A major esoteric publishing event has just been brought to my attention which I have not had the opportunity to check out myself, but the publishers speak very highly of it. It is in the form of a 562 page book entitled THE BOOK OF ENGLISH MAGIC by Philip Carr-Gomm and Sir Richard Heygate and published by the long established and respected firm of John Murray. If the title should sound somewhat parochial to world wide readers, (let alone our Scottish, Welsh and Irish cousins), then two statements in the book seek to justify it: “England has fostered the greatest variety of magicians in the world” and “there are now more practicising wizards in England than at any other time in history.” Anyhow details are freely available at http://www.bookofenglishmagic.com/
Qualifying I suppose as an English magician myself and having had to do with a few in my magical life, good, bad and indifferent, I am now in the process of reviewing what it was all about in an autobiography I propose to call “A Magical Life”. There seems to be something of a virus going around of an autobiographic nature just now, as a couple of other close colleagues of mine, of a certain age, (steaming up to the age of 80), are also apparently at the game. At least it may allow us to get in the first word (or in another sense the last) before the biographical vultures gather to pick over our remains.
Actually I find it a most educative and rewarding exercise. It has caused me to realise a lot about myself (and other people) that had not been apparent before in the cut and thrust of life’s battle. And possibly what effort I put into this exercise may make things a little easier when I actually enter the Judgement Hall of Osiris to be weighed in the balance against the feather of Maat. At least I shall have some of my answers and justifications prepared.
One thing that has come to me has been the importance of the Tarot in my life. I had more or less forgotten that I had written three books on it over the years - A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism then The Treasure House of Images (aka Tarot and Magic) and finally The Magical World of the Tarot.
The first was a somewhat traditional approach when I was still learning my trade, aligning it with the Spheres and Paths of the Tree of Life. This appeared in 1965 although it had been written by 1962 along with a set of Tarot cards, The Gareth Knight Tarot, designed by Sander Littel, that had to wait until 1984 before being rescued from oblivion by the great Tarot card collector Stuart Kaplan. The correspondences are those favoured by the Golden Dawn, which are certainly not the only ones possible, but in my experience have served me very well over the years in formal Qabalistic studies, both theoretical and practical.
The Treasure House of Images or Tarot and Magic developed out of a workshop I did in 1984 at Hawkwood College, where I sought to show its possibilities as a system of magical images in ritual work. I had then realised it to be a system in its own right that did not necessarily have to be tied in to the Qabalah. Although I did conclude with an extended path working that more or less followed Tree of Life lines, and which came to me first as a children’s story for grown ups, called Granny's Magic Cards. For the textbook I cut out all the kid’s stuff, (although, as with Lewis Carroll’s adventures of Alice, some of it contained teaching not easily rendered by other means). Eventually I did publish the original, in 2004, with evocative illustrations by Libby Valdez, but what with one thing and another it turned out to be a very limited edition, no more than 100 copies, so any who have it can rest assured that they have a considerable rarity, worth a pound or two on the second hand market. It has since been issued on disc in PDF format by Ritemagic but alas without the illustrations. It remains, however, a work that makes my hair stand on end at certain points.
The most recent book, The Magical World of the Tarot, developed out of a course that I wrote and marketed in the late 1980’s before releasing as a self study book in 1991. This was a bit of a con in a way, insofar that in the guise of teaching how to use it as a divination device I was really encouraging students to use their own magical imagination to make contact with the fount of wisdom behind the Tarot, rather than simply mugging up “meanings” in a shallow intellectual fashion. Whilst many casual readers might have found this a bit demanding, if followed through it paid handsome dividends, and one of the reader responses that I treasure most was from a sergeant in the US Marines who wrote in to say how much he had been helped by it in the vicissitudes of life.
The method was not quite so demanding perhaps, as getting people to design and produce their own Tarot cards, but that is the way I trained students in the Gareth Knight Group. Each and every one had to design and produce their own Tarot before they could regard themselves as having passed beyond the Lesser Mysteries. However, not all are called, or cut out, to be serious esoteric buffs, although it remains probably the best way to learn about Tarot, ourselves, and the inner worlds in general. We all have a Tarot within us, so why not let it come out?
Now in my latter days I still find increasing wisdom coming through the Tarot, and in this respect I have been much impressed with a book called Meditations on the Tarot which is also a profound exercise in revealing just what the Hermetic and Platonic traditions are all about.
It was, and is, anonymously authored, but we all know who it is! And one can also see why he decided to remain anonymous. It was so that the book could speak for itself. The more so, as some of his earlier work, before he reached the maturity of this one, had become somewhat controversial amongst guardians of the party line of his previous affiliations. But all who are pioneers have to pay this price. And I still bear scars of my own in this respect!
In the pages of this book, Valentin Tomberg reveals much of himself, as well as of the tradition, strung out on the convenient structure of the Tarot Trumps. In this the book becomes a magical device in itself and means of communication between the planes. Highly recommended, if you are ready for it.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Interview in Magickal Light
I was interviewed by Pino Longchild in Magickal Light for February 2009. This is the official e-zine of http://www.magickaschool.com/ which seems to be a most interesting site for any of you of the neo-pagan persuasion.
PL: First of all let me say how pleased I am that you have agreed to be interviewed for The Magickal Light Ezine:
I believe you were 23 when you first came across books by Dion Fortune which led you to the Society of the Inner Light and the first taste of an esoteric order. I was wondering though, what provided you with the inspiration to set out on a spiritual quest before that?
GK: Oh I was always interested in magic from as far back as I can remember. Mixing up mud and water in the back garden whilst still a toddler and calling them “witches’ pies” is about the earliest manifestation of this interest I suppose. In my early teens had read most of the psychic research section in the local public library. Also a desultory interest in ouija boards, hypnosis and such like. Then onto books I could not understand like Eliphas Levi’s “History of Magic” before eventually having all bells rung loud and clear by coming across Dion Fortune’s “The Esoteric Orders and their Work” and “The Training and Work of an Initiate”. I immediately recognised a familiar voice in these. If there were such things as initiates I wanted to be one, and such things as esoteric orders, then I wanted to join. Which I promptly did – and I suppose never looked back.
PL: You were in touch with a variety of famous occultists such as Israel Regardie, Gerald Gardner and Pat Crowther. Do you have any particular recollections of these individuals you could share?
GK: I was quite shaken when I first came across Regardie’s “The Art of True Healing” which seemed to set out practical magic in a daringly uncompromising fashion. Consequently when I first set up as a publisher this was the first book I produced – absolutely delighted to have discovered that Regardie was still around. To my youthful mind he was somewhat of the status of the old gods! He turned out to be a charming man, somewhat mellowed from the time when he had been such a thorn in the side of those he rated as “the inepti” of the Golden Dawn. I met him some years later when he came across to London for one of Carr P Collins Jnr’s esoteric parties and found him very much a kindred spirit. Knowledgeable, modest but with scant respect for phonies. It was indeed Regardie that first put me onto Carr, who bankrolled my early publishing efforts.
I never met Gerald Gardner although we corresponded when I was editing “New Dimensions” magazine in which I featured all aspects of occultism from spiritualism to ritual magic and at a time when the “wicca” were beginning to come out of the closet – so he was part of quite a high powered team that wrote for me about this side of things, including Doreen Valiente, Pat and Arnold Crowther, Roy Bowers and others, despite pressure on the part of several self-appointed guardians of “the public good” to cease featuring articles on witchcraft. As I wrote in my Editorial for the May 1964 issue, which also contained his obituary by Pat Crowther, “Unfortunately we never had the pleasure of meeting him personally – but only through business postal correspondence. Even so, we feel a sense of loss. We could not agree without some degree of reservation with what he believed in and stood for, but he was that regrettably almost rare kind of person in occult circles – a man with a sense of proportion and a sense of humour. Not only the witch movement, but the occult world in general has lost a great champion in Gerald Gardner. He was also, to an outsider’s point of viewpoint, a great unifying figure in a movement which tends at times to a degree of inter-group factionalism. And his appearances on television on behalf of the Craft gave the lie to the usual distortions and sensationalism put about by the Sunday press. May his soul rest in peace – or in active work! – in whatever pagan afterworld it chooses to go to.”
