Kao23 :: Blog

Glastonbury evokes images of the Holy Grail, the Arthurian Mythos, Sacred Mysteries and New Age Hippies. Well I'm pleased to say Jack Gale's talk finally burst that naive little bubble last night. Yes, the white lighters are there  (to the  disdain of the locals, carnate and discarnate), yes it has a Celtic heritage, and yes it is a centre of sacred mysteries, but at a deeper level the place is very dark indeed. And perhaps not surprisingly given its traditional ruler, Gwyn ap Nudd, Lord of the Underworld, King of the Fey and son of Nodens of the Abyss.

Jack Gale's talk was essentially a series of anecdotes and tales illustrating the nature of the Glass Isle, collected from people who have lived and practiced magic in the village, the Glastonians - or as today's crew are often known, the Glastofarians - as opposed (sometimes literally) to the Avalonians, local residents for whom the place is simply a unique Somerset village full of strange people.

Jack himself is a Glastonian, or was till chased from the village by the forces that reside there, forces he still deeply respects. The place he says is undefinable, a zone of chaos and dark mystery.

There were far too many fragmentary tales to recall but I shall relate those I found impressive and quote from my notes.

We began with a qoute from Geoffrey Ashe in Gandalf's Garden (1968)

"Most people who get close to Glastonbury seem to go mad, more or less. Sometimes with the higher madness which is wisdom; sometimes not. The professional scholars (with a few exceptions) get as unbalenced as anyone else; only they are cleverer at appearing sane. Whatever the thing is that has such potential effects, it is THERE, in Avalon, an authentic presence"

Jack then explained how this aspect of Glastonbury has been glossed over by those seeking to give the town a positive image, but the reality was always there. At the mundane level the place was reknowned for its conflicts and relationship breakdowns, a place were a simple disagreement could become a blood feud overnight, a flawed relationship disintegrate into emnity and a slight unbalence become psychosis. On the otherhand, though far rarer, a harmonious state became even more harmonious. The place intensifies these things.

Few writers had explored this aspect, one who has is Michael Howard, editor of the Cauldron, a few others have joined him, here are some unattributed quotes from the handout:

"There is an energy at work here that is extremely powerful, tangible and present. Deserving both grave respect and constant awareness. If it touches you it cannot be ignored. It shakes and pulls and reveals. It truely effects people in profoundly challenging and sometimes shockingly damaging ways. The oddest thing is that this energy seems to particularly effect those 'called here', while it seems to have little or no affect whatsoever on many of the long time locals". 

"Glastonbury is not always a safe place, and for some people it becomes a truly dreadful nightmare. Through my work I have met too many people who are seriously depressed, anguished, tormented, and even suicidal because of what is sometimes refered to, with irony or gallows humour, as their 'Glastonbury Experience'. People are literally pulled apart mentally and physically'.

This final reference was explained in terms of the story of Richard Whitling, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, who was siezed by Thomas Cromwell on behalf of Henry VIII and dragged by horses, together with two other monks to the top of the Tor, where they were hung, drawn and quartered.  The Abbot's head was then hung on the gate of the Abbey and his limbs taken to Wells, Bath, Ilchester and Bridgewater. This story also revealed another strange feature of Glastonbury, its energies seemed to encourage people and even protect them, only to suddenly turn on them without warning. Whitling was constantly reassured by Henry that his abbey was safe from dissolution during the Reformation, being an examplary religious institution. As the last Abbey in England it became one of the most important sacred sites in the country before the unexpected arrival of Cromwell. The bones of Whiting were gathered up and buried at the Abbey where they were allegedly later discovered and identified by a psychic. They are now in the keeping of the enigmatic Father Damian at the reestablished Prinknash Abbey who privately regards them as the relics of the sainted Abbot, even though this is still not recognised by the Vatican.

