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

Check it out here

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


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







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

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

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


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

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

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







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

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

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

My Blog Talk Radio presentation entitled Huxley and Crowley: Goodbye to Berlin, Hello Sgt Pepper is available now as archive download. it is one hour in length.






When Aldous Huxley and Aleister Crowley met for lunch in Berlin in 1930 the two great visionaries could never in their wildest imaginings have anticipated the events that would lead to their posthumous appearance together on the Beatles Sgt Pepper cover in 1967. From the backdrop to the movie Cabaret to Timothy Leary and the Human Be-In and the Summer of Love, here is a story of myth, ideas, and influences, taking in a whole host of cult figures and providing an introduction and context for the psychedelic era.











Material drawn from my book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.

Listen to it here:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogtalkradio.com%2Fpaul-weston1%2F2010%2F10%2F10%2Fhuxley-and-crowley-goodbye-to-berlin-hello-sgt-pepper&h=67b73

Boleskine House


My recent Blog Talk Radio presentation,an hour-long Typhonian entertainment entitled Aleister Crowley and the Loch Ness monster is available as archive download.



Doc Shiels notorious 1977 photo.


Aleister Crowley is the second most famous inhabitant of Loch Ness, having owned a home there in the early years of the last century. Occult folklore has suggested a link between his activities there and the later return of the monster. This appears to be absurd but can lead into a fruitful surreal consideration featuring the magick of Crowley’s Aeon of Horus in connection with monster hunting and UFOlogy.






It is based on the chapter 'Loch Ness Leviathan and the Boleskine Kiblah' in my book 'Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus'.

Listen to it here:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogtalkradio.com%2Fpaul-weston1%2F2010%2F10%2F18%2Faleister-crowley-and-the-loch-ness-monster&h=67b73

An interview with me has just appeared on Christopher Knowles Secret Sun blog that includes some of my thoughts on L Ron Hubbard and the Babalon Working.
It can be read here:


http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2010/10/therion-rising-part-ii-rocket-men-and.html#links


I have decided to re-post a long piece originally uploaded in Nov 2009 that is an appendix in my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus as it presents a far more detailed analysis of what a somewhat controversial topic! I like to think it's fairly unique in comparison to other treatments on the same subject in as much as I am not a rabid Ron hater and therefore have perhaps spotted a few potentially interesting things that others might have missed. Although there are references to topics covered earlier in the book this is a fairly self-contained piece.


Scientology accounts of L Ron Hubbard’s life leave blank the incredible period from 1945-6 when he was involved with Jack Parsons and the legendary magical Babalon Working. An extensive account of this episode has already been given but LRH’s role is so contentious and mysterious it is worth considering separately. I believe I have brought together data that has not been thus arranged before and that it does at least a little to unravel some of the calumny surrounding LRH in this context and suggest that he might be a bit more interesting than his denigrators would contend.

With each passing decade Jack Parsons becomes increasingly well known. He may now be a candidate for the title of coolest man of the twentieth century, being referred to by Richard Metzger as the ‘James Dean of the occult’. Whatever one might feel about the nature of the spiritual forces he invoked, a quick perusal of his writings soon reveals a powerful and passionate advocate for freedom. He was obviously a quite incredible man.

The general feeling of Hubbard’s role has scarcely developed at all. Occultist lovers of Parsons see Ron as a scoundrel who laid Jack low by cheating him out of a large sum of money and running off with his former partner. We will see how when confronted with the story of the Babalon Working the Church of Scientology portrayed LRH as a man on a covert Intelligence mission to infiltrate and undermine the Parsons scene.







With Peter Moon’s Montauk books the possibility of a wider perspective began to present itself. As we have seen, Moon was able to offer unique insights through having known both L Ron Hubbard and Marjorie Cameron. She recalled how the two men had been like brothers and she herself was not hostile to Ron. She even added a detail missing from other accounts that Hubbard had actually contacted Parsons again, years after their tumultuous parting, when Dianetics had just appeared. He invited Jack to invest in it! This might be seen as colossal nerve on his part but it hints at a bigger picture of their interaction.

Is it possible to create a narrative that in some way allows the different versions to all be essentially true? Beyond Moon’s beginnings I’m not aware that anyone has ever really tried to do so. This is a tentative speculative attempt that may well be an imaginative fiction. I’m not asking anyone to necessarily endorse it. I would hope it might be found interesting and show that when approached in the right spirit this compelling topic still has some open doors.








On October 5th 1969 the London Times published a lengthy article going into considerable detail on L Ron Hubbard’s involvement in the Babalon Working. This information had never been disseminated before and was known only to a few occultists. Given that Scientology was a topic of some controversy at the time it was quite a story. Before long the church responded with a threat of litigation unless the story was withdrawn. The paper eventually agreed to print a statement from Scientology in December which was written by Hubbard himself. All subsequent enquiries to the church concerning the Parsons period in LRH’s life are simply referred back to the original statement.

‘Hubbard broke up black magic in America: Dr Jack Parsons of Pasadena, California, was America’s Number One solid fuel rocket expert. He was involved with the infamous English black magician Aleister Crowley who called himself “The Beast 666.”Crowley ran an organization called the Order of Templars Orientalis over the world which had savage and bestial rites. Dr Parsons was head of the American branch located at 100 Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena California. This was a huge old house which had paying guests who were the USA nuclear physicists working at Cal Tech. Certain agencies objected to nuclear physicists being housed under the same roof.

L Ron Hubbard was still an officer of the US Navy because he was well known as a writer and philosopher and had friends among the physicists, he was sent in to handle the situation. He went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad.

Parsons wrote to Crowley in England about Hubbard. Crowley “the Beast 666” evidently detected an enemy and warned Parsons. This was proven by the correspondence unearthed by the Sunday Times. Hubbard's mission was successful far beyond anyone's expectations. The house was torn down. Hubbard rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed and never recovered. The physicists included many of the sixty-four top US scientists who were later declared insecure and dismissed from government service with so much publicity.’

To begin with, it is important to set the statement in the wider context of the time period it appeared in. Hubbard and his church were already receiving a lot of flack and had black propaganda being flung at them. A year before, in 1968, LRH had commissioned an investigation to try and figure out where it was coming from and decided that a global cabal of big-pharma psychiatrists were heavily involved.

Less than one week after the Times article, on Crowley’s birthday October 12th for those appreciative of such detail, Charles Manson was arrested. It wasn’t long before he became the biggest story in America and all aspects of his past were being investigated. Perhaps the biggest issue was how he was able to “program” his followers? Where might he have learnt mind control techniques? It soon surfaced that he had received fairly extensive Dianetic auditing in prison and used a lot of Scientology terminology. It appeared that he did check out the organisation on his release. One of his followers took a somewhat mysterious journey to England and some unexplained deaths and unsolved murders cluster around it.

Scientology distanced itself from the Manson connection. They weren’t exactly the only ones. Charlie had spent a lot of time at the prestigious Esalen Institute, a place where some of the biggest names in the Human Potential movement put on events. Manson was there very shortly before the Tate murders but people weren’t exactly queuing up to talk about it. The Hollywood set that Charlie and his girls provided a rent-a-drug-orgy service to went a bit quiet too. Of course they did. I consider it to be perfectly straightforward that Scientology would want to play down any Manson connection. His major warp-outs derived from other sources, primarily his own head.

Nonetheless there is material circulating on the internet that states that Charles Manson was a Scientologist in a manner virtually suggesting he was a fully paid up member and that somehow LRH is responsible for his crimes or variants thereof. This is entirely untrue and unreasonable. In fact those that know the Manson story in greater detail will be aware that in the last crazy days of Helter Skelter one man named Paul Crockett persistently stood his ground against Charlie and even helped some of his followers break free from him by effectively de-programming them. He was able to do this because of a strong background in Scientology.

The OTO weren’t looking too good then either. Jean Brayton’s Solar Lodge achieved notoriety through the decidedly unpleasant episode, mentioned earlier in the Strange Days section, of the child chained in a box in the desert. The subsequent trial was widely reported at the end of October 1969. The actions of one lodge were not representative of the organization worldwide but try telling that to the media. The Times article showing some kind of Hubbard involvement with an OTO linked scenario appeared just a few weeks before the Boy in the Box trial was reported. It is again understandable that a damage-limitation exercise would be deemed necessary. The ‘savage and bestial rites’ may be reflective of that peculiar situation.

The kind of cultic milieu that Manson arose from and was later so well portrayed by Ed Sanders in The Family seemed to be very interdependent. One part of the equation was the Process Church which had undoubtedly been founded by two former Scientologists even though the end result was a long way away from its source.

As for Crowley, after his Sgt Pepper appearance, 1969 was the year that he really began to re-emerge with the reissue of the Confessions. We have seen that the legend of infamy hasn’t gone away and isn’t likely to. In many minds Crowley equals black magic equals evil. Is it that much of a surprise that at the end of ’69, an OTO Crowley Manson association was the kind of thing Scientology could do without. The Crowley connection is there though. It does rather seem that the interest continued after his break with Jack Parsons and this will be investigated shortly.

Beyond that, what about the basic story that LRH was sent in as part of an Intelligence operation to infiltrate the Parsonage? It makes sense that considering the circles Parsons moved in he would be thought of as a potential huge security risk. Hubbard, who, regardless of controversies around his biography, definitely did have a military background, would have been absolutely the perfect person to send in on such a mission. It’s also fairly obvious that the chances of finding corroborating information in any government documents are virtually zero. If such a mission ever existed no paper trail would ever lead to it.







One of the biggest realms of contention in Hubbard’s biography concerns his military career during the Second World War. Dedicated Ron haters have spent considerable time going through an enormous number of Scientology publications comparing details given of that period of time. There are undoubtedly inconsistencies. Ron spoke of medals and wounds and some interesting exploits. Russell Miller in Bare Faced Messiah attacked these stories armed with other documents that paint a picture of Ron as incompetent or problematical and leave the impression he was an out and out liar.

In today’s conspiratorial climate it’s rather interesting to find someone who has published extensively on CIA black-ops, the Kennedy assassination, and a whole other bunch of controversial topics coming out with a startling extended defence of Ron and his military career. The man in question was no stranger to controversy himself and has been harangued as an unreliable fantasist but the fact that his take on LRH even exists is notable.



Fletcher Prouty



Fletcher Prouty may be best known for being an advisor on Oliver Stone’s JFK movie. The character designated only as X played by Donald Sutherland was based on him.





The man does seem to have had a most intriguing military career. After joining up in 1941, within a month of LRH, he had a distinguished war in the air force and worked in the mid-fifties from US Air force HQ for a decade creating a system of “Military Support of the Clandestine Operations of the CIA”. He moved in the highest circles and retired with quite a collection of medals. His knowledge and experience led to his authoring of a number of contentious works, primarily The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Prouty spoke of a global elite behind international events and believed that the CIA manipulated the notorious Jonestown cult mass suicide/murder.





Considering LRH and Scientology are so often on the receiving end of paranoid conspiracism it’s rather intriguing that Prouty spoke out at length in their defense. Although never a member, he was hired out by the Church to investigate and hit back at what they considered to be black propaganda against themselves and in particular their founder.

When Bare Faced Messiah was published Prouty wrote a long letter to the publisher protesting in the strongest terms about the general tone of the work and what he took to be its selective abuse through omission and distortion of source material. This letter is readily available on a number of internet sites. Inevitably it has in turn likewise been denigrated but its contents are rather intriguing and provide the source for some of Peter Moon’s material on Ron in the Montauk books.

Prouty seizes on Russell Millers playing down of what he considers to be crucial data, mentioning only in passing that in 1941 Hubbard was posted for training as an Intelligence Officer. This is the information that changes ones awareness of all the rest. He further runs through Miller’s data highlighting areas that show to someone with Prouty’s background that,

'Almost all of Hubbard's military record is replete with markings that signify deep intelligence service at the highest levels. Many of his records, copies of official records, revealed that even the originals had been fabricated in the manner peculiar to the intelligence community in a process that we call "Sheep Dip”. I myself have supervised a lot of that function in the offices I managed during 1955-1964.

"Sheep Dip” is a process that provides, customarily, three files. One is the true civilian record of the agent. One is his agency or military true record. The third is his "cover” personality and all that it takes to support it.

Thus when one researches these files, in a routine manner, he may get copies from any one of three...or of various kindred files that are maintained for special reasons. Some of Hubbard's records are kept in from 8 to 18 files as is clearly noted in codes on the records.’

Prouty also noted that a Washington Congressman named Magnuson had written to President Roosevelt urging him to personally ensure Hubbard's request for active duty was processed quickly, a procedure that was ‘most unusual’. ‘Miller failed to note that Hubbard's first Active Duty Orders were signed by none other than Chester Nimitz, later the famous five-star Admiral and hero of Pacific campaigns. A small code number on those same orders identifies Hubbard as being placed on duty with Naval Intelligence’.

Miller mentioned in passing that Hubbard went ‘on a four-month course in 'Military Government' at the Naval Training School, Princeton,’ and was later ‘transferred to the Naval Civil Affairs Staging Area in Monterey, California for further training’. Prouty asserts that these were important high grade establishments.

‘Unlike MI-5's Peter Wright, Ron Hubbard was of the old school. He never revealed important intelligence sources and methods.’ The inconsistent tales of where he was and when and what he was doing were partly to fulfil old obligations. He nonetheless felt it acceptable to let it be known he had a somewhat colourful war.

Prouty also stated that Ron was very familiar with the dark mind control direction that the newly formed Nazi infiltrated CIA was taking that would lead to MKULTRA. A lot of the source material they would abuse is there in the background of his own research prior to Dianetics. In this version of events he chose to break ranks and use the ideas for good. Of course there are plenty of people who would never endorse this idea but it needs to be stated for the sake of balance and the possibility that it might actually be true.

The official Church statement on breaking up black magic in America might just be Ron being ironic about some of the original intentions of his mission as he was given it. In 1969 it was obviously not true in any literal sense.

LRH has been portrayed as virtually a dribbling deranged nutcase. I’ve already noted that he started taking flack from the Feds round about the same time as Wilhelm Reich and for broadly similar reasons. The difference is that he handled it and not only survived but thrived. Indeed, over a period of decades when assorted governments and intelligence agencies were on his case he managed to create his own departments within Scientology to deal with such hassle. This side of the church has always been controversial and likely to attract bad publicity but it has held its own, fought fire with fire, and generally played the spooks at their own game. The name of the game was set out by LRH in minute detail. Quite clearly it was a subject he knew about. He was in fact bloody good at it. No other self-help guru, mystic or occultist in history comes anywhere near it. Pathological dysfunctionals won’t last very long in such scenarios. Hubbard was together enough to play it whilst formulating all of the Operating Thetan material for which Scientology is now so well-known and misunderstood for: Xenu etc.

Some might look askance at a spiritual movement that involved such activities. The same people might be captivated by the legend of the Knights Templar, a fabulously wealthy organisation that protected and served its esoteric interests through money, espionage and warfare. The devil-worship accusations thrown against them tend to be seen as vulgar and stupid. Those guys are generally considered to be pretty cool. Reich died in prison. Gnostics and heretics down through the ages have been massacred for want of the knowledge of how to survive and protect themselves. It is perhaps useful to look at Scientology activity in that light.

I don’t think it is at all unlikely that Hubbard could have been working on some kind of covert mission when he got to know Jack Parsons. That brings us to the next problem. It is clear that LRH was a full-on participant in the proceedings. In fact his visionary material considerably shaped the details of the magick rites. There must have been something occurring in the scenario that served his own mystical process. Most accounts are hampered by a predisposition on the part of the writer to view Ron with hostility. This is often coupled with a tabloid mentality towards Crowley. Such a combination is unlikely to produce any new insights even when the source material has been used.



Jack Parsons and Marjorie Cameron



A good example is Bare-Faced Messiah. The author detests his subject and goes out of his way to portray Ron as liar, madman, etc. There’s a whole chapter dealing with the Babalon Working. Firstly, Crowley is referred to as a ‘sorcerer and Satanist’. Jack Parsons was ‘worshipping the Devil’. His home had become the ‘headquarters of a black magic group which practised deviant sexual rites’. It’s clear that Russell Miller hadn’t got much of a handle on the western mystery tradition. To describe the OTO Gnostic Mass regularly performed at the Parsonage as a deviant sexual rite is to allow one’s critical faculties to descend to the level of a fundamentalist Christian. There are written accounts from other residents who likewise had no real understanding of Thelema and Parsons passionate libertarian mysticism and simply thought in terms of “people in robes chanting equals black magic”. Miller is happy to set his scene with such material. Add to that a number of skewed facts concerning Parsons its clear that the mystery of Hubbard’s involvement will not be solved through Miller.







A pivotal event in Hubbard’s life that may shed some light on his involvement in the Babalon Working was recalled on various occasions by his onetime literary agent and major sci-fi aficionado, Forrest Ackerman. Interviewed by Russell Miller he spoke of an occasion in 1947 when Ron told him how he had died on an operating theatre during the war and “rose in spirit form, and looked back on the body that he had formerly inhabited. Over yonder he saw a fantastic great gate, elaborately carved like something you’d see in Bagdhad or ancient China. As he wafted towards it, the gate opened and just beyond he could see a kind of intellectual smorgasbord on which was outlined everything that had ever puzzled the mind of man. All the questions that had concerned philosophers through the ages -When did the world begin? Was there a God? Whither goest we? – were there answered. All this information came flooding into him and while he was absorbing it, there was a kind of flustering in the air and he felt something like a long umbilical cord pulling him back. He was saying “No, no, not yet!”, but he was pulled back anyway. After the gates had closed he realised he had re-entered his body.”

After establishing with a worried nurse that he had effectively died he jumped up from the operating theatre and dashed home to get “ two reams of paper and a gallon of scalding black coffee” and within two days produced a manuscript he was calling Excalibur or The Dark Sword. This legendary work is the cornerstone of the official Hubbard biographies. It is said to contain the very foundations of everything that came afterwards. It is a legend because it was never published. Ron liked to tell how those he showed it to were immediately overwhelmed with suicides and madness resulting.

Ackerman has a date and context for this episode that is at variance with the usual timeline. A modest preface from Excalibur has been published and bears a date of New Years Day 1938. The near-death experience happened under the influence of gas anaesthetic at Dr Elbert E Cone’s dental office in Bremerton, Washington. There is no mention of the gate and the great download of knowledge but in this version he returns agitated with the feeling of still being in contact with something that if he could remember would give him the secret of life. This state endured for days until one morning he awoke with enough recall to start on the great manuscript. We shall return to the gate and Babalon after noting another tale from Ron’s early days.

The young Hubbard was a daredevil glider pilot. Nobody doubts this. He told a rather interesting story in the thirties to fellow writer Arthur J Burks. On occasions when he ran into trouble a red-haired smiling woman would appear on a wing and all would be well. Burks speculated on her as a possible guardian angel. Hubbard would name this being the Empress by the time he met Jack Parsons who mentioned in a letter to Crowley that he believed Ron to possibly be in contact with a higher intelligence of some kind that may have been his guardian angel. There is an incredibly evocative fragment concerning the early days of Dianetics when he was asked by an associate how he had managed to write the work so quickly and he hinted that it was in certain respects a kind of automatic writing dictated by the Empress.