Pat Crowther I first met in completely secular circumstances, entertaining her and her husband Arnold to lunch to discuss publication of his popular children’s book “Let’s Put On A Show”. A professional conjurer, he was an entertaining and convivial companion, full of fun, with a wide knowledge of esoteric lore and they both provided me with articles on witchcraft and related lore. Our paths did not cross again except by way of editorial correspondence although I did come within arms length of Pat some years later, after Arnold’s death, at one of Carr’s massive parties but regretfully never got round to chat with her.
PL: You worked with W. E. Butler on the /Helios Course on the Practical Qabalah/. W. E. Butler is a favourite author of mine for the gentle way that he encourages students and the practical no-nonsense advice he gives. What was it like working with him?
GK: I did not actually do a great deal of work alongside Ernest. I had written the first six lessons of the Helios Course, (based on Regardie’s “Art of True Healing”) and Ernest was commissioned to take it on from there, which he did, extending it to fifty lessons in the end, a unique course that utilised evocative symbolism from Arthurian legend based upon a sub-structure of the Tree of Life. So it was simply a matter of letting him get on with it, of which he was well capable, recruiting senior students to help him with the supervision.
He was considerably my senior in age, magical experience and knowledge so a comparative young whipper snapper like me did not mess with him too much, for if he felt his preserves were being trespassed upon he could be quite tetchy, which he justified by citing Irish and Yorkshire ancestry!
I shall always remember him from a couple of choice sayings of his. One was about the demerits of those esoteric schools who promised more than they delivered, quoting the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”: The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today!
The other was chanted with chuckling gusto defining the attitude of schools or teachers of an exclusive frame of mind:
We are the few, the chosen few, let all the rest be damned,
So fasten up those pearly gates, we can’t have heaven crammed!
Ernest was, above all, of the inclusive persuasion, with a deep and genuine love of all students, and humble pride in the role of being an esoteric teacher. He never compromised his principles and was certainly one of the more liberal dispensers of esoteric jam I have been privileged to know in my occult career.
PL: You set up what is now known as The Avalon Group in 1973 (now run by Wendy Berg). How did this group come to be?
GK: The time came when having passed through the grades of Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light and come out the other side in 1965, I spent a few years working out the way I thought esoteric teaching and practice ought to be going, through a combination of the magical input of William G Gray and the mystical input of the Rev. Anthony Duncan, books by both of whom I also published.
There was no point in muscling in on the foundation that Ernest Butler had built, which was now launched as the Servants of the Light organisation in the capable hands of Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and her husband Mike under Ernest’s direction for the rest of his life. Accordingly I started completely afresh, writing and publishing “Experience of the Inner Worlds” on which all my personal band of students were trained.
This initiative received a shot in the arm between 1979 and 1986 when I did a series of workshops at Hawkwood College, now quite legendary, which built up a considerable momentum until the power levels reached such a pitch that they were difficult to control in a public free for all. I therefore decided the time had come to shut up shop and continue to work with just a core of personally trained students. This later became known as the Gareth Knight Group until, in 1998, having ruled the roost for 25 years, I decided to hand over to a succeeding generation.
This is now known as the Avalon Group, under Wendy Berg, although another off shoot is the Company of Avalon under Mike Harris and Steve Blamires. I also had another job waiting me as an esoteric consultant back at a rejuvenated Society of the Inner Light, which included editing and publishing a number of Dion Fortune’s previously unpublished works.
PL: Since the 1960s Tarot has become terribly popular. It was through a desire to understand the Tarot symbolism better that I originally came across your work, most notably /A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism/. I have noticed that although many use the Tarot for divination, far fewer have any in-depth interest in its symbolism and Qabalistic correspondences. What are your views on this?
GK: Well I think it a pity and tried to build a half-way house by launching a book and course called “The Magical World of the Tarot” in the early 1990’s, which sought to teach Tarot divination by first teaching the first principles of what the cards stood for, rather than mugging up “meanings” from out of a book. This had a modicum of success but was not worth devoting any major part of my life to. The book is still around though, and I was much touched by receiving a letter from a sergeant in the US marines to say that he did not know a lot about occultism but this book was the best on Tarot he had ever read and had helped him a lot in life.
PL: You have produced your own symbolically rich set of excellent Tarot cards, which appear to be based largely on the Golden Dawn attributions. A number of high profile occult practitioners have done similarly, most notably A. E. Waite and Aleister Crowley. Although based on the Golden Dawn attributions both sets include ideas that are not in the original design schema. Does it matter that whoever produces a set of Tarot cards is to a greater or lesser extent giving their own take on things?
GK: I think my own set of Tarot cards somewhat apprentice work, although probably none the worse for that. Indeed in training seriously committed students for my group, each and every one of them was expected to design and produce their own set of 78 cards. The criterion not being, of course, artistic ability, but by meditation upon the Tree of Life or other symbolic schema to work out their own “model of the universe” which is essentially what the Tarot is.
In one sense it is encouraging to see so many different published designs nowadays but producing your own deck, however crudely executed, would be a far more fruitful enterprise than buying one. Indeed, in the course of life, one might produce more than one set, as realisations change and mature. Although I realise that this may be a somewhat unrealistic counsel of perfection.
Exception must be made for decks produced by experienced and proven teachers. And I have myself found one or two to be highly instructive – for instance Hallowquest by Caitlín and John Matthews and the Dream Power Tarot by R J Stewart. It is surprising however, on analysis, how many designs derive (with or without acknowledgement) from those of A. E. Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith.
In practice I opt for one of the old crude Marseilles packs, which at least have not been influenced (or contaminated) by other people’s esoteric ideas, and I visualise my own ideas upon those rough archetypes.
PL: Many high profile celebrities are featured in popular magazines professing a belief in Qabalah, such as Madonna and Victoria Beckham. How do you feel about this?
GK: It does not impinge much on me as I am not a reader of popular magazines - particularly those that feature high profile celebrities. It could be all to the good to the celebrities themselves and their followers if they get beyond the superficial. Otherwise I suppose it does no more good nor harm than any other fashion accessory.
PL: Does it matter that the occult world has become increasingly commercialised?
GK: I think it has its up and down sides. Useful if it spreads the word that there is more to life than the material side of things - even if in the process of hawking superstitious nonsense. It may well lead some to enquire after more fruitful lines of enquiry. One welcomes what has been expressed in some quarters as “the externalisation of the hierarchy” but it is perhaps inevitable that this will bring with it a certain amount of trivialisation – which I suppose is better than being totally ignored or persecuted by religious or political authority – which is still the case in many parts of the world.
PL: Throughout your life you have been heavily involved in the publishing world in one way or another. If you could recommend 5 books that were essential reading for a beginning student keen to learn more about magic what would they be and why?
John and Caitlín Matthews: The Western Way. Subtitled “A Practical Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition” that is exactly what this two volume work is. The first volume devoted to the native tradition and the second to the hermetic tradition. An excellent introduction, with exercises, to all aspects of the western tradition that any beginner could possibly wish to know. Only wish I had written it myself!
R J Stewart: The Living World of Faery. A general introduction to a vastly important field of esotericism that has been unduly neglected and misunderstood, and that will also serve as an entry point to this important writer’s series of books that go deeper into underworld initiation, earth light and power within the land.
