Here is a second extract from my recently published Avalonian Aeon, a multi-faceted autobiographical look at the complete Glastonbury experience that includes previously unpublished material from the archives of historical mysteries researcher Andrew Collins. This piece is a companion to the section on the Mary Chapel from a few days ago. Psychic questing in Glastonbury with a remarkably talented visionary named Bernard in the mid-eighties was crucial to the later development of his work and led directly to his interest in what may lie beneath the Giza plateau, a subject he covered in Gods of Eden and recently returned to with his spectacular book Beneath the Pyramids.
Andrew Collins
Both pieces are from the Avalonian Aeon chapter Aegypt and link Glastonbury and Giza. The section here has been edited to bring together paragraphs from different pages and excludes some material that links them together in the book. They certainly represent unconventional modes of investigation and I (and Andrew Collins) make no dogmatic claims as to the validity of the ideas. The material is nonetheless striking and therefore may be potentially stimulating. It ultimately served to lead Andrew Collins to something very tangible. This piece is a deliberate teaser, making mention of topics dealt with elsewhere. I would hope it may encourage you to buy Avalonian Aeon which can be done through the cover image on the right hand column from this piece or from the books website
“On April 9th 1985 Bernard was showing Andy his Mary chapel design. He drifted into the Egyptian zone again, stating emphatically that there is a chamber beneath the Giza plateau. Andy was familiar with the famous American psychic Edgar Cayce’s ideas. Perhaps primed by Theosophical and Rosicrucian input, he had talked of refugees from Atlantis travelling to Egypt and building the Sphinx and Pyramids. They also created a “Hall of Records”, an underground chamber filled with the lost knowledge of pre-deluge humanity. Cayce claimed that the place would be uncovered in 1998 and this momentous event would form part of a sequence of massive global transformations that would usher in a new epoch.
Serpent in the Sky was primarily an exposition of an immense corpus of esoteric work by the mystical polymath Rene Schwaller de Lubicz. It was he who had first suggested the possibility of water erosion on the sphinx. The man had spent fifteen years at the gigantic Luxor Karnak temple complex in Egypt. He and his team measured every inch of the place, recording each hieroglyphic and piece of artwork. Schwaller didn’t have the mindset of a typical archaeologist. He was part of a potent stream of European esotericism that is sometimes overlooked in Britain and America in favour of the Golden Dawn and Theosophical legacy.
He was particularly concerned with finding evidence of phi. Conventional history credits the Greeks with this crucial mathematical geometrical discovery. Schwaller became convinced that it was known to the Egyptians. He was clear that it was a glimpse into the working of the divine, the blueprint for reality.
In his later years he told his pupil Andre VandenBroeck that the basic material of Fulcanelli’s work on the cathedrals had been his own and the man he claimed to be behind the Fulcanelli myth, Julian Champagne, had been lent the manuscript and essentially ripped it off, adding material of his own and various associates. VandenBroecks Al-Kemi tells the full story for those who may be interested. There is no doubt that Schwaller was an alchemist. He had a fully functioning laboratory in his home of which photographs exist. Anyone who looks at his Egyptian work could probably see that it is coming from a very high level of insight indeed. Schwaller stated that “I could not have recognised the cosmology of the Pharaohs had I not known the medieval book of the cathedral”. In his own way Bernard rapidly went through a version of the same process, from the Mary Chapel to what he began to call the Crystal Chambers beneath Giza.
During the second half of April, Bernard went through an ongoing brainstorm download in which he received a detailed design and explanation for the Crystal Chambers in a similar manner to his Mary Chapel experience. Bernard came to believe that the underground complex dated from the astrological age of Leo, over 12,000 years ago. He didn’t really talk about Atlantis in the usual way. It was sufficient to think in terms of a previous cycle of an advanced civilisation that had all but disappeared through planetary upheavals. He referred to the “Elder Race”. Those dudes were a bit strange. They were etherial, extremely tall, viper-visaged, virtually albino types. They weren’t standard issue Homo Sapien Sapien. They weren’t ETs either. It was a now extinct line but it had bred into the current human race. Their Crystal Chambers were not a repository for books and conventional treasure but a living cosmological temple. The knowledge it held was the understanding of how the present universe came into being. It represented the form of the process of creation and the actual point of creation itself. The rites that Bernard believed to have occurred therein had a haunting otherwordly feel to them that was both archaic and futuristic. They maintained, harmonised, and adjusted the very form of the laws of nature as they functioned within the planet.
Drawing by Bernard G featured in Andrew Collins Beneath the Pyramids.
The whole complex lay beneath a mound island on a lake. At the entrance was a large rectangular panel of polished grey stone. Depicted on this in base relief, on the left, was a man facing right wearing an Egyptian style headdress, a skullcap with uraeus serpent. He held a staff with a curved top. Facing him was a lion with upraised wings, standing up on its hind legs. Ray-like spikes emanated from its stomach. There was a line of glyphs between and beneath the two figures. The leonine being seemed to be a form of the Mithraic Aion cosmocrator Lord of Time.
Artwork by Yuri Leitch inspired by an original drawing of Bernard G featured in Avalonian Aeon
The ground-plan was in the form of a twelve-pointed double hexagram. Domed-roofed chambers were situated on the apex points. On the floor were a series of concentric rings, slightly differently configured in each room. From their central point of emanation, there were also three straight yellow grooves cut into the floor that formed paths outward. The left and right grooves connected through doorways with adjacent chambers, forming paths that marked the twenty four sides of the whole design. The third central groove reached down a long corridor to the central chamber producing a total effect like the spokes of a wheel.
Painting by Bernard G featured in black and white in Andrew Collins Gods of Eden.
The central chamber was twenty-four sided. In the middle was a twelve pointed, twenty-four faceted pyramidion crystal, several feet in height. It was the “Knowledge Stone”. Its facets in combination represented all known colours, dimensions, aspects of reality etc. The last Glastonbury imagery Bernard had seen, at the climax of the first spiral of the zodiac quest, clearly recalled the Egyptian creation myth. Atum caused a hill of creation to arise out of the primordial ocean of darkness that preceded the first morning. The island became the sun temple of Heliopolis. At its centre was a black pyramidal stone with a quartz top representing the Ben-ben stone. The crystal reflected and refracted the rising sun’s rays each morning. This was a living demonstration of a cosmology showing how the one became many. It seemed that the underground Giza complex with its central crystal was perhaps the original temple of this myth. The Heliopolitan form of it told of the phoenix bird that alighted upon the stone at the start of each new epoch. Bernard had seen Glastonbury Tor, the Zodiacal phoenix, arising out of the waters. It was an extraordinary mixture.”
Design plan featured in Avalonian Aeon.
In common with the companion piece on the Mary Chapel, this extract from Avalonian Aeon has also been posted on the excellent Ishtar’s Gate site. Do check it out.
My recently published book Avalonian Aeon, a multi-faceted autobiographical look at the complete Glastonbury experience, includes previously unpublished material from the archives of historical mysteries researcher Andrew Collins. Psychic questing in Glastonbury with a remarkably talented visionary named Bernard in the mid-eighties was crucial to the later development of his work and led directly to his interest in what may lie beneath the Giza plateau, a subject he has recently returned to with his spectacular book Beneath the Pyramids.