In The Montauk Book of the Dead Peter Moon discusses the LRH 1938 “Gate” experience and notes how Babalon is taken to mean gate and therefore the two things hang together. I believe the links can be established in some detail through the Qabalistic framework of Crowley and Parsons’ magick.



Tree of Life from Kenneth Grant's Magical Revival.


The Qabalistic Tree of Life is depicted with three vertical columns linked by twenty two paths. The middle pillar is taller, connecting upwards to the point of white light (known as Kether) whence the formless breaks through into the realms where it will become form. The tops of the left and right hand pillars are joined by a path that passes between them beneath the level of Kether. This path lies just above the veil of the abyss which we have given so much attention to.

The abyss contains the controversial zone named Daath where Crowley encountered Choronzon. It is known as Knowledge. Spheres called Understanding and Wisdom top the left and right hand pillars.

The assorted paths have attributions with the tarot trumps and Hebrew letters which are ideograms, meaning they are taken to broadly resemble artefacts in the world such as a hook, house, or camel. The letter associated with the path just above the abyss that runs between the two pillars is Daleth. It means door. In the Golden Dawn/Crowley tradition, its tarot card is the Empress with a planetary association of Venus.



Empress from Haindl tarot.One of the better depictions of the daleth doorway.


Whether or not he knew this before entering the Parsonage, LRH would more than likely have become aware of this magical data during the initial brainstorming before the Babalon Working. It doesn’t seem unlikely that he might have recalled his experience with the great gate and his ongoing connection with the Empress and found a lot of things starting to make sense. Babalon, residing across the abyss, primarily in the sphere of Binah partook of many of the qualities of Hubbard’s red-haired Empress.

It would be easy enough to interpret the near-death experience in magical Qabalistic terms. LRH was briefly catapulted across the abyss to the Daleth doorway where Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom were downloaded. The Daath side of it is covered by the fact that he had to virtually die to get there and faced the struggle of bringing back what he had found. Being a writer already who was famous for his prodigious fast output was a major bonus here. The experience fits the framework very well and the level of energy, power, and influence he went on to wield were entirely uncommon.

So Hubbard may have gone in to undermine the scene but would soon have experienced a conflict of interest. The forces invoked were extremely powerful. We have noted the resonance with the saga of Dee and Kelly. Ron took action that did indeed detonate the scene when he went off with a large sum of Parsons’ money and his former partner, the girl ‘rescued’ in the 1969 statement.

There are indications that Hubbard’s interest in a Crowley-flavoured magick continued. This means that the official Scientology line only covers some of the story. It does not address whether LRH actually found any interesting lines of enquiry when he came into contact with Crowley’s work and is therefore incomplete but also worded in such a way that it cannot be said to be untrue.

A controversial court case in 1984, the details of which do not concern us here, made visible some documentation relating to the period after the Babalon Working. The details were covered in the anti-scientology work A Piece of Blue Sky by Jon Atack. Similar problems are faced to dealing with Russell Miller’s Babalon chapter.

The waters have also been considerably muddied by the fact that L Ron Hubbard Jr, generally known by his childhood nickname “Nibs” spectacularly fell out with his father and has sounded forth for decades, most notably with a Penthouse interview in June 1983, with the most outlandish accounts imaginable of his experience of dad as a drug crazed, woman beating, baby aborting, megalomaniac, sexual tyrannosaurus, black magician. Those temperamentally predisposed to be Ron haters have completely accepted this material and rehash it uncritically. Blue Sky is no exception.

In Penthouse Nibs told how when Crowley died dad ‘decided that he should wear the cloak of the beast and become the most powerful being in the universe.’ ‘I believed in Satanism. There was no other religion in the house! Scientology and black magic. What a lot of people don't realize is that Scientology is black magic that is just spread out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks. But in Scientology it's stretched out over a lifetime, and so you don't see it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology --and it is probably the only part of Scientology that really works. Also, you've got to realize that my father did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan. He was one with Satan. He had a direct pipeline of communication and power with him. My father wouldn't have worshiped anything. I mean, when you think you're the most powerful being in the universe, you have no respect for anything, let alone worship.’

‘Hitler was involved in the same black magic and the same occult practices that my father was. The identical ones. Which, as I have said, stem clear back to before Egyptian times. It's a very secret thing. Very powerful and very workable and very dangerous. Brainwashing is nothing compared to it. The proper term would be “soul cracking.” It's like cracking open the soul, which then opens various doors to the power that exists, the satanic and demonic powers.’

In a 1984 taped interview Nibs went on to say that “the same individual that transmitted the various Magick tech to Adolf Hitler as a young man also transmitted them to Dad. And like Dad, Hitler, when he came to power, promptly had his teachers and the occult field in general wiped out”. This is classic material that will run forever in cyberspace getting more and more distorted as dark forces paranoid types with progressively less knowledge make use of it.

The Empress called in the Archangel Michael in guardian capacity at one point in the Babalon Working. Bearing in mind his role in the Revelation War in Heaven as God’s bouncer when it comes to rebel angels it seems a tad odd that the supposed Satan worshipping badass portrayed by Ron Jr would want his help.

Some kind of extensive Hubbard diary full of “affirmations” came to light and had brief quotations aired in the court case referred to in Blue Sky where it is stated that ‘Hubbard hypnotized himself to believe that all of humanity and all discarnate beings were bound to him in slavery.’ This detail has been pumped-up to giant proportions in the Ron as black magician mythology.

The fabled document is not available for inspection but I am inclined to feel it may be part of an experiment by Ron to follow or create his own version of Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel ritual Liber Samekh, presented in Magick as the distillation of his experience with the Abramelin procedure. The ritual is intended to be performed daily by anyone engaging in a serious HGA intensive. The four elements and Spirit are invoked with assorted visualisations that we have already noted with Jung. At the end of each section this “affirmation” is recited: ‘Hear me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me; so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth, on dry land and in the water; of Whirling Air, and of rushing Fire, and every Spell and Scourge of God may be obedient unto Me.’ It may appear a tad full-on to a tabloid mentality but it’s really about profound balance as much as power and the one can’t happen without the other. It’s not proof of a Ming the Merciless mentality.

Another document that got a brief court airing was described by LRH himself as “The Blood Ritual”. Those with their minds conditioned by Dennis Wheatley novels, horror movies, and Fundamentalist Christian fulminations will start twitching at the mere sight of the words. Only a few details were revealed. Ron and his “rescued” woman mingled some of their blood together to become one in the context of an invocation to Hathor, an Egyptian goddess of love quite similar to Isis. Nibs mentioned that dad also knew his Empress as Hathor. Maybe we can actually go along with him there. Blue Sky manages to find a way to make this seem like more malevolent sorcery.



Hathor


Hathor was an Egyptian goddess of Love and Beauty whose myth cycle links her with lion-headed Sekhmet who on one occasion, which started as a mission of justice, went on a destructive blood-drinking rampage that threatened to destroy the human race. We have here a definite sense of Babalon and that ancient unity of the divine feminine that was fragmented by Christianity whereby seemingly contradictory aspects can exist together.

Jon Atack focuses on Sekhmet as “destroyer of man” and produces an interpretation of the Blood Ritual that is surely transparent in its desperate desire to paint as black a picture as possible. ‘To Crowley, Babalon was a manifestation of the Hindu goddess Shakti, who in one of her aspects is also called the 'destroyer of man'. It seems that to Hubbard, Babalon, Hathor, and the Empress were synonymous, and he was trying to conjure his 'Guardian Angel' in the form of a servile homunculus so he could control the “destroyer of man”.’ “Guardian Angel” and “servile homunculus” don’t really blend together that easily. They are somewhat disparate concepts. Homunculus relates back to the moonchild idea in the Babalon Working whereby a conception is manipulated to embody a non-human force. And there’s no indication that Hathor was intended to bring forth Sekhmet. If that was what he wanted then Hubbard would have mentioned her by name. A group of other deities including Nuit, Re, and Osiris got a mention as well but no Sekhmet. Perhaps the best clue comes from the inclusion of Mammon in the forces invoked. This is a Biblical concept for extravagant wealth, sometimes considered to be a demon by those who needed to control people through selective poverty consciousness. In modern terms it sounds like Ron was using the Secret to put in a cosmic order for mega-bucks. He’s not alone in such activities. If you want to bring abundance and money into your life you don’t stir up the destroyer of man!








In his epic 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures, one of the most important foundations of Scientology, Ron did have a few things to say about Crowley. “The magic cults of the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th centuries in the Middle East were fascinating. The only work that has anything to do with them is a trifle wild in spots, but it's fascinating work... written by Aleister Crowley, the late Aleister Crowley, my very good friend .... It's very interesting reading to get hold of a copy of a book, quite rare, but it can be obtained, The Master Therion . . . by Aleister Crowley.” And also, “One fellow, Aleister Crowley, picked up a level of religious worship which is very interesting - oh boy! The Press played hockey with his head for his whole life-time. The Great Beast - 666. He just had another level of religious worship. Yes, sir, you're free to worship everything under the Constitution so long as it's Christian.” The “good friend” designation is certainly interesting as the two never met. The book referred to as The Master Therion is Magick, where Liber Samekh can be found.







Whilst it was only moderately controversial and potentially problematical to mention Crowley in 1952, by 1969 things had got a lot worse and this was before Nibs got involved. The Philadelphia Doctorate Crowley quotes, taken from original recordings, can be found all over the internet in video exposes by Christians, cult bashers and suchlike in the usual manner. In the Nibs mythology dad was going home every night during the lecture series and reading Magick to get ideas for the next day.

There are always going to be people who warp-out on Crowley and Hubbard. Put the two together and there is very little chance of any rational discussion. We can begin to see why the 1969 statement was made and why it has remained as essentially the only Scientology statement on the subject. It really wouldn’t matter what else they might ever say, occult gossip will have its way.

Just supposing Hubbard had come out and admitted to a big interest in Crowley and significant experimentation with his work on the basis of the Beast’s remarkable knowledge and experience of the world’s magical and mystical traditions and how nobody interested in such topics could afford to ignore him, that checking him out constituted an essential part of a general education in the mysteries of consciousness. Would the results have been any more inspiring? Of course not. The same level of negativity would still circulate.

A lot of comparisons between Scientology material and bits of Crowley and the Golden Dawn have been made with the implication being that this reveals the secret core of the Church. I’m not going to examine that here. It’s possible to find all kinds of other big influences as well such as Freud and Korzybski. Hubbard was always looking for what worked and he wouldn’t necessarily keep it in its original context.

A student of comparative religion could probably place Scientology in with the Gnostic revival. There are many common themes. We are immortal beings trapped in a prison world by a lapse in our awareness often caused by external agencies whose purpose is served by keeping us that way. It is possible to awaken, become free, and regain the full power of our divine potential. In this Ron possibly absorbed some Thelemic Gnostic nuances via Parsons but was maybe also affected by what Jung experienced with Abraxas and what Phillip K Dick experienced as the Nag Hammadi plasmate generally in the airwaves. Nonetheless, coming to birth in the UFO Cold War fifties, his creation was unique.

After seeing Alan Moore discussing Austin Osman Spare on BBC2's Culture Show last night I decided to repost a piece from last year inspired by his greatest creation.

Following an online comment thread concerning the Johnny Depp Jack the Ripper movie From Hell I found myself pondering again on a subject that has been present in my life for decades. The film has somewhat polarised opinion. I come down in its favour. I present here what is primarily an expanded version of material featured in my Avalonian Aeon on what I have termed the 1888 matrix, an extraordinary scenario centred on London that has given the modern world a set of potent mythic icons that continue to inspire and disturb us. How very strange that, alongside the grimly historical Ripper, stand the equally immortal figures of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes. They also accompany the birth of the magical order that has most strongly influenced the modern revival, the Golden Dawn.







Johnny Depp’s Abberline was a real policeman involved with the case whose biographical details only bear the faintest resemblance to the movie portrayal of drug-addled psychic. Clearly he has been mythologised. This annoys some people depending on their temperaments. I accept all movies as inherently mythological, even supposed historical documentaries. I am happy to be led by that process. Mythic figures can enable us to see things from a unique viewpoint that may enhance our understanding. Depp’s detective helps us to appreciate that the Ripper murders were a nightmarish hallucinatory scenario full of nuances indicative of something vast and hideous just out of sight in the shadows intruding into the comfort and safety of our daytime consciousness and consensus reality. Drug-enhanced psychic visions of murder are a good vehicle for such perceptions.







Although the prostitute victims of the Ripper are generally depicted in the movie as entirely unglamorous and grim glimpses are given of their dangerous degraded lives, Heather Graham as Mary Kelly seems almost an absurd and even objectionable exception. Let’s just say she scrubs up pretty well for 1888 Whitechapel. The final murder was hideous in the extreme and despite the scarcity of available biographical details Kelly has generated tremendous sympathy over the years. In defence of the Graham portrayal, it has been said that she was noticeably different from her eventual associates in general appearance and demeanour. A thousand people saw her funeral procession. Many prayers have been said for her and one modern devotee paid for a grave stone. Of course we would all want to rescue her from her fate and the movie plays on this. There are mysteries concerning her death and the suggestion that someone else died in her place dates from 1888 and is not just a plot device.




Dorset St in 1888, the general area where Mary Kelly lived and died.














The basic scenario in From Hell is that the Ripper was Queen Victoria’s surgeon, William Gull. He acted as the agent of a Masonic conspiracy to save the royal family from a scandal after a dissolute prince had married a prostitute in a secret Catholic wedding. In this scenario the Ripper’s victims knew each other and the royal bride. Elements of this theory had been circulating for some time before cohering in the currently recognisable form. The one work most responsible for this is Stephen Knight’s 1976 Jack the Ripper: the Final Solution, which in turn inspired Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel From Hell on which the movie is based. Hardcore Ripperologists tend to reject the whole package but some mythic potency has seen the general idea take root in popular culture.









William Gull.



The power of the movie and Knight’s book is that they can serve as an entrance into a realm that provides an ever-expanding context for the basic drama that at the very least is fertile ground for Jungians. Something mighty strange was going down in 1888. Alan Moore’s graphic novel is the definitive treatment of this bigger picture. To criticise the movie of the book for not doing its scope justice seems a bit futile to me as it would take an elaborate mini-series at least to do so.








The starting point for this larger journey and the fundamental frame for the mystery comes from material produced by poet novelist Iain Sinclair in Lud Heat on the architect of some notable London churches, Nicholas Hawksmoor. Five of these buildings, dating from the reconstruction after the great fire of 1666, and expressing all manner of Masonic and Aegyptian influences, lie in a pentagramic configuration anchoring an arcane matrix of powerful influences that have called forth murder and mayhem over the years. The last and most hideous of the Ripper’s murders was committed in the immediate proximity of a Hawksmoor church.




Christchurch Spitalfield.






From Alan Moore's graphic novel.


Ripperology has some points of comparison to Arthurian studies. Here are realms where every single known fact has been examined and analysed in minute detail on innumerable occasions. Over the years individuals have found themselves becoming obsessed with the topic and drawn into weird odysseys that lead them to some new angle, some new interpretation. There is the quest for the historical Arthur and the search for the true identity of Jack the Ripper.

There are partisans for their respective candidates. Rivalries arise with attendant controversies. Eccentrics abound. The fields are fertile. Many of these journeys of exploration yield incredible results that understandably convince the navigators of their veracity. Whether it is an interpretation of a Grail text or the hints of some vast conspiracy, something of validity continues to surface so that even if one can reject a certain hypothesis it is often conceded that is has revealed something of merit. In recent years the Grail industry has seen the emergence of the holy bloodline theories with the increasing centrality of Mary Magdalene until they have become the theme of a blockbuster novel and Hollywood film. In Ripperology the theories bringing in the royal family and the masons have been incredibly stimulating to many creative minds inspiring the genres’ Parzival in the form of Alan Moore’s From Hell and a number of books and movies.

In each case, the Grail literature and the Ripper, some kind of esoteric background has been postulated. Just as I have come to identify a distinct twelfth century flavour, a bigger picture in which to appreciate the Grail mystery (which I have elaborated upon in my Mysterium Artorius), so likewise I have mulled over what I came to call the London 1888 matrix. I had already figured out a lot of the details before coming to Alan Moore’s comprehensive catalogue.







On 8/8/88, the Lyceum theatre premiered a stage version of Robert Louis Stephenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde. It was an immediate sensation, evoking strong responses in its audience. The leading actor’s transformations from the figure of a pillar of the community to a monster right in front of their eyes was horrific stuff for a pre-psychoanalytical culture with no real sense of any lurking inner demons.






It proved to be a powerful experience for the young Irish manager of the theatre, Abraham “Bram” Stoker (pictured above). Within a decade he would be inspired to conjure a figure of equal power from the collective unconscious to stand alongside Mr Hyde on the streets of London.




Gary Oldman as Dracula.


Something strange was stirring. Just a few weeks after the play’s opening the first of the Whitechapel murders occurred. The “autumn of terror” had begun.

This was the London where Madame Blavatsky was living out her last years, publishing the epochal Secret Doctrine in 1888. A few miles away from the Ripper’s Whitechapel, in 1887, coroner Wynn Westcott claimed to have discovered cipher manuscripts in some books bought on the Farringdon Road.





Westcott.










Mathers




With the aid of an associate knowledgeable in the occult, Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, he set about translating the information that led to the foundation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn the following year. Or so the mythology goes.













And lots of other evocative little fragments contributed to a particular flavour. The Elephant Man was coming to public attention. One of the greatest fictional characters in British consciousness, Sherlock Holmes had just set out on his first published case, A Study in Scarlet. And Hitler was in the womb during the time of the Ripper murders.



Holmes unravels the masonic Ripper conspiracy. An excellent movie.



Was there an occultist background to the scenario? I am sure of it. There is another interesting suspect to place alongside William Gull. An old school teacher of mine, Melvin Harris, pointed the finger at Robert Donston Stephenson.






Stephenson fits the bill right across the board. Onetime army surgeon, dissolute addict of prostitutes and initiate of ceremonial magic of a nineteenth century French flavour, traveller amongst African magicians, contributor to Blavatsky’s Lucifer magazine, this man was a disturbing presence. He actually wrote an article as early as December 1888 suggesting a satanic element in the murders. In this, he may be the first instance of such a posited occult connection. His closest associates of the time, who numbered the Theosophical writer Mabel Collins and the London literary figure WT Stead all considered him to be the Ripper. An anecdote relating to this appears in Crowley’s Confessions.

Ivor Edwards further investigated Donston, going back to basics by actually measuring out the murder sites in relation to each other by the yard and taking compass bearings and so on. He suggests a rival configuration to the Hawksmoor pentagram. The first four victims were laid out facing North, South, East, and West respectively. All of the women were killed within a five-hundred yard radius. Edwards’ findings are revealed in the pulp-titled Jack the Ripper’s Black Magic Rituals. It is enough here to say that he believes that with the final placing of Kelly the killings were meticulously enacted on a vesica piscis design that provided maximum desecration of the Christian cross and female form.