John Matthews and Marian Green: The Grail Seeker’s Companion. An elementary but comprehensive guidebook to all elements of the mysteries of the Grail - its history, ritual, myth and literature along with meditation exercises, advice and instruction – in fact everything you need to start you on the way to your own quest.
Gareth Knight: Magic and the Power of the Goddess. Now in its third incarnation having come out of a collection of lectures and practical workshops as The Rose Cross & the Goddess and then refurbished as Evoking the Goddess, it seems to go from strength to strength so maybe was ahead of its time. It gives an historical take on various aspects of the feminine divine principle along with practical exercises.
Gareth Knight: The Practice of Ritual Magic which with Magical Images and the Magical Imagination are two little primers specifically with the beginner in mind on all you need to get going on the much misunderstood practice of ritual.
PL: One of my favourite books of yours is /A History of White Magic/. This is because you explain magic as encompassing both science and religion in a coherent way. You are one of the few authors to do this. Do you think enough is done to explain the rationale of magic? The reason I ask is that the world of science has become increasingly aware that it needs to do more “outreach” work and explain itself and its value to the world. Do you think the magical world should do likewise?
GK: I think this is already happening. A number of universities are offering degrees in esoteric studies and so the whole field is beginning to be taken seriously albeit in terms of history of the subject, or in terms of anthropology, but as Robert Persig pointed out in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” universities are “temples of reason” and therefore somewhat ill equipped to deal with matters beyond the rational mind. However, it’s a start. Mention should also be made of The Tenemos Academy in London, founded by the poet and mystic Kathleen Raine which is a high powered academic flag waver on behalf of the esoteric approach. Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical movement has also made significant strides into the practical worlds of agriculture, education and other disciplines over the years.
PL: What are your latest projects?
GK: I have just produced after a great deal of research a book on faery in Arthurian legend as a consequence of taking a university degree in French, concentrating on the work of the first Arthurian romancer Chrétien de Troyes. Described by the publishers as “one of the most significant esoteric texts about the connections between Arthurian and Faery Tradition ever written” it is a mind blowing re-take on the function of the ladies of the knights of the Round Table – how in the earliest romances they were faery women acting as guides, guardians and lovers to the knightly heroes, inciting them or enticing them onto quests that were in reality initiations into Faeryland. And how this is equally applicable today.
This has just been published as “The Faery Gates of Avalon” by R J Stewart Books.
Another long term project has been into the history and legend of the faery Melusine of Lusignan. However this has been put on the back burner for the time being as I concentrate upon my autobiography, as yet untitled, which seems to have quite a high priority as I approach my ninth decade.
On the practical front I help out a bit at the Society of the Inner Light which is where my esoteric journey started from, thus completing the magic circle in a sense. I have however retired from public workshop and lecture work.
PL: What are you currently reading?
GK: An academically annotated edition of the works of Lewis Carroll – notably “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” along with “The Hunting of the Snark”. All excellent sources for magical analogies, such as the one already quoted by W. E. Butler and the one that appears in the prelims of my “Experience of the Inner Worlds”:
‘Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the Unicorn ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?’
‘Yes, if you like,’ said Alice.
PL: What makes Gareth Knight sing?
GK: No great singer, but likes to fantasise about one day playing the piano as well as Dave Brubeck or Count Basie.
PL: First of all let me say how pleased I am that you have agreed to be interviewed for The Magickal Light Ezine:
I believe you were 23 when you first came across books by Dion Fortune which led you to the Society of the Inner Light and the first taste of an esoteric order. I was wondering though, what provided you with the inspiration to set out on a spiritual quest before that?
GK: Oh I was always interested in magic from as far back as I can remember. Mixing up mud and water in the back garden whilst still a toddler and calling them “witches’ pies” is about the earliest manifestation of this interest I suppose. In my early teens had read most of the psychic research section in the local public library. Also a desultory interest in ouija boards, hypnosis and such like. Then onto books I could not understand like Eliphas Levi’s “History of Magic” before eventually having all bells rung loud and clear by coming across Dion Fortune’s “The Esoteric Orders and their Work” and “The Training and Work of an Initiate”. I immediately recognised a familiar voice in these. If there were such things as initiates I wanted to be one, and such things as esoteric orders, then I wanted to join. Which I promptly did – and I suppose never looked back.
PL: You were in touch with a variety of famous occultists such as Israel Regardie, Gerald Gardner and Pat Crowther. Do you have any particular recollections of these individuals you could share?
GK: I was quite shaken when I first came across Regardie’s “The Art of True Healing” which seemed to set out practical magic in a daringly uncompromising fashion. Consequently when I first set up as a publisher this was the first book I produced – absolutely delighted to have discovered that Regardie was still around. To my youthful mind he was somewhat of the status of the old gods! He turned out to be a charming man, somewhat mellowed from the time when he had been such a thorn in the side of those he rated as “the inepti” of the Golden Dawn. I met him some years later when he came across to London for one of Carr P Collins Jnr’s esoteric parties and found him very much a kindred spirit. Knowledgeable, modest but with scant respect for phonies. It was indeed Regardie that first put me onto Carr, who bankrolled my early publishing efforts.
I never met Gerald Gardner although we corresponded when I was editing “New Dimensions” magazine in which I featured all aspects of occultism from spiritualism to ritual magic and at a time when the “wicca” were beginning to come out of the closet – so he was part of quite a high powered team that wrote for me about this side of things, including Doreen Valiente, Pat and Arnold Crowther, Roy Bowers and others, despite pressure on the part of several self-appointed guardians of “the public good” to cease featuring articles on witchcraft. As I wrote in my Editorial for the May 1964 issue, which also contained his obituary by Pat Crowther, “Unfortunately we never had the pleasure of meeting him personally – but only through business postal correspondence. Even so, we feel a sense of loss. We could not agree without some degree of reservation with what he believed in and stood for, but he was that regrettably almost rare kind of person in occult circles – a man with a sense of proportion and a sense of humour. Not only the witch movement, but the occult world in general has lost a great champion in Gerald Gardner. He was also, to an outsider’s point of viewpoint, a great unifying figure in a movement which tends at times to a degree of inter-group factionalism. And his appearances on television on behalf of the Craft gave the lie to the usual distortions and sensationalism put about by the Sunday press. May his soul rest in peace – or in active work! – in whatever pagan afterworld it chooses to go to.”
Pat Crowther I first met in completely secular circumstances, entertaining her and her husband Arnold to lunch to discuss publication of his popular children’s book “Let’s Put On A Show”. A professional conjurer, he was an entertaining and convivial companion, full of fun, with a wide knowledge of esoteric lore and they both provided me with articles on witchcraft and related lore. Our paths did not cross again except by way of editorial correspondence although I did come within arms length of Pat some years later, after Arnold’s death, at one of Carr’s massive parties but regretfully never got round to chat with her.
PL: You worked with W. E. Butler on the /Helios Course on the Practical Qabalah/. W. E. Butler is a favourite author of mine for the gentle way that he encourages students and the practical no-nonsense advice he gives. What was it like working with him?
GK: I did not actually do a great deal of work alongside Ernest. I had written the first six lessons of the Helios Course, (based on Regardie’s “Art of True Healing”) and Ernest was commissioned to take it on from there, which he did, extending it to fifty lessons in the end, a unique course that utilised evocative symbolism from Arthurian legend based upon a sub-structure of the Tree of Life. So it was simply a matter of letting him get on with it, of which he was well capable, recruiting senior students to help him with the supervision.
He was considerably my senior in age, magical experience and knowledge so a comparative young whipper snapper like me did not mess with him too much, for if he felt his preserves were being trespassed upon he could be quite tetchy, which he justified by citing Irish and Yorkshire ancestry!