A similar though less drastic fate befell the discovery of the Abbot's bones, Frederick Bligh Bond, the archeologist and psychic who was appointed by the Church of England to exacavate the Abbey in 1908. Bond was a Freemason, Theosophist and member of the SPR and SRIA who made many geomantic discoveries about the Abbey, including its alleged Cabalist Gematria. He had free reign in the village for 13 years, largely popularising it, and was on the verge of new discoveries when changes in his employers, now opposed to psychism, suddenly removed him from his role. A devastating blow and mockery he took several years to recover from. Some of his work was carried on later by the other Glastonian Wellesley Tudor Pole. A more dramatic tale told of psychics following the tradition of Bond who took to psychic questing after a mysterious blue bowl was found. Years of research was influenced by several independent psychics who all associated the bowl with a veiled female spirit. One 'saw' a secret document that told its origin, hidden under a stone in the middle east, even giving the markings to be found on the stone. After exhaustive search the stone was actually found, complete with predicted markings, and under it was absolutely nothing. The team broke up disillusioned soon after. Like many Glastonians they had been raised up and dropped from a great height.

All of this was tame compared to the psychological nightmares experienced by other Glastonians, which seemed to increase over the years. Even locals spoke of the 'blight', a local fog phenomena which hangs over the village, obscuring even the top of the Tor, bringing with it an oppressive atmosphere. In recent times despite its New Age gloss the village has experienced its first 'drug related murder'. The darker events of the village inspired the novel, the Chalice, and its concept of an anti-Grail, enfuriating many local hippies, but regarded as authentic in its ambience and style, if not its explanation, by several local occultists. Some have regarded all this in ethical terms, as one writer put it:

"It is a dangerous place because of the very potency of its spiritual energies, as those who have despoiled its brooding aura have discovered to their cost. It can generate madness and death as easily as tranquility and revelation. But this is the function of all terrestrial oracles".

Jack was sceptical on this however seeing no real discernment in the victims of the place. While some have been relatively untouched, such as Geoffrey Ashe in the 60s/70s and Dion Fortune in the 40s (who coincidentally came to sequentially live in the same house without knowing it), and others benefited from the association, such as the eccentric Katherine Maltwood, who discovered the Glastonbury Zodiac, several well intentioned occultists have not prospered there. And even Dion Fortune contracted leukaemia a few years after arriving as the villages new celebrity. Curiously those least effected seemed to be those without goals or agendas who just lived on a day to day basis in the now,

One interesting case was of the former pagan activist and libertarian Tony Roberts, who became enamoured with the place, studied its mysteries and became its self appointed guardian amongst the growing occult community in the village. Although a popular radical, if an outspoken one, Roberts was rejected by exclusionist feminists in the local Goddess community, and soon entered into a feud with them in opposition to their 'feminazi' ethos, this turned bitter and lasted for years before Roberts died of a massive heart attack on the Tor. An event celebrated by his enemies who threatened to exhume his body and scatter the bones.

This theme of dismemberment was regarded as a crucial feature of the enigma, and one writer who'd come to a similar view claimed the energies of the Tor were negative and brought a tearing apart, while the energies of the Abbey were positive and healed. Others saw things in terms of a war between pagan and Christian forces. But Jack took a more sceptical view than this neat dualism, argueing that while the Abbey may have that effect and may even have been founded with that aim, it was not part of the occult process itself, which was far older than Christianity. Rather he suggested the area was as the legends said a gateway to the land of the dead, and a place of death and rebirth, where the most severe 'tests' were experienced, and all of ones faults and virtues were intensified and challanged. A process that would either transform and perfect all it touched or destroy it. A true chapel perilous.


This was one of the most enlightening and entertaining talks at the Moot for some time.     