The movie of From Hell can work to open a doorway that results in a long journey. When coming back to it later I would suggest it may not seem diminished through that greater knowledge but enhanced. However conscious and deliberate the historical protagonists were the basic insight of Alan Moore as stated in the movie makes perfect nightmarish sense. This enormous matrix gave birth to the twentieth century where the old gods live again and Mr Hyde, Dracula, and the Ripper serve as embodiments of the collective Shadow we have to integrate and we intuitively sense that we need the flawed brilliance of a Sherlock Holmes or Depp’s Abberline to help us crack the case.

Artwork by Adam Scott Miller

My Blog Talk Radio presentation entitled Timothy Leary: heir to Aleister Crowley? is available for listening now.

Phone problems in the last five minutes prematurely curtailed the broadcast but I had finished the essential material.

Most of the lecture is taken almost verbatim from a chapter in my book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.

The central topic is a mysterious episode in 1971 when Leary and the English writer Brian Barritt found themselves walking in the footsteps of Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuberg in their legendary occult workings in the Algerian desert that included the raising of John Dee's "mighty demon" Chroronzon.

Although the subject has been discussed by other writers, I believe I have a unique and interesting perspective on what it actually meant abd how it helps us to understand the whole drama of Leary's life.

Listen to it here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/paul-weston1/2010/11/07/timothy-leary-heir-to-aleister-crowley

A section of the cover image of Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus:
Yuri Leitch's rendition of Lam.


Here is a reposting, almost exactly a year later, of an extract from the extensive consideration of UFOlogy in my book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus. It is obviously intended to interest the reader in the larger work. A video with contents appropriate to the theme is featured at the end.



Amazingly enough there are some who believe that Aleister Crowley was perhaps the first alien contactee in the modern sense of the term. A Thelemic ET theme has also been suggested running through the Babalon Working, taking us into the birth of the UFO era. This seemingly wild idea will lead us into a consideration of the Contact phenomenon itself and the manner in which UFOlogical studies can take us into the wider field of the paranormal and occultism. Eventually, after a most extraordinary journey indeed, we shall return to the mystery of The Book of the Law and ponder whether it may contain a secret key to the whole process.








Kenneth Grant was just twenty when he met Crowley in 1944. Already well-read in western occultism and eastern mysticism he embarked on a crash-course magickal apprenticeship whilst serving as the Beast’s secretary. It only lasted a few months but ensured that Grant became one of Crowley’s literary executors alongside John Symonds. This afforded him access to unpublished material and later involvement in the production of editions of many of Crowley’s works.

The leadership succession in the OTO has been a controversial and litigious issue ever since Crowley’s death. Rival groups have formed. Grant became the head of one of them, known to history as the Typhonian OTO. As well as a connection to Crowley, he also had the distinction of prolonged close contact with the prodigiously talented shamanic artist Austin Osman Spare. After assimilating all kinds of knowledge and experience over a period of decades he finally published his first major work, The Magical Revival, in 1972, an account of contemporary occultism seen from the perspective of the Aeon of Horus.









Grant may well be the most controversial occultist of the second half of the twentieth century. There have been critics who have considered him to be genuinely insane and/or monstrously evil and that his writings are a major distortion of Crowley’s legacy. Others consider him to be an awesome genius. It does seem rather remarkable that a person of his potential should meet the dying Crowley at such a young age. For now, we shall focus on the theme of what could be termed Thelemic UFOlogy that runs through nine books by Grant that have come to be called the Typhonian trilogies.

The illustrations in Magical Revival include a reproduction of a drawing made by Crowley in 1919 which Grant describes as ‘Lam, an extra-terrestrial intelligence with whom Crowley was in astral contact.’ It’s important to be clear about the history of this image as so much mythology and contention has arisen around it. In 1918, during a period when he was living in America, Crowley engaged in an extensive six-month long magickal episode known as the Amalantrah Working, primarily with the aid of his Scarlet Woman of the time, Roddie Minor. A combination of sex and drugs helped induce repeated consistent visionary material focused on a being named Amalantrah. Crowley was satisfied that the imagery and names produced were authentic in as much as they met his Qabalistic checking criteria. Towards the end of the written records of the working, Amalantrah made the enigmatic statements “It’s all in the egg”, “Thou art to go this Way.” Unusually for Crowley’s magickal records there appear to be details missing during the final phase.







The drawing seems to originate from the same period and depicts a being with an elongated egg-shaped head and no ears. It was publicly displayed in an exhibition of Crowley’s art-work in New York in 1919. It also featured as the frontispiece for an edition of HP Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence with an extensive running commentary from Crowley. There it was designated as ‘The Way’ and given this explanation: ‘LAM is the Tibetan word for Way or Path, and LAMA is he who Goeth, the specific title of the Gods of Egypt, the Treader of the Path, in Buddhistic phraseology. Its numerical value is 71, the number of this book.’ It was later stated that the figure was Crowley’s ‘guru’ and ‘painted from life.’ That appears to be all that Crowley ever had to say about it. It is by no means clear that the word Lam is a name belonging to the being in the picture.








Unlike Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky’s Voice is a short devotional work of Eastern Mysticism and not loaded with her usual esoteric detail. It tries to evoke the source of consciousness, considered to be a silent void, and the key to its mystical realisation, poetically rendered as experiencing its voice. Crowley’s mystical side was entirely in harmony with such sentiments and equated the idea with Harpocrates perhaps implying that Lam, as an image of the Voice of the Silence, could be linked with a complex of associated ideas in the Thelemic system.

Part of Crowley’s commentary briefly refers to another 1918 event when he spent time on Esopus Island in the Hudson River in New York State. During that period he claimed to have accessed a number of past life memories that became significant in the emerging Crowley myth. These included the major occultists Cagliostro and Eliphas Levi.







Sometimes overlooked in this catalogue is Ko Yuen, stated to be a follower of Lao Tzu, the author of one of the great masterpieces of the wisdom tradition of humanity, the Tao Te Ching. During the Esopus retreat, Crowley produced a version of the Lao Tzu classic full of cross-referencing notes to the Qabalah. In the introduction he states that he was still in ‘almost daily communion’ with Amalantrah. ‘He came readily to my aid and exhibited to me a codex of the original, which conveyed to me with absolute certitude the exact significance of the text.’ Crowley had travelled across Southern China. Taoism was a big influence on his mysticism. The I Ching was his constant companion for decades. The records of the Amalantrah Working show extensive use of it. This 1918 work immediately preceded the Blavatsky commentary and the appearance of the Lam picture. Tao has often been translated as “Way,” the actual title of the drawing. This has lead to the suggestion by Alan Chapman in the 2007 Fortean Times Crowley special that the figure may actually be Lao Tzu himself as depicted by a reincarnation of one of his followers. Crowley’s lack of draughtsmanship skills have simply meant it’s a poor depiction of a Chinaman.







After this brief appearance, the picture seems to vanish from sight until Kenneth Grant came upon it during his short stay with Crowley who actually gave it to him which alternatively suggests that it was not particularly important or the exact opposite, with him recognising something of the young Grant’s temperament and potential.





Cover image of Whitley Streiber's Communion.




Following its dissemination through the three Typhonian trilogies, the image generally known as Lam is probably Crowley’s most famous art-work. Its original use as the frontispiece to Blavatsky has been virtually forgotten. The visual archetype of a grey ET has become well-established in popular culture, particularly since the eighties when Whitley Streiber’s Communion featured a striking image of one on its cover. The resemblance to Lam was enough to establish a conceptual linkage that has since become a widespread internet truism whose mythology has included a number of further connections that critics could consider tenuous.

The Babalon Working was concerned with ripping a hole in the fabric of reality to encourage influences from beyond to enter in. That may seem a pretentious megalomaniacal enterprise but consider the very events that Jack Parsons had been connected with. The science of the time was doing precisely that. After the atomic explosions it was easy to believe that the veil was thin and further momentous events near at hand.

It has been increasingly speculated that, following Crowley’s Lam contact, the Babalon Working also opened a larger portal that bore a direct connection to the influx of UFOs the following year during which Crowley died. This idea has been widely repeated outside of Grant’s work and is gaining strength with each passing decade. That both portals were opened in America, a major focus for early UFOlogy, has also been deemed significant.




Jack Parsons.



In Outside the Circles of Time Kenneth Grant stated that ‘Parsons opened the door and something flew in’. The flavour of that something is indicated by a strange episode that occurred in March 1946 at the time of the conclusion of the Babalon Working. Marjorie Cameron saw an unidentifiable aerial phenomenon. She was exhilarated, considering it to be a Thelemic sign, a ‘war engine’ mentioned in The Book of the Law. This event inevitably predisposed her to be particularly interested in a phenomenon that erupted into popular consciousness the following year.




Marjorie Cameron as Babalon.


Grant instigated a specific Cult of Lam after coming to feel that the portrait was a focus of an increasingly intense extra-terrestrial energy that would be of great importance during the Thelemically significant decade of the eighties (remember ‘I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the Eighties cower before me & are abased’?).

It is worth pausing to consider what “Extra-Terrestrial” may be considered to mean. To most people it will obviously refer to something originating on another physical planet elsewhere in the universe. In this Thelemic context it designates experiences and intelligence not confined to the consensus three-dimensional co-ordinates of planet Earth. Higher dimensional realms coterminous with 3D may well be the spaces these mysteries move through.




Ramana Maharshi.




Grant is a mystic like Crowley. For all of his exposition of entities and magical realms his ultimate devotion is to the non-dual philosophy perhaps best expressed by Hindu Advaita Vedanta and its peerless modern exemplar Ramana Maharshi. As far as this ET issue is concerned it means the distinction between inner and outer is abolished. It is in harmony with Jung’s intuitions. The field of UFOlogy thereby becomes an aspect of esoteric psychology. Its classic cases represent processes of magical and spiritual initiation for individuals and humanity as a whole, whether understood by their subjects as such or not. There is confusion and possible failure and tragedy implicit in this extraordinary scenario.

The basic Kenneth Grant position, which is now an important aspect of the magick of the Typhonian OTO, is that firstly Lam is a name and image of something that gives access to Extra-Terrestrial gnosis, a state of consciousness. Lam was intrinsically part of the Amalantrah Working which opened a portal of some kind to other dimensions. This makes Crowley the first modern style ET contactee. It also opens up a consideration of what is the real nature of the Secret Chiefs of Occultism and in particular, Aiwass.

In the Cult of Lam as initiated by Kenneth Grant and developed by his closest long-term associate in the Typhonian OTO Michael Staley, Lam is not necessarily a distinct entity but a trans-aeonic portal to gnosis outside of the circles of time. Something about his visual appearance potentially serves to stimulate aspects of consciousness otherwise dormant. He could be a mask for the experience of the Hidden God/Holy Guardian Angel and help serve the purpose of crossing the abyss.

The basic method of Lam meditation consisted of creating a magickal space by the usual banishings and then sitting silently in front of a copy of the Crowley picture staring into its eyes. The name was then repeated internally in the manner of a mantra. This process was considered sufficient to potentially stimulate an altered state of consciousness. As mood shifted an imaginative attempt would be made to enter into Lam’s head, the Egg of Spirit, and then look out from his eyes. Profoundly alien zones might be thus encountered or general mutations of consciousness allowing download access to previously unknown realms of being.

An extension of this procedure formulated by Michael Staley begins with the fact that the name Lam also happens to be a Sanskrit seed syllable featured in some Kundalini yoga systems referring to the base chakra wherein the great serpent power resides that can be raised up the spinal column through a progressive expansion of consciousness until a climactic enlightenment at the top of the head. Staley’s development involves visualising a serpent with the head of Lam ascending the spine through the chakras. The process does not directly identify Lam with Kundalini but may produce similar results.

We have established at least one example where, regardless of the particular cases’ credibility, there is an overlap between the study of UFOlogy and occultism. Closer investigation soon reveals that this zone of overlap is in fact of considerable size and any account of UFOlogy which ignores it is profoundly incomplete.





Master Therion Speaks. Video posted on You Tube by Dionysus999.
Music by Serpent Nation




Text from Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.
Available to buy now directly from the author.

http://www.aleistercrowley666.co.uk/container/buythebook.html


Readers in the USA may care to purchase from Weiser Antiquarian.

http://www.weiserantiquarian.com/cgi-bin/wab455/38031.html






http://www.aleistercrowley666.co.uk/

New painting by Yuri Leitch, commissioned by me to my design, on the theme of Dion Fortune and the Magical Battle of Britain. Will feature as my next book cover.


December 6th is Dion Fortune's birthday. I have a particular interest in the work she did in 1940 that has come to be known as the Magical Battle of Britain. During the nineties I was inspired to recreate some parts of it and also to eventually introduce additional details. The basic material is featured in my first book Mysterium Artorius. The Glastonbury Qabalah section also appeared in Avalon magazine in 1997. The form this material takes here is a unique blend for this occasion.


I originally posted this on September 29th, the Feast of the Archangel Michael, in 2009. I have reposted now as some people are gathering on this coming Monday, December 6th, in a group visualisation using this material, deliberately timed for Dion Fortune's birthday. A number of others who cannot be physically present have expressed an interest in tuning in from a distance. The process is intended to begin at 8:30 GMT. This posting stands then as core material for anyone who feels inspired to join in at that time or on the day in general. I welcome communication of any results.







Remarkable events occurred during the Second World War that I have come to feel represent Glastonbury’s finest hour so far. It seems strange to me that they are not better known. To any occultists of the time it was obvious that the Nazis were making use of magical techniques. They had helped to mobilise a nation’s consciousness through the manipulation of folklore and mythology. The energy unleashed by this was immensely powerful and had easily swept all before it.




Dion Fortune






Dion Fortune felt that a British response was urgently needed. We had plenty of traditions of our own that could be invoked. The mediocrity represented by years of appeasement and non-entities like Neville Chamberlain needed to be transcended. What followed was a new departure in the history of magic.




Dion Fortune as magical priestess by Chesca Potter.




Shortly after the start of the war, letters were sent out every week to a group of associates across the country. They contained details of visualisation meditations that were to be carried out in unison every Sunday morning. The focus became Glastonbury Tor. Imagery gradually built up over a period of months. The participants would find it coming to life and developing of its own accord. Feedback would be exchanged and this would influence the next sequence. It was believed that messages from discarnate sources were received.







To begin with, the scene consisted of a large cavern inside the Tor. A red rose on a cross of gold hung in the air.






For those initiated in the Golden Dawn tradition this was seen as a more detailed glyph covered in magical symbols.



Tor Rose Cross and Qabalistic colour rays by Yuri Leitch.



Three rays of light, red, purple and blue, emanated from a point above and behind the cross.










The fully developed form of the imagery saw Christ at the apex of the converging rays. The purple light was central, reaching down behind and beneath the cross.



Our Lady of Glastonbury



At its base could be seen the Virgin Mary, holding a chalice.







The red beam came down at an angle to the left of the cross and culminated in an image of Arthur, sitting on a white horse and holding Excalibur aloft.










To the right of the cross, the blue ray projected a vision of Merlin, holding an orb of sovereignty. The imagery was arranged over the broad schemata of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, a design and philosophy that Fortune had written a whole book about, it having formed the basis of her magical education.

To me, it seemed a very powerful equilibration of Britain’s pagan and Christian heritage. When it mattered, they functioned from a space of unity. From this inner plane realm, spiritual forces streamed through into the soul of the nation fortifying it against the potent will of Nazism. That’s what Dion Fortune and her associates believed and my temperament inclines me to agree with them.

My sense of that time was hugely expanded by the unbearably poignant powerful feeling of the Tor as the spiritual heart of the nation, from where the guardians of the Grail fought the forces of darkness. There was something else that amplified my feeling for the magical Battle of Britain even further. I’d been fascinated by the subject of Nazi occultism since the start of the decade. I had done a dissertation on it towards my degree. I saw something very clearly that Dion Fortune may never have known the details of.






Himmler had taken control of a Schloss at Wewelsburg in Westphalia. He had lavished immense time and resources into turning it into a Grail castle for his SS. People can argue about the extent of Hitler’s occult interests and their effect on his career but with Himmler, there is no doubt of the matter.









The SS were quite clearly conceived of as a modern chivalric order after the manner of the medieval Teutonic Knights. Schloss Wewelsburg was a place for their elite. It was a shrine to German history. There was actually a circular table there around which twelve men would gather.









Ceremonies took place in the crypt that one can only speculate upon. Without doubt, processes of a meditational, ritualistic and occult nature were generally engaged in over a period of years.







We don’t have to go as far as Trevor Ravenscroft in The Spear of Destiny as to see Himmler as some empty shell manipulated by demonic forces, but the man’s track record speaks for itself. Wewelsburg was his spiritual base. It was believed that many ley lines passed through it. This was where he and his buddies like Reinhard Heydrich recharged their batteries.





The thriller writer Duncan Kyle wrote a novel about Wewlesburg. It’s a tale of espionage rather than occultism but its title evokes the magical reality: Black Camelot. The place can be thought of as a kind of antithesis of Glastonbury, it’s polar opposite.There is no mention of it in Dion Fortune’s published letters of the period. It does seem that the Nazis managed to keep the place secret. How appropriate that the Tor, our British inner plane Grail castle, situated in a landscape imbued with Arthurian associations, functioned as the focus of spiritual resistance.

There’s been a tendency in recent years to try and detrimentally deconstruct the myth of the finest hour. It really does seem that Hitler was never completely committed to invading Britain. His main concern was always Russia. The construction of fleets of apparent invasion barges at channel ports was, on one level, a form of psychological warfare. Coupled with the Luftwaffe bombing campaign, he hoped to intimidate Britain into surrender. Therefore, so some have argued, the Battle of Britain wasn’t really that important after all and so on. Our stiff upper lip, fight them on the beaches attitude had nothing to do with the reality of the situation and subsequently, by some trick of logic, becomes devalued. I shall merely say by way of response, that the number of people who knew where Hitler was really at was very small. None of the German soldiers along the French coast had any sense of being involved in some huge ruse. Their superiors were not in on the joke either. As the barges got built, all were full of apprehension and excitement for an imminent huge undertaking. A lot of plans were drawn up for it. The pilots of the planes that bombed Britain were not exhibiting the relaxed disposition of a bunch of guys out having a laugh. They were potentially open to attack at any moment and therefore the whole business was clearly a matter of life and death to them. To the British public and armed forces, the threat of invasion was perceived as the most fundamental and urgent reality. It brought out a quality of response that has become the stuff of legend. The basic point is this: invasion may never have been as real a possibility as it seemed but the morale and character demonstrated by the British in the face of that apparent threat was real and nothing can diminish that. Period.


At the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in 1995, I was inspired to recreate Dion Fortune’s visualisation of the inner realm of the Tor. The result was entirely satisfying and I gave considerable attention to it during the time of my moving to Glastonbury shortly after. On December 6th 1996, in acknowledgement of her birthday, I put on a public event in Glastonbury with the intention of using the same material again to see how a group of people would respond to it in the modern world. I was very aware, through reading the wartime letters collected together and published by Gareth Knight as The Magical Battle of Britain, that Fortune believed the Glastonbury work was not just relevant to the immediate circumstance of the war but also to the regeneration of the national consciousness in the future and the birth of a New Age.









