until, then as now, warlike disturbances drove him back to Europe to spend a wandering life expounding his doctrines. He was so convinced of the truth of these, that like Pico della Mirandola, a Christian Qabalist of a later age, he sought an audience with the Pope. As with Pico this almost cost him his life but he survived to continue wandering and writing prophetic works until disappearing from the scene in about 1291.

According to Abraham Abalufia, the only reliable guide was to be found in the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation, into the secrets of which he claimed to have been initiated. This is probably the oldest book of Qabalah, from the 1st or 2nd century A.D., thus pre-dating the Zohar and Abulafia himself by about a thousand years. Modern students of the Qabalah will be familiar with it through the Yetziratic Texts which are assigned to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and thence to the Paths and Spheres of the Tree of Life. They are considerably obscure, rather of the nature of works such as The Cosmic Doctrine that claim “to train the mind rather than to inform it”. And things not terribly helped by the existence of different translations, some of them via Latin on the way.

But if Hebrew is the language of God, then the Hebrew alphabet can, according to the Sepher Yetzirah, be seen to delineate symbolically the world of His creation. The 22 letters divide up into three types, 3 Mother letters, 7 Double letters, and 12 Single letters, which even on the most superficial reading provides us with the traditional Triune God, 7 planetary spheres, and the 12 zodiacal signs. However, rather than venturing into celestial spherical geometry after the fashion of The Cosmic Doctrine, the symbolic structure of the Sepher Yetzirah or Book of Formation is based upon the Cube of Space.

A cube is a figure with six faces, windows upon the four cardinal directions, plus the above and the below – and a point in the very centre – to which system the seven Double letters can be allocated. (A cube also happens to have twelve edges, to which can be allocated the twelve Single letters, a zodiacal framework to the planetary planes, but we will not over-complicate at this stage).

It is better at first to conceive the Cube floating in space. A space that can be described as an infinite sphere separated out from the Body of God, in order for creation to take place. (This formation of a Cosmic Space in which Creation could be formed, was a conception of a later Jewish Qabalist, Isaac Luria, in a doctrine known as the tsim-tsum, which is theologically important to bear in mind as it prevents us from falling into pantheism, and assuming that God and the Universe are one and the same.)

The sphere has what R.J.Stewart, in a slightly different set-up, has described as two “sensitive points”, one above and one below, which in our system link the Sphere to its Creator. In the Hebrew alphabet these two sensitive points are allocated to Aleph above, and Shin below, with Mem making up the space within the sphere.

In Qabalistic letter symbolism Aleph corresponds to Air, Mem to Water, and Shin to Fire. These are Cosmic rather than Elemental elements. Air (Aleph) relates to the breath of the Holy Spirit upon the waters (Mem) of creation, with the whole thing sustained by cosmic fire (Shin).

I do not propose to enter into any detailed description of the Cube, apart from the six sides and the seventh central point. Relevant diagrams can be found in the Upper Room chapter of my book Experience of the Inner Worlds. Suffice to say that if we regard our Upper Room, or magical Temple, or Dr Who-type Tardis vehicle, in Hebrew alphabetic terms, we will have Daleth in the East, Resh in the South, Kaph in the West, Peh in the North, Beth above and Gimel below, with Tau in the centre.

Now the Jews had their own names and images for each of the letters, but in the interests of modern magical practice and speculation I propose to take a leaf from Eliphas Levi’s book, and provide Tarot Trump images for each of them – with the exception that I shall use the Golden Dawn system rather than the one that Levi proposed in his published works.

So if we look up our tables of correspondence we can see ourselves going into a temple in which we find facing us in the East the fruitful life giving figure of the Empress, with to the South the beneficent figure of the Sun, in the West the figure of Fortuna turning her wheel of fate and destiny, and in the North the Lightning Struck Tower. Above us looking down is the figure of the Magician, overseeing all, and beneath us the powers of the High Priestess, while in the centre point is the dancing hermaphroditic figure of the Universe.

I have found this a structure well worth visualising and meditating upon, and I welcome others to try the same, if they have the time and inclination. To my mind, sitting in the West places you with the background of life in the world, (Fortuna), with the bright powers of nature before you in the East, (Empress), with warmth and light to the South (Sun) and darkness and wisdom to the North (the Tower, which I like to see illustrating divine light, power and wisdom striking down to break up old forms against a dark background of the night sky, with stars). You need to feel fairly free to create your own realisations and realities in this kind of temple work.

This is simply a beginning. The whole thing can be further fine tuned by taking account of the images allocated to the four edges that surround each directional face. But this is by no means essential, and it is best to start with the simple structure, and then see where it leads you. Using such a method as this should instruct you and give practice in formulating your own more cosmic interpretation of the archetypal Tarot images and Temple directions and power points.

Extending the method to the Cosmic Sphere that encompasses the Cube (a question of “sphere-ing the cube” rather than the traditional two-dimensional “squaring the circle”) in the Cosmic Above we have the Fool – as the representative of God Transcendent contemplating the work of creation – and below, the Last Judgement which speaks of the Last Days when God ends the creation in time and space as we know it and draws it back into the Uncreate Limitless Light – whilst within the Sphere is the principle of God Immanent (as opposed to Transcendent) in the archetype of the Hanged Man.

Within the Cosmic Sphere is our Magical Temple which has its own traditional dynamics of time and directions in space. The proof of any pudding is in the eating rather than recipe, and a lot depends upon the individual who is doing the cooking, so I will say now more, but leave it to individuals to try their own orientation in the Cube along the lines of traditional Tarot Trump images

East – Empress    
South - Sun
West - Fortuna
North - Tower
Above - Magician
Below - Priestess
Centre - Universe
South-East – Hierophant   
South-West - Justice
North-West - Death
North-East - Emperor
East-Above - Lovers
East-Below - Chariot
South-Above - Star
South-Below - Moon
West-Above – Temperance
West-Below – Devil         
North-Above – Strength     
North-Below – Hermit

Sphere Upper Divine Point – Fool
Sphere Lower Divine Point - Last Judgment
Sphere Inner Creative Space - Hanged Man

[This article appeared in LYRA - Avalon Group Journal - Samhain 2012