I shall always remember him from a couple of choice sayings of his. One was about the demerits of those esoteric schools who promised more than they delivered, quoting the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”: The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today!
The other was chanted with chuckling gusto defining the attitude of schools or teachers of an exclusive frame of mind:
We are the few, the chosen few, let all the rest be damned,
So fasten up those pearly gates, we can’t have heaven crammed!
Ernest was, above all, of the inclusive persuasion, with a deep and genuine love of all students, and humble pride in the role of being an esoteric teacher. He never compromised his principles and was certainly one of the more liberal dispensers of esoteric jam I have been privileged to know in my occult career.
PL: You set up what is now known as The Avalon Group in 1973 (now run by Wendy Berg). How did this group come to be?
GK: The time came when having passed through the grades of Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light and come out the other side in 1965, I spent a few years working out the way I thought esoteric teaching and practice ought to be going, through a combination of the magical input of William G Gray and the mystical input of the Rev. Anthony Duncan, books by both of whom I also published.
There was no point in muscling in on the foundation that Ernest Butler had built, which was now launched as the Servants of the Light organisation in the capable hands of Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and her husband Mike under Ernest’s direction for the rest of his life. Accordingly I started completely afresh, writing and publishing “Experience of the Inner Worlds” on which all my personal band of students were trained.
This initiative received a shot in the arm between 1979 and 1986 when I did a series of workshops at Hawkwood College, now quite legendary, which built up a considerable momentum until the power levels reached such a pitch that they were difficult to control in a public free for all. I therefore decided the time had come to shut up shop and continue to work with just a core of personally trained students. This later became known as the Gareth Knight Group until, in 1998, having ruled the roost for 25 years, I decided to hand over to a succeeding generation.
This is now known as the Avalon Group, under Wendy Berg, although another off shoot is the Company of Avalon under Mike Harris and Steve Blamires. I also had another job waiting me as an esoteric consultant back at a rejuvenated Society of the Inner Light, which included editing and publishing a number of Dion Fortune’s previously unpublished works.
PL: Since the 1960s Tarot has become terribly popular. It was through a desire to understand the Tarot symbolism better that I originally came across your work, most notably /A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism/. I have noticed that although many use the Tarot for divination, far fewer have any in-depth interest in its symbolism and Qabalistic correspondences. What are your views on this?
GK: Well I think it a pity and tried to build a half-way house by launching a book and course called “The Magical World of the Tarot” in the early 1990’s, which sought to teach Tarot divination by first teaching the first principles of what the cards stood for, rather than mugging up “meanings” from out of a book. This had a modicum of success but was not worth devoting any major part of my life to. The book is still around though, and I was much touched by receiving a letter from a sergeant in the US marines to say that he did not know a lot about occultism but this book was the best on Tarot he had ever read and had helped him a lot in life.
PL: You have produced your own symbolically rich set of excellent Tarot cards, which appear to be based largely on the Golden Dawn attributions. A number of high profile occult practitioners have done similarly, most notably A. E. Waite and Aleister Crowley. Although based on the Golden Dawn attributions both sets include ideas that are not in the original design schema. Does it matter that whoever produces a set of Tarot cards is to a greater or lesser extent giving their own take on things?
GK: I think my own set of Tarot cards somewhat apprentice work, although probably none the worse for that. Indeed in training seriously committed students for my group, each and every one of them was expected to design and produce their own set of 78 cards. The criterion not being, of course, artistic ability, but by meditation upon the Tree of Life or other symbolic schema to work out their own “model of the universe” which is essentially what the Tarot is.
In one sense it is encouraging to see so many different published designs nowadays but producing your own deck, however crudely executed, would be a far more fruitful enterprise than buying one. Indeed, in the course of life, one might produce more than one set, as realisations change and mature. Although I realise that this may be a somewhat unrealistic counsel of perfection.
Exception must be made for decks produced by experienced and proven teachers. And I have myself found one or two to be highly instructive – for instance Hallowquest by Caitlín and John Matthews and the Dream Power Tarot by R J Stewart. It is surprising however, on analysis, how many designs derive (with or without acknowledgement) from those of A. E. Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith.
In practice I opt for one of the old crude Marseilles packs, which at least have not been influenced (or contaminated) by other people’s esoteric ideas, and I visualise my own ideas upon those rough archetypes.
PL: Many high profile celebrities are featured in popular magazines professing a belief in Qabalah, such as Madonna and Victoria Beckham. How do you feel about this?
GK: It does not impinge much on me as I am not a reader of popular magazines - particularly those that feature high profile celebrities. It could be all to the good to the celebrities themselves and their followers if they get beyond the superficial. Otherwise I suppose it does no more good nor harm than any other fashion accessory.
PL: Does it matter that the occult world has become increasingly commercialised?
GK: I think it has its up and down sides. Useful if it spreads the word that there is more to life than the material side of things - even if in the process of hawking superstitious nonsense. It may well lead some to enquire after more fruitful lines of enquiry. One welcomes what has been expressed in some quarters as “the externalisation of the hierarchy” but it is perhaps inevitable that this will bring with it a certain amount of trivialisation – which I suppose is better than being totally ignored or persecuted by religious or political authority – which is still the case in many parts of the world.
PL: Throughout your life you have been heavily involved in the publishing world in one way or another. If you could recommend 5 books that were essential reading for a beginning student keen to learn more about magic what would they be and why?
John and Caitlín Matthews: The Western Way. Subtitled “A Practical Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition” that is exactly what this two volume work is. The first volume devoted to the native tradition and the second to the hermetic tradition. An excellent introduction, with exercises, to all aspects of the western tradition that any beginner could possibly wish to know. Only wish I had written it myself!
R J Stewart: The Living World of Faery. A general introduction to a vastly important field of esotericism that has been unduly neglected and misunderstood, and that will also serve as an entry point to this important writer’s series of books that go deeper into underworld initiation, earth light and power within the land.
John Matthews and Marian Green: The Grail Seeker’s Companion. An elementary but comprehensive guidebook to all elements of the mysteries of the Grail - its history, ritual, myth and literature along with meditation exercises, advice and instruction – in fact everything you need to start you on the way to your own quest.
Gareth Knight: Magic and the Power of the Goddess. Now in its third incarnation having come out of a collection of lectures and practical workshops as The Rose Cross & the Goddess and then refurbished as Evoking the Goddess, it seems to go from strength to strength so maybe was ahead of its time. It gives an historical take on various aspects of the feminine divine principle along with practical exercises.
Gareth Knight: The Practice of Ritual Magic which with Magical Images and the Magical Imagination are two little primers specifically with the beginner in mind on all you need to get going on the much misunderstood practice of ritual.
PL: One of my favourite books of yours is /A History of White Magic/. This is because you explain magic as encompassing both science and religion in a coherent way. You are one of the few authors to do this. Do you think enough is done to explain the rationale of magic? The reason I ask is that the world of science has become increasingly aware that it needs to do more “outreach” work and explain itself and its value to the world. Do you think the magical world should do likewise?
GK: I think this is already happening. A number of universities are offering degrees in esoteric studies and so the whole field is beginning to be taken seriously albeit in terms of history of the subject, or in terms of anthropology, but as Robert Persig pointed out in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” universities are “temples of reason” and therefore somewhat ill equipped to deal with matters beyond the rational mind. However, it’s a start. Mention should also be made of The Tenemos Academy in London, founded by the poet and mystic Kathleen Raine which is a high powered academic flag waver on behalf of the esoteric approach. Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical movement has also made significant strides into the practical worlds of agriculture, education and other disciplines over the years.
PL: What are your latest projects?