Here is the first of a few extracts from Avalonian Aeon I will post here that link Glastonbury and Giza. They certainly represent unconventional modes of investigation and I (and Andrew Collins) make no dogmatic claims as to the validity of the ideas. The material is nonetheless striking and therefore may be potentially stimulating. It ultimately served to lead Andrew Collins to something very tangible. I would hope it may encourage you to buy Avalonian Aeon.
Andrew Collins
"Around this time, Bernard visited Canterbury Cathedral with his family and viewed what is known as the Opus Alexandrinum mosaic. He mentioned to his wife that there was a similar one on the floor in Glastonbury Abbey and it included a zodiac and lines set into the stones. Having virtually no knowledge of the abbey’s history he didn’t realise until he spoke to Andy that it no longer existed. He was able to see it still with his inner eye so clearly that he could draw it and discuss it in detail.
The Company of Avalon monks of Glastonbury Abbey as depicted in large painting on display in museum there.
The design on the floor of the Old Church referred to by William of Malmesbury and Bligh Bond’s monks was apparently reproduced in the new Mary chapel, signifying the position of the original building. John Michell had paid particular attention to it when suggesting that the abbey’s foundational geometry embodied the ancient wisdom code and represented the New Jerusalem celestial archetype during the Christian cycle.
Bernard saw an outer and inner circle. Within the two were twelve spheres, in four groups of three, containing symbols for the signs of the zodiac. In the middle of the inner circle was a square. Its corners could not be seen as they were cut across by a Maltese cross whose points reached out to the edge of the inner circle. From the sides of the square that were visible, four triangles reached out to the edge of the inner circle, indicating the cardinal points. Sixteen lines ran out from the centre of the design, through the twelve spheres and four triangles beyond its outer circle to sixteen small pillars along the base of the chapel walls, each about two feet tall, on which were further symbols. The twelve lines passing through the zodiacal signs could be continued out beyond the building to the locations of the fabled twelve huts and further across the Glastonbury landscape and beyond.
The twelve zodiacal spheres and central point were coloured gold by ochre tiles. The outer circle in which the spheres were set was red terracotta as was the Maltese cross and cardinal point triangles. Beaten lead lines marked the geometry of the design. Somehow the whole thing was to be perceived as in motion. Each part of the levels of geometrical design was revolving. The Maltese cross was moving at one speed, the triangles from the square at another. A series of colours was produced by this that came to form one colour. The colours also had sound correlations."
This text has also just been posted on the excellent Ishtar's Gate site but with only the grid plan diagram as visual accompaniment.
Check out the site for a wide range of topics concerning historical mysteries of mystical and magical interest.
It’s crop circle season. Consciousness starts to go a bit cosmic. In celebration of that I am re-posting a piece originally blogged-up a year ago that was intended to appear in my latest book Avalonian Aeon where it would have served to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of input the Andrew Collins psychic questing group were experiencing between a Glastonbury Zodiac intensive and the search for the seventh Meonia sword in the early nineties. I am still amazed at the manner in which his partner of the time, and our main psychic, Deborah Benstead, pulled her orgone material from the ethers. Space reasons meant it was eventually excluded but it will now feature in the follow up, Aquarian Phonenix, and is featured here as a taster of that work to come.
Andy has recently radically revamped his crop circle classic as The New Circlemakers. Why not buy an autographed copy from him at www.andrewcollins.com
This piece is a snapshot from 1991. It contains a few references to other things in Avalonian Aeon but is able to stand on its own. The original version of Circlemakers serves as its centre of gravity but I have given it my own flavour with the scene-setting, the introduction of some other relevant questing material and examination of the Jon King and Cydonia Barbury items. Deborah Benstead reviewed my orgone summary and helped fine tune it. Later on in Aquarian Phoenix I return to the subject of crop circles in the post Doug & Dave conspiracy obsessed Glastonbury of the late nineties. This is a lengthy piece so I have broken it up with a few piccies and, most excellently of all the Cloudbusting video. Enjoy.
THE CIRCLEMAKERS
‘We looked into the ethers and we saw that they were very much alive.’ Steve Hillage. Light in the Sky.
On July 11th 1991 a total solar eclipse visible in Mexico seemed to be the herald of a spectacular UFO flap in that country that it was claimed coincided with the start of a new epoch in the Aztec calendar known as the Sixth Sun. This timescale was later discredited but the idea helped create a particular atmosphere around the events. In Britain, the crop circle season had come round again. Since the mutation of the phenomenon following the appearance of the Alton Barnes pictogram the previous summer, much thought had been expended in explanations and interpretations.
The Native American flavour “Voice of Mother Earth” theory was proving very popular and drawing together interesting groupings of diverse fellow travellers with mystical eco-sensibilities. The indigenous peoples of the Americas had paid a lot of attention to the phenomenon. For the Navajo, corn is the primordial food, linked with the very process of creation. It features extensively in their prayers. Their Night Chant, featuring a Corn Pollen Prayer, was included on the Voyager space probe package in 1977. Everyone of a certain age will remember it. It contained a general representative greeting message from humanity featuring a star map saying “we are here,” a picture of a naked man and woman, Chuck Berry and Beethoven music, and so on. It’s understandable that weird manifestations in corn, believed by some to be extra-terrestrial in origin, would have an impact. Tribal lore on star ancestors became aired in public. Some crop formations were rumoured to be identical to designs featured in Native American semi-secret initiatory rituals.
After finishing writing The Seventh Sword, Andy increasingly turned his attention to crop circles, experiencing a resurgence of the kind of enthusiasm he had known as a young UFO investigator. By July ‘91 he was in possession of all known information on the subject and was planning a group outing. There had already been cases of researchers using psychics and meditational methods to try and interact with the phenomenon and getting interesting results. With our track record it seemed worth making an effort.
On Saturday July 20th the questing crew headed down to Wiltshire. The first crop circle I ever set foot in just happened to be one of the greatest classics, later becoming somewhat legendary. The national press, using the omnipresent Saddamspeak of the time, referred to it as the ‘mother of all pictograms.’ The story of its manifestation contained all of the elements of crop circle mythology. Barbury Castle is an Iron Age hill fort on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. It’s positioned roughly between Swindon and the Avebury area. On the night of the 16th/17th July local residents heard a huge rumbling sound and saw lights in the sky. There is an RAF base nearby and people were habituated to the kind of sights and sounds it regularly presented. This was something different. Not that far away, at Beckhampton, in the vicinity of Avebury and Silbury Hill, a group of circle watchers saw a variety of lights and a large dark triangular silent something passing across the night sky. All present were convinced that none of the usual explanations of planes, satellites and so on, remotely did it justice. One witness described the scene as being as spectacular as something from Spielberg’s Close Encounters
.
Spread over 12,000 square yards, the Barbury formation consisted of an equilateral triangle with smaller circular projections at its three points. There was a kind of large bull’s eye in the triangle centre. Two circles surrounded it, the outer one crossing outside of the triangle’s sides. Three lines linked the centre to the apexes. The basic appearance was of a three-sided pyramid, a tetrahedron. We all knew this particular shape only too well after the climax of the Zodiac quest.
