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/
Sunday, October 05, 2008
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
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Spring message 2008
Well Spring has finally sprung after what has been somewhat of a hard winter and among the first green shoots to show is publication of MAGIC AND THE POWER OF THE GODDESS on April 15th by Destiny Books, which some of you may already have met in its former incarnation as “Evoking the Goddess”. It has evolved out of a great deal of practical work of mine over the years in public workshops and private groups and on looking through it again I think it to be one of the best things I have done and so thoroughly deserving this new presentation.
The Goddess, the divine feminine, is no mere product of a trendy esoteric fashion. She has been with us from the beginning of time, and I have tried to show some of the paths of her expression over the past couple of thousand years in her many guises as maiden, mother, initiator, protector, sorceress and faery queen – along with a manual of magical and mystical, active and contemplative techniques for contacting her.
For more details of this and of their other excellent publications log on to http://www.destinybooks.com/
I regret that as I press on towards the further end of my eighth decade I am having to curtail some of my travelling about and so unfortunately will not be present at the Hawkwood or Glastonbury events that I mentioned in a previous blog. However by all accounts they will be none the worse for my absence and promise to be even more powerful and rewarding events than in the past. Meanwhile I concentrate my efforts on the written word and inner rather than outer travelling, with particular emphasis on Arthurian and Faery origins. But more of that later.
I shall also be continuing to contribute regularly to the Inner Light Journal (details http://www.innerlight.org.uk/) with whatever takes my fancy.
Blessings to all!
The Goddess, the divine feminine, is no mere product of a trendy esoteric fashion. She has been with us from the beginning of time, and I have tried to show some of the paths of her expression over the past couple of thousand years in her many guises as maiden, mother, initiator, protector, sorceress and faery queen – along with a manual of magical and mystical, active and contemplative techniques for contacting her.
For more details of this and of their other excellent publications log on to http://www.destinybooks.com/
I regret that as I press on towards the further end of my eighth decade I am having to curtail some of my travelling about and so unfortunately will not be present at the Hawkwood or Glastonbury events that I mentioned in a previous blog. However by all accounts they will be none the worse for my absence and promise to be even more powerful and rewarding events than in the past. Meanwhile I concentrate my efforts on the written word and inner rather than outer travelling, with particular emphasis on Arthurian and Faery origins. But more of that later.
I shall also be continuing to contribute regularly to the Inner Light Journal (details http://www.innerlight.org.uk/) with whatever takes my fancy.
Blessings to all!
Saturday, January 12, 2008
On Becoming an Alchemist
"On Becoming an Alchemist - a Guide for the Modern Magician" by Catherine MacCoun has just dropped onto my door mat. I was sent this book to read in manuscript some time last year, asked to review it, and was much impressed by it.
Here is what I said:
"Catherine MacCoun is a great communicator and she knows her stuff from the inside too. This book blows a bright and refreshing breeze through the musty halls of hermetic and magical symbolism, and lays it all on the line. Highly recommended."
I see that some respected fellow authors have been similarly impressed. Thus from David Spangler (author of Blessing and Everyday Miracles):
"A true alchemist, Catherine MacCoun has transformed profound ideas into a gold standard of what a book on magic should be. Excellently written with prose that sparkles with clarity and wit, this book can serve the novice and advanced practitioner alike with equal grace and insight. She inspires with her vision, and effortlessly transforms magic into the practical living art it is meant to be - as a part of life and an expression of who we are. I highly recommend it."
And from Dr Larry Dossey (author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things):
"Many discussions of alchemy are hopelessly dense and opaque; this one is full of light and life. With admirable clarity, MacCoun shows how alchemy can benefit one's life here and now. This is uncluttered, everyday wisdom; the most accessible discussion of the psychospiritual dimensions of alchemy to appear in years."
Published by Shambhala Publications, Boston and London, under their Trumpter Books imprint, (ISBN 978-1-59031-369-6), it should have excellent distribution in bookstores both sides of the Atlantic. Need I say more? Don't miss one of the best books on magic I have read in years.
Here is what I said:
"Catherine MacCoun is a great communicator and she knows her stuff from the inside too. This book blows a bright and refreshing breeze through the musty halls of hermetic and magical symbolism, and lays it all on the line. Highly recommended."