Rupert Sheldrake at Alternatives, St James 7/8/08

Rupert Sheldrake’s overview of his Morphic Resonance theory, started with the best summary of the history of western metaphysics I’ve ever heard, focusing on the  basic dichotomy of Eternity vs Change (aha, Apollo and Dionysos I thought). It certainly sharpened my understanding. He began with the Greeks who prioritised Eternity over all else, by argueing for an unchanging essence that underpinned and ordered everything. This possibly began with a mystical experience of a timeless realm he argued, but suggested this was a fundamental error which he sought to correct. Firstly Pythagoras had claimed number and mathematics was the basis of Eternity, the fundamental root of all being, existing in an ideal realm outside Space-Time. This was expanded on by Plato, who stated that everything had an eternal, perfect archetype, or blueprint, that existed in the same abstract, ideal realm as mathematics, giving it its form (thus there was one ideal horse-form, for example, which shaped all imperfect, real horses). A very conservative form of idealism, which emphasised the ‘normal’ and ‘perfect’, and created hierarchies of ‘natural perfection’. He then pointed to the Greek opposition to this stance, typified by Heraclitus, which said the only thing eternal was Change itself, as everything was in flux and diversity the norm. But observed that even Heraclitus had argued that there was a stability to reality, ordered by the Logos, in that everything moved in eternal cycles, repeating themselves over and over in a constant pattern, like the seasons (the classical Pagan or Dionysian view?). Thus even here the ideal of Eternity was still paramount, and maintained by the Logos, the eternal Word, or Law of Nature. Plato argued the Logos was guided by the archetypal Forms, which were all aspects of one Absolute Form, the Good (the ‘solar’ centre of the cycles you could say), and that Change, or ‘chaos’ as he saw it, was a mere drift away from perfection and order, and so an ‘evil’ to be opposed. Heraclitus thought the opposite but was marginalised in Greek thought. He only briefly mentioned Aristotle, the other great Greek idealist, who differed from Plato only in the more liberal view that the ideal Forms were somehow within Nature not outside of it, and that Change was a fine tuning towards gradual perfection, but still maintained the hierarchy of perfection and the faith in the ideal. An important minority view was that of the Atomists, typified by Democritus, who argued that only Matter was eternal, and consisted of particles or atoms, which randomly combined, uncombined and recombined according to geometrical rules, and that Change was merely this random ordering.   

Sheldrake then contrasted this with the Jewish ideal of Progress, the idea that there was not some preordained perfection but rather a perfection was something in the future that we move towards, and that Change was the norm that made this possible. This was realised by the wandering nature of legendary Jewish history and search for the promised land. He prefered this but pointed out that then as now, the ‘promised land’ was full of Palestinians, and so preconcieved ideas or goals rarely worked. He then explained how Christianity emerged as a fusion of the Greek and Jewish ideals under the late Romans. Here the Logos and the Absolute Form became aspects of the Mind of the Jewish God. Progress arrived as God’s plan, but Eternity still ruled. The ideas of Plato and Aristotle were thus Christianised. However with the collapse of Imperial Rome superstitioned reigned (Note: The Father, Son and Holy Ghost of superstition could be regarded as Jehovah, Absolute Form, and the Logos of earlier philosophy, but Sheldrake didn’t state this).

The most important factor was the return to centre stage of Plato, Aristotle in the Rennaissance, as well as the new  popularity of Democritus and his Atomism, which was linked to the concept of Individualism and social organisation. But it was not until the Reformation that the Jewish concept of Progress was really absorbed he suggested, and with it came the idea of Evolution. Then experimental Scientific Philosophy began and these three ideas became merged in various combinations. Francis Bacon took this idea up and essentially began the Enlightenment and Modern Science, but he and his later followers, Newton and Wren, were all Pythagoreans or Platonists at heart. These positions were based on habits of thought however not reason Sheldrake argued. Bacon’s greatest practical innovation however was said to be the systematisation of experimentation. Bacon also argued for a process of Social Evolution, believing that Change was the rule in the Human social order, as was demonstrated by History, but that Nature was eternal and fixed. It was goverened by the Laws of Nature, which as a lawyer, Bacon described legalistically. Sheldrake regarded this as anthropomorphic, qouting C S Lewis who said ‘this makes a falling stone a man, and even a citizen’.