As the time drew near I found that I spontaneously thought of vivid imagery that developed from the original core to create a full Glastonbury Qabalah. Notice that I term it a Glastonbury Qabalah, not the Glastonbury Qabalah. I claim no exclusivity or definitiveness about it. It may mutate as time dictates. The main point is that cultivating a feeling for “British music” and the Grail epoch material so important to the western mystery tradition was a vital precondition for the appearance of such inspiration. Much work was later done with this revival and expansion of Dion Fortune’s work, including an episode on the night of Princess Diana’s funeral, but that forms part of another tale.

This material is presented in a form which can be used for pathworking visualisations if desired.

The Company of the Avalon of the Heart invite you to join them.

Come, by whatever means, to the cavern in the Mount of Illumination, where the brethren assemble and those who come in light appear. In the air hangs, in a blaze of light, a red rose on a cross of gold or, for those with such a background, the Golden Dawn Rose Cross in all its complex detail. This image is of the sphere of Tiphareth, realm of the sun, equilibrium and harmony. By its light is the cavern made visible. A celestial perpetual choir intones unseen in the background.

Be aware that a winding stone staircase cut in the rock joins the cavern with other chambers above and below it.

Beneath is a path that reaches deep into the earth where dwell ancient ones, ancestors, faery folk, elementals, chthonic deities.

Immediately above the cavern is a Hall of Learning, a library, where volumes of arcane knowledge await the seeker. Look in its books for answers to your deepest questions.

Above this is a Grail Chapel. A place of devotion and grace, of sublime spiritual power. This corresponds to the physical space of the church and monastery atop the Tor.

The Tor tower is the physical sign of an inner plane Watchtower where a silent watcher, cowled and cloaked, stands in perpetual vigil, seeing the inner tides of the destiny of nations.

All of these places are accessible but let those who would join the Watcher’s vigil take heed of the warning that here is a place of power not suitable for all.

Having sensed the other chambers of the Hill of Vision focus again on the cavern lit by the Rose Cross.

Above the cross, from the realm of Kether, the most high, a sphere of white light appears. Within it as vision and presence emerges the figure of Christ. He wears a diamond encrusted crown of pure white brilliance flecked with gold.






Beneath the cross appears a purple sphere of light. Yesod. Within it a vision of Glastonbury Abbey on a full moon night. The Virgin Mary walks along the centre of its ruins. She wears a black cloak covered with shining silver stars. A crescent moon adorns her head. She carries a Grail Chalice. The geometric grid plan of the Abbey foundations light up in silver from beneath the ground. The presence of the monks of the Company of Avalon can be sensed all around.




The monks of the Company of Avalon from Glastonbury Abbey

To the right of the centre of the cross a blue sphere. Chesed. Within it, seated on a stone crystal throne, is Merlin. He is dressed in blue-violet and deep purple and is holding a diamond sceptre and orb. Representing the most archaic of lineages, he wears a stag-antlered headpiece. A unicorn can be glimpsed somewhere behind him.

Opposite, to the left of the centre of the cross, a red sphere forms in the air. Geburah. Here is Arthur, sitting on a stationary white horse, holding aloft the sword Excalibur.

So is a cross formulated that harmonises Glastonbury and Britain’s Christian and Pagan heritage. Around the four points of the Rose Cross the images hover in their spheres of coloured light in the great cavern. Four more spheres will now join them.




Joseph of Arimathea with the Glastonbury Zodiac by Yuri Leitch



On the right above Merlin’s sphere, but a little below the level of that of Christ, a grey ball of light appears. Chokmah. In it a vision of Wearyall hill. It is daylight. A grey mist surrounds the foot of the hill like a sea. The sky above is a clear spring blue. Across it can be seen shining the outline forms of the Glastonbury Zodiac. The Holy Thorn comes into focus. It is in bloom. Joseph of Arimathea is standing with his right outstretched hand around its trunk. He is facing to the left towards the Tor so we see in profile his bearded face.









Opposite, above the sphere of Arthur, comes Binah. Firstly a black sphere like ink. In that deep dense liquid darkness many flickering points of light can be seen. Moving nearer to them in vision they reveal themselves as innumerable candles. The location is the Chalice Well gardens at night. Many are present for a rite of silent contemplation. In the inner sanctum around the well-head, the vesica piscis cover is raised and its metalwork shines with reflected candle light. Standing to its left and facing right, wearing a black outer robe of concealment, is Morgan. A raven is perched on her shoulder. In the shadows behind, sensed more than seen, is another presence. A mature woman. Dion Fortune herself.




A vision of beauty triumphant


Beneath Merlin and the cross but above the level of Mary, on the right forms a green sphere. Netzah. In here is Chalice Hill in spring sunshine. The Tor can be seen behind. All around are spring flowers. Bees hover and buzz about them. Now comes a naked Venus like Botticelli’s. She wears a head-dress of roses. Women looking like the graces of Primavera accompany her. They are the Melissae, the Bee Priestesses. This is the inner plane realm of their secret garden. They are keeping bees for an alchemical nectar. Somewhere beyond the Tor they work their rites of the Chalice of Green Fire to bring a vision of beauty triumphant to earth.

Opposite, beneath Arthur, an orange sphere. Hod. Bride’s Mound as it is physically today. Superimposed upon the scene its inner plane reality as sanctuary and powerhouse of Brigit. A perpetual flame is burning. Priestesses go about their duties. Brigit stands to the forefront holding a snake staff.









Within the cavern now is access to a complete Glastonbury Qabalah and the chambers of the cavern itself. Any of these realms can be worked within. Perhaps connections seek to be made between them. And the conduit of manifestation, the earthing in Malkuth, is we ourselves and our lives that change through connection with these ideas. And it is the land itself. Following the end of an epochal century of word-historical destiny, Great Britain needs to take stock of its sacred history and inner resources to regenerate itself for the vast unknown future.

Let there be no misconception that because Christ, Mary, Merlin and Arthur represent old traditions that they are now ineffectual, outmoded and generally redundant. These forces were, at one point in the war, bravely invoked by Dion Fortune to purge the nation of all that was corrupt and inert so that progress could be made. This can be done again. Masks that these beings are given by different eras can likewise be purged and their raw essence remains. Arthur and Merlin are no staid Victorian gentlemen when they are contacted today. Indeed, during the two minutes silence on VE Day 1995, before the lighting of beacon fires across the nation, Arthur Pendragon was seen by one person as naked and powerfully ithyphallic within the Tor. The mysteries of Sophia and the Magdalene are now explicitly inherent in the Abbey vision of Mary. And an ever more enigmatic and powerful Gnostic, Essene, Buddhist, Druid, Magician, revolutionary (the list is endless) Christ calls the many emanations of the One to unity at the divine heart that is Consciousness itself. Is it any wonder that the totality of the mystery that Glastonbury represents is activating ever more strongly and that a beacon shines from the Mount of Illumination? Light your own torch from it and go forth. Now is the time.






Most of the text of this blog entry comes from Mysterium Artorius.

Each year during the solstice New Year dreamtime I am acutely aware of the dissolution of the societal consensus co-ordinates and the outbreak of an archaic mythic consciousness, albeit one that the majority of its votaries are essentially unconscious of. One work has been primarily responsible for this perception which has helped me navigate the grossness of the popular culture christmas and connect to the primal pulse behind it. Here is an extract from my Avalonian Aeon that sings its praises, discusses the spring equinox Babylonian New Year festivities, makes a few suggestions about Glastonbury, and affirms that some forms of neurosis might eventually prove useful. Having read the material, the reader may understand why I have reposted it again from its initial appearance at the same time last year.



Mircea Eliade










My contemplation of time was hugely stimulated in early 1982 by reading Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return. I have been strangely perturbed by time since I was a small child. I can first remember it in relation to the Batman movie in 1966, when I was seven. I used to watch the TV series and saw that a movie was in the offing. I thought that there was something weird about feeling that I would probably get to see the film and that would be in the future. When I was actually in the cinema it would be the present moment and then it would rapidly recede into the past. I tried to imagine looking back from months later, on this event that was still some way off, and feeling it as long gone and also remembering when I had first thought of the whole sequence. All the way through the run-in to seeing it, I kept returning to this pattern of thought. I eventually saw the film on a Thursday. From that point on, every subsequent Thursday for some time, I would stop to ponder that it was now one week since seeing Batman, two weeks, and so on up to about nine, before I dropped the whole thing.

There was something mysterious about time that I just couldn’t get my head round. Over the years I developed a lot of neurotic obsessive behaviour around dates and anniversaries. I used to note when I’d watched some rubbish movie on TV by circling the date on my calendar and then counting off weeks and months away from it. I can still remember to this day that I watched The Purple Mask, starring Tony Curtis, on November 23rd 1971. The apex of this derangement occurred in 1972. Walking to school, on March 24th, I noted some horse manure in the road. I idly wondered how long it would be before the passing of cars and the weather removed every last trace of it. I duly made a circle on my calendar and noted the gradual diminishment of the pile of poo. Miniscule amounts of it still remained there a year later. I realised I was undoubtedly the only person in the world who a) knew that there was a tiny amount of horse manure in a crack in the road, and b), had a record of the date it had been deposited. Fortunately I went into a kind of spontaneous remission after this event, perhaps unconsciously realising that to go any further in that kind of direction was not a good idea. Nonetheless, the general thing about time persisted.

In other respects this strange mental functioning did serve me well. By the age of ten I had got all of the main dates of the history of the two world wars indelibly memorised. The whole sequence of Hitler’s expansionist policies from the remilitarisation of the Rhineland through to the attack on Poland was quite clear to me and I found it totally bizarre that my father, who had fought in the Second World War, got confused over what had happened in what order. Round about the age of eleven, my mania for history was sidelined by a passion for football. I pored over Rothman’s Football Yearbook like it was an arcane scripture and used the data therein to reconstruct England teams from the 1890s. In 1972, the year of the centenary of the FA Cup competition, I had memorised the teams and scores of every single FA Cup Final. A lot has now faded but it’s surprising to me how much I still retain. I didn’t realise it at the time but all of this was providing me with invaluable intellectual foundations and a general emotional disposition in relation to information. It wasn’t just dull neurosis. I was passionate about my interests. I felt a strange contempt for people who were merely lukewarm about their lives.

With the reading of Eliade a great elation overcame me. I discovered other ways of experiencing time that seemed to validate at least some of my personal rituals surrounding it. It seems entirely natural to believe that time moves in a straight line, from the past, through the present, and into the future. This is the process of history. The Bible contains such a cosmology. There was a beginning of time, with God’s creation of the universe, and there will be an end of it. From Genesis to Revelation. Common sense appears to bear this out. Our bodies age in a clearly linear sequence. The path from infancy to old age and death seems obvious and apparently inescapable. The deeds of our long vanished ancestors are in the past. The days of Stonehenge and the pyramids are gone, never to return. There is, however, a significant part of the life of the world that is repetitive. On this planet we have the cycles of day and night, the returning seasons, the movements of heavenly bodies in the sky. Nature appears to teach that what disappears will return. And there are many people, even in modern technological societies, who have strong experiences suggesting that they may have lived before this life, that something of them is eternal.

Western civilisation, with its servant science, has been so successful, has demonstrated so many tangible results, that other ways of experiencing time and history have been all but forgotten. Pre-industrial traditional societies often demonstrate a profoundly different worldview. “Neither the objects of the external world nor human acts, properly speaking, have any autonomous intrinsic value. Objects or acts acquire a value, and in so doing become real, because they participate, after one fashion or another, in a reality that transcends them.” That greater reality consists of the deeds of deities and mythic ancestors, which represent the blueprint for all subsequent actions in a culture. “In the particulars of his conscious behaviour, the “primitive”, the archaic man, acknowledges no act which has not been previously posited and lived by someone else, some other being who was not a man. What he does has been done before. His life is the ceaseless repetition of gestures initiated by others.”

Construction rituals recreated the cosmogonic act. An archetypal model was imitated. Sacred centres in tribal lands establish divine harmony by bringing down to the earth the celestial perfection. Locations in Egypt, Sumeria, and central Asia were supposedly mapped out firstly in the sky, and then brought to earth. Settlement in new, unknown, uncultivated territory was equivalent to the divine act of creation. Chaos was transmuted into cosmos.“Man constructs according to an archetype. Not only do his city or his temple have celestial models; the same is true of the entire region that he inhabits, with the rivers that water it, the fields that give him his food etc. The map of Babylon shows the city at the center of a vast circular territory bordered by a river, precisely as the Sumerians envisioned Paradise. This participation by urban cultures in an archetypal model is what gives them their reality and their validity.”

A large section of the book deals with the topic of the regeneration of time. Every culture has had a concept of the end and beginning of a temporal period and ways of acknowledging it. Many are profoundly different to what we are now used to. Traditional cultures have periodic ceremonials for the annual expulsion of demons, disease and sins, amidst rituals for the days on either side of the New Year. The expulsions are part of a process that literally abolishes the past. There is an “attempt to restore, at least momentarily, mythical and primordial time, “pure” time, the time of the instant of the creation.” Every New Year is a resumption of time from the beginning, that is, a repetition of the cosmogony.








The clearest examples of all this come from Babylon. Their New Year ceremonials, known as the Akitu, seem to have kept a basic form that dates from the earliest Sumerian times. They therefore represent the earliest “historical” civilisation. The Akitu lasted twelve days. During this time the creation story, the Enuma Elish was repeatedly recited in a Temple of Marduk. He had become the principal Babylonian deity. It was said that the creation of the world and the human race had come about as a result of his combat with a primordial water serpent of chaos named Tiamat, who he had slain and then dismembered, using her severed pieces to make earth and heaven. (Devotees of the Goddess may feel that Tiamat has been unfairly treated. She was originally conceived of as a womb of creation, an essentially benevolent force. The Marduk story could be taken as an example of patriarchal forms violently supplanting an older matriarchal culture.) Actors mimed the epic saga. The most important point is that they weren’t just commemorating the events in the creation drama, they were repeating, actualising the cosmogonic passage from chaos to cosmos. “The mythical event was present: “May he continue to conquer Tiamat and shorten her days!” the celebrant exclaimed. The combat, the victory, and the Creation took place at that very moment.”




Marduk and Tiamat





The Akitu also contained a festival of fates known as the Zagmuk. Omens for each of the twelve months of the coming year were determined. In effect this helped to create the year. It was “a period of chaos when all modalities coincide”. All of the normal conventions of social behaviour were dissolved. The dead were allowed to return. There were orgies, the reversal of social roles (slaves as masters etc), feasting, “a reversion of all forms to indeterminate unity,” “a repetition of the mythical moment of the passage from chaos to cosmos”.








The king embodied divinity on earth. He was responsible for the regularity of the rhythms of nature. In the New Year ceremonials he had the duty of regenerating time. It all concluded when he ascended a ziggurat step pyramid to a temple on its summit. Here he engaged in a rite of sexual union with a sacred hierodule priestess who embodied the Goddess. In this it could at least be seen that something of the significance of the Goddess remained. Here was a tangible acting out of the rebirth of the world and humanity.

Similar conceptions of time are present throughout the ancient world. They can be found, in varying degrees, in Vedic India, early Rome, Germanic tribes and amongst the Egyptians. I have a very strong sense that our Christmas and New Year festivities contain many survivals of the archaic mentality. In the rites of mistletoe and the office party, in the feasting and drunkenness and auld lang syne, were the modern forms of the Akitu. Quite clearly they served profound human needs. There seemed to be a cyclical sense of dissolution and regeneration in all this. The psychology of the New Year’s resolution speaks clearly of it. A new year carries something of the feeling of the possibility of an abolition of the past and a genuine new beginning. I had some knowledge of the origins of much of the Christmas mythology, the presence of Roman and Norse elements, the case for Father Christmas as a kind of shamanic figure, and so on. I was aware that it was the rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice that was the undoubted centre of gravity of the proceedings, and that the early Christians had wisely opted to utilise the date for their own purposes. Eliade’s exposition of the complete mind-set behind such events expanded my understanding immensely.

I seemed to be thinking and feeling like an ancient Babylonian. I’d had a weird sense since childhood that the past cannot really be completely gone and that something of the nature of anniversaries means that the events they commemorate are somehow present. My bizarre obsessive behaviour around time was an attempt, however unconscious and distorted, to express this. I felt that Eliade validated my weird experiments with time and this encouraged me still further.

I also learned that the Persians had a kind of second New Year’s Day in mid-summer. It was known as the Mihragan and was dedicated to Mithra. They felt this period was a sign of the end of the world. The big sprout had reached its maximum expansion and had no further capacity for growth. The scorching summer heat was a kind of destruction of the world by fire and return to chaos. This elemental dissolution can be placed alongside the water deluge theme that was present in Babylon and amongst the Hebrews.

This led me to ponder upon my personal summer solstice mythos and what the pilgrimage to the West Country had come to mean for me. I realised that many of the motifs from the Babylonian Akitu were present in my Glastonbury experiences. Christmas and New Year are powerfully noticeable in our society because most of the culture participates in some way. The summer solstice was, for some, becoming an equally significant time. For me it always seemed to be a focus for transitional events of renewal and regeneration. Being a student was a contributory factor, as the academic year ended round about then. My festival experiences had certainly been “a period of chaos when all modalities coincide” and “a reversion of all forms to indeterminate unity”. Time had been dissolved. Solstice dawn was some kind of eternal now, a moment in the dreamtime. The normal forms of consensus reality ceased functioning. There was most certainly great intoxication. I already realised that I probably felt all of this more strongly than most. I knew I was evolving a personal mythos. Once again my understanding of Eliade encouraged me to feel that I was gradually revealing some knowledge or intuitive understanding that was already present in me and was entirely in sympathy with the worldview of the ancients.









Looking at Glastonbury with the eyes of Eliade was very useful to me as well. The zodiac on the landscape had been allegedly created by Sumero-Babylonians. I contemplated the ideas concerning mapping out a celestial archetype of perfection on a new territory, of acting out the cosmogonic process from chaos to cosmos. It was easy to think of prehistoric Somerset as a series of hills arising out of primordial waters of creation in the manner of some ancient myth. The emergence of this land, subtly imbued with the very shapes of the laws of heaven, was an idea that was intoxicating to contemplate. The terraced Tor could evoke the image of a ziggurat. It was an obvious sacred centre. And this zodiac was perhaps the generator of our subsequent national mythos. The Arthurian Grail stories, with their call to vision quest, could easily be seen as examples of Eliade’s theme of the imitation of mythic figures whose deeds form the exemplary eternal models of perfection for human behaviour. If the zodiac was pure fantasy, the mysteries of the Abbey remained to suggest the bringing down of heavenly archetypes of perfection to earth. The geometry of its grid plan represented the dimensions of the New Jerusalem. Or at least there were those who believed it did. I had most definitely decided to allow myself to follow that train of thought as far as it could possibly lead me.

Eliade gave me the phenomenological tools to place the Glastonbury mythos in an expanded context through comparative data. It was not in any way diminished by this analysis. I became still further convinced that a living authentic mythical reality was accessible there. I was confident that the more I studied the religions of the world and allowed them to mutate my everyday life, the more I learned to think in other categories, the greater chance there would be for the mystery to reveal itself to me.





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Arguelles 2012 Circumpolar Rainbow Bridge.




‘Self-divination is the Art form of the Dreamspell. Through self-divination, you become your own authority in charge of your own destiny.’
‘Who owns your time, owns your mind. Own your own time and you will know your own mind.’