A major storm and a steady stream of visitors had already dissipated the pristine clarity of the original formation by the time we arrived only a few days later. As we reached its centre, Debbie briefly referred to “orgonic” energy and the “language of sound”. Andy had created a group of about forty cards featuring black on white images of all of the major formations from the last few years. We took it to represent an unknown non-verbal language. The idea was to settle down in the middle of the formation beneath the little fluffy clouds, get into a meditational space, and invite communication with the phenomenon by filling our heads with it’s visible forms. The cards were passed round. Andy had brought our Tintagel sword along and struck it in order to produce a reverberating tone. We started to look at the cards. After consciously clocking each one, we briefly closed our eyes, allowing the after-image to arise. The bright sun greatly helped this effect. Spending three quarters of an hour doing this sort of thing is bound to change one’s state of consciousness. By the end though, we were more spaced than we might have anticipated. As Andy later wrote in The Circlemakers, ‘Paul Weston graphically described it as like having his mind completely scrambled.’
Not long after entering the formation, Debbie had started to feel that she was going down with flu. Her limbs were aching and she had a strange metallic taste in her mouth. I wasn’t feeling wildly lively myself. Alongside many tales of healings and mystical reveries, there are numerous accounts of unpleasant symptoms experienced in formations by even the most normal and sceptical. Other visitors to Barbury went down with a touch of the wobblies.
John Michell later claimed to have uncovered significant examples of sacred geometry encoded within the Barbury formation. He considered it to be a ‘divine revelation.’ Later critics suggested that he was using what could be termed idealised rather than accurate measurements of the formation to back up his argument. This was a charge occasionally made against some of his other work. Similar symbols were soon found in western occult lore. Brian Grist (who had witnessed the Beckhampton light display) examined in detail what was perhaps the closest fit. It came from the work of the mysterious Basil Valentine, the possibly pseudonymous author of The Twelve Keys, a work on alchemy first published in 1599. The tenth key is illustrated as a tetrahedral triangle with a large centre point and circles at its apexes. It represents ‘the heavenly stone of the third conjunction,’ the merging of sun, moon and mercury. It was the alchemical egg in the act of formation of matter. ‘The Barbury configuration was, then, a symbolic figure of the divine order that exists at the interface between one level of matter and another.’ The tetrahedron had already made me think of the Glastonbury Zodiac. I was reminded of Reiser on the Tor maze, ‘The morphogenetic field pattern for the embryogenesis of the world sensorium.’
Over the years a considerable variety of weird material has surfaced on the Barbury pictogram. For me, the most interesting concerned the case of Jon King, best-known in the nineties as editor of UFO Reality magazine. He had experienced a series of contactee episodes in the early eighties. They seemed to involve aspects of the classic abduction syndrome but also with a sense of parallel dimensions. Essentially, some ET types told King about their long-term plans for the human race between 1977 and 2013. This involved focus on a large triangular area of England centred on Barbury Castle, which is not exactly the most famous ancient site in the country. This area would receive “energy codings” to help prepare for “Decloaking”. A map drawn of the “Aquarian Triangle,” of which Glastonbury formed one corner point, also looked remarkably like the Barbury formation. There are obvious problems with this material. None of it appeared in print until years after the crop formation. It may simply make King a prime suspect for hoaxing it. I am personally willing to believe that he did have his strange experiences and that the map and mention of Barbury and the energy codings were part of it but that doesn’t mean I entirely accept the revealed ET agenda.
There was one response to the Barbury formation that was out there on its own in terms of cosmic weirdness and the mythology it generated. In 1976 a NASA space probe had extensively photographed the surface of Mars. One of the resulting images gained lasting fame. It seemed to show a large rock formation in the shape of a humanoid face. In 1980 computer work was done to make it clearer. The surrounding landscape was more closely examined. A small group came to believe that a series of features showed signs of intelligent design and were basically the remains of a Martian city. The main publicist of the ideas, Richard Hoagland, was quite an interesting character. He had been responsible for the message from the human race that had been sent into space with the Voyager probe. Hoagland came to believe that the face on Mars was a similar message.
The geometrical relationship between the different sites of Cydonia (as the “Martian city” came to be known) were examined in detail. Lots of lines were drawn on maps. All manner of numerical data was extrapolated. Our old mate the tetrahedron seemed to be much in evidence. This is strange enough to be going on with. Weirder still is the claim that the ritual landscape around Avebury, that includes Silbury Hill, is laid out to the same Cydonian plan. Assorted sites have the same proportional distances, alignments and angles between them. The inference is of an ET contact somewhere along the line, even if not directly in Wiltshire. Some of the Martian geometry had been spotted in various crop circles from 1990 onwards. The Barbury pictogram supposedly contained the whole package to an extent that blew Hoagland’s mind. One line of the triangle was not totally straight and this had suggested to some that the formation was a hoax. Hoagland actually found more Martian geometry in the distortions, triumphantly proclaiming it to show a definitive coded calling card from Cydonia. He was convinced that it was a clear message that the builders of Cydonia have returned. The fourth edition of Hoagland’s The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever supplies all of the necessary material for those with a taste for such things.
This typifies the excellence of the crop circle mystery for me. I don’t have a problem with the idea that the Barbury formation may have been created by humans with some esoteric inclinations. I also accept that it still may have served a purpose beyond the conscious understanding of its creators that sent ripples out in spacetime in a number of different directions.
Barbury began a day where we tried to enter, or see from a good vantage point, as many formations as possible. It was certainly striking to see clearly for ourselves what other observers had already written of, the definite proximity of the circles to assorted ancient sites, barrows, hill forts, chalk figures etc. As her physical condition deteriorated, something else was going on in Debbie’s brain. The brief reference to “orgonic” energy was the first indication of what was to follow.
It was later clear that things were already in motion the night before we left for Wiltshire. Debbie thought she saw a book moving on it’s own on a bookshelf at Andy’s home. It was standing out a little way from the row it was in. Its removal revealed another title that had fallen down behind and had been hidden from view. Andy retrieved a book dating from his UFO researcher days that he didn’t even realise he still had. It was Sky Creatures: Living UFOs, by Trevor James Constable, a work better known by it’s original title, The Cosmic Pulse of Life. I was familiar with it. Steve Hillage had taken a chapter title from it to name the instrumental track Ether Ships on his Green album (listen below for some cosmic consciousness).
Constable’s story was uniquely strange. It began with his meeting an early contactee named George Van Tassell who was the focus of gatherings of up to seventy people in a huge chamber beneath a place called Giant Rock in the Southern Californian desert. A mass prayer and chanting session got Van Tassell in the right state to channel the Space Brothers in a weird booming voice. Amongst a whole load of the usual ufological material, one idea forcefully struck Constable. It was stated that there are invisible living forms in our atmosphere that are not spaceships. Not only that but pointing a camera at the sky exposing infra-red film in dry locations would record their images. Constable moved on from Van Tassell and further fed on a diet of ideas derived from Rudolf Steiner.
In 1957 he went out into the desert and conducted some meditational invocations of the blobby dudes in the sky, who he referred to as “critters,” whilst a colleague waited with a camera. Amazingly enough they photographed over a hundred biological looking images and more standard UFO-type thingies (one result seen above). And these “bioforms” were pretty big, sometimes miles long. Constable believed them to have a kind of consciousness and intelligence.