This was followed by a history of the triumph of the Evolutionary paradigm in Science. At first simply seen as a social phenomena, Darwin expanded it into Biology and lifeform development, drawing on Social Theory, but maintained that Nature itself was fixed. Then Einstein demonstrated the Universe was expanding, but added a ‘fudge’ called the Cosmological Constant to maintain an eternal stability. This has shown to be false he claimed, and has been replaced by the idea that the Universe itself is evolving like an organism. Once thought to be running down into heat death, it was now seen as expanding constantly and evolving. Darwinian concepts are being deployed to explain this. However Matter was seen as eternal for a long time, as were ‘constants’ like Position, but Quantum Mechanics demonstrated this was not fixed either and was all a state of flux. But still Eternity was retained in the basic Laws of Nature. Sheldrake suggested that, given the trend this would go as well, and the Laws of Nature would be seen as mere habits, as Eternity was a myth.

This was where Morphic Resonance fitted in, as the mechanism of all evolution, from the Laws of Nature, to Lifeforms, to Mind and Memory. The general idea being that everything was linked into one big field on all levels, Nomological, Material, Cosmical, Biological, Social, Mental and Psychological. All ordered forms in this field were just habituated patterns, or impressions in it, based on nodes of force resonating with each other. It was these habits that had not only created the illusion of Eternity, but the illusion itself had become a habituated thought pattern, like all thoughts and ideologies.

His argument for Cosmological Morphic Resonance was to ask scientists if the Laws of Nature existed before the Big Bang and the formation of the Cosmos, if they say yes then they are Platonists, who believe in unprovable or unfalsifiable, non-scientific elements,  and if they say no, they either believe all the Laws of Nature miraculously came into existance at the Big Bang (including Laws effecting things not then existant), or that they evolved with the Cosmos. He likewise tackled Quantum Physics by suggesting the Multiverse contravened Ockham’s Razor, and that its supporters such as Lord Rees, the head of the Royal Society agreed, but had said it did away with God and the supernatural. In contrast he proposed a Resonant Quantum Mechanics (perhaps like Decoherence Theory?). He then outlined how Morphic Resonance made Genetics redundant, or at least as nothing more than a protein factory for producing the building blocks that Morphic Resonance organised. Evidence for this was the insuffient genetic difference between species, given the complexity and diversity of life. Furthermore he argued the brain functioned by connecting resonant ideas, and particularly that memory was a resonance between past and present mental states (and possibly even future states). Even our personal identity was a resonance between our current awareness and past memories. ESP was a resonance with others according to how well the subjects were atuned or alike. Group psychology and herd formation was another kind of socio-cultural resonance. But most controversially he suggested the mind was extended outside the body as part of a universal field of which we were all part, drawing parallels with Jung’s Collective Unconscious. Even suggesting that personal memories were stored here and not in the brain, which was just a tuning device. His evidence for his memory theory drew on Pribram’s holistic mind theory and research that showed an octopuses memory was everywhere in its brain, but nowhere in particular, and how bits of the human brain could be removed without memory loss. His extended mind theory draws on his ESP experiments.

Other anecdotes he put forward were that if Morphic Resonance were true, things learnt by other minds would spread, the much contested hundreth monkey effect. But gave evidence for this in the form of the mystery of the increasing ease of IQ tests. He even argued exams could be easier by answering the questions in reverse order, so the earlier answers tackled last will already have been answered by many others. He even suggested testing  this in an experiment with  head  of exam board.

When asked if he had a metaphysical philosophy that explained how all this worked he said no, but suggested that the philosophy of Kashmir Shivaism was interesting (curiously as this is also an influence on Neo-Dionysian thought).

I was very impressed by his presentation though noted he underplayed his experiments that haven’t had good results and was sceptical of his claim that Morphic Resonance was behind every ordered phenomena at every level! A good idea become obsessive or the greatest discovery of all time? Either way I think he’s closer than most others to science of the future.    

The Spear of Destiny (23^rd April)
Treadwell’s Bookshop, Tavistock St W1 (www.treadwells-london.com)

This was one of the most interesting talks I’ve yet attended at Treadwell’s. The last in a series of five by the scholar James North on Hermeticism in the English Renaissance / Tudor period.