Jose Arguelles.




Following on from my previous post on the archaic consciousness of New Year celebrations, here is another extract from my Avalonian Aeon dealing with the mystery of time. This section is an edited version of material discussing a period in July 1992 that Jose Arguelles believed was an important moment in the larger process of the huge cycle set to culminate in 2012.

The weekend of 25th/26th July was promoted as a global New Age event that formed a kind of Part Two to the “psychic Woodstock” of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the extravaganza that had first drawn popular attention to the Mayan calendar.

In preliminary promotional material, Arguelles offered a prophetic critique of the established calendar and the way it dictates our relationship with Time. He referred to the current “third-dimensional timing frequency,” of “12:60.” We have a 12 month year and a 60 minute hour. This has been determined by the 360 degree circle rather than the natural orbits of the Moon and Earth. The western Gregorian calendar mechanised Time. “By the beginning of the 17th century, the 12:60 timing frequency was in place, creating a purely third-dimensional mental bubble around the planet. Thus was made possible the revolution of scientific materialism, followed by the Industrial Revolution, and, in quick succession, the various democratic and socialist revolutions of the past two centuries. All of these 12:60 clockwise revolutions have been accompanied by a staggering increase of human population, a rapid spread of materialism, and the environmental pollution and degradation of the current world crisis.”







He believed that our calendar has played a major role in the current global crisis. “The entire purpose of education and socialization in the modern world is to fit children into a 12:60 slot so that they can carry on the burdensome business of materialism”, which Arguelles called a “Time Drug.” “Time is money”is based on the 12:60 ratio. Everything is valued according to how much you can get out of 60 minutes.” Reforming the calendar would literally change Reality. Arguelles announced “the Time Shift, July 26, 1992----the moment when the 12:60 frequency attains maximum entropy.”

The Dreamspell Peace Plan was inaugurated in which people, “agree to follow the 13-moon calendar, effective July 26, 1992, the Time Shift. The 13-moon calendar measures the solar year according to thirteen perfect months of 28 days each. The 12-month Gregorian calendar (the current global standard) distributes the thirteenth month as 28 extra days randomly added to eleven of the twelve months. (One extra day, the 365th, is accounted for in the Dreamspell as Green Day, July 25.)” This would enable the human race to make “the transition from 12:60 third-dimensional time to 13:20 fourth dimensional time,” best represented by the Mayan 13 x 20 Tzolkin.

It was interesting for me to contemplate how the nature of the messenger can determine how and where their message may be heard. If some of Arguelles ideas on the 12:60 Time is Money matrix had been espoused by some French Neo-Marxist post modern types like Derida or Baudrillard they would probably be taught on university courses by now, having become part of political debate. It hasn’t quite worked out that way but a zone of interface between different ends of the philosophical spectrum can sometimes be discerned.









Beyond the strange mindset of New Agers, with the approach of the millennium, a general theme of “Endism” was emerging amongst post-modern cultural theorists. One major work saw the theme break the surface of the mainstream that very year and generate ferocious debate. In 1992 American political theorist Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, a completed form of arguments that had initially appeared in journals a few years previously. It’s quite interesting and instructive to compare and contrast him with Arguelles. It was mighty strange to see their two apparently divergent perspectives appearing about the same time. Fukuyama likewise pondered the extraordinary rate of change best represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism. He also felt that a huge epoch had culminated. In this case though, Fukuyama came to strikingly different conclusions. He believed that, rather than indicating the demise of the 12:60 reality-tunnel, such events were in fact a sign of its ultimate and most worthy triumph. American capitalistic liberal democracy cannot be improved upon. It represents the ultimate perfection of human culture and all other systems will inevitably fail before it. The only worry for Fukuyama was that the Last Men of his title might find such perfection a tad boring and maybe be dumb enough to restart the general nonsense of history for want of something better to do. Little episodes like Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany were minor aberrations on the obvious road to perfection. Howls of protest and derision greeted Fukuyama but he remained unphased. He continues to affirm his theories in the present day, 9/11notwithstanding.




Fukuyama





Some post-modernists rejected anything that could be called a “meta-narrative,” a bigger picture that explained why history and cultures worked the way they did, whether it was the Bible or Karl Marx. Crowley’s Aeon of Horus was a meta-narrative. The Mayan calendar likewise. What the PoMo contingent didn’t seem to grasp was that any concept of an era that was “post” something previous was also a meta-narrative. I found both Arguelles and Fukuyama to be part of a bigger picture that Eliade had outlined for me a decade before. It was that old theme of the ending and regeneration of history/time.








A more recent presentation by Arguelles










The book can be bought here.

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Another of my Blog Talk Radio lectures is now available for listening.

Movies, Mind, and Magic features some material featured in Avalonian Aeon and a lot of fresh stuff that I feel is rather interesting.

TV, movies, and novels as magical reality. A Hollywood Babylon Synchronicity Working.Bizarre, hilarious, and terrifying personal stories of new possibilities. Featuring Twin Peaks, Robin of Sherwood, DW Griffiths Intolerance, Lovecraftian horror, and a preposterous finale combining Kenneth Grant, Jack Parsons, and Baywatch!


http://www.blogtalkradio.com/paul-weston1/2011/01/23/movies-mind-and-magic

The official announcement has now been made that the most controversial occultist of the latter half of the twentieth century has attained peace unutterable in the body of Nuit from where his star fire will continue to shine. He was not insane or demon driven. He was a family man with a half century of happy marriage. Begone! ye mockers.

An examination of the numinous power of the Victorian painting featuring Robert Graves White Goddess, the Mabinogion Elen of the Shining Paths, the Web of Wyrd, and a personal story to bring them together, is available to hear as an hour-long presentation.

The material was originally intended for inclusion in my Avalonian Aeon but had to be excluded for reasons of space. The strange circumstances of Robert Graves writing of The White Goddess eventually featured in my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.


http://www.blogtalkradio.com/paul-weston1/2011/01/31/the-white-goddess-and-the-lady-of-shalott

Here is an article by me recently published in the British Pentacle magazine. It is an abridged version of the Gnostic Revival section in my Crowley book. I have also posted it as a note on my Facebook Avalonian Aeon Publications Fan Page. I am able to make better use of imagery on this blog. It is also the basis of my Blog Talk Radio presentation on the same subject.








In 1904 Aleister Crowley took dictation, from what he believed to be a non-human intelligence named Aiwass, of The Book of the Law, a text that announced the dawning of a new “Aeon of Horus” that would be characterised by extremes of agony and ecstasy. If the work has any veracity one might expect other figures from that time would intuit the same forces at work.







One man who gave profound expression to undercurrents in the psyche of western humanity was Carl Gustav Jung. The popular concept of a collective unconscious derives from him. He played a significant role in inspiring interest and revival in a wide range of mystical topics drawn from the world’s traditions.

In Flying Saucers: a Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, Jung expressed his belief that the UFO phenomenon was an example of ‘manifestations of psychic changes which always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. Apparently they are changes in the constellations of psychic dominants, of the archetypes, or “gods” as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche.’ Ideas that were below the psychic horizon were rising again into consciousness during the transition into the dawning of the new Platonic month or astrological epoch, the Age of Aquarius.

In the middle of the First World War, Jung was involved in an astonishing episode with a Gnostic deity. Abraxas is usually depicted as having a human body with a rooster’s head and legs like serpents. Sometimes he has a hawk or lion’s head. He tends to hold a whip and a shield. He is associated with one of the leading Gnostics, Basilides, who flourished in Alexandria around about 120-30AD. The letters of the name of Abraxas were linked with numbers and added up to 365, thus indicating his connection to the solar year and the laws of the heavens.

“Abraxas gems” came in the form of gems, plates, or tablets of metal. They were mainly inscribed with his name. Some had depictions of Egyptian god-forms with inscriptions such as Abraxas and IAO. Most interestingly of all from my point of view, some showed the infant Horus seated on a lotus flower, forefinger raised to his mouth in the magical gesture of silence. This is none other than the same Harpocrates who features in The Book of the Law and is shown on Crowley’s Aeon tarot trump. Others had Jewish words like Jehovah and Adonai. There are images of a cock, a lions head with the word Mithras, monstrous forms, sphinxes and apes, and many Egyptian deities. The phrase “solar-phallic,” which Crowley used to refer to the Thelemic current, sums up their general attributes.

Sometime between the summer of 1916 and February 1917 (there are variant dates in different accounts), over three consecutive evenings, Jung had a Book of the Law experience, writing Seven Sermons to the Dead. The episode was heralded by strangeness in the family home. Jung’s children saw and sensed ghosts. One had a serious dream featuring an angel and a devil. Jung himself felt a powerful atmosphere building. On a Sunday afternoon, the doorbell started ringing. No earthly visitor was responsible. The apparatus could be clearly seen moving on its own. The air in the whole house seemed so thick with spirits that it was difficult to breathe. Jung cried out, “For God’s sake, what in the world is this?” A chorus of voices replied, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought.”

With the barriers between the worlds broken, Jung settled down to write a stunning text. Its authorship was attributed to Basilides. We don’t have as many details on the process of composition as there are with Crowley. There is still conjecture over whether or not Jung was mediumistically dictating from a source he believed to be Basilides or expressing some part of his own psyche through the form of a Gnostic teaching.




From Jung's Red Book



Basilides sets out to instruct the dead, who seem to be crusading knights who failed to find fulfilment in Jerusalem, in other words, through conventional Christianity. Their god concept got a makeover through encountering Abraxas who, “is undefinable life itself, which is the mother of good and evil alike.” “He is the brightest light of day and the deepest night of madness.” “He is both the radiance and the dark shadow of man.” “Abraxas generates truth and falsehood, good and evil, light and darkness with the same word and in the same deed. Therefore Abraxas is truly the terrible one.” “He is the monster of the underworld, the octopus with a thousand tentacles, he is the twistings of winged serpents and of madness.” “To fear him is wisdom.” “Not to resist him means liberation.”




Philemon




Abraxas did not exactly arrive unheralded. The figure of Aiwass was of central significance in Crowley’s Book of the Law experience. Jung had his own daemonic angel who helped open the portal for the Seven Sermons. In 1913 he had begun to deliberately cultivate visionary experiences through what is now known to Jungians as active imagination. A figure appeared who he knew as Philemon, an impressive white-bearded robed sage with multi-coloured kingfisher wings. Jung described him as having “an Egypto-Hellenistic atmosphere with a gnostic coloration.” Philemon became a guru to Jung, guiding him through times of visionary experiences that verged on psychosis. This wise old man aspect of his psyche, that some occultists might designate as an inner plane contact, later served as the conduit for the incoming Basilides-Abraxas transmission.

The 1913 visions were undoubtedly shaped by Jung’s extensive reading on the mystery cults of antiquity, in particular Mithraism, which had an enduring fascination for him. During the peak of the Alexandrian Hermetic era, Mithras had become tremendously successful in the Roman world. In the syncretistic manner of the time, his form mutated. A complex of kindred god-forms blurred and blended. Mithras, Abraxas, Aion. A variant spelling, Meithras, adds up to 365 like Abraxas. Crowley claimed that the correct name of the idol supposedly worshipped by the Templars was Baphometr which meant “Father Mithras.”




Solar barge from Jung's Red Book




The Golden Dawn had a technique known as the assumption of a god-form. It involved powerfully imagining oneself in the appearance of some deity. One might sit with a particular posture that the chosen form has been depicted in. If it was an Egyptian god for example, it might also mean imagining oneself to have an animal head of some kind. Various artefacts might be visualised as being held. Crowley had often taken on the form of Horus during his Golden Dawn days. He later felt that this had helped to predispose him towards the Cairo revelation that led to his proclamation of himself as Logos of the Aeon.

The climax of Jung’s visionary experiences has only recently become more widely known, primarily through The Aryan Christ of Richard Noll. One night in December 1913, in a state of active imagination, he started to experience a snake wrapping itself around his body. As it did so, he found himself taking on a crucifixion pose and his head changing shape into that of a lion. Jung had assumed the god-form of the Mithraic leontocephalic (meaning lion-headed) cosmocrator (ruler of the cosmos), Lord of Time, Aion. He achieved such intensity as to experience total identification, in his own words, “Deification.” “In this deification mystery you make yourself into the vessel, and are a vessel of creation in which the opposites reconcile.” “So Aion, the lion headed god with the snake round his body, again represents the union of opposites, light and dark, male and female, creation and destruction.” It was essentially an initiatory experience. The scene was set for Seven Sermons, where Jung was the vessel of the Mithriac Aion’s kindred Abraxas, unifier of opposites.




Mithraic Aion


Seven Sermons wasn’t published until after Jung’s death in 1961. Not many of his followers had even known of its existence. A small number of copies had been distributed amongst a select few. Crowley had no knowledge of it. Compare this passage however, from Liber VII, one of his later holy books from 1907, to Jung on Abraxas.

“O all ye toads and cats rejoice! Ye slimy things,
come hither!
Dance, dance to the Lord our God.”Crowley.

“He is the lord of toads and frogs, who live in water and come out unto the land, and who sing together at high noon and at midnight.”Jung.

The two passages do rather seem to be drawing from a common source of inspiration.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn had roots as strongly in Alexandria as those of Basilides. Some of its members, including Crowley, were as enthusiastic students of mystery cults and Gnosticism as Jung. The most magically significant example of this is the mileage got from an obscure mid nineteenth-century academic work, Fragment of a Graeco-Egyptian Work upon Magic from a Papyrus in the British Museum by Charles Wycliffe Goodwin. It featured an Invocation of the Headless One.

Golden Dawn chief Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers had made use of it as a general preliminary invocation in a translation he made of the medieval grimoire, the Lesser Key of Solomon that became known in the order. It featured a sequence of what’s become known to magicians as “Barbarous names of Evocation,” weird, seemingly meaningless words that carry a feeling of archaic strata of humanities’ religious consciousness. Some would avow that amongst the medieval theatrics may be authentic fragments with a history that goes back to Alexandria and beyond.







As Kenneth Grant explains it in The Magical Revival, “The Headless One was a name given by the Gnostics to the Sun in Amenti, ie the Light in the Underworld. --- In other words, the headless one typified the hidden god submerged below the horizon: in terms of psychology, the subconsciousness, the subliminal Will.” Crowley adjusted the translation from Headless to Bornless, “to indicate the fact that the True Will is subject to neither birth nor death, its vehicles alone are subject to these twin phases of activity in the phenomenal world. The invocation of the Bornless One therefore forms the practical basis for contacting the most hidden of all gods or daemons – the Holy Guardian Angel.” It begins -

“Thee I invoke, the Bornless One.
Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens.
Thee that didst create the Night and the Day.
Thee, that didst create the darkness and the light.”

Crowley’s adaptation found its final form as Liber Samekh. Theurgia Goetia Summa (Congressus Cum Daemone), a hefty section within the great masterwork, Magick. This included the barbarous names Qabalistically adjusted, elucidated, and translated into English. He considered it to be his definitive manual for the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

Crowley advised in his explanatory notes for the ritual that it would involve a sequence of “assuming the form and the consciousness of the Elemental God of the quarter.” With fire in the south, this would be “a solar phallic lion.” Jung knew all about that. The barbarous name Abrasax (a variant spelling) is interpreted to mean, “of the Father, the Sun, of Hadit, of the spell of the Aeon of Horus!”







The most famous of all magical incantations, Abracadabra, derives from the name of Abraxas. The Book of the Law contains the important Thelemic variant Abrahadabra, a magical formula explaining the nature of the union of Nuit and Hadit. “In the sphere I am everywhere the centre as she, the circumference, is nowhere found”. It also refers, as Kenneth Grant explains in The Magical Revival, to “the two faces, or the dual aspect, of HAD, as the solar twins, - Set and Horus (Hoor-Paar- Kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khuit).” This calls to mind the duality of Jung’s Abraxas.

This consideration of the Jung Crowley connection opens up a fertile field for future investigation of the modern magical revival that I feel is important and will yield further fine fruit.









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Listen to my hour-long Blog Talk Radio presentation on Crowley and Jung based on this material.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/paul-weston1/2010/09/12/crowley-and-jung




From Jung's Red Book


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I have been giving a lot of attention to Glastonbury Abbey and Frederick Bligh Bond recently, both as part of my next book project, and my general love of the subject. Here is one of my favourite sections from the automatic writing sessions featured in Bond's legendary book The Gate of Remembrance. The illustrations also derive from his work.


“We have sat in the grate gallery under the west window and watched the pilgrims when the sun went downe. It was in truth a brave sight, and one to move the soul of one there. The orgayne that did stande in the gallery did answer hym that spake on the great screene, and men were amazed not knowing which did answer which. Then did ye bellows blow and ye --- man who beat with his hands upon the manual did strike yet harder, and all did shout Te Deums, so that all ye towne heard the noise of the shouting, and ye little orgaynes in ye chapels did join in the triumph. Then ye belles did ring and we thought hyt must have gone to ye gates of Heaven.”

"Sir Galahad is now King of Sarras, and upon a hill he makes a Sacred Place and builds a Golden Tree." Edwin Austin Abbey. One of a numinous sequence of 15 murals painted in Boston Public Library that will feature throughout this article.



Here is a significantly expanded version of a piece on the Grail Romance Perlesvaus that has appeared in slightly variant forms in two of my books, Avalonian Aeon, and Mysterium Artorius. It should eventually be published in a projected anthology of work by various Glastonbury based Katharine Maltwood and terrestrial zodiac enthusiasts. As well as hoping to interest the reader in the bizarre medieval tale, I also seek to acknowledge Hank Harrison, who has been immersed in the mystery for a lot longer than I have and whose stimulating work has been unjustly neglected. Quotations are taken from the Sebastian Evans translation, an edition known to polarise opinions but one for which I have considerable affection. This is a long piece so I have included a number of images that are hopefully conducive to its pleasent digestion.



Katherine Maltwood’s presentation of her Glastonbury Zodiac work is comprehensively rooted in the medieval Grail Romance Perlesvaus, more generally known as the High History of the Holy Grail. The text therefore represents fundamental source material that needs to be examined in order to assess the veracity of the terrestrial zodiac concept.








At the end of the story it’s stated that, ‘the Latin from whence this History was drawn into Romance, was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenevere lie’. This is an obvious reference to Glastonbury Abbey and implies that those words at least must have been written following the alleged discovery of Arthur’s grave in 1190/91. It could be, however, that with the story being so well-known, Glastonbury was invoked in the way that Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain talked of ancient documents he had used, or Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival boasted of esoteric sources in Spain. They may be stylistic devices to gain credibility.











Written in French by an unknown author, Perlesvaus takes up the general Grail story where Chretien de Troyes left off. His Conte del Graal has generally been considered as the earliest telling of the tale. A number of “continuations” sprang from his work. Characters, motifs, and plot details in Perlesvaus refer back to de Troyes and a few other early Grail Romances. The author demonstrates wide reading and knowledge of the existing literature.







Some critics believe that the text was written in the decade 1200-1210. A date as late as 1250 has also been suggested. Therefore it is difficult to determine whether it comes before or after the important works of Robert de Borron and the Queste Del Saint Graal, and what its level of originality may be. Which work first mentions certain themes may perhaps only be of interest to scholars.