I see that some respected fellow authors have been similarly impressed. Thus from David Spangler (author of Blessing and Everyday Miracles):
"A true alchemist, Catherine MacCoun has transformed profound ideas into a gold standard of what a book on magic should be. Excellently written with prose that sparkles with clarity and wit, this book can serve the novice and advanced practitioner alike with equal grace and insight. She inspires with her vision, and effortlessly transforms magic into the practical living art it is meant to be - as a part of life and an expression of who we are. I highly recommend it."
And from Dr Larry Dossey (author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things):
"Many discussions of alchemy are hopelessly dense and opaque; this one is full of light and life. With admirable clarity, MacCoun shows how alchemy can benefit one's life here and now. This is uncluttered, everyday wisdom; the most accessible discussion of the psychospiritual dimensions of alchemy to appear in years."
Published by Shambhala Publications, Boston and London, under their Trumpter Books imprint, (ISBN 978-1-59031-369-6), it should have excellent distribution in bookstores both sides of the Atlantic. Need I say more? Don't miss one of the best books on magic I have read in years.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Extension to web site
We have now produced an extension to my web site, giving details of the Avalon Group, which is the name of the former Gareth Knight Group, founded by me in 1973 and which is now in the capable hands of Wendy Berg. For details click here: The Avalon Group
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Prospects for 2008
2008 looks like being an interesting year. The Dion Fortune seminar at Glastonbury seems set to be a regular annual event and I look forward to being there on Saturday September 6th in company with Alan Richardson, Jim McBride and Mike Harris to continue our investigations into the faery tradition, which proved highly popular and evocative at our last meeting, details of which are now posted on the Company of Avalon website, http://www.companyofavalon.net/, where you can also apply for tickets for the 2008 meeting. In keeping with our faery theme we shall also have Wendy Berg on the platform, leader of the Avalon Group, author of the forthcoming Red Tree, White Tree which I have been fortunate enough to have read in manuscript and regard as pretty hot stuff in regard to the faery tradition in Arthurian legend.
I also hope to make a return to old haunts by participating in a residential workshop with R J Stewart and Caitlín Matthews at Hawkwood College on the weekend of 29th/31st August. This is an event limited to those who have already attended a gathering or workshop on the lines of the stellar fire temple work with R J Stewart. For enquiries about course content or student requirements contact Caitlín via tigerna9@aol.com or for a booking details http://www.hawkwoodcollege.co.uk/ or janedmay@btinternet.com. And whether you can attend or not you can find details of advance reading and supportive material at http://www.rjstewart.org/
By that time what may seem to be a new book of mine should have been published in America by Destiny Books under the title Magic and the Power of the Goddess, subtitled Initiation, Worship, and Ritual in the Western Mystery Tradition. Although it is in fact a re-titled new impression of what may already be familiar to some of you as Evoking the Goddess, Initiation, Worship, and the Eternal Feminine in the Western Mysteries (1993) or even in an earlier incarnation as The Rose Cross and the Goddess (1985). Price of the new edition is announced at $14.95, estimated publication date: 15th April 2008. For more details visit the publisher’s web site http://www.innertraditions.com/
On reading it through again I was agreeably surprised to find that, rather than aging, it seems to have increased in significance with the passing of the years. Most people now realise the great challenge that faces us involving the well-being of the Earth. This is commonly expressed in terms of climate change but this is simply the most materialist way of looking at it – entirely from the outside of things. There is an all important inner side to it all – which is linked to the realisation that our planet behaves like a conscious living being. What some of us call the Planetary Being.
In some ways this has been likened to the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth, Gaia, for there has ever been a recognition of the Divine Feminine Principle throughout the ages under different guises. But the intellectual climate of the past 300 years or so, when science and technology have made such great strides, has tended to drive it underground. Now is surely the time to restore the balance, to rediscover the true nature of things and our relationship to them. Then we might find ourselves ready to enter a New Age rather than worry about whether we are going to survive into it!
We need to see ourselves as allies of creation rather than its exploiters. To choose to work in harmony with the natural world. To realise the Earth to be a great Elemental being who provides the means for the generation of life within and upon herself. The forms of life that she nurtures and nourishes includes not only the human race but the animal kingdom in all its forms. And those with a certain degree of inner awareness may realise it also includes the so-called faery realm.