The theoretical side of his work was considerably accelerated when he came upon the ideas of the heretical scientist/psychologist Wilhelm Reich who believed that he had discovered a universal life-force that he called orgone. Reich is perhaps most notorious in the history of psychology for his theories on orgone as the energy of sexual libido, most spectacularly present and active in orgasm. He believed that the free-flow of this process was essential to good mental and physical health. He later constructed a device known as an orgone accumulator, made of alternating layers of organic and inorganic materials to harness and stimulate the universal life force. Contention over it’s veracity with the American legal system led to the appalling tragedy of Reich being jailed and his books burned in a public incinerator, a disgraceful fate for a man who had fled Nazi Germany in search of freedom. He actually died in circumstances some have deemed suspicious in prison in 1957.
The basic unit in Reichian biophysics is known as the bion. They are produced when sunlight interacts with living tissue in a manner similar to photosynthesis. The resultant radiation permeates the body, helping to stimulate neurological impulses and their paths through the body. Reich carried out experiments where he viewed these bions to his own satisfaction through a microscope. The pulsings of the bion processes emit ultra and infrasound depending on the rates of frequency vibration. This demonstrates on a microcosmic level a similar phenomenon to that found when opposing ionised masses create thunderstorms. Some bion energy is held in place by a kind of electromagnetic field around the human body. It is present in the controversial photographs taken using special processes of the “aura.” Orgone on a different frequency escapes from living bodies on waves and finds it’s way either up into the atmosphere or down amongst the geo-magnetic fields on the surface of the earth.
The behaviour of orgone in the atmosphere was later summarised by Andy in his book, The Circlemakers. ‘When these particles are forced to remain in close contact they react with each other’s wave vibration to create even higher frequencies of radiation. These ultra-wave particles become ionised and so accumulate and condense themselves into undetectable masses that may be likened to cloud formations. They exist undetected in the upper atmosphere and their masses can vary from the tiniest particle to vast amoeba-like clouds of etheric plasma, constantly changing in size and shape. They are a dense and complex miasma of orgone, incorporating not just ultra-wave particles, but also known energies such as ultrasound and infrasound, electromagnetism and radioactivity.’ ‘These orgone masses move of their own accord by accumulating further wave particles of the same or a comparatively higher frequency, while discharging lower frequency particles -- they are constantly evolving, changing and transmuting like atmospheric amoebas.’
The same energy that animates the intelligence, consciousness, and memory of life-forms on the planet, particularly humans, ie orgone, is also contained within and animates the bioforms. The consciousness of a bioform is made of the same matter as the consciousness of a human, the only difference being that the bioform is a discarnate consciousness, it does not have a physical body. In this way, there may be an interface between human consciousness and the bioforms. This is because non local communication or resonance is a recognised process whereby particles of the same or similar nature can communicate and alter each others state across distances.
Some bioforms may become drawn downwards by the pull of higher orgone potential on the ground. A ritual landscape where natural orgone or chi dragon force has been deliberately manipulated would generate a strong attraction. They may split and react against each other in a process of excitation and oscillation. In coming ever nearer to the earth’s magnetic field they may start to become partly visible as light. They may ionise the air creating spirals and electromagnetic emissions around them. This kind of thing can lead to a full range of assorted light phenomenon, audible sounds, hums, whistles, and ultrasound, hence numerous reports of dogs howling for hours in the dark on nights when formations appeared. When the bioform hits the ground it will make ultrasound pulses or pressure waves that are a wave in the air that can imprint its pattern on any form that can hold it, hence Debbie’s phrase “the language of sound.” Most ancient sites constructed of inorganic and organic components such as stone and earth can act as orgone accumulators. This earth energy builds up and discharges along a line of least resistance. A descending bioform might trigger such a discharge and then be drawn some way across the landscape by it, thus earthing itself not right on top of an ancient site but in the general vicinity. This process seems to have been understood by the ancient Chinese geomancers who manipulated chi through the so-called dragon paths by subtle landscaping engineering.
In Reich’s orgone studies he began to differentiate between OR, Orgone Radiation, the natural state, and DOR, Deadly Orgone Radiation, a warped-out distorted form analogous to the stagnant types of chi familiar to Feng Shui practitioners. DOR could be dispersed by the legendary Reichian device immortalised in the Kate Bush classic Cloudbusting. (See video beneath featuring Donald Sutherland as Wilhelm Reich)Some of the after-effects were far from pleasant. It seemed that DOR might manifest in crop formations. If a bioform landed in a place of particularly potent earth energies it might produce a kind of orgone overdose that would cause electrical equipment to malfunction and produce varying symptoms in humans and animals. This might go some way to explain why there are accounts of both good and bad physiological effects seemingly stimulated by crop formations.
It is important to make clear that before entering the Barbury formation Debbie knew nothing about Wilhelm Reich and his ideas at all. Her extraordinary understanding of the possible relation of orgone to crop circles, which would emerge from that point on in a series of spontaneous outpourings during the summer of 1991, came as a download from nowhere. It demonstrated clear knowledge of the very essence of Reich and Constable’s work and even suggested new developments. It wasn’t a brief moment for the sake of a greater work either. This knowledge changed her life and later spurred her on to study the man and his work in depth and to gain a degree at university. Reich remains a significant influence on her, as best demonstrated in her 1998 Inward Revolution.
After dark we continued to search for weirdness. Many fields were full of watchers, hoping for a glimpse of the phenomenon in progress. As we moved amongst them I could easily see that we were in the midst of a rapidly evolving mythology. Many people had already made their minds up that the formations were the work of extra-terrestrials. Headlights visible on a distant hilltop were stated by some to belong to a van full of “hoaxers” who were on the loose that night and seemed to be conceived of as shadowy intelligence operatives involved in disinformation. A collective mindset of high expectation was clearly present. It seemed like the slightest prosaic thing could easily get seized on and interpreted exotically. That state is a mixed blessing. Receptivity to genuine weirdness is increased but critical faculties are decreased, leaving the problems of figuring out what had been misidentified, imagined, or hoaxed. The whole scene was like a second coming of psychedelic sixties ufology, Warminster and all that.
The matrix of Britain’s greatest and most sustained UFO flap was not that far away. Some of us with a bit of history in our heads could make some interesting connections. A genuine mystery of powerful strange noises and earthlight phenomenon had become interlinked with the ufological zeitgeist to produce an outlandish “event sociological”. For around a decade the hills around Warminster were visited by hordes of people settling down for night-time sky watches. Lights in the sky were seen by the thousand. The nearby presence of army bases that consistently flew helicopters, used flares, and generally set off all kinds of stuff that produced light effects in the night sky made little difference to the UFO cultic mentality. Arthur Shuttlewood’s books bring the folklore of the area, assorted ghosties and weird events into the brew. Ill-defined leylines became involved. In the end, messages from benevolent space brothers warning about ecological catastrophe capsize the whole thing into unreadability. The first offering, The Warminster Mystery, remains at least a classic mood piece. Sceptics came and joined the sky watches. Cynical reports were made. Hoaxes of various kinds were perpetrated. It really is quite extraordinary how much of the later crop circle scene was anticipated in the Warminster episode.