GK: I have just produced after a great deal of research a book on faery in Arthurian legend as a consequence of taking a university degree in French, concentrating on the work of the first Arthurian romancer Chrétien de Troyes. Described by the publishers as “one of the most significant esoteric texts about the connections between Arthurian and Faery Tradition ever written” it is a mind blowing re-take on the function of the ladies of the knights of the Round Table – how in the earliest romances they were faery women acting as guides, guardians and lovers to the knightly heroes, inciting them or enticing them onto quests that were in reality initiations into Faeryland. And how this is equally applicable today.
This has just been published as “The Faery Gates of Avalon” by R J Stewart Books.
Another long term project has been into the history and legend of the faery Melusine of Lusignan. However this has been put on the back burner for the time being as I concentrate upon my autobiography, as yet untitled, which seems to have quite a high priority as I approach my ninth decade.
On the practical front I help out a bit at the Society of the Inner Light which is where my esoteric journey started from, thus completing the magic circle in a sense. I have however retired from public workshop and lecture work.
PL: What are you currently reading?
GK: An academically annotated edition of the works of Lewis Carroll – notably “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” along with “The Hunting of the Snark”. All excellent sources for magical analogies, such as the one already quoted by W. E. Butler and the one that appears in the prelims of my “Experience of the Inner Worlds”:
‘Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the Unicorn ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?’
‘Yes, if you like,’ said Alice.
PL: What makes Gareth Knight sing?
GK: No great singer, but likes to fantasise about one day playing the piano as well as Dave Brubeck or Count Basie.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Review of "The Faery Gates of Avalon"
"Another book not to be missed" says the first review to hand of my latest book "The Faery Gates of Avalon" - which I modestly think is the most important book I have written for a long time - and it took me long enough to write and research! Whilst a reader whose knowledge and experience I value highly writes in: "once started, I couldn't put it down. It seems to me that you cleared away the centuries of overgrown brambles to reveal the "faery castle" hidden away for so long. I'm sure further readings will lead one into a very special place."
The different dynamics of the ever-changing relationships between Knight and Lady are as tantalising today as in the time of the Courts of Love. And if you are asking yourself why we would wish to re-enter the Faery realms, there are answers here. The Lords of Story are invoked, and we are invited to make our own entrance through “The Faery Gates of Avalon”, if we dare, to undertake our own quests in realisation of our spiritual heritage, as human beings, in Earth.
A worthy addition to the oeuvre of one who has dedicated his life to the elucidation of the Mysteries, while allowing the living heart to remain what it truly is…a Mystery that each must approach alone. Highly recommended.
Anyway, for the review - destined for the Inner Light Journal:
The Faery Gates of Avalon by Gareth Knight ISBN 978-0-9819246-2-5
PB RJ Stewart books £15.95
Here we have another book with a proper index, and with layer upon layer of meaning to be discovered; we move forward into the 12th Century and to the work of Chretien de Troyes, who tells tales of Arthur in the Trouvere tradition to his patron, Marie of Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine. In exploring the tales of Erec, Yvain and Perceval, of Guenevere and of Gawain, Gareth Knight goes back to a fountain of inspiration for those who wish to “open the Faery gates” through the Arthurian tradition.
We are looking at a series of initiation tales, thinly disguised. The “heroes” are earthly knights, and the initiators are Faery women.
The different dynamics of the ever-changing relationships between Knight and Lady are as tantalising today as in the time of the Courts of Love. And if you are asking yourself why we would wish to re-enter the Faery realms, there are answers here. The Lords of Story are invoked, and we are invited to make our own entrance through “The Faery Gates of Avalon”, if we dare, to undertake our own quests in realisation of our spiritual heritage, as human beings, in Earth.
A worthy addition to the oeuvre of one who has dedicated his life to the elucidation of the Mysteries, while allowing the living heart to remain what it truly is…a Mystery that each must approach alone. Highly recommended.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The Faery Gates of Avalon
My latest book has just been published - "The Faery Gates of Avalon"
This is a mind blowing re-take on the function of the ladies of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table.
How in the earliest Arthurian romances they were faery women acting as guides, guardians and lovers to the knightly heroes, inciting or enticing them onto quests that were in reality initiations into Faeryland.
I have taken the stories of Erec, Yvain, Lancelot, Perceval and Gawain from the Old French romances of Chrétien de Troyes - who got them in turn from Welsh and Breton story tellers steeped in Celtic myth and legend - and have high lighted the faery dynamics that have been obscured by later writers - whether pious monks or secular chivalry buffs.
What is more, “opening the faery gates” remains possible and relevant to us today, and these tales can tell how best to go about it.
For full details on how to buy this book go to the publisher’s web site www.rjstewart.net
This is a mind blowing re-take on the function of the ladies of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table.
How in the earliest Arthurian romances they were faery women acting as guides, guardians and lovers to the knightly heroes, inciting or enticing them onto quests that were in reality initiations into Faeryland.
I have taken the stories of Erec, Yvain, Lancelot, Perceval and Gawain from the Old French romances of Chrétien de Troyes - who got them in turn from Welsh and Breton story tellers steeped in Celtic myth and legend - and have high lighted the faery dynamics that have been obscured by later writers - whether pious monks or secular chivalry buffs.
What is more, “opening the faery gates” remains possible and relevant to us today, and these tales can tell how best to go about it.
For full details on how to buy this book go to the publisher’s web site www.rjstewart.net
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Keepers of the Planetary Flame
Some thirty years ago I started a project known as the Keepers of the Planetary Flame inviting any of my students or anyone else of good will to take part in a small personal ceremony each day with the interests of the planet Earth at heart. The main concern at that time was to perhaps do something to discourage our fellow human beings from launching a nuclear holocaust. This dangerous corner having been passed, it seemed, the loose informal fellowship was discontinued.
However, in the new millennium it seems that even bigger crises await us in terms of our capacity to destroy the environment. This is currently expressed in terms of avoiding climate change, yet those who are conscious of the inner side of things and our spiritual stewardship of the planet should be concerned with rather more than improving our carbon footprints.
This can be aided by meditational work, and all you need is a stone or crystal, a candle, and the good will to devote a few minutes each day to the cause. My good friend Coleston Brown has agreed to set up a site dedicated to the running of this scheme, for full details of which you have only to go to www.magicalways.com/KPF.html
I hope you will join us in this good work and that as a Keeper of the Planetary Flame many blessings may flow back to you.
However, in the new millennium it seems that even bigger crises await us in terms of our capacity to destroy the environment. This is currently expressed in terms of avoiding climate change, yet those who are conscious of the inner side of things and our spiritual stewardship of the planet should be concerned with rather more than improving our carbon footprints.
This can be aided by meditational work, and all you need is a stone or crystal, a candle, and the good will to devote a few minutes each day to the cause. My good friend Coleston Brown has agreed to set up a site dedicated to the running of this scheme, for full details of which you have only to go to www.magicalways.com/KPF.html
I hope you will join us in this good work and that as a Keeper of the Planetary Flame many blessings may flow back to you.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
The Glastonbury Zodiac
Much seems to be happening down Glastonbury way these days, including at least a couple of my former cohorts intent on stomping round what is generally, although slightly misleadingly, called the Glastonbury Zodiac.
In 1925 Katharine Emma Maltwood, working in Chilton Priory, her strange, towered abode, looked over the landscape of Somerset, getting the feel for a map she had been commissioned to produce for a new edition of The High History of the Holy Graal. As she pondered the curious appearance of a lion in the story, she had a flash of vision and saw the figure of a great lion shaped in the hills and hollows of the countryside before her. She later associated this effigy with the ancient constellation of Leo.
Wandering the landscape and referring to topographical maps she quickly outlined other effigy figures. Among them a phoenix, a great rider and horse, a giant fish, a bull's head, a mighty hound, a sheaf-bearing goddess, a divine child, and another bird in the centre. Thus did she first discern the great star temple in the holy Vale of Avalon.