The series dealt with Anglican Christian Cabbalism and Pythagoreanism from John Dee to Francis Bacon, leaning heavily on ciphers and numerology, often centred on the numbers 17 and 19, particularly in Shakespearean prose. Some of which seemed more than just pattern recognition. Inthe final talk for example he revealed the secret Shakespearean numbers 23 and 46, linked not only to his birth/death dates, but also Psalm 46 (the 46^th word of which is ‘shake’ and 46^th penultimate word is ‘spear’!).  It also linked this to Rosicrucianism and the mystery of the Rho (17) and Tau cross (19). Note, all these root numbers are Primes, hinting at a Neo-Pythagorean revival with a more advanced symbolic Maths (Bacon’s influence?).


The final talk focused on English occult politics and St George.

The essence of this was the thesis that during the increasing religious split in Europe,
first between Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, and then between Catholicism and Protestantism, a movement towards Christian reunification began to grow, alongside a
more general reformism (with opposition to all dualistic factions) and return to Christian origins. Central to this movement was Christian Cabbalism (with its own agenda of a Christian and Judaic reunification) and Alchemical Hermeticism (with its synthesis of  Christian and Pagan themes), operating both independently and within Christian mystical circles within the Churches. This intensified with the rejection of the emerging puritanical forms of Protestantism, but more especially with the increasing perception of the Catholic Church as an ‘evil empire’, with worldly rather than spiritual interests and ambitions. This culminated in the shockwaves that followed the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenot Protestants by the Catholic powers in France. At the core of this movement lay various secret societies, at the forefront of which were the occult orders of the age. The movement however was not itself a unified ideology but was rather a tradition, or system of principles, with various interpretations.
Shortly after this the ‘miraculous’ defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English,  who saw it as ‘Divine Intervention’ against the ‘Satanic’ Catholic Empire, revived the natural inclination of the British to see themselves as the ‘chosen people’, and the reformist wing of the Tudor Elizabethan establishment thus became the foremost champions of this movement.

Central to the British mythos was the image of the twin pillars, with a ship sailing between  them, popularised by its official ‘sea magus’ John Dee. Initially this was a symbol of the Pillars of Hercules passed through on the ‘journey to Atlantis’ or new land, but it also came to be regarded as the pillars of the Temple of Solomon, understood as the pillars of the Tree of Life. This became the central image of reunification, with the pillars representing everything from heaven and earth, to the ideologies that required reunification, to the projected political powers of Europe and America. All of which were part of a kind of magical dialectic which became the master formula for all theory and practise. The image was inherited by many orders, but most famously by the Freemasons who interpreted it in their own way. The ship that mediated the pillars was often forgotten, but was traditionally associated with Britain. The speaker emphasised the multiple meaning of symbols and their context dependency.

Britain’s importance was traditionally rooted in the Glastonbury Grail tradition, which via the Arthurian Mythos dovetailed with the reformative neo-chivalric fashion of the period, and the legitimising  Tudor Celtic Revival.  As it was St George’s Day special emphasis was placed on the role of the Order of the Garter and its central myth of George and the Dragon.

This British tradition was also appeared diverse, incorporating everyone from the elitist British Imperialists, through Shakespeare’s esoteric patriotism, to William Blake, with his libertarian visions of a New Jerusalem and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.