Andy was aware of this and made the point in The Circlemakers. Perhaps there are more fundamental links that touch the genuine core mystery. Andy’s only UFO sighting had actually occurred in the Warminster vicinity in 1976. This had been a strange light ball in a foggy night sky near the village of Upton Scudamore. Shuttlwood’s UFOs: Key to the New Age featured accounts and photos of crop damage circa 1970 discovered on more than one occasion near Cradle Hill, one of the key sky watching sites, the night after light in the sky activity. These included swirled circles and triangles. One of the earliest reported crop formations in the modern canon had appeared in 1983 near the foot of the other old sky watchers Mecca, the impressively huge and atmospheric Cley Hill. Much of the orgone hypothesis could be applied to Warminster.
There was a hint of dark forces at work when a supposedly sacrificed sheep was found near the Barbury formation. One of the crop-watchers we met was an old friend of Andy’s, the medium Rita Goold. She would go through a phase of believing that the Friends of Hecate had relocated to Wiltshire and were involved in the circles phenomenon. I never bought into that one but having found an obviously strategically placed dead rabbit at the apex of a spectacular formation much later on in 2003, I am certainly aware that people of diverse mindsets move amongst the night fields of Wiltshire.
In 1991 I did not feel at home in the crop circles world and had no desire to get more involved. Andy was relentless. We were still navigating along tramlines in cornfields at gone 2am, looking for more formations. Eventually he realised that the complete darkness made it increasingly unlikely we would find them. Silbury Hill was fairly close. Its car park was to be the resting place for the night. As far back as 1969, in The View Over Atlantis, John Michell had suggested that the manner of alternating layers of material in its construction were sufficiently similar to Reich’s orgone accumulator to imply a connection. Perhaps Silbury Hill functioned as a giant orgone device in the landscape. It did rather seem that it was at the very heart of the crop circle world. Alex Langstone and I opted to climb the hill and stay the night on it. There was no way we could be so close and resist it. The others slept in cars.
The question of why the phenomenon centred itself primarily in Wiltshire has inspired a lot of speculation. One of Debbie’s most intriguing suggestions of the time was that some great cycle was coming back round. It was known of in some way by the ancient peoples of Britain and similar manifestations of the bioforms had occurred towards the end of the megalithic era. This gave a hint as to why we were being drawn into the subject. It seemed to connect with the Green Stone era, the Akhenaten Exodus, the partial shutting down of the ley system and so on. Back in the late seventies, Graham Phillips had produced huge amounts of psychic material concerning that time. He spoke of the megalithic culture as the Laan People and a concept called Nyan, which he specifically compared to orgone. They were able to store it in stone for limited periods. Thought forms could be likewise deliberately held in place, alive and resonant through the use of this energy.
More formations were scheduled for Sunday. By mid-morning most of us were totally satiated with circles. Andy and Debbie carried on. The rest of the group returned to Essex. What was the immediate legacy of my experience? Later that Sunday, back in Southend, my nose began to run like a tap. I thought I’d got a cold but didn’t have any of the other normal symptoms. I took some medication that normally managed to dry me up. It didn’t work. I took some more. No difference. For nearly eight hours my nose ran like never before in the whole of my life. I was forced into walking around with rolled-up tissue stuffed up each nostril. It was hideous. From that day on, I became susceptible to the curse of hay fever. Prior to that I had never known as much as a sniffle. I’d wandered about for days in summer fields and slept outdoors on numerous occasions. Nothing, even when I could have been considered to be open and susceptible due to multiple drug effects, lack of sleep, and so on. Now, after being scrambled in that divine revelation sacred geometry crop circle by DOR, my immune system was permanently mutated. I could readily conceive of better results. For the time being, I had little enthusiasm for the subject.
Yuri Leitch's depiction of the third Key of Balance.
There's been a lot of talk in Glastonbury recently about the alleged terrestrial zodiac.Beyond its perimeter there is supposedly an effigy of a guardian dog. One aspect of its magical mysteries was dealt with in my last blog post. Here is another. This extract from my upcoming Avalonian Aeon features a previously unpublished episode in the psychic quest for the Seventh Sword partly dealt with in Andrew Collins book of the same name.It expands the existing magical mythology concerning the possibility of Mesopotamian travellers in Somerset and may be of interest to dragon enthusiasts.
A short version intro just isn't possible but this piece is sufficiently self-contained to be understandable despite some references to other material outside it.The fundamental point is that finding a magical sword that would complete a set also involved obtaining three mysterious artefacts known as Keys of Balance. Two are discussed in Andy's book. They were made of plaster glazed with a turqoise finish and measured but a few inches in length. The first was in the form of a caduceus, the second, a Celtic cross. The third manifested in the Glastonbury locale in the immediate run-up to the first Gulf War and proved to be a doorway not just to the eventual finding of the sword but to the emergence of the Nephilim material that would feature in Andy's masterpiece From the Ashes of Angels.
So here, featuring the spectacular psychic talents of Andy's partner of the time, Debbie Benstead (now Cartwright), here is an extract from the section entitled --
BABYLON RISING
In the lead up to Christmas, knowing that another Glastonbury New Year visit was looming, Debbie inevitably found herself looking back on the events of 1990, in particular the ongoing dragon theme that had led to the two Key of Balance eggs amongst much else. She became agitated with the feeling that the dragon was even more important than we had realised. There was something that we had so far not understood. She wondered what was coming next?
It had been perplexing that we had received two Keys on subsequent weekends and then had to wait so long for the third. There had been a number of occasions when things appeared to be set up for number three and then not quite happened. The actual form it would take seemed mutable. The destiny matrix kept reconfiguring. Debbie believed that a set of the artefacts had been constructed during the twentieth century by a man who was now dead. The one that would manifest as the third Key would determine massive future karma. The mechanism of all this was impossible to understand. How the set had been put into hyperspace as Terma type treasures could barely be speculated upon. It was clear that whatever the hell it was we were up to it was not separate from the bigger world drama. The Gulf crisis might well be a significant factor.
From December 23rd, Debbie began to repeatedly see an image of an arched stone bridge and an eastern, maybe Sumerian, looking priest leaning over it towards the river beneath in which lurked a huge, monstrous, open-mouthed dragon. The priest was tossing a red stone into its’ gaping jaws. It was an offering made in order to be able to cross over the bridge. The feeling was that this character had physically come to Glastonbury from Mesopotamia bringing dragon power of some kind with him. Every time the scene appeared it would conclude by turning into turquoise stone. This seemed to be a clear Key of Balance indicator. It was all connected with very powerful Glastonbury dragon energies.
In a dream she found herself present in the scene which she now knew was somewhere in the Glastonbury vicinity. The bridge had been located. She could hear chanting. The last words of the sequence were “Ehieh Metatron” and each time they repeated, a blinding flash of light was seen on the water. Debbie ran across the bridge saying urgently, “it’s there, we must get it.” She put her hand down into muddy water by the riverbank only to find her arm then being eaten by something beneath the surface. The excruciating pain caused her to leave her body and watch herself screaming. A procession of ten Sumerian-looking men appeared, crossing the bridge, repeating the chant for the third and final time. An unknown person, connected in some way with our group, threw something into the water. This sacrificial offering was sufficient for the beast to release Debbie. Some of the Sumerians helped pull her from the water. Her arm had mutated. There was a blue disc stuck to her stump on which was a picture of a dragon being fed the stone. The perplexing thought arose that just because we got it didn’t mean we’d succeeded, in fact we failed because they got across the bridge. The same dream repeated twice.