She initially announced her findings anonymously in A Guide to Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars (1929) and would spend the rest of her life refining her research. In the esoteric community, support for her work came from an assortment of figures including A E Waite, Ronald Heaver, Rene Gueneon, Oliver Reiser and Lewis Spense.
The subject was controversial from the beginning, and remains so now. Nonetheless, KEM mentions in several of her letters how the RAF used the effigy figures as landmarks for training new pilots. Later, she commissioned her own aerial photographs of the complex and in 1937 published them as a supplement to her Guide. In 1938 she moved to Canada where she carried on her work until her death in 1961, in a series of articles that included a walking tour of some of the important localities within the Enclosure.
KEM recognised in the effigies a prehistoric initiatory pattern that had later infused the tales of Merlin's Round Table, Arthur, and the Graal, and there is no doubt that she saw it as vital, not only for understanding the past, but for a new spiritual vision of the future. As my esteemed colleague R J Stewart has long been teaching, the stars and earth are closely bound up with initiatic experience. Indeed, the fundamental mystery of the Hermetic and related traditions, such as the alchemical and Rosicrucian, is concerned with the celestial powers inside the earth. These are the key to the transformation and regeneration of mortal beings and of matter itself.
To learn more about this fascinating subject you can do no better than to refer to the website of The Magical Ways Open Mysteries Directive which has just been brought to my attention, where you will also find useful information on Working with Sacred Sites, Contacting Spiritual Beings and The Magical Tree. What is more, contents may be freely quoted in whole or in part for purposes of study and teaching, both private and public, as long as due acknowledgement is given to the author. (Something which, outside of a den of thieves, should go without saying!)
All this is courtesy of a former student of mine, Coleston Brown, who has trod the Glastonbury land and followed up in the tracks of Katharine Maltwood on Vancouver Island. You can find out more on http://www.magicalways.com/
In 1925 Katharine Emma Maltwood, working in Chilton Priory, her strange, towered abode, looked over the landscape of Somerset, getting the feel for a map she had been commissioned to produce for a new edition of The High History of the Holy Graal. As she pondered the curious appearance of a lion in the story, she had a flash of vision and saw the figure of a great lion shaped in the hills and hollows of the countryside before her. She later associated this effigy with the ancient constellation of Leo.
Wandering the landscape and referring to topographical maps she quickly outlined other effigy figures. Among them a phoenix, a great rider and horse, a giant fish, a bull's head, a mighty hound, a sheaf-bearing goddess, a divine child, and another bird in the centre. Thus did she first discern the great star temple in the holy Vale of Avalon.
She initially announced her findings anonymously in A Guide to Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars (1929) and would spend the rest of her life refining her research. In the esoteric community, support for her work came from an assortment of figures including A E Waite, Ronald Heaver, Rene Gueneon, Oliver Reiser and Lewis Spense.
The subject was controversial from the beginning, and remains so now. Nonetheless, KEM mentions in several of her letters how the RAF used the effigy figures as landmarks for training new pilots. Later, she commissioned her own aerial photographs of the complex and in 1937 published them as a supplement to her Guide. In 1938 she moved to Canada where she carried on her work until her death in 1961, in a series of articles that included a walking tour of some of the important localities within the Enclosure.
KEM recognised in the effigies a prehistoric initiatory pattern that had later infused the tales of Merlin's Round Table, Arthur, and the Graal, and there is no doubt that she saw it as vital, not only for understanding the past, but for a new spiritual vision of the future. As my esteemed colleague R J Stewart has long been teaching, the stars and earth are closely bound up with initiatic experience. Indeed, the fundamental mystery of the Hermetic and related traditions, such as the alchemical and Rosicrucian, is concerned with the celestial powers inside the earth. These are the key to the transformation and regeneration of mortal beings and of matter itself.
To learn more about this fascinating subject you can do no better than to refer to the website of The Magical Ways Open Mysteries Directive which has just been brought to my attention, where you will also find useful information on Working with Sacred Sites, Contacting Spiritual Beings and The Magical Tree. What is more, contents may be freely quoted in whole or in part for purposes of study and teaching, both private and public, as long as due acknowledgement is given to the author. (Something which, outside of a den of thieves, should go without saying!)
All this is courtesy of a former student of mine, Coleston Brown, who has trod the Glastonbury land and followed up in the tracks of Katharine Maltwood on Vancouver Island. You can find out more on http://www.magicalways.com/
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Spirit Cord and The Sphere of Art
Two books, mercifully slim, have appeared in the last few weeks which are well worth a perusal. Both are from the pen of R J Stewart and entitled, respectively, The Spirit Cord and The Sphere of Art. What I find refreshing and important about them is that they encapsulate the essence of magical practice without most of what traditionally has been thought to be essential associated haberdashery, real estate, group membership and symbolic appurtenances. For the first you need simply a cord and for the second not even that, although paradoxically the whole world and immediate environment becomes your temple.
Stewart and I have interacted in various ways over the past thirty years and more, almost like complementary serpents on the caduceus of Hermes, with my own inspiration deriving ultimately from Dion Fortune and his from the Glastonbury adept Ronald Heaver, both of us, in our time, having passed through an instructive if turbulent magical apprenticeship under the irascible old adept W G Gray. (For an insight into whom, by the way, Alan Richardson’s biography The Old Sod from Ignotus Press is worth more than a passing glance. The somewhat ambivalent title was how William Gray chose to describe himself, and in many respects he certainly lived up to it. Nonetheless he is a key figure in the development of late 20th century occult theory and practice.)
I have recently praised another book for cutting much superfluous detritus out of magical practice, in Catherine MacCoun’s On Becoming an Alchemist but R J Stewart’s books do the necessary in a somewhat different manner. MacCoun’s approach is a chatty style that should appeal to the more general esoteric public, Stewart’s gets down to basics without feeling the need to sugar the pill.
The Spirit Cord reveals practical methods of Cord meditation, empowered vision and spiritual magic using a physical cord in a set of simple and powerful practices that range from mystical ancestral traditions through to a unique set of contemporary methods for transforming consciousness. Cords have been used in spiritual and magical practices for centuries, to bless, to bind, to curse, to liberate, knotted or plain, or strung with beads in religious practice, to say nothing of more intimate cords such as the umbilical cord by which we came into the world, the spinal cord that carries us through it, and the cord of continuity between incarnate lives. Stewart has distilled much of this lore into a handbook, with accompanying CD, on how to procure our own cord and then how to empower it as a device for sacro-magical techniques.
What struck me in particular, as one whose magical training consisted of magical temple work over many years – and training others in the same way – with the concomitant problems of organisation and financing such endeavours, was that in the Spirit Cord we have a device that can produce much the same effects without all the hassle.
Much the same can be said for the techniques described in The Sphere of Art which to my mind encapsulate much of the structures and dynamics of a full blown magical temple that can now be accessed by the lone operative – or the so-called lone operative! It should be apparent that, as Stewart affirms in his concluding remarks, the practices described should not be undertaken lightly – for there are responsibilities to accept and a need to be focussed and disciplined. However, beyond the early training stage of discipline and responsibility, the way becomes simple and clear, opening up into a regenerated state of awareness that perceives the world of nature as at one with the cosmos. This is a radically altered state, not an intellectual concept. Incidentally, the alchemical diagram on the front cover of the book illustrates it all.
It should be said that The Sphere of Art embodies the most advanced work of R J Stewart’s “Inner Temple Traditions Inner Convocation” that he has taught internationally since 1988. A further development is promised in his next book The Purifying Fire. You can find further details of all this on his web site www.rjstewart.org along with his publication of books by a variety of authors, whose numbers I hope shortly to join with my study of early Arthurian tradition The Faery Gates of Avalon but of this – more later!