This is something to challenge us in many different ways. It is not enough to confine our interest to purely intellectual speculation or wishful thinking. We must not only believe in the reality of the Goddess and the forms of elemental and spiritual consciousness that make up Her being; we must come to understand and cooperate with them by means of an active and enlightened imagination.
By creative work with traditional images we can awaken and realign our energies. We can free up our preconditioned energy patterns and begin to work within a framework of realisation that holds great potential for inner transformation. For we literally imagine ourselves into being what we are. And it is through a culture of organised greed, indifference to others, and materialistic blindness, that we have imagined ourselves into a feeling of antagonistic isolation, alone and unloved in an alien universe.
Yet if we use our imagination to open ourselves to the hidden glory that surrounds us we can discover this sense of isolation to be an illusion. We can then discover a world of many beings and many realities. And by working with the light and power within the Earth, which throughout history has typically been revealed in feminine imagery, we may open ourselves to energies inherent in an Otherworld through which remarkable changes can occur. Not only to ourselves but to the world at large. In Magic and the Power of the Goddess I hope to have given various indicators to light your way.
The printed word is however not the only way of spreading light and wisdom and indeed the joy of living. I have mentioned the means of song before by reference to my daughter Rebsie Fairholm and to Magic Folk led by my friends Ben & Michelle Glover. You do not have to take my word entirely for it, for a couple of enthusiastic reviews have recently appeared, which I quote below.
With regard to the Magicfolk debut album, which includes Heliopolis, Persephone and Sea Priestess (based on the Dion Fortune novel), Tim Carroll of FolkWords writes “A raft of magical spells – fantastic flights of musical and lyrical fancy mixed with a touch of pagan lore, medieval storytelling and a gentle otherworldly air. Magicfolk blend tantalisingly delicate music with wistful poetic meandering lyrics. If you want to slide off this planet with all its cares and go somewhere mysterious listen to Magicfolk. Ben and Michelle write music that acts like mental balm – soothing and revitalising.” You can hear sound clips and buy online at http://www.magicfolk.co.uk/
As regards Rebsie Fairholm’s album, Mind the Gap, (the gap referred to exists between the worlds!), the prestigious magazine Organ writes: “An absolutely wonderful album’s worth of entrancing whispered glowing heart-warming Celtic/Old English (pagan?) folk, embroidered with cleverly delicate instrumentation. Lush golden strings and seductive woodwind, haunting glowing beauty and Rebsie has the most beguiling of voices – she really is something special. Just beautiful, uncluttered, refreshing. Delicately arranged folk familiars (and a beautiful version of Pink Floyd’s Julia Dream). Calming, uplifting, ethereal and a slightly new feel on something very traditional and unashamedly rooted in very old ways – for fans, followers and lovers of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, the leaves turning golden orange and the Albion spirit that can still be found, (beautiful artwork as well).”
And you can hear sound clips and buy online at http://www.rebsiefairholm.co.uk/
2007 saw the publication of two books that seem likely to mark the close of my literary association with Dion Fortune. One was The Arthurian Formula, an important and challenging text that she channelled in 1941 and which was continued by her successor Margaret Lumley Brown. It was originally intended for her close esoteric associates rather than the general public, so I have provided it with an introductory commentary and reader’s guide to help anyone unfamiliar with some of the concepts that she and they took for granted. There now seems nothing more of her unpublished work left for me to edit - it is all now in the public domain. Probably not before time you may think! But the powers and intelligences behind some of this advanced work tend to play a long game.
However one can still talk about some of her achievements. And my other book, The Occult Fiction of Dion Fortune, is my take on how she provided practical esoteric teaching within her short stories and novels. There is a popular saying that truth is stranger than fiction – but with esoteric authors of Dion Fortune’s calibre fiction can be the best possible way to impart certain elements of truth! This began with an opening up of the Portal of the Mysteries with her short stories The Secrets of Dr Taverner and first novel The Demon Lover, that developed into the Mysteries of Sun and Earth in The Winged Bull and The Goat-foot God followed by the Mysteries of Sea and Moon in The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic. All containing elements of practical Qabalah, the theoretical side of which she expounded in her great classic The Mystical Qabalah which has taught more than one generation of students and has been continuously in print since 1935.