The chanting words heard were clearly Jewish Qabalistic and both associated with the sephiroth of Kether. Why would they be recited by alleged Sumerians? There were all kinds of nuances in the air. Abraham, the founder of Judaism, originated in the famous Sumerian city of Ur. The Jews took much from the Babylonians (heirs to Sumeria). Metatron, so the story goes, had once been a human being named Enoch who had attained unique archangelic status. A book concerning him was present in some versions of the Bible and he was of some significance in underground esoteric lore. As was so often the case with Debbie’s psychic material, there were seeds of future developments in what seemed to be peripheral details.
A further vision then followed on the 29th where Debbie was standing on a windswept hilltop. A strange young man named Eserkyll was with her. He had dark skin and hair and sported a bizarre inverted cone-shaped brown and gold hat. He also wore a thick necklace and a long white robe, enlivened by zigzag and square designs with a kind of squashed eye in the middle. He told her that an oath should to be taken on the hill on which they stood and then, from the starting point of a tree, the path of the beast needed to be walked to the crossway. “On oath the bridge is in sight.” There was talk of the River Pharet.
There was enough information for Andy to understand where we were being directed. Oath Hill is a well-known site in the region of the girt dog and also lies in an area that Somerset folklore says was once terrorised by a dragon that used to fly between Curry Rivel and Aller. It was slain by a man named Hext. In Loham Church, the spear allegedly used to kill it is displayed on the wall. Janet Roberts, wife of Tony, had looked closely at the landscape of the legend and believed it to hide a dragon effigy to add to the girt dog as a Zodiac guardian figure. There is an article by her discussing it in Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem. About nine miles long, the serpentine creature has a head at each end, one of which was at the foot of Oath Hill. Churches in the general vicinity do seem to contain an abnormal amount of carvings of dragons and associated saints.
The area is full of evocative history and legend that strongly hints at ancient mysteries. It was in this area that Alfred the Great was based during the darkest days of the war between Wessex and the Vikings. After his victory, the mighty Dane Guthrum and his warriors were baptised at Aller, which is situated on the back of the girt doggie. As for offerings to the beast, it was also in the vicinity that the famous tale of the burnt cakes comes. Some have speculated that they were a ritual burnt offering put into the mouth of the Zodiac dog in a manner similar to Greek offerings to Cerberus the guardian hound of the underworld.
In a semi-dream state Debbie saw a place she named the Temple of the Blue Flame. It was in Mesopotamia and constructed around natural flame from the earth. The disc was seen tumbling through blue flame. Something untoward had occurred there. A presiding priestess had been murdered. Some group of travellers had carried the flame away. They had the Key.
As the Glastonbury visit got nearer, Debbie’s feelings on what was involved became more strongly focused. She believed that during the Christmas/New Year period a kind of astral video of an event that really happened replays. A Sumerian boat sailed up the River Parrett. It left the Key and loads more temporarily available there. The vessel sailed on to Glastonbury. It was red, white and green, colours associated with the travellers’ home city. They came at a time of unusual flooding that was primarily natural but also amplified in some occult manner by the powerful magical contingent. They stayed on board for a while before making landfall. Subsequent imagery such as the Ship of Solomon derives from these people. The great hero Gilgamesh was the son of one of them, who in turn was connected to the original form of Noah.
It was clear that a Sumero-Babylonian Key of Balance hung in the air. If we wanted it we had to bring the boat back to us. The third Key would take us to the root of our myths, in particular the dragon. The retrieval of the first Key had involved releasing a dragon. The second involved facing one. For the third, we needed to make an offering to it. They all represented very archaic magical acts.
On New Year’s Day the group diverged somewhat. Some had other business to attend to. I accompanied Andy and Debbie out towards Burrow Mump. An interesting dream of hers from the previous night was the first point of discussion. She was standing on Oath Hill in the company of a warrior king named Gwythyr who was directly descended from the wandering Mesopotamians. His name meant Head Dragon. He was also known as Uther and was the son of Hext who was also Hercules. He was the father of someone called either Amhearty or Amahita, which were versions of Arthur.
This was a bewildering blend worthy of Mary Caine. We were being invited to contemplate a series of potential associations. Gwythyr is primarily known for his role in the Mabinogion story of Culch and Olwen. He was betrothed to a beautiful maiden who is abducted by Gwyn ap Nudd. Arthur intervenes and rules that the two shall fight each other for her hand every Mayday until doomsday. The two protagonists appear to represent summer and winter. Their potential prize Creiddylyd, in some variants Cordelia, is the landscape goddess, sovereignty. Things start to get a bit complex when it is realised that she is daughter of Lludd who likewise features in a tale of Mayday conflict involving the two dragons that get buried at Dinas Emrys. Gwythyr was appearing for us in the middle of a two-headed dragon. If he was a Head Dragon, a pendragon, then it seems that he and Gwyn and their contention represent another pair of fighting dragons. There was a sense of thematic continuity in this from the first two Keys and all the way back to Cornwall. To suggest that these Celtic warrior types were descended from Sumero-Babylonian wanderers was a weird variant on the recurring eccentric British Israelite theme.
Marduk.
Debbie was only just getting warmed up for the day though. Having mentioned the previous night’s dream, she turned her attention to the present moment, picking up on the girt doggie. It’s not the guardian of the Zodiac, it’s the creator. This is where the mysterious boat travellers first let loose the power they had. It was in the form of the dragon because of “Mardek”. She began to use this alternative to the usual Marduk. Bel Mardek is god of light like the Celtic Lugh. More than that, he’s the oldest god of light, the first source of power for all sun kings and sun men, all god of light imagery. He was light, and a serpent, born of a fish. The ancient middle-eastern travellers believed life came from the sea. The old ones came and lived in the sea before any gods were formed in man’s mind. Baal, son of Dagon, came from the sea as knowledge and light. When priests acknowledged Bel the first knowledge began. Bel was the serpent of knowledge, symbolised by a flame above the head. He turned the wheel of man’s advancement. Something went wrong. They believed they’d got the wrong apple, temptation, and banished him, cutting off his arms and legs, making him into a serpent. Some priests stuck by him. They left in a boat and travelled to Britain, bringing Bel’s serpent power. At Burrow Mump they first let it loose. It’s not a dog, it’s a dragon. The dog is a later layer like Uffington’s horse over a dragon. The Gilgamesh legend reflects this. The Merdek name carried thru to the Druids as Myrrdin. The Merlin archetype is a wielder of dragon power. “Bel Merdek” was an initiatory title passed down that had mutated into Merlin. In Wales in April, at the foot of Dinas Emrys in the Grove of the Magicians, Myrrdin had spoken of the distinctive difference of the third Key. Our journey to the dog was becoming a journey to the origins of the source of the Matter of Britain and our work.