Stewart and I have interacted in various ways over the past thirty years and more, almost like complementary serpents on the caduceus of Hermes, with my own inspiration deriving ultimately from Dion Fortune and his from the Glastonbury adept Ronald Heaver, both of us, in our time, having passed through an instructive if turbulent magical apprenticeship under the irascible old adept W G Gray. (For an insight into whom, by the way, Alan Richardson’s biography The Old Sod from Ignotus Press is worth more than a passing glance. The somewhat ambivalent title was how William Gray chose to describe himself, and in many respects he certainly lived up to it. Nonetheless he is a key figure in the development of late 20th century occult theory and practice.)
I have recently praised another book for cutting much superfluous detritus out of magical practice, in Catherine MacCoun’s On Becoming an Alchemist but R J Stewart’s books do the necessary in a somewhat different manner. MacCoun’s approach is a chatty style that should appeal to the more general esoteric public, Stewart’s gets down to basics without feeling the need to sugar the pill.
The Spirit Cord reveals practical methods of Cord meditation, empowered vision and spiritual magic using a physical cord in a set of simple and powerful practices that range from mystical ancestral traditions through to a unique set of contemporary methods for transforming consciousness. Cords have been used in spiritual and magical practices for centuries, to bless, to bind, to curse, to liberate, knotted or plain, or strung with beads in religious practice, to say nothing of more intimate cords such as the umbilical cord by which we came into the world, the spinal cord that carries us through it, and the cord of continuity between incarnate lives. Stewart has distilled much of this lore into a handbook, with accompanying CD, on how to procure our own cord and then how to empower it as a device for sacro-magical techniques.
What struck me in particular, as one whose magical training consisted of magical temple work over many years – and training others in the same way – with the concomitant problems of organisation and financing such endeavours, was that in the Spirit Cord we have a device that can produce much the same effects without all the hassle.
Much the same can be said for the techniques described in The Sphere of Art which to my mind encapsulate much of the structures and dynamics of a full blown magical temple that can now be accessed by the lone operative – or the so-called lone operative! It should be apparent that, as Stewart affirms in his concluding remarks, the practices described should not be undertaken lightly – for there are responsibilities to accept and a need to be focussed and disciplined. However, beyond the early training stage of discipline and responsibility, the way becomes simple and clear, opening up into a regenerated state of awareness that perceives the world of nature as at one with the cosmos. This is a radically altered state, not an intellectual concept. Incidentally, the alchemical diagram on the front cover of the book illustrates it all.
It should be said that The Sphere of Art embodies the most advanced work of R J Stewart’s “Inner Temple Traditions Inner Convocation” that he has taught internationally since 1988. A further development is promised in his next book The Purifying Fire. You can find further details of all this on his web site www.rjstewart.org along with his publication of books by a variety of authors, whose numbers I hope shortly to join with my study of early Arthurian tradition The Faery Gates of Avalon but of this – more later!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Midsummer Message 2008
Magic is where you find it. Some thirty years ago, the Managing Director of a very respectable religious publishing house in England, A.R.Mowbray & Co., was looking into his shaving mirror one morning when the message came to him, out of the blue, "Why not publish a book on the history of white magic?" He cast around what few contacts he had who might have some idea about such an arcane subject and in the end was referred to me. The consequence was, and I hope he did not lose his job as a result of it, the publication of "A History of White Magic" by Gareth Knight.
It caused a few ripples at the time, a bit of fluttering amongst some readers of the Church Times, one of whom wrote in condemning the publication without going to the trouble of actually reading it, though I hope he bought a copy if only to throw it away - unless he was as socially responsible as one of Dion Fortune's readers who returned a well thumbed copy of "The Winged Bull" to the publishers for fear of corrupting the scavengers if it ended up in the trash can. Anyhow, some people liked it, it translated into French and Greek and later had an American edition under the title of "Magic and the Western Mind".
I felt it was an opportunity to present my favoured subject to the world at large, either directly, or for fellow students of the subject to present to their friends and relations as an intelligent and reasonable justification for their taking up with such an out of the way subject. Of course in the years since then, the world has become a less strait laced place, and interest in the esoteric become almost commonplace. Nonetheless what I had to say in the book retains a use and validity I feel. Thus I am happy to announce that it has now been made available again, in the form of a disc you can put into your computer, and bringing for the first time the joys of full colour illustration.
The point I have to make in the book is that the world of magic is one of high imagination, and an art and science with applications as universal as those of mathematics. Yet its unique scope, encompassing both science and religion, has caused it to be denigrated in modern times. Physical science has discarded it as superstition or a pseudo-religion. Religion has regarded it, as it once regarded science, with deep suspicion, thinking it to be an impious attempt to trespass on sacred preserves. But I consider magic to be a middle ground between science and religion, reconciling them in a technology of the imagination, which can bring about personal regeneration and spiritual fulfilment.
In a wide historical survey I show how the higher imagination has been used as an aid to the evolution of consciousness, from the ancient Mystery religions, through alchemy, Renaissance magic, the Rosicrucian manifestoes, Freemasonry and 19th century magical fraternities up to the 20th century occult revival. The message of the whole book is that we have sadly neglected the contribution that the higher imagination can make in bringing about an ecological responsibility to science and a restoration of nerve to religion. Now that we and the environment are threatened with a Faustian disaster, could a re-appraisal of the function and importance of magic be the key to our survival?
To find out, if you have not already read a copy of the book, go to http://www.ritemagic.co.uk/ to obtain a copy of the PDF file.
Review comments:
"It is quite a book. It deserves to do well and to be treated with respect and attention. As to its main theme, I know nobody better qualified to write it, and it is a grand sweep of very well digested and understood - and researched - information which is not available to my knowledge anywhere else in this kind of form." - Publisher's reader.
"As a chronicle of the evolution of consciousness and culture in Western Europe this may be compared favourably to Bronowski's 'Ascent of Man' " - Sangreal Magazine.
And may the sun continue to shine brightly on you all,
Regards, Gareth Knight
It caused a few ripples at the time, a bit of fluttering amongst some readers of the Church Times, one of whom wrote in condemning the publication without going to the trouble of actually reading it, though I hope he bought a copy if only to throw it away - unless he was as socially responsible as one of Dion Fortune's readers who returned a well thumbed copy of "The Winged Bull" to the publishers for fear of corrupting the scavengers if it ended up in the trash can. Anyhow, some people liked it, it translated into French and Greek and later had an American edition under the title of "Magic and the Western Mind".
I felt it was an opportunity to present my favoured subject to the world at large, either directly, or for fellow students of the subject to present to their friends and relations as an intelligent and reasonable justification for their taking up with such an out of the way subject. Of course in the years since then, the world has become a less strait laced place, and interest in the esoteric become almost commonplace. Nonetheless what I had to say in the book retains a use and validity I feel. Thus I am happy to announce that it has now been made available again, in the form of a disc you can put into your computer, and bringing for the first time the joys of full colour illustration.
The point I have to make in the book is that the world of magic is one of high imagination, and an art and science with applications as universal as those of mathematics. Yet its unique scope, encompassing both science and religion, has caused it to be denigrated in modern times. Physical science has discarded it as superstition or a pseudo-religion. Religion has regarded it, as it once regarded science, with deep suspicion, thinking it to be an impious attempt to trespass on sacred preserves. But I consider magic to be a middle ground between science and religion, reconciling them in a technology of the imagination, which can bring about personal regeneration and spiritual fulfilment.