The English Draconic tradition then formed the bulk of the rest of the talk. With the Dragon or Serpent typified as the Tellurian, Chthonic or Lunar power and St George as the archetypal, earthly manifestation of the Heavenly or Solar power, formerly known as Apollo (the slayer of the Delphic Serpent). Mythically this was also seen as the interaction of Apollo and Diana, or the Divine Feminine. Later in the question period St Michael was added as the more celestial form of Apollo who battles the Draconic Satan in defence of the Divine Feminine. A crucial point here was not only are the Serpent and Dragon significantly different but in themselves depend on context for meaning. The fixated ideas that the Dragon-Serpent represented instinct and femininity and Apollo represented reason and masculinity were common cultural distortions. Symbolism it was explained could be easily misinterpreted by undeveloped or narrow minds, with Wagner the classic example. Similarly the idea of a dualistic conflict between these two was also rejected in favour of mutually modifying dilectic and union. Early depictions of George and the Dragon showing a subduing rather than a killing. The Serpent was depicted in general as a feminine force but also a symbol of wisdom as well as earthly forces, while the Dragon could be a force of fertility and prima material, or a celestial power of destruction cast down into the Earth, like Typhoon (whose name meant swelling and excess).  Apollo’s name also meant ‘destruction’ however. There was a sense of Taoism in all this.A major historical error was the use of such Typhoonian powers through their enslavement to divine forces, the origin of the Grimoire tradition. This reflected a mentality of the ‘ends justifying the means’.

This was expanded on by reference to Zoroastrian notions of dualism, involving the liberation of the positive forces of the Earth  (from the Darkness and Fixation of Ahriman)  and its union with the positive forces of Heavenly Light.  Thus the Spirit penetrated and illuminated the Earth, and Darkness, which only had a negative existence anyway, vanished.  This negative non-existence, of Darkness and Satan was compared to abstractions and illusions, like false beliefs and the bad credit that was currently plaguing the economy. Money itself (and perhaps commodification?) was also described as illusional, a kind of occult version of the Spectacle? Francis Bacon was evoked as a Hermetic Scientist who sought to illuminate material ignorance in a similar way. 


In addition to this Indian Kundalini Yoga and Tantra were deployed to shed further light on the Draconic Solar-Lunar dualism and the wisdom giving powers of the chthonic Serpent.


I felt this might have been stretching credulity a bit, and projecting modern occult concepts into the past, however some curious supporting examples were given, such as the symbolic resonances of the name of the Grail achiever Percival with ‘Parsee (Zoroastrian) Fool’ and ‘Pierce the Veil’. This was more convincingly backed by associating this with Elizabethan literary references, which used sexual innuendo in its talk of  the spear and its bearer, with its magical potency and power of penetration. There were also references to the wounded king and his blood, closely related it seemed to the blood of the menstruating woman and the wounded Dragon. All of which had the power of magical renewal. An interesting image was referred to which saw the contending horizontal forces of the Solar and Lunar powers turning a vertical axis in a spiralling motion. Arthur was related to the Great Bear, and the Pole Star, the guardian of this axis. All of which was suggestive but not conclusive.

Ending on light relief with the notion of Stella Artois as a kind of spiritual nectar, and Tony Blair as some form of anti-christ figure creating a secular version of these mysteries, that combined the worst aspects of political and religious dualism, the speaker brought the series to an end.

The talk was well received and most were sympathetic to the theses, with one criticism being the interesting comment that the ‘evil dragon’ was sometimes more attractive for ‘outsiders’ in rebellion than the Christian ethos of this Rosicrucian thesis. But the speaker had already stated that he was in many ways playing ‘angel’s advocate’ and was not necessarily supporting the cosy English Cabbalism of his historical narrative.

Likewise I wondered how the dissident ‘School of Night’ fitted into this thesis, a recalcitrant left hand path tradition? And from my own favourite paradigm, remembering James North’s earlier talk on Orphism and Dionysos, wondered where the Dionysian fitted into the equation. Perhaps as an alternative to the Dragon, given the Seven Headed Dragon form sometimes attributed to Bacchus, and Nietzsche’s Apollo – Dionysos opposition (also found in Robert Fludd’s work, which saw Apollo as Light and Dionysos as Darkness). Or given the late Greek identification of Apollo and Dionysos at a deeper level, in a more Orphic interpretation which would equate an androgynous Dionysos (often depicted in a boat) with the intermediary between Solar and Lunar, and the ship between the pillars.

Reflections Beneath A Dark Sun: Myth, History, Politics and Paganism
Treadwell’s Bookshop, Tavistock St W1 (www.treadwells-london.com)