When it comes to potential sites for the narrative, a landmark quite likely to be Glastonbury Tor is described, but so are features of Tintagel, which is clearly mentioned as a location. Some have found details suggestive of Pembrokeshire, possibly taken from the Descriptio Cambriae of Giraldus Cambrensis, written about 1188. One theory bases the author on the borders of Wales and Shropshire. Another hints that he may have been a monk in the Priory of Bassaleg near Newport, founded in 1110 by Robert de Haga and his wife Gudreda as a cell to Glastonbury. There are many allusions to Wales and Welsh customs in the story. All distances except one are measured in Welsh leagues. Two Welsh knights who become hermits are the last to find the Grail castle. Hermits remained common in Wales later than the England of the Norman Conquest. There’s also a case to be made for the author coming from what today would be Belgium. An early copy was in the possession of the Lord of Cambrin in Flanders.

Whoever did write it, and wherever they were based, they clearly had access to Welsh Celtic mythological material. Perlesvaus is permeated by it, perhaps more extensively than any other Grail Romance. Despite that, it’s also more militantly and crusadingly Christian than the other works of the time. Arabs are brutally killed with great relish, as are pagans and any other resistors of the new law of Christ.

Regardless of the issues over the dating of the text, there are a number of significant elements in the story that are unique. The Grail changes form. It is clearly stated that it has five aspects, each manifesting amidst the usual light and fragrance. These are: crowned king crucified; child; A man wearing a crown of thorns, bleeding from the forehead, palms, feet and side; The fourth form is unspecified; the fifth is a chalice.






The Fisher King actually dies, a detail at odds with the standard version of the Grail story, where his healing is of paramount importance. Also, following the usual narrative, Perceval failed to ask the correct question when being in the presence of a strange Grail feast but rectifies this later. In Perlesvaus however, this is accomplished not by getting a second chance to ask the proper question but by taking the Grail castle by force of arms. Arthur and Guenevere have a son named Lohot. Their union is usually portrayed as childless. Lohot is murdered, and in another unique development, Guenevere subsequently dies of grief.

Alongside Perceval, Gawain and Lancelot feature as major characters of the Quest. Arthur is also involved and can be seen as making up a fourfold grouping of heroes, but his adventures are proportionately less than the other three who move through a recurring landscape of castles, chapels, forests and meadows, meeting a bewildering sequence of maidens, hermits, knights, kings, deceitful dwarves and the occasional demonic giant.







A number of obvious themes and motifs recur throughout the story. The name Perlesvaus itself is explained as meaning essentially, Perceval the disinherited. Rightfully-held land is repeatedly stolen and heroically regained throughout the story by a number of characters. There are complex webs of family relationships and blood feuds. Instances of withheld and mistaken identity constantly move the plot along. The central character, Perceval himself, changes his shield and apparel, going unrecognised in the close company of members of his own family, such as his sister, his uncle, the Fisher King, and knights he has previously met, Gawain and Lancelot. Perceval often mysteriously refrains from identifying himself in these situations. Characters ask the names of others and are sometimes refused the information. Quite why this is never gets explained.







To modern sensibilities, it is an extremely odd story. According to the great Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis, ‘the author seems at times deranged,’ demonstrating ‘savage vindictiveness’ and ‘a taste for the gruesome.’ Norma Lorre Goodrich went even further, referring to him as ‘a psychopath like the filthy Marquis de Sade’. Nonetheless, both these authors and other critics have praised the imagination and skill therein.







The strangeness is apparent quite early on in the narrative. Arthur has been languishing in Fisher King manner. The land has suffered, his knights departed and great deeds been neglected. He manages to recover and convenes a great gathering at Cardueil on the feast of St John, which is at midsummer. Gawain and Lancelot are unable to appear, but five hundred knights attend in a vivid scene. ‘The sun shone through the windows everywhere amidst the hall that was strown of flowers and rushes and sweet herbs and gave out smell like as had it been sprinkled of balm.’

After the meal has begun, an extraordinary procession arrives. Three maidens enter the hall. The first rides on a white mule that wears a headpiece of gold, an ivory saddle inlaid with jewels, and a saddle-cloth of red samite traced with gold. The maiden sports a silken gown and a head-dress ‘loaded of costly stones that flamed like fire.’ This funky hat hides the fact that she’s bald. Her right arm is hung in a sling and both arms rest on a fabulously rich cushion adorned with golden bells. With both hands, she holds the head of a king, sealed in silver and crowned in gold.




For some reason, I tend to picture the bald maiden as resembling the Borg Queen.




The second maiden rides in ‘after the fashion of a squire’. A wooden box is tied behind her that a hunting-dog sits upon. Around her neck, a shield is hung. It has a design of argent and azure bands with a red cross and gold boss. The third maiden is described as the most beautiful of the group. She walks in, wearing a short skirt and carrying a whip!



Maybe Keira might have made a more credible Maiden of the Cart than a Guenevere?



The bald leader cannot dismount in the company of knights until the Grail is attained. She explains to Arthur that the shield belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. Arthur is requested to hang it on a pillar in the middle of the hall until a pre-ordained knight retrieves it. With the shield, he will gain the Grail and then return with another shield emblazoned with a white stag on a red background. The hunting-dog is also to remain and will respond to no-one until the knight arrives.

She goes on to bring greetings from the Fisher King and laments his malaise. It is attributed to the failure of a knight to ask the right question about the Grail. This is where the tale follows on from de Troyes. Arthur’s own earlier inertia was a part of the greater sickness that sprang from this event. The maiden removes her hat, displaying her baldness. She had once sported beautiful hair but the knight’s failure has caused its loss. The baldness will remain until the Grail situation is rectified.













Arthur’s attention is then drawn to a cart that the maidens have left outside the hall. It is harnessed to three white stags. The vehicle is draped in black samite with a long gold cross atop it. Beneath the drape is a macabre load of 150 severed heads, sealed variously in gold, silver, and lead. The kind of person who keeps count of things such as how many times goats appear in the Bible might like to add-up the severed head count in Perlesvaus. The notable Celtic motif makes regular appearances. All of this spectacular horror is down to the knight’s failure. It is further revealed that the maiden with the shield is also carrying a queen’s head sealed in lead and crowned with copper. She had betrayed the king whose head the bald maiden carried, and the 150 knights of the cart.

The requests are granted. The shield is hung upon a pillar and the dog looked after. The strange maidens depart with their stag-led cart full of heads. Arthur, Guenevere, and all of the feasting knights watch in wonder, noting again that the lady on foot in the short skirt carrying a whip was indeed the most bodacious. The macabre group journey on and soon encounter Gawain. He is entreated to go to the Fisher King and thereby remedy the calamitous situation. Help is also needed to successfully pass an upcoming perilous castle. Gawain is more concerned about the babe with the whip. He wants to know why she’s walking and not riding on the cart. It is explained to him that it’s part of a penance resulting from the failed-question disaster. If he goes and sorts it all out, she’ll be okay and the bald maiden will grow hair. Gawain is inspired to take up the challenge.

The group soon ‘enter into the most hideous forest and most horrible that any might ever see.’ Trees are bare-branched, black and burnt. The ground is parched and full of cracks. Eventually, in a great valley, they come upon a black castle enclosed by a circular wall, ‘foul and evil seeming.’ The nearer they get, the more the bad vibe increases. ‘Great halls appear that were right foully mis-shapen.’ From a black mountain behind the castle, a river descends with a thunderous roaring. A further blasted forest looms beyond. The gateway to the castle suggests the mouth of hell; from it can be heard ‘great outcries and lamentations.’ Many people are waiting for the arrival of a good knight. The bald maiden explains to Gawain that they have arrived at the castle of the Black Hermit and she advises him not to get involved but it is too late. From the castle gates, 152 knights, clad in black and riding black horses, come riding out. They each take one of the severed heads, spike them on the end of their lances and gallop back in, rejoicing. Bummer. Gawain comments, ‘Damsel, an evil castle is this where folk are robbed on such wise.’ Only the arrival of the fabled good knight can rectify the crime.







They prepare to leave the environs of the castle, but the action’s not over yet. A lone knight appears and tells Gawain that he must joust with him for the shield he carries, which had belonged to the Jewish Old Testament hero Judas Machabeus. Gawain is victorious and the shield is given over to the maidens who point out to him the path he must follow, into a beautiful forest. He takes his leave of them, but not before a further riddle. The whip-maiden calls after Gawain to make him aware that he had failed to ask the bald maiden why her arm is in a sling, resting on a cushion. She warns him to be more alert at the court of the Fisher King. The bald maiden further points out that none of the earlier assembled feast, including Arthur himself, had asked her. She’s not going to tell anyway. Only the most cowardly knight in the world knows the answer. He’s in her service and looking for her, but can’t find her. With that, they part company.








I’m not going to go through the whole Perlesvaus story in such detail. The maidens and the cart episode is enough to indicate the weirdness of the tale. What on earth is it all about? A few things do become a little clearer later on in the text. Gawain passes through the Castle of Enquiry. An obliging priest there gives him a few pointers. The Black Hermit is none other than Lucifer, ruling over hell as he had wanted to do in Paradise. As for the cart full of severed heads, the ones sealed in gold signify the new law of Christianity; in silver, the old law of the Jews; and in lead, the false law of the Saracen Muslims. The male and female heads held by the maidens are Adam and Eve. The bald maiden signifies Fortune, who was bald before the crucifixion but grew hair after the blood of the saviour redeemed the world.

That’s only a few things. The narrative seems preposterously allusive. Every image and detail could carry layers of meaning. Did the author have a grand scheme? Is it all carefully placed in the manner of a James Joyce? It doesn’t necessarily follow. And that’s only the start of quite a long story.

After he left the maidens of the cart, Gawain encounters the Fisher King and is set a task before he can enter his castle and see the Grail. He has to recover the sword that beheaded John the Baptist from a pagan king. If the sword is drawn from its sheath at midday, it is covered in blood. It seems that a sword presented to Perceval at the start of the Grail feast in de Troyes’ tale is being deliberately identified as the beheader of the Baptist. Adding this detail to the story’s stated beginning on the midsummer feast of John, and the preponderance of the severed head motif perhaps indicates the presence of Johannite heresies. This is but one of a spectacular series of holy relics that make an appearance in Perlesvaus.



















In the Grail castle, the usual procession appears and a feast begins. Here the uniquely mutable Grail makes appearances. Gawain has three sightings of it. The first occurs when two damsels appear with the cup and lance, which is allowed to bleed into it. ‘Gawain gazes at the Grail and it seems to him that there is a chalice within it, albeit there was none at the time.’ The next time he, ‘seemed to behold in the midst of the Grail the form of a child’. In the final appearance, Gawain sees the crucified Christ, pierced by a spear. He is so awe-struck by these visions that he neglects to ask the right questions, thereby failing the Quest. The scene has many similarities to de Troyes’ depictions of Perceval’s failure, but also some interesting differences. The Fisher King is absent from the hall during the feast. Angels rather than squires bear the candelabra. The Grail hovers in the air at one point. There are twelve knights present, who are all over a hundred years old, although they don’t look it.











After Gawain’s failure, the quest is taken up by Lancelot. In support of the idea that the Grail heroes are all interchangeable solar figures, the four main characters can easily be seen to embody seasonal qualities. Arthur is winter. The kingdom is inert. The quest begins with Gawain, the Hawk of May. Lancelot, very much the summer sun, gets to the Grail castle and meets the Fisher King, but is not granted a sighting of the holy artefact due to his sinful love for Guenevere. He then gives over the quest to Perceval who slays some golden-bull worshippers and consequently gets his own invitation for a look at the Grail. It’s seen with the Baptist’s sword, a bell of Solomon and a whole heap of other relics.




Guenevere and Lancelot from Excalibur.



Perceval later encounters some strange behaviour from two priests by a red cross in a forest. One ecstatically kisses it. The second beats the cross with a stick and ‘weepeth right passing sore’. Perceval asks what’s going on and is told it’s none of his business. There’s more than a waft of heresy in the bizarre scene. Cathars, Templars, Gnostic dualism, kinky sex? Take your pick.

There are a number of bizarre and grotesque set-pieces. When Perceval defeats the Lord of the Fens, who had stolen his mother’s land, he has eleven of the Lord’s men beheaded and their blood drained into a vat into which their leader is then lowered head first and left to drown. At one point, two artificial men, who were created by sorcery wield giant hammers and beat out the brains of nearly fifteen hundred people. In an ongoing vigorous round of combat, jousting with lances and swordplay on foot is portrayed in grim detail as armour is ripped and rendered, limbs and heads are hacked off, and horses collide and crash to the ground. Maidens, innocent and otherwise, are whipped, beaten, and killed as blood flows and piteous lamentations fill the air. As a reader of most of the classic Romances of the time, it appears to me that Perlesvaus is the one containing the most detailed and sustained violence and it’s easy to understand the opinions of Loomis and Goodrich.

A modern reader might also note that, although there are some fascinating snippets about the Grail, its five changes and so on, it doesn’t really seem to be that important to the story. A lot of the other themes appear to be far more predominant.

What have the critics made of the form of the story as a whole? The bald maiden is a good starting point. In his epochal epic The Golden Bough ,JG Frazer collected together vast amounts of data from the world’s religious history and folklore. He came to feel that much of it demonstrated a fundamental belief that the king and the land are one. The vegetation deity lives within him, so the monarch’s vitality is linked to the fertility of the earth. When he is healthy, the crops thrive, when he declines; the land does with him. As a result, he may have to be ritually killed by a healthy successor.

Something about all this reminded Arthurian scholar Jessie Weston of the recurring theme of the wasteland in the Grail tales. The Fisher King seems to be a Frazerian monarch in decline. His mysterious wounding through the thighs is often taken as a euphemism for impotence. The whole kingdom suffers with him. In From Ritual to Romance, published in 1920, she argued that Romance literature derived from myth. Since Frazer believed that myth derived from ritual, Romance literature could have some kind of foundation in ancient ritual.

Using Frazer as her inspiration, whilst not ignoring the Celtic sources, Weston also sought additional roots far more widely, coming to the inspiring hypothesis that there may have been a direct continuity linking ancient fertility rites with the Grail Romances. Something of the classical mystery cults, where dying and resurrected deities were celebrated, may have lingered. She mentioned that the female devotees of Adonis shaved their heads following his demise. John Cowper Powys, influenced by Weston’s thinking, featured a bald female Grail messenger as the character of Mad Bet Chinnock in A Glastonbury Romance.








The bald maiden also seems to correspond to a character in de Troyes known as the loathly damsel, although in Perlesvaus she is not depicted as being ugly and with some animal features, as she is in the earlier work. Loomis believes she derives from the Celtic figure of sovereignty, not unlike Eriu the personification of Ireland. When Gawain first meets her, she advises him on the question to ask at the Grail castle. He later learns she was the Grail bearer. The cart is stated to be the Wheel of Fortune, although unlike any known depiction of it. A cart pulled by stags appears in Irish mythology as vehicle of the mermaid Liban, daughter of the god Dagda. After Perceval gains the Grail, he meets the maiden, whose hair has been restored. Some of the heads are retrieved for her. By then, she seems to also symbolise the Church. The author of Perlesvaus has drawn together a number of disparate elements to create the bald maiden. The process whereby a pagan goddess ends up personifying the Church seems a bit convoluted and incoherent. There may not have been any esoteric subtlety in his awkward blend.

A case has been made by Professor J. Neale Carman for a complex system of allusions throughout the text, whereby many characters and events parallel the story of Christ, both scriptural and apocryphal. Perceval’s original failure to ask the right question, with its catastrophic results, is like the fall from Eden. His conquest of the Grail Castle represents the crucifixion. He is carrying a red-cross shield which has already been referred to as ‘the holy shield of the Cross for which none but God ever dared pay the price.’ A group of watching hermits correspond to the disciples. There’s a huge amount of such episodes and their style is such that they’re not systematic. Gawain has adventures that call to mind both John the Baptist and St Peter. Perceval is quite messianic and Christ-like but when the Fisher King can serve a similar allegorical purpose, he does. The Fisher King’s death is announced to Perceval’s sister Dindrane in the Perilous Cemetery. It’s dark like the climax of the crucifixion. There’s an earthquake. An altar cloth is torn like the temple veil. Dindrane seems to stand for the Virgin Mary. And so on.

A good example of this general allegorical approach concerns the questing beast, equated with the so-called girt dog of Langport by Maltwood and Caine. In Perlesvaus, she’s small, white, and pregnant with twelve barking hounds. When she gives birth to them by a cross, they tear her to pieces but aren’t able to consume the flesh. According to the bizarre allegorical scheme of the medieval author, the beast represents Jesus and the hounds are the Jews who crucified him but weren’t able to ingest the sacrament of his body. Roger Sherman Loomis commented on this episode that, ‘To select a pregnant bitch to signify the incarnate Deity seems the last word in extravagance and bad taste.’






After Gawain’s failure, the quest is taken up by Lancelot and finally, Perceval. The Grail Castle actually gets captured by the bad guys but Perceval single-handedly sorts out this little problem barely halfway through the story. Before he does so, there is an enigmatic brief moment when his presence is sufficient to ensure the long prophesied opening of a tomb that turns out to contain his ancestor, Joseph of Arimathea. Not a lot is made of this potentially momentous event and it’s interesting that no Glastonbury connection of any kind is made. With the Grail castle secure and Perceval’s family honour upheld, a second narrative dynamic leads up to a finale where he finally takes on a major villain, the Black Hermit, who is in fact none other than Lucifer, the Lord of Hell.







It has been suggested that the action deliberately models the Book of Revelation. During the crusading days, it was constantly being invoked. The city of Jerusalem loomed large in the collective mind, having been recently reclaimed for Christendom during the first crusade. In 1187, the legendary Saladin had regained it for Islam. This stimulated the third crusade in which Richard the Lion Heart famously participated. These huge events seemed very much to be the drama of the End-Times, being played out close to the time generally accepted for the writing of Perlesvaus. The Holy Land and Camelot become an interchangeable landscape, as at one point in the story some of Arthur’s kingdom is taken by the forces of Islam.

The overcoming of the Black Hermit in Perlesvaus seems very brief and underplayed for the dramatic climax of the book. Perceval unhorses and wounds him. He is not actually killed. His followers seize him, uncover a huge pit and fling him in. This happens to Satan in Revelation. Perceval retrieves the heads sealed in gold, the Christians. The Jewish and Muslim heads have been put permanently out of reach by the Black Hermit. This is only a hint of the amount of details that seem to mirror the Bible story.

The mysterious author’s anonymity has been cited as an indication that he may have been a member of a military order. There are so many details given in the course of the story, involving armour, weapons and grisly descriptions of wounds, that it seems possible he had been on a real battlefield. The Teutonic Knights are known to have encouraged anonymous poets in their order. Perhaps he was a Templar. They don’t get a specific name-check but their presence in the story seems fairly clear. Perceval enters a castle containing 33 initiates wearing white garments with red crosses. Their master claims to have seen the Grail.







It may well be that readers familiar with the Maltwood/Caine corpus have recognised very little in the preceding account of Perlesvaus and that is important. There are a number of big events in the story that they don’t cover. The fifteen hundred people getting their brains bashed out with giant hammers and the drowning in a vat of blood and suchlike don’t feature much in the zodiacal exegesis. How do the biblical allusions mesh together with the supposed local landscape references? Hostile critics can be forgiven their scepticism.