Finally may I wish all readers a bright and transcendental 2008!
I also hope to make a return to old haunts by participating in a residential workshop with R J Stewart and Caitlín Matthews at Hawkwood College on the weekend of 29th/31st August. This is an event limited to those who have already attended a gathering or workshop on the lines of the stellar fire temple work with R J Stewart. For enquiries about course content or student requirements contact Caitlín via tigerna9@aol.com or for a booking details http://www.hawkwoodcollege.co.uk/ or janedmay@btinternet.com. And whether you can attend or not you can find details of advance reading and supportive material at http://www.rjstewart.org/
By that time what may seem to be a new book of mine should have been published in America by Destiny Books under the title Magic and the Power of the Goddess, subtitled Initiation, Worship, and Ritual in the Western Mystery Tradition. Although it is in fact a re-titled new impression of what may already be familiar to some of you as Evoking the Goddess, Initiation, Worship, and the Eternal Feminine in the Western Mysteries (1993) or even in an earlier incarnation as The Rose Cross and the Goddess (1985). Price of the new edition is announced at $14.95, estimated publication date: 15th April 2008. For more details visit the publisher’s web site http://www.innertraditions.com/
On reading it through again I was agreeably surprised to find that, rather than aging, it seems to have increased in significance with the passing of the years. Most people now realise the great challenge that faces us involving the well-being of the Earth. This is commonly expressed in terms of climate change but this is simply the most materialist way of looking at it – entirely from the outside of things. There is an all important inner side to it all – which is linked to the realisation that our planet behaves like a conscious living being. What some of us call the Planetary Being.
In some ways this has been likened to the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth, Gaia, for there has ever been a recognition of the Divine Feminine Principle throughout the ages under different guises. But the intellectual climate of the past 300 years or so, when science and technology have made such great strides, has tended to drive it underground. Now is surely the time to restore the balance, to rediscover the true nature of things and our relationship to them. Then we might find ourselves ready to enter a New Age rather than worry about whether we are going to survive into it!
We need to see ourselves as allies of creation rather than its exploiters. To choose to work in harmony with the natural world. To realise the Earth to be a great Elemental being who provides the means for the generation of life within and upon herself. The forms of life that she nurtures and nourishes includes not only the human race but the animal kingdom in all its forms. And those with a certain degree of inner awareness may realise it also includes the so-called faery realm.
This is something to challenge us in many different ways. It is not enough to confine our interest to purely intellectual speculation or wishful thinking. We must not only believe in the reality of the Goddess and the forms of elemental and spiritual consciousness that make up Her being; we must come to understand and cooperate with them by means of an active and enlightened imagination.
By creative work with traditional images we can awaken and realign our energies. We can free up our preconditioned energy patterns and begin to work within a framework of realisation that holds great potential for inner transformation. For we literally imagine ourselves into being what we are. And it is through a culture of organised greed, indifference to others, and materialistic blindness, that we have imagined ourselves into a feeling of antagonistic isolation, alone and unloved in an alien universe.
Yet if we use our imagination to open ourselves to the hidden glory that surrounds us we can discover this sense of isolation to be an illusion. We can then discover a world of many beings and many realities. And by working with the light and power within the Earth, which throughout history has typically been revealed in feminine imagery, we may open ourselves to energies inherent in an Otherworld through which remarkable changes can occur. Not only to ourselves but to the world at large. In Magic and the Power of the Goddess I hope to have given various indicators to light your way.
The printed word is however not the only way of spreading light and wisdom and indeed the joy of living. I have mentioned the means of song before by reference to my daughter Rebsie Fairholm and to Magic Folk led by my friends Ben & Michelle Glover. You do not have to take my word entirely for it, for a couple of enthusiastic reviews have recently appeared, which I quote below.