Dion Fortune as Sea Priestess by Chesca Potter. Brean Down in the background.
There were definite echoes of Dion Fortune in this material. The idea that Arthur , Merlin, and Morgan were titles passed down from an Atlantean lineage was one we had already made some kind of connection with in Cornwall. I noted that the location she used for her novel The Sea Priestess was at a powerful primal promontory called Brean Down by the Bristol Channel just before Weston super-Mare. It would have been a location that foreign seafarers in the Somerset vicinity would surely have been aware of. Debbie believed that the lineage connected by Dion Fortune to Atlantis was proper to Sumeria. It came to this country from the Middle East and not the mid-Atlantic. Its more ancient antecedents were not immediately relevant.
Burrow Mump
On a muddy, rainy, and windy New Year’s Day afternoon, we climbed to the top of Oath Hill and did our best to visualise the boat coming up river. Gwythawr appeared. He spoke of the two-headed dragon that flew between the nearby Crimson Hill and Red Hill. The nose of the Mump is the flame of fire from the dragon’s mouth. He asked, “do we come to strangle Cerberus or do we come to offer her?” We replied, “offer”. Having earlier been linked to Hercules, this was a clear link to his myth cycle. We were instructed to cross the bridge where the two rivers Tone and Parret meet, the area of the mouth of the dog or dragon. Gwythawr’s final advice was to, “always follow the path of the dragon for at the end of that path is the source of the power you’ve been given.”
On the bridge we offered up an artefact that had once been found in the usual bizarre circumstances by Bernard. It was a serpent bracelet with an orange stone set into it. We went to stand where the rivers meet. At first nothing seemed to be happening. Debbie then began to hear a tone coming from the ruined church atop Burrow Mump, which was clearly visible from where we were. It was the same sound that a Meonia sword made if struck. This was an obvious encouragement for Andy to use a sword he had with him for a similar purpose. To Debbie’s psychic hearing, the sounds met. Orange flames were seen ascending from the church tower and coming down to the water. Along each of the two rivers, a dark green shadow moved along, underneath the water. They converged at the meeting of the rivers, where the fire had touched the water. Debbie then started to hear the chanting from her dream of the procession.
We rushed back to the bridge, anticipating the appearance of the Sumerians. There was no sign of them. Debbie rapidly became confused and then upset. No instructions were forthcoming. We began to randomly search on the riverbank for the elusive Key but to no avail. Time passed. The mood was becoming increasingly despondent.
Suddenly, a typically strange Sumero-Babylonian type appeared on the opposite end of the bridge, identifying himself as Utnapishtim. The procession stood behind him but not very vividly. This was indeed an A List magical celebrity. He features in one of the most ancient extant myth sagas of the human race, the Epic of Gilgamesh, recorded on cuneiform tablets in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh but much older and found in varying forms across the Middle East. Gilgamesh is a proto-hero whose long journey in search of immortality finds later echoes in stories of the labours of Hercules, Jason and the Argonauts and the Grail sagas. He may have originally been a real historical king who ruled from the city of Uruk around 2700 BC, an interesting date for Glastonbury Zodiac enthusiasts. Within the cycle is a flood tale that is clearly a major influence on the Bible story, including an Ark full of animals. Utnapishtim (known as Ziusudra in earlier Sumerian) is the main protagonist, a Babylonian Noah. He was once a king and seeds a new wave of the human race. Utnapishtim and his wife were made immortal after the flood. He was taken by the gods to live forever at "the mouth of the rivers." This makes him a kind of Ascended Master although I’m not aware of any New Agers channelling him. I felt it was interesting to put him alongside Melchizedek who had made his presence felt over the previous New Year.
This was an obvious further development of some of the fragments of material which had come out over the previous week where Gilgamesh and Noah had been mentioned along with a flood. The hero was indeed descended from Utnapishtim but wasn’t his son in the known versions. It suggested Ark connotations for the Sumerian boat.
Utnapishtim swept his arms through the riverbank rushes a few times. “Where did you find Moses?” he said. Aha! This set us off into frantic investigation amongst the rushes. It was Andy who found it. Debbie’s initial response was not jubilation but tears. She shook her head saying, “No, this isn’t supposed to be this way, this is wrong,” shuddering with an intimation of the path that had now been laid out ahead. There was no escaping Saddam’s rebuilding of Babylon and what was returning with it.
So what was this strange artefact? What did it depict? It was obviously part of the same batch as the first two Keys. The plaster and turquoise finish were identical. It was circular, about an inch and a half across. The design carved upon it was faded and difficult to discern at first but it was undoubtedly Debbie’s repeating vision. Despite her earlier successes with the first two Keys, she was profoundly shocked to see her imagery physically displayed in front of her, especially as on this occasion it was so distinctly unusual. There was a mountain in the background. A bridge stretched over an expanse of water. A robed figure standing on it, lent over the handrail to put a small spherical object into the gaping jaws of some dragon/crocodile type creature in the water. There was a tree by the right end of the bridge. What did it mean? They came down from the mountain and crossed the bridge over four rivers. The figure was feeding the dreamstone, the word the oracle speaks, back to the land, the dragon serpent, the beast, the father. Everything we do he will take from us. Our fruits will be offered to him. If we want to cross the bridge to where they’ve come from that’s the price we pay. Some kind of sacrifice might be involved. The hand that gives the offering could be torn off by the beast. It would be a long time before the immensity of what that really meant became clear. In the short term, Debbie was convinced that the final Key would act as a homing beacon for the seventh “black” sword. We wouldn’t have to go and dig it up somewhere. It would find us. All we had to do was ensure that certain things were set in motion and to keep calling to it.
Back in Essex, after yet another extraordinary New Years Day, Andy and Debbie retired for the night. The three Keys had been brought together for the first time in the bedroom by a mirror. Before long, a small very bright ball of powerful dark blue energy appeared out of the darkness, seeming to arise from the combined presence of the three artefacts. It was pulsating like a snakes tongue, sensing, waiting. Debbie realised that she was paralysed and could barely speak to alert Andy about what was occurring. It moved towards her. One side of her face became ice cold. She had trouble breathing. This was seriously scary. The small ball of light entered her head, slowly moving down through her body. She began to hear a deep, slow, voice that sounded as if it was echoing through immense caverns. It wasn’t speaking directly to her. She was overhearing something but could only hear some of the words. The energy finally left through her feet and she was released.
A feeling of powerful lingering presences in the flat remained for days. After a week, one night around 5 am, Debbie became aware of not being asleep anymore. It felt like the bed was floating but this was not unpleasant. A sudden sense of urgency made her feel it was important to sit up. She then realised that she was incapable of moving. Looking in the direction of the window, it seemed to disappear in glowing darkness. It was as if the night came through the window. It had a very long face with glowing eyes, long pale hands with long fingers that came ever nearer, making snaking movements across her body. The night then tapped it’s hands together, uttering a strange incantation that sounded like “ulab anhadre”. Debbie tried to force her face away feeling that if she looked for too long she would become the darkness.
Shemyaza crucified upside-down in the constellation of Orion by Debbie Cartwright.