In a wide historical survey I show how the higher imagination has been used as an aid to the evolution of consciousness, from the ancient Mystery religions, through alchemy, Renaissance magic, the Rosicrucian manifestoes, Freemasonry and 19th century magical fraternities up to the 20th century occult revival. The message of the whole book is that we have sadly neglected the contribution that the higher imagination can make in bringing about an ecological responsibility to science and a restoration of nerve to religion. Now that we and the environment are threatened with a Faustian disaster, could a re-appraisal of the function and importance of magic be the key to our survival?
To find out, if you have not already read a copy of the book, go to http://www.ritemagic.co.uk/ to obtain a copy of the PDF file.
Review comments:
"It is quite a book. It deserves to do well and to be treated with respect and attention. As to its main theme, I know nobody better qualified to write it, and it is a grand sweep of very well digested and understood - and researched - information which is not available to my knowledge anywhere else in this kind of form." - Publisher's reader.
"As a chronicle of the evolution of consciousness and culture in Western Europe this may be compared favourably to Bronowski's 'Ascent of Man' " - Sangreal Magazine.
And may the sun continue to shine brightly on you all,
Regards, Gareth Knight
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism update
In response to a recent query from Paul in Ireland it seems worth repeating what I wrote some time ago when I started this web-site. This concerns various comments I made in A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO QABALISTIC SYMBOLISM which many feel somewhat outdated, not to say pontifical and repressive in light of current social and moral attitudes. This is because, like any other book from human hand, it never was infallible, and almost 50 years after it was written is not unnaturally showing the effects of its age. (Like me!) For reasons of publishing economics it has not been possible to revise the text but in the latest one-volume paperback edition from Red Wheel Weiser I have been able to insert a foreword that covers some of these issues as best I may. If anyone does not have a copy of this edition but would like to read the foreword I will be happy to send it by e-mail.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Magic and the Power of the Goddess
First review of Magic and the Power of the Goddess has just come to my notice, and sums up what I had in mind for the book very well. I quote:
“Over the years, Gareth Knight has been very much an innovator and opener of new ways in the Western Mysteries. At a time when this stuff was generally reserved for secret lodge meetings and when many groups frowned upon individual thought and inner work, he was one of the first to encourage people to meet and practice magic in living rooms and public workshops. Magic and the Power of the Goddess – perhaps the best in the list of impressive titles that have flowed from Knight’s prolific pen – is very much an expression of this original, initiating spirit.
“Originally published in 1985 as The Rose Cross and the Goddess, then later substantially revised and expanded under the title Evoking the Goddess, this latest edition has a new preface by the author. In many ways the book was, and still is, ahead of its time. For it presents the Western Mystery Tradition not as an inalterable secret “system” controlled by a hierarchy of reticent adepts, but as a dynamic, living approach to sacred lore. It is a way of transformation and spiritual service.
“The book is divided into two main parts, which taken together provide a rare opportunity to work magic from beginning exercises to advanced levels of service. Indeed, the book could well be taken as a course of training in and of itself and I would certainly wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in the Magical Way.
“Part One, entitled The Magic Circle Maze Dance, is a masterful résumé of magical practice. Here you will learn about treading the sacred spiral, becoming one with the earth, invoking the fourfold elemental powers, working with the cycle of time and the central flame. The section concludes with a consideration of the need to balance oneself in the Three Worlds or Realms, a vision of the Goddess and a call to respond to her. There are times in this book, particularly in the practical segments, where Knight’s literary style, already accomplished and impressive, seems overshadowed by yet a greater voice. A poetic muse of spiritual contact seems to speak with unusual power from those passages.
“Part Two deals with the application of this practical instruction to the figure of the Goddess as she appears in various traditions. Gareth Knight offers insightful analyses of the myths and legends of Andromeda, Isis, Mary, Alchemical Venus, and the Queen of Faery – each followed by a visionary practice.
“In the chapter on the Queen of Faery, Knight remarks more fully on an important theme running through the book. This is “the democratization of the Mysteries”, which he rightly links to the power of the Goddess. He mentions the current spate of books and workshops on once secret doctrines and practices as evidence of this process, and from my own experience as a teacher of magical ways, it does indeed seem as if the roles of priest and priestess are moving with equal haste away from confinement in both conventional religion and traditional mystery lodges into wider, more accessible and integrated expressions in the daily lives of spiritual people.
“The book closes with a chapter on the Initiation of the Earth, in which Knight gives visionary examples of how this new priest and priestess-hood is undertaken in the context of the Goddess and sacred sites. Effective participation in this kind of spiritual service requires, the author tells us, “breadth of vision and largeness of soul” – a phrase which aptly applied to both the work and person of Gareth Knight.”
C Y H Brown
This appears on Colestone Brown’s website www.magicalways.com which is worth a visit not least for a view of the current activity and publications of this highly active and promising former student of mine.
The book itself ISBN 978-159477235-1 is published by Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 224 pages, 9 b&w illustrations, at $14.95. Further details from www.DestinyBooks.com
“Over the years, Gareth Knight has been very much an innovator and opener of new ways in the Western Mysteries. At a time when this stuff was generally reserved for secret lodge meetings and when many groups frowned upon individual thought and inner work, he was one of the first to encourage people to meet and practice magic in living rooms and public workshops. Magic and the Power of the Goddess – perhaps the best in the list of impressive titles that have flowed from Knight’s prolific pen – is very much an expression of this original, initiating spirit.
“Originally published in 1985 as The Rose Cross and the Goddess, then later substantially revised and expanded under the title Evoking the Goddess, this latest edition has a new preface by the author. In many ways the book was, and still is, ahead of its time. For it presents the Western Mystery Tradition not as an inalterable secret “system” controlled by a hierarchy of reticent adepts, but as a dynamic, living approach to sacred lore. It is a way of transformation and spiritual service.
“The book is divided into two main parts, which taken together provide a rare opportunity to work magic from beginning exercises to advanced levels of service. Indeed, the book could well be taken as a course of training in and of itself and I would certainly wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in the Magical Way.
“Part One, entitled The Magic Circle Maze Dance, is a masterful résumé of magical practice. Here you will learn about treading the sacred spiral, becoming one with the earth, invoking the fourfold elemental powers, working with the cycle of time and the central flame. The section concludes with a consideration of the need to balance oneself in the Three Worlds or Realms, a vision of the Goddess and a call to respond to her. There are times in this book, particularly in the practical segments, where Knight’s literary style, already accomplished and impressive, seems overshadowed by yet a greater voice. A poetic muse of spiritual contact seems to speak with unusual power from those passages.
“Part Two deals with the application of this practical instruction to the figure of the Goddess as she appears in various traditions. Gareth Knight offers insightful analyses of the myths and legends of Andromeda, Isis, Mary, Alchemical Venus, and the Queen of Faery – each followed by a visionary practice.
“In the chapter on the Queen of Faery, Knight remarks more fully on an important theme running through the book. This is “the democratization of the Mysteries”, which he rightly links to the power of the Goddess. He mentions the current spate of books and workshops on once secret doctrines and practices as evidence of this process, and from my own experience as a teacher of magical ways, it does indeed seem as if the roles of priest and priestess are moving with equal haste away from confinement in both conventional religion and traditional mystery lodges into wider, more accessible and integrated expressions in the daily lives of spiritual people.
“The book closes with a chapter on the Initiation of the Earth, in which Knight gives visionary examples of how this new priest and priestess-hood is undertaken in the context of the Goddess and sacred sites. Effective participation in this kind of spiritual service requires, the author tells us, “breadth of vision and largeness of soul” – a phrase which aptly applied to both the work and person of Gareth Knight.”
C Y H Brown
This appears on Colestone Brown’s website www.magicalways.com which is worth a visit not least for a view of the current activity and publications of this highly active and promising former student of mine.
The book itself ISBN 978-159477235-1 is published by Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 224 pages, 9 b&w illustrations, at $14.95. Further details from www.DestinyBooks.com
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