With regard to the Magicfolk debut album, which includes Heliopolis, Persephone and Sea Priestess (based on the Dion Fortune novel), Tim Carroll of FolkWords writes “A raft of magical spells – fantastic flights of musical and lyrical fancy mixed with a touch of pagan lore, medieval storytelling and a gentle otherworldly air. Magicfolk blend tantalisingly delicate music with wistful poetic meandering lyrics. If you want to slide off this planet with all its cares and go somewhere mysterious listen to Magicfolk. Ben and Michelle write music that acts like mental balm – soothing and revitalising.” You can hear sound clips and buy online at http://www.magicfolk.co.uk/
As regards Rebsie Fairholm’s album, Mind the Gap, (the gap referred to exists between the worlds!), the prestigious magazine Organ writes: “An absolutely wonderful album’s worth of entrancing whispered glowing heart-warming Celtic/Old English (pagan?) folk, embroidered with cleverly delicate instrumentation. Lush golden strings and seductive woodwind, haunting glowing beauty and Rebsie has the most beguiling of voices – she really is something special. Just beautiful, uncluttered, refreshing. Delicately arranged folk familiars (and a beautiful version of Pink Floyd’s Julia Dream). Calming, uplifting, ethereal and a slightly new feel on something very traditional and unashamedly rooted in very old ways – for fans, followers and lovers of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, the leaves turning golden orange and the Albion spirit that can still be found, (beautiful artwork as well).”
And you can hear sound clips and buy online at http://www.rebsiefairholm.co.uk/
2007 saw the publication of two books that seem likely to mark the close of my literary association with Dion Fortune. One was The Arthurian Formula, an important and challenging text that she channelled in 1941 and which was continued by her successor Margaret Lumley Brown. It was originally intended for her close esoteric associates rather than the general public, so I have provided it with an introductory commentary and reader’s guide to help anyone unfamiliar with some of the concepts that she and they took for granted. There now seems nothing more of her unpublished work left for me to edit - it is all now in the public domain. Probably not before time you may think! But the powers and intelligences behind some of this advanced work tend to play a long game.
However one can still talk about some of her achievements. And my other book, The Occult Fiction of Dion Fortune, is my take on how she provided practical esoteric teaching within her short stories and novels. There is a popular saying that truth is stranger than fiction – but with esoteric authors of Dion Fortune’s calibre fiction can be the best possible way to impart certain elements of truth! This began with an opening up of the Portal of the Mysteries with her short stories The Secrets of Dr Taverner and first novel The Demon Lover, that developed into the Mysteries of Sun and Earth in The Winged Bull and The Goat-foot God followed by the Mysteries of Sea and Moon in The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic. All containing elements of practical Qabalah, the theoretical side of which she expounded in her great classic The Mystical Qabalah which has taught more than one generation of students and has been continuously in print since 1935.
Finally may I wish all readers a bright and transcendental 2008!
Monday, September 10, 2007
Glastonbury again - and some magic sounds
Here follows the text of my talk at the 2nd Dion Fortune seminar at Glastonbury this year, an event which, by popular request, seems likely to become a regular event on the esoteric calendar. It was held in the Assembly Rooms, site of the first performance, back in 1914, of The Immortal Hour, the haunting faery operetta by Rutland Boughton based upon lyrics by Fiona McLeod. In Avalon of the Heart Dion Fortune records being present at a performance here, citing it as "a thing never to be forgotten." Indeed the show went on to become enormously successful with an even wider public, indicating that there are other ways of diseminating the secret wisdom other than by the printed word.
With this in mind it seems appropriate to mention the release of two magically evocative CD's recently. One by my multi-talented daughter Rebecca contains some magical songs channelled straight from the English folk muse, and its title Mind the Gap refers to a gap between worlds which it may be best to avoid falling into. Whilst two other musically gifted associates of mine, Michelle and Ben Glover, with their group Magicfolk and a CD of the same name, provide mystically inspired songs in their own blend of esoteric psych-folk.
Web sites to call at for details or a free listen are:
http://www.rebsiefairholm.co.uk and/or http://www.magicfolk.co.uk
With this in mind it seems appropriate to mention the release of two magically evocative CD's recently. One by my multi-talented daughter Rebecca contains some magical songs channelled straight from the English folk muse, and its title Mind the Gap refers to a gap between worlds which it may be best to avoid falling into. Whilst two other musically gifted associates of mine, Michelle and Ben Glover, with their group Magicfolk and a CD of the same name, provide mystically inspired songs in their own blend of esoteric psych-folk.
Web sites to call at for details or a free listen are:
http://www.rebsiefairholm.co.uk and/or http://www.magicfolk.co.uk
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