One maverick critic has given considerable time and ingenuity to the enigma of Perlesvaus. Hank Harrison is probably best known as the father of rock and movie star Courtney Love. Far more interesting to me is his decades-long interest in the Grail and all matters pertaining thereto. He studied at the Warburg Institute with the legendary Frances Yates. In his major published work, The Cauldron and the Grail, Harrison postulated continuity from megalithic times to the Gothic cathedral builders via such themes as the light beam orientation through the long barrows and cathedrals into the primal womb of the Goddess, with the mystery served from vessels that evolved from skull cups to Grail chalices.

Harrison has also produced a number of essays about Perlesvaus, the mystery of its authorship and the nature of its meaning. Their content is contentious and provocative, unlikely to convince academics. Although I am far from comfortable with a lot of his details, I get the feeling from his work of that certain something that does lead into the true temple of the mysteries being conveyed. One statement by him is worth remembering whilst entering into the historical material he has assembled. ‘The Grail is not an object, but rather an initiation, a ceremony, which transforms the supplicant from simple soul to brilliant mind.’







Harrison believes that the fabled source material for the Grail Romances mentioned by a number of authors from de Troyes onwards really did exist and was in fact the Perlesvaus. He goes further still by contending that it was written by Henry of Blois who in turn was making use of an even earlier text.




Henry of Blois



In order to get a feeling for whether this man might have been the author, we need to get a sense of who he was. Henry of Blois, a nephew of King Henry I, was asked by his uncle in 1126 to become Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey whilst still in his twenties. An ancestor of Henry known as Theobald the Cheat captured the area in France around Blois and the county of Chartres in the tenth century. From then on, the family was very much in the centre of some major early medieval esoteric action. The town of Blois is situated in the vicinity of Troyes, home to Grail author de Troyes, and a Templar power base. Henry was considered to be an academic prodigy. The learning and philosophy behind the new Gothic style of architecture then developing would have been part of the general mindset he brought to his new appointment at Glastonbury.

With the special permission of the Pope, Henry also uniquely took on the simultaneous role of Bishop of Winchester, then the main royal city in England. The royal mint was located there, along with the great Domesday Book survey. He initiated huge building programs: both ecclesiastical, at Glastonbury and Winchester, and secular, erecting a host of castles around the country. Glastonbury was soon transformed from a chaotic mess into the richest abbey in England. Many new buildings, including a bell tower, were constructed.

Henry was a perfect example of the fact that churchmen were by no means separate from political activity. His father had been one of the earliest Templars, his mother a daughter of William the Conqueror. The usurper Stephen of Blois was his brother. There are hints that it was Henry himself who was the prime mover in a plot to bring him to power. He certainly played a major role in the civil war that followed. In one astonishing episode in 1141, he led an army besieging the other contender for the throne, Matilda, in Winchester itself. The city was torched and Matilda fled.

Geoffrey of Monmouth makes many mentions of Winchester: the beginning of it becoming an Arthurian location. Uther Pendragon was proclaimed King there. Arthur fought Mordred in the vicinity. There’s no real precedent for much of Geoffrey’s general championing of the city. He was known to be concerned to advance his career and is said to have composed his Life of Merlin to please the Bishop of Lincoln. It could be that he wanted to get on the right side of the powerful Bishop of Winchester. Nor is it entirely unlikely that Henry could have made some suggestions to Geoffrey concerning his composition. Chretien de Troyes mentions Winchester in one of his Arthurian romances, Cliges, and seems to have a vivid knowledge of it. It’s the first time the place is portrayed as where Arthur holds court. It has been suggested that de Troyes may have visited Winchester in the retinue of Henry of Blois.

Henry was patron of the historian William of Malmesbury. His work on Glastonbury Abbey, De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, appeared in 1129, within three years of Henry arriving, the same year he became Bishop of Winchester, within a year of the Templars becoming an official Holy Order, and before the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth. It’s most famous passage strongly suggests the presence of some esoteric mystery within the Old Church. ‘One can observe there upon the paving, in the forms of triangles and squares, stones carefully interlaced and sealed with lead. If I believe that some sacred mystery is concealed under them, I do no harm to religion.’ The powerful royally-connected Abbot would surely have had some kind of control over what William published, so it seems likely he was happy to let that idea circulate, for whatever reason.

The man who was Abbot of Glastonbury between 1126 and 1171 was the most powerful, important and influential historical character ever to have functioned there. A major political conspirator. A king maker. There can be little doubt that he was working with a significant agenda on many levels. He may well have influenced the two most important figures in the development of the Arthurian mythos, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chretien de Troyes. He certainly oversaw the writing of De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie that seems to contain information that’s served as what Robert Bauval would call a “Hermetic device,” still drawing people into its mystery almost a millennia later.

Perlesvaus is generally considered to date from a period after Henry’s life. How does Hank Harrison put things together? His chain of associations begins in Tudor times, just after the tragic end of Glastonbury Abbey. A chronicler named Bales mentioned a First Book of the Holy Grail, written by a hermit bard astronomer historian. This evokes the kind of figure who was on the cusp of the transition from Druidism into so-called Celtic Christianity. The work was allegedly famous in the time of King Ine, the Saxon who bestowed lavish grants upon the Abbey and funded building there. Harrison suggests Gildas as a possible author. The obvious problem is that Bales is a late source and the absence of any version of the material over the previous thousand years can be brought against it. It is nonetheless intriguing that the Helinandus fragment concerning the monk’s vision and subsequent production of a Grail book was dated at 717, a period within the reign of King Ine.

Why would Harrison think of Gildas as a possible writer of a lost source book of the Grail? The saint is best known for his work Concerning the Ruin and Conquest of Britain. He lived during the Arthurian period and is often brought into academic controversies because he discussed the battle most famously associated with the warlord, without mentioning his name. British traditions depict him as a scholar hermit who is linked with Glastonbury Abbey and was finally buried there. It is known that he spent time in Brittany where another strand of tradition was established around him.

Harrison makes much of a painting discovered in underground chambers at Chartres Cathedral in 1972. It allegedly depicts Gildas giving Mass to Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. This is a very early depiction of the fabled Glastonbury founder. If Gildas is serving them, this implies some strange seniority even though their lives preceded his by centuries. Harrison speculates that he may have been part of an alternative apostolic succession, the line of transmission that the genealogies tracing the Grail knights back though the Fisher Kings to Joseph try to establish. This extraordinary artwork was apparently, ‘ruined by a bad attempt at reconstruction and certain items are now erased from it, most notably the golden chalice.’ Harrison claims to have photos of the original image.

In this version of events, we have Gildas as a link between Glastonbury and Chartres. The Grail source-book is somewhere in the background of early events at both these major locations. Henry of Blois would have been aware of and have access to it. William of Malmesbury referred to his patron as a great writer, ‘remarkable, besides his splendid birth, for his literary skills’. Nothing seems to survive of any of this work. Harrison believes otherwise. He asserts that the basic form of Perlesvaus, whatever later adjustments were made to it, was written either by, or under the direction of, Henry, probably using the earlier Gildas work for inspiration.







Chretien de Troyes was an established literary figure, but he did seem to tale a quantum leap with his Grail tale. In 1170 Eleanor of Aquitaine had returned to France, setting up court at Poitiers. It seems she had contact with Henry of Blois during the time of her English imprisonment by her husband Henry II. Considering her cultural interests, she would probably have travelled with books and manuscripts. Harrison contends that Eleanor may well have made available to her daughter Marie, de Troyes patron, material that had belonged to her great-uncle, Henry of Blois. Such items could have contained esoteric material and general Glastonbury lore. This may have included the legendary Grail source-book.







In one of the continuations of de Troyes, authorship of the original Grail book from which the tale was derived was ascribed to a Master Blihis, sometimes rendered as Blaise. Harrison suggests that this is a phonetic variant of Blois, caused by regional accent pronunciations.







Harrison portrays Perlesvaus as a multi-levelled initiatory document, as esoterically loaded as Wolfram’s Parzival. It contains material that reaches back through Celtic Druid times to the megalithic era. It also includes connections with the earliest years of Christianity and its links with the Qumran community, the generators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Something of this was present in the background behind the rise of the Templars and the Gothic cathedral epoch. Harrison postulates the existence of some sort of cult, to which Blois was connected, that was behind the first crusade and had deliberately set out to recover obscure relics and knowledge of the early days of Christianity. There are strands of mystery cult Hermeticism as well.


A major theme of the story concerns Perceval’s mother, who is referred to as the Widowed Lady. Her lands and castles had been taken by hostile forces. As well as the associations modern readers would note regarding her designation and Freemasonry, Harrison feels that the Widowed Lady carries nuances of the Goddess, the Celtic Church, the Cathars and other heretics whose land had been seized by the Pope. Henry of Blois’ own mother was widowed when he was a baby. Despite being a daughter of William the Conqueror she had to negotiate with the Vatican to set up convents for nuns in order to ensure her own survival. In functional terms, she had lost her lands. The theme may have also have hinted at the Henry II/Eleanor conflict.







The story of Perlesvaus begins in earnest with some adventures of Gawain, who Harrison sees as ‘a young Templar initiate on a pilgrimage through prehistory and that he represents the hopes of more than one alternative religious faction.’ His character embodies some very archaic strata. His famous encounter in another tale with the Green Knight connects back to the kind of shamanism of the hunt seen painted on cave walls. ‘I see, in Gawain, Lancelot and Perceval, different faces of the old tricephalic god (Hermes Trismegistus). The trefoil spiral at Newgrange, date 3100BC represents the same idea’.

Harrison believes that the Fisher King has been deliberately portrayed in Perlesvaus with features suggestive of both the Templar and Cathar initiates. ‘The Fisher King is Hermes guarding the Krater Hermetis, the God of light guarding the inner chamber, the priest of Eleusis guarding the womb of the Great Goddess.’ Ultimately, 'the Fisher King is the final composite of the tricephalic hero fulfilled, aged and seeking an heir’. ‘Perhaps part of the Grail vision is the realisation that one must eventually take over the job of the Fisher King. This is a great responsibility, without question identical to the Masonic tradition wherein the master of the temple retires and selects a successor’.






Is it feasible that Henry of Blois could have written this text? A lot of the general ambiance suggests the time after his death when Jerusalem had been lost to Saladin. It was perceived as a calamitous event indicative of the Last Days of the Book of Revelation having arrived, and provoked an intense crusading zeal, exemplified by Richard the Lion Heart. The cultural spiritual mood of the time was considerably different from the time when the holy city was in the possession of the crusaders a few decades earlier. The feeling in Perlesvaus, with its intense violent advocacy of the New Law of Christ, seems to reflect this.








What we know of Henry suggests a man of some considerable culture and refinement. He strongly involve himself strongly in politics and played a part in the destructive civil war but is the repeated brutal graphic violence of Perlesvaus really his style? Was he the deranged psychopath of Loomis and Goodrich? I’m not so sure. If Henry was responsible in some way for the majority of the text, another additional later level of material would need to have been interpolated.

Perlesvaus then, is a fascinating enigma that seems to contain multiple levels of meaning. The Somerset star temple may indeed be a major part of the blend but the other material outlined here needs to be acknowledged. Whether the entire story is a coherent expression of some deliberate intent remains indeterminate. I would hope the intrigued reader who has never read the High History might consider taking a look. It’s a uniquely strange, powerful enchantment and the effort involved is entirely worthwhile.







BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Flavia, The Ancient Secret, Thorsons, Wellingborough, 1987.
Barber, Richard, The Holy Grail, Allen Lane, London, 2004.
Bryant, Nigel, Translator, The High Book of the Grail, DS Brewer, Cambridge, 1996.
Caine, Mary, The Glastonbury Zodiac, Surrey, 1978.
Carley, James P, Melkin the Bard and Esoteric Tradition at Glastonbury Abbey, Downside Review, Vol 99, Bath, 1981.
Carley, James P, Glastonbury Abbey, Gothic Image Publications, Somerset, 1996.
Evans, Sebastian, Translator, The High History of the Holy Grail, James Clarke & Co, Cambridge.
Goodrich, Norma Lorre, The Holy Grail, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1992.
Harrison, Hank, The Cauldron and the Grail, The Archives Press, California, 1992.
Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Grail. From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, Columbia University Press, USA, 1963.
Maltwood, Katharine, E. A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars, James Clarke & Co, Cambridge, 1934.
Maltwood, Katharine, E. The Enchantments of Britain, James Clarke & Co, Cambridge, 1944.
Matthews, John, The Grail, Thames and Hudson, London, 1981.
Matthews, John, At the Table of the Grail, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1984.
Matthews, John, Ed, The Household of the Grail, Aquarian Press, Northamptonshire, 1990.
Matthews, John, Ed, A Glastonbury Reader, Aquarian Press, London, 1991.
Nitze, William A & collaborators, Perlesvaus, Volume 2, Phaeton Press, New York, 1972.
Powys, John Cowper, A Glastonbury Romance, Picador, London, 1975.
RILKO, Glastonbury & Britain. A Study in Patterns, RILKO, London, 1990.
Sinclair, Andrew, The Discovery of the Grail, Century, London, 1998.
Weston, Jessie, From Ritual to Romance, Princeton University Press, West Sussex, 1993.
Weston, Paul, Mysterium Artorius, Avalonian Aeon Publications, Glastonbury, UK, 2007.
Weston, Paul, Avalonian Aeon, Avalonian Aeon Publications, Glastonbury, UK, 2010.

A note on Hank Harrison
I have read a number of online articles by Harrison, primarily on Perlesvaus. They included Signs of Divinity, Eleanore’s Ghost, The Mystery, Gawain’s Quest, Who Wrote Y Saent Graal?, Who Was Ina? and The Grail in the Stones. Periodically, they disappear from view. At the time of this publication www.arkives.com is the current place to find Harrison’s material. Crown of Stars gathers much of the above together. It would be great to see his stuff in print one day; the man deserves recognition.




The Grail being withdrawn from the world on the Ship of Solomon to the city of Sarras.



The cover image is a colour version of the frontispiece for the 1898 Sebastian Evans edition of the High History.


Buy it here.


http://www.mysteriumartorius.com/buythebook.html

As Beltaine approaches and mythic archetypes stir in Great Britain, it seems a good time to give this material an airing again. It has appeared in various forms since my first ever journey along the line almost exactly 20 years ago.



In July 1990, during a visit to Glastonbury with my friend and psychic questing colleague of the time, Alex Langstone, I had a wild idea. Why not try and traverse the entire length of the famous St Michael leyline, initially presented by John Michell in The View Over Atlantis, during the Mayday Bank holiday weekend (a time when the sites along it are alleged to align with sunrise)? The pace we would set led to the event being named the Michael Line Rally. It was conceived of as a holiday, a pilgrimage, and an experiment. Some sort of activity other than simple site-seeing was intended for each place we visited. Perhaps a meditation or ritual of some kind.









The sites represented a tremendous diversity of aspect. A theme was needed to link them together, to provide some conceptual continuity. I was looking for something that could incorporate the idea of pilgrimage through the multi-faceted sites, within the continuum of earth energy currents of the St Michael force and its counter-balance, the newly formulated St Mary Line, which weave their way around the basic line of sites. (For a full explanation of the Michael/Mary interaction, see The Sun and the Serpent by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst.)





I put my mind to work.






In the extraordinary Green Stone of Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman there is an episode known as the “Lights of Knowledge” Quest. From my association with Andrew Collins I knew details of this not mentioned in the published version. The main point is that in traversing most of the Michael Line, heading down towards Cornwall, Graham Phillips came to believe that various sites along it resonated with the energies of the Qabalah in an orderly sequence, so that a coherent Tree of life could be drawn with them mapped out upon it.

For what follows I have to assume some prior knowledge of the Qabalah in the reader. Here’s a listing of various sites assigned to the Tree of Life. See if they feel right to you or not.

Kether. The Merry Maidens stone circle.
Chokmah. St. Michael’s Mount.
Binah. Dozmary Pool, Roche Rock, Hurlers stone circle area.
Chesed. Brentor.
Geburah. Crediton.
Tiphereth. Glastonbury.
Netzah. Avebury, Silbury Hill.
Hod. White Horse of Uffington, Wayland’s Smithy area.
Yesod. Dorchester on Thames.

The Merry Maidens stone circle is not normally considered to be a part of the alignment. In recent years Miller and Broadhurst’s dowsing work has suggested it does connect to the main current. A Malkuth site was never designated. I opted for Bury St Edmunds as a workable possibility.






The Michael Line has sometimes been thought of as a possible spinal column of a Blakean Albion figure. This is not conceived of in the sense of physical earthworks in the manner that the Glastonbury Zodiac landscape supposedly models giant effigies. It somehow lives in an inner realm of the nation’s consciousness. A Suffolk village named Eye has influenced views on which end of the line the head would be. Central to Qabalistic lore is a giant cosmic being named Adam Kadmon on whom the Tree of Life can be drawn. His feet are in the earthly realms, his head at the Crown of Creation. The path of High Magic lies in realising that cosmic figure is latent within us all and can be activated, thus raising us to our highest, fullest, most total capacities. In the specific physical locations on this figure of the different spheres of the Qabalah, a similarity can be seen with the Yogic concept of the chakra centres of energy along the spinal column. The middle pillar of the Qabalah correspond s to the spinal column of Adam Kadmon and ourselves. There are specific practices arising out of the Golden Dawn tradition for working with and energising the centres of this middle pillar. Knowing that Blake was aware of the Qabalah, I didn’t find it hard to broadly equate Albion with Adam Kadmon. I wondered how far, working with Graham Phillips’ material, the analogy could be profitably extended? Maybe the giant’s head was in Cornwall?







I began to toy with the idea of taking it as read that, in some archetypal realm, an Albion figure exists along the Michael line and that treating it as a kind of Adam Kadmon and playing Qabalistic games with it would be doing it a favour. My attitude was to treat it as an experiment with reality. Believe it and see what happens as a result of believing it. I also felt that Adam Albion was generally conceived of as being distinctly male. I didn’t think it was taking too many liberties with Qabalistic thought to think of the figure as androgynous in some way. It was in keeping with the theory of the Qabalah, if not always the practice. This idea could be taken further with the concept of the dual Michael/Mary energies that wind, like a caduceus, around the spinal column, in the manner of the Ida Pingala currents of Kundalini yoga.

As pilgrims of the path of light, we would start at the source, the crown, trying to fill ourselves up with light and take it down through ourselves, through Albion following the downward eastern path of its manifestation in the sunrise orientation. By the end, hopefully, we would have helped to in some way activate the centres of this figure and their corresponding areas in ourselves. This was the plan to get the line humming.

The middle pillar would be our centre of gravity and the caduceus of Michael/Mary a continual balancing process throughout the journey. I felt that the Middle Pillar sites needed the Qabalistic cosmic figure emphasised, but how to do it? I also knew that Graham Phillips had done some unpublished work using the Tarot in the landscape. He believed that sometimes certain sites embodied the aspects of particular cards. Once this was understood the card could be used as a gateway into the inner realms of the place. In the Golden Dawn/Crowley tradition the Tarot cards are assigned to different places on the Tree of Life. The 22 Trumps correspond to the paths between the Sephiroth. Regarding the middle pillar, the path from Kether down to Tiphereth is Atu II, the High Priestess. Tiphereth to Yesod is XIV Temperance. Yesod to Malkuth, XXI the World.

I looked at the Michael Line sites that corresponded to the middle pillar of the Qabalah and the Tarot cards that joined them to see if there might be any possibilities for visualisation pathworkings. What I found was so apt and fertile for creative exploitation I could hardly believe it possible. I shall give a detailed description of these examples, and how they were used, as it possibly gives the essence of the feel of our journey.






Glastonbury Abbey’s ruined Mary chapel was the place I chose to enter the realm of Atu II, the High Priestess, linking Kether with Tiphareth. Its floor no longer exists and the crypt Chapel of St Joseph of Arimathea beneath it has now effectively merged with it, creating one vibrant space. We sat in front of the altar focusing, in our imaginations, on a cross that used to sit atop it in those days. A point of blue light emanated outwards from it filling the whole place, until seeming to have become a transparent veil with the pillars of the Temple and Qabalah, at either side of it. Behind the blue light, the cross faded, leaving the outline and sense of presence of a female form. With this the veil parted, revealing the Virgin Mary in a Queen of Heaven Isis aspect, seated on a throne. Behind her, steps led up to a door opening onto the landscape we had travelled from Cornwall, in particular the Kether Merry Maidens site.

The Qabalistic sphere of Yesod is concerned with the astral realms. It incorporates lunar and water symbolism. Graham Phillip’s Yesod site was at Dorchester in Oxfordshire. This is the place where the Michael Line and the River Thames cross. To bring the energy from Tiphareth to Glastonbury, we would pathwork with the Temperance card. The particular one that had inspired me was in the Mythic Tarot, in which the figure represented (often the Archangel Raphael), was Iris, the Rainbow Goddess, and which featured a rainbow as a prominent part of its imagery.

Now think of all the many versions of this card you may have seen and try to picture our scene. It is dusk by the banks of the Thames in early May. The evening star hangs in the heavens and reflects rippling in the river’s waters. Around a lantern at the water’s edge we sit now, closing our eyes. In our imaginations the light of the lamp expands outwards, through and around us, until an egg of glowing energy encompasses us. Just beyond we begin to see, as if in daylight on the bank, a shimmering wavelet of light that condenses into an ever clearer form. The Rainbow Angel of Temperance stands tall and serene before us. One foot is in the waters of the river and one is on the bank. In each hand is a chalice. One is gold and is filled with the solar aspects of the Michael Line. The other is silver and of the Thames and Mary. Endlessly, gracefully, the Angel pours the contents of the chalices between them. Eternal equipoise in the harmony of the two currents at this site. In the mid-distance the Dorchester landscape blurs as a giant rainbow arches across the sky. As it reaches the ground on the left we see Hod with the White Horse of Uffington and Wayland’s Smithy. On the right we see Netzah, Avebury and Silbury Hill. In the centre, just beneath the rainbow, in the far distance, we see Glastonbury Tor. We try to feel a sense of energies moving through the landscape to find their harmonisation at Dorchester.



A painting specially commissioned from Glastonbury artist and Michael Line Rally veteran Yuri Leitch for my 2006 Megalithomania conference presentation.



Bury St Edmunds proved to be a good Malkuth. Its ruined Abbey provided the setting for the Qabalistic climax to our epic journey. Two ruined pillars, once joined as an arch, formed the frame for an imagined recapitulation of our complete travels to that point. We saw ourselves dressed as monks and pilgrims travelling from site to site and finally emerging through the gateway between the pillars to rejoin our physical bodies sitting nearby. We then saw, using AtuXXI, the World card as a jumping off point, the figure of Albion flanked on either side by St Michael and the Virgin Mary. Behind Albion, on the horizon, the sun appeared, ascending, and as it moved just above him, Michael and Mary both reached a hand out into it, and on doing so, it became a crown which they placed upon his head. Mission accomplished. A rendition of Blake’s Jerusalem was in order regardless of what any passing tourists may have thought.



Drawing by Yuri Leitch from 1991 depicting the journey from Michael's Mount to the ruined church at Hopton that included recurring lion and unicorn imagery.







The Michael Line Rally was carried out in full in 1991 and 92. In 1997, now living in Glastonbury, I felt the need to try the journey again when the General Election was announced for Mayday. It seemed likely that the archetypes and energies of the sacred landscape would be massively switched on. Sure enough, in the week leading up, I had a major brainstorm in which a flood of further Qabalistic Tarot imagery enabled me to make good use of the complete Major Arcana linking all of the spheres. As we travelled the line I did wonder if this cerebral Qabalah was imposing a structure onto the landscape that was not appropriate, however much it seemed apt to me.






On returning I discovered that, during the course of our journey, at a place near the course of the Mary current, a crop formation had appeared in the form of a complete Qabalistic Tree of life with all 10 sephiroth and the 22 paths between them. Regardless of how it arrived there, the concept of “hoax” would have to be re-defined in order to accommodate its synchronistic levels of meaning. Crop circles have been appearing for a long time now. A Tree of Life could have manifested on numerous occasions. As it is, it waited until a group of people were travelling the landscape carrying out detailed Qabalistic pathworkings at sacred sites (and not that many people are doing such things anyway). This was all the affirmation I needed. My work with the Michael Line continues to develop and represents one of the great joys of my life.

I shall be giving an unashamedly cosmic expansive presentation at
The Grail Centre, 24 Chilkwell St, Glastonbury, BA6 8DB
on Thursday May 19th between 7:30 and 9:30.
£4.00 Admittance.

The most extraordinary exposition of the whole Glastonbury Zodiac corpus was by onetime Professor of Philosophy, Oliver Reiser. The Aquarian effigy is an uncharacteristic phoenix centred on the famous Tor, also believed to display a unique maze design on its slopes. Reiser wondered, ‘Is it possible that the labyrinth will turn out to be the morphogenetic field pattern for the embryogenesis of the World Sensorium?’ This dense concept will be unpacked with reference to the comparable Noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin, and Lovelock’s Gaia in the context of American visionary Robert Coon's belief in Glastonbury as Global Omega Point.

A powerful visualisation based on Paul’s unique experience of a vision quest within the Glastonbury Zodiac and its relevance to 2012 will also be featured and should help bring the ideas to life.



Aquarian Phoenix by Chandira.

All material featured in my Avalonian Aeon. Buy it here.

http://www.avalonianaeon.co.uk/container/buythebook.html

I am returning to the Blog Talk Radio format. After changes in their programming earlier this year, meaning that the potential hour of free broadcasting had been reduced to 30 mins, I wondered if my information-dense presentations could still be effective. This has led to a rethink and the initial result is now available.


Intro to Avalonian Aeon: Synchronicity and Destiny.

My most recent book massively features Glastonbury, Crowley, Psychic Questing, and 2012 but its fundamental themes are the mystery of destiny, the glimpses we catch of it through synchronicity, and what that means about the nature of our true identities. In this half hour, I shall discuss some aspects of the work of Whitley Streiber and Carlos Castaneda and the possibility of playing games with synchronicity to provoke it. Although an extended advert for the book, the material featured stands in its own right as capable of provoking deep processes.

Listen to it here:


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

To celebrate the season when our mythic landscape is most powerful and evocative I am reposting a unique version of the introductory mood-setting section of my first book Mysterium Artorius that was initially created 2 years ago.

Here can be found the entire chapter British Music embellished by photos,piccies (will be happy to acknowledge artist of Puck image if I can find out who they are), music videos, and some additional text inserted specially to focus on Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill which begins on Midsummer Eve.

I have developed methods to enhance my receptivity and pleasure in the moods evoked by the landscape that involve artfully cultivating an ongoing mood, an ambiance, a constant background evocation. A relentless combination of history, art, literature, poetry, music, magic, and mysticism, fills me with the spirit of what the great literary seer Peter Ackroyd has called “English music” which I would adjust to “British music”. It’s like connecting with an indigenous landscape songline. There is nothing parochial and exclusive about the results.


BRITISH MUSIC






See you the dimpled track that runs,
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Phillip's fleet.

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was where the Saxons broke,
On the day that Harold died.

See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone
Where the red oxon browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye
Where you and I will fare.
Rudyard Kipling. Puck's Song.


“Something eternal - universal - the very breath of freedom lives in this land. It stretches out, embracing the whole of humanity. It still speaks to us through the hills and the valleys, the rocks and caves mentioned in the Arthurian legends. The winds and the waves sing of it, the atmosphere is full of it. It is necessary to find contact with this invisible Power which, in only one of its forms, appears as the Arthur of the legend. This Power in reality is the Eternal Spirit of this country ---. Could we but realize this, a cultural element would be born again, English in its innermost depths. It speaks to all human beings wherever they live and to whatever nation they belong.”
Walter Johannes Stein. Is King Arthur a Historical Character?

“Legend and history and the vision of the heart blend in the building of the Mystical Avalon”.
Dion Fortune. Avalon of the Heart.







It begins with a sense of place. Arthur’s name has been attached to so many. Glastonbury and Tintagel best embody the feeling. Regardless of the strong historical arguments against the validity of their Arthurian associations, something seems to connect the legendary locations that frame his life from conception to burial. The fundamental factors are landscapes that profoundly impact on the human psyche, places that will inevitably attract a numinous mythology.

Neither place is just a repository of history and legend in the past tense, some kind of museum. That which has given them their unique identity remains alive and functioning, potent with power for transformation. I would affirm that there exist certain special places, somehow able to inspire the tribal tales that any culture needs to understand its identity and needs, its potential destiny. I believe that Glastonbury and Tintagel seem to be such places, where history and mythology, two hemispheres of one greater brain, are almost impossible to separate.

It was surely a mysterious quality of the landscape that attracted people to Glastonbury in the past. Geoffrey Ashe has noted this in King Arthur’s Avalon and Avalonian Quest. For example, the Tor can be seen from a considerable distance away. It totally dominates the visual field. As one approaches and circles around it, a continual shape-shifting is occurring. It presents a different aspect from every vantage point. And yet, there are places in the town where the Tor cannot be seen. The view from its summit is extensive but does not include the abbey, which is hidden by Chalice Hill, apart from the late addition of the abbot’s kitchen. The tower, which is clearly visible from miles away, doesn’t really seem that tall when you’re inside it. The early inhabitants of Britain led lives far more intimately connected to the land than most people do today. The distinctive qualities of the Glastonbury environs would suggest it was a place of the Otherworld. In those far-off times much of the area was underwater as well. The Tor and its adjoining hills would have been virtually islands. Despite subsequent draining much of the spell remains intact. The whole locale seems to participate in an endlessly shifting perspective.






John Cowper Powys in his astounding novel A Glastonbury Romance attempted to express, “the effect of a particular legend, a special myth, a unique tradition, from the remotest past in human history, upon a particular spot on the surface of this planet together with its crowd of inhabitants of every age and of every type of character”. The “special myth” is the book’s heroine, the Grail, “much older than Christianity itself”, for, “ages before any saint or Saviour of our present Faith appeared in Glastonbury --- the earth-goddess had her cauldron of the food of life safely guarded in our Island of the West.” “Its hero is the Life poured into the Grail. Its message is that no one Receptacle of Life and no one Fountain of Life poured into that Receptacle can contain or explain what the world offers us”.

Powys decided to make the landscape, history, and mythology of Glastonbury a character in his novel. The different elements cannot be separated. They constitute an elusive something that can interact with a person as strongly as a human character, stirring passion, idealism, madness, asceticism, horror, mysticism and eroticism in all possible combinations. This approach would later be developed in the psychogeographical London work of Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair.



HV Morton.







During the nineteen-twenties HV Morton had visited Glastonbury as part of a nationwide car journey that resulted in the hugely successful book, In Search of England. He had noted that “It is, perhaps, not strange that all places which have meant much to Man are filled with an uncanny atmosphere, as if something were still happening there secretly: as if filled with a hidden life. Glastonbury is like that.”



Photo Stu Quigley.


The occultist Dion Fortune may well have been familiar with the work. In her mystical, poetic book about Glastonbury, Avalon of the Heart, she wrote that, “Where strong spiritual emotions have been felt for long periods of time by successive generations of dedicated men or women - especially if they have had among them those who may be reckoned as saints because of their genius for devotion - the mental atmosphere of the place becomes imbued with spiritual forces, and sensitive souls capable of response are deeply stirred thereby when they come to it”.




Fortune wondered if we “miss much when we abandon the ancient custom of pilgrimage?” “Every race has its holy centres, places where the veil is thin”, that contain, “power to quicken the spiritual life and vitalise the soul with fresh enthusiasm and inspiration.” “Glastonbury is a spiritual volcano wherein the fire that is at the heart of the British race breaks through and flames to heaven”.









Tintagel is another such place. Many would agree that the area around the cliff-top castle ruins by the sea carries an archaic feeling of tangible magic. Imagine the end of a perfect summer day. The all but cloudless sky has become a symphony of gradations of portentous pink focused on the sun setting into the sea. As its reflection touches the water, a rippling ray spreads out from the horizon back across the foaming Mediterranean turquoise waves to the beach, like a sword of shimmering light. From a vantage point up on the cliffs, amongst a riot of small wild flowers, looking across at the ruined castle and down to the entrance of the famous Merlin’s Cave, one can forget all the intellectual arguments of history, feel the Arthurian mythos alive in the very air, and believe. Wordsworth’s famous lines on the landscape around Tintern Abbey come readily to mind.







“And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought,
And rolls through all things.”

Place stirs feeling. Inspires poetic mystical sensibilities. Fills the heart with the intuition of music that is constantly present if not always audible. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was a great British musical revival that produced a huge corpus of work inspired by love of the landscape. Perhaps the most famous examples are The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams.










Both pieces were composed just before the First World War. In retrospect, they do seem to carry an incredible nostalgia for a vanished world and lost generation, but they also speak of some more archaic mystical quality of supreme sublime beauty that remains an ever-present force emanating from the very earth of our sacred “sceptred isle”. Williams’ third symphony and the haunting first movement of the fifth can produce a similar response.

The obvious superstar of the scene was Elgar. He is primarily known for his Last Night of the Proms anthem, Pomp and Circumstance, which includes the great soundtrack of Edwardian imperialism, Land of Hope and Glory. I feel that’s rather unfortunate as it gives a very one-dimensional sense of the man and has possibly kept some people from wanting to investigate him further. Elgar composed many works inspired by nature and the nostalgia of childhood that are in turn, passionate, wistful, melancholic, mellow, and mystical.





As a small child he would sit by the banks of the River Severn, “trying to write down what the reeds were saying”. This continued into his adult life as he walked and bicycled around the Malvern Hills. In a letter to a friend he said,“the trees are singing my music or have I sung theirs?” There’s a visionary sequence in Ken Russell’s inspired 1962 black and white BBC drama documentary on Elgar which depicts him as a young man riding on a white horse across the Malverns to the stirring accompaniment of the Introduction and Allegro for Strings and shafts of sunlight.






A number of the more prominent composers of the great revival were mystically inclined with interests in Celtic and Arthurian mythology, faery lore, and so on. They were not of the status of Beethoven and Wagner but are unfairly neglected. Bax, Bantock, Butterworth, Delius, Finzi, and Ireland, all help to back up Vaughan Williams and Elgar very nicely in creating an evocational soundscape.

Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Cowper Powys were both born in 1872 and lived to truly ripe old age, producing stunning work well into their seventies. As people they were considerably different. In his Autobiography, Powys gives little space to music. To me though, both men expressed something poignant and powerful that was quintessentially of the land and its history.

A Glastonbury Romance and the music of Vaughan Williams have become inseparable in my consciousness. Powys had said that, “the symbolism of the Grail represents a lapping up of one perfect drop of noon-day happiness as Nietzsche in his poignant words would say, or as Nature herself, according to the hint given us by Goethe, whispers to us in more voices than at present we are able to hear, or to understand when we do hear.” A particular Avalon of the Heart reverie of mine became my personal expression of that idea: a May morning on the Tor, the unique Somerset mystical misty blueness of the sky around the horizon’s rim providing a perfect backdrop for ascending larksong. Blossom and blooming abound as the landscape rolls away like surging strings, a hymn of ancestral voices, ever young and hopeful.

In John Michell’s City of Revelation I first read of the idea of Glastonbury’s Perpetual Choir. Apparently, a Dark Age work known as the Welsh Triads mentioned three “perpetual choirs of Britain”. These were ecclesiastical establishments where relay teams of monks kept up a constant liturgical chant. They were located at Amesbury, just down the road from Stonehenge, Llantwit Major in South Wales, and Glastonbury. Michell noted some kind of alignment relationship between the sites and extrapolated geometrical data that led him to talk of a “Circle of Perpetual Choirs”. Elgars’ Malverns were in the centre of it. The material seemed a bit vague but something about this idea inspired me in a way I couldn’t yet make fully conscious.




Rudyard Kipling’s classic children’s tale, Puck of Pook’s Hill provides another potential doorway into the zone. The story begins with two children in a fairy ring in woods near their home. They give a little performance of selected extracts from Midsummer Night’s Dream on the eve of the very night itself. This conjures up Puck, the ancient spirit of the hills. “I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.” He has watched all of history pass by with a benevolent and mischievous eye, occasionally intervening in human affairs.






Puck becomes the children’s guide for a history lesson of their immediate locale. From this particular saga, involving landmarks familiar to them, the greater vista of the life of the whole British nation unfolds. They meet a Roman soldier who goes off to serve on Hadrian’s Wall, a Saxon from the time of the Norman conquest, a Jew from the Magna Carta epoch, and so on. With Puck we encounter not only humans but old gods as well. The cult of Mithras is sympathetically portrayed. The narrative continuity comes through a rune covered singing sword made by Saxon deity turned smith, Weland. The sword has a subtle auspicious effect on the lives of the subsequent generations, leading through to Magna Carta. Through all this Kipling affirms the diverse elements in the layers of history that make the mixture that is Britain.


The idea of Puck watching from ancient hills enhanced my sense of “British music”. The feeling of a primordial past somehow still living through the very land itself and the ongoing mythos it generates became ever stronger for me. The land has a consciousness of some kind. A voice that can be heard. A feeling that can be communicated. At certain places and times, on hills at dawn and sunset, by wells, streams and rivers, in moonlit woods, amongst poignant ruins and remains, it lingers on, surprisingly potent, waiting to inspire in diverse circumstances; poets, soldiers, musicians, mystics, militants, all ages and genders across the whole social spectrum.

Such is the preparatory ambiance. A number of powerful ideas are coming together. At least in some poetic sense, Glastonbury, the Avalon of the Heart, is a perpetual choir that is helping to compose and to play “British music”, an expression of some vast mystical landscape mystery. All of our great artists, from the designers of Stonehenge and Glastonbury Abbey through to Powys and Vaughan Williams are part of Albion’s greater perpetual choir. Its supreme symphony, in which untold multitudes have participated in innumerable ways in every epoch from the megalithic to the present is the mythos of Arthur and the Grail.




It's a mighty fine book. You could buy it now from anywhere in the world right here!

http://www.mysteriumartorius.co.uk/buythebook.html