In commemoration of the anniversary of the death of Aleister Crowley, here is a short piece that tells the remarkable little-known story behind the publication by Earth Mysteries Press of his funeral service, known as The Last Ritual, in 1989.
The basic story is self-contained but also an extract from my work in progress Avalonian Aeon and thereby contains references to other material that I have deliberately left to serve as a teaser for the bigger work.
It is worth briefly stating that the Green Stone referred to in the text was the centre of what may well be the greatest paranormal drama played out in Britain during the twentieth century. It involved a psychic quest for a talismanic jewel, full of magical power, dating from the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, that was passed down through the ages through an illustrious chain until being buried at the time of the Gunpowder Plot and then rediscovered in 1979. I was fortunate to be involved in the extension of that story, the quest for the Seven Swords of Meonia, later recounted by Andrew Collins.
Crowley played an enigmatic role at certain points throughout the proceedings that my Avalonian Aeon will feature in greater detail than previous versions. Here then is the section on Perdurabo enduring beyond the end.
“Alas the Master; so he sinks in death. But whoso knows the mystery of man Sees life and death as curves of the same plan.” Aleister Crowley.
Barely had 1989 begun when an amazing story set my head on fire. Whilst I’d been moving towards my Glastonbury Qabalah, events had been occurring in Egypt that were outrageous and enigmatic in the extreme. It had begun when Earth Mysteries researchers Paul Devereux, his wife Charla, John Merron, and Sue Boyd-Lees had bought a house in Brecon to serve as a base to run courses and organise excursions. A cruise journey to Egypt was arranged to check out some of the prime locations. A number of unusual and interesting people soon booked up. Marion and Gaynor Sunderland were going. It was decided to take the Green Stone along. Caroline Wise was also involved.
Shortly before departure, the Devereuxs were presented with a strange discovery. Near to their new home was a house where the Ley Hunter magazine was published. During renovations, its owner had found a long discarded shoebox in the attic. He felt that the contents might be of interest to them, although he didn’t really know what they were. Caroline Wise certainly knew. It contained the original material for Aleister Crowley’s funeral service, known as the Last Ritual, previously believed to be lost. There were uncorrected proofs, with corrections by Lady Frieda Harris in pencil, not set in type. There was copperplate artwork by her as well. When later photocopied, the otherwise invisible word “hypnos” could be seen upon it. It was a remarkable discovery in any circumstances. Being on the verge of a trip to Egypt, scene of Crowley’s greatest revelation, rendered it all the more unusual.
Caroline felt it would be good to acknowledge the magical strangeness of the situation. Part of the tour itinerary included a dawn meditation at the Great Pyramid. She suggested reading some of the funeral rite aloud there. The Giza plateau is a supreme necropolis. It would be on November 1st, a time in the western magical calendar very much considered to be a feast of the dead. Her plan was accepted. The journey began.
In Egypt, during the underworld hours prior to the November 1st dawn, Caroline dreamt of Anubis. In the form of a human body with a jackal head, he lay on a slab in a black chamber. He sat up, seeming as if ready to speak. Before any words could be heard, an alarm clock broke the dream. A later check revealed that her partner of the time, back in England, had exactly the same dream that night.
The group assembled under the gaze of armed guards. Special permission had been obtained to be present on the Giza plateau. It was one of those periodic times when the place is off-limits to tourists for various reasons. About thirty people sat down in a horseshoe shape directly in front of the Great Pyramid. They tried to best cultivate a meditational space by closing their eyes and relaxing.
Paul Devereux began to read from the last rite, from Crowley’s Hymn to Pan.
“Thrill with lissome lust of the light, O man! My man! Come careering out of the night Of Pan! Io Pan!”
Caroline felt the urge to open her eyes. Her attention was immediately drawn to the striking sight of a group of jackals that appeared around the lower levels of the stepped edifice. They scampered around and then one picked it’s way up a little further, until taking up a sitting position right in the centre of the triangular facade. This was more than a bit odd. Something then made her look upwards at the apex of the pyramid. A figure was sitting there. It was Aleister Crowley. He was wearing a turban and a red and white striped pyjama number, similar to an outfit he was famously photographed in. He sat with arms folded out in front of him, slowly rocking from side to side. Despite the great height and distance he was clearly visible, and therefore somehow of giant proportions. Caroline later described the apparition as “inhabiting space in a strange way”. The vision was not just a brief flash. It seemed to last for a few minutes at least. The experience was strangely neutral. One part of Caroline’s mind calmly registered that she was seeing Aleister Crowley sitting atop the Great Pyramid but there were no feelings of surprise, curiosity, amazement, fear or exhilaration.
John Merron had seen the jackals as well. As the reading commenced, he saw two of them climbing the pyramid to also take up a central position, as if guardians of a portal. He likewise found his attention moving upwards to see Crowley in the same Arabic clothing. To John though, he was standing and strangely gesticulating, as if engaged in some mysterious ceremonial summoning. Both Caroline and John briefly looked away and then Crowley was gone. The Devereuxs had seen something of the figure as well and readily identified it as Crowley. One group member who had chosen to stand apart from the meditation saw a flash of blue white light behind one of the other pyramids at the time of the reading. The rest of those seated on the ground, including “professional meditaters” from California had not felt the urge to open their eyes and missed the astounding manifestation.
A few months previously I’d pondered the saga of Helen and the Beast. Crowley had a role in the Green Stone story. It had seemed to be a negative one. I didn’t totally believe that. Almost a decade after those events he had manifested again, in the immediate proximity of the stone, and there had been nothing malevolent about him. Nobody cross-referenced dates at the time but I later found what I took to be significant correlations. The funeral material had been discovered on October 15th. Andy wasn’t aware of this, but he spent the following week going over old events in detail, as he prepared his booklet prior to delivering his lecture at the Thelemic Conference on October 22nd. The group left for Egypt on the 24th. Crowley appeared on November 1st. This was the same date that Andy had been instructed to be at the Abbey of Thelema in 1979. I was sure that Andy’s renewed interest in the Helen story was not separate from something that was building up and had also expressed itself in Cairo. Something told me I was being drawn into all this for a good reason. I trusted the process completely. It would be nine years later, in the 93rd year of the Thelemic epoch, at Glastonbury, before I finally understood.
Coming in 2010.
And, by way of conclusion, some poetry from the end of Crowley’s life in 1946. My thanks to Robert Coon for pointing me in its direction.
Out of the night forth flamed a star – mine own! Now seventy light-years nearer as I urge Constant mine heart through the abyss unknown, Its glory my sole guide while spaces surge About me. Seventy light-years! As I near That gate of light that men call death, its cold Pale gleam begins to pulse, a throbbing sphere, Systole and diastole of eager gold, New life immortal, warmth of passion bleed Till night’s black velvet turn to crimson. Hark! It is thy voice, Thy word, the secret seed Of rapture that admonishes the dark. Swift! By necessity most righteous drawn, Hermes, authentic augur of the dawn!
Andrew Collins has been investigating the evocative mythos concerning a relic of a lost civilisation lying beneath the Giza plateau for twenty-five years. His distinctive slant on what is generally known as the Hall of Records was featured in his 1998 work Gods of Eden.
Much publicity was generated in the nineties by the theories propounded in The Orion Mystery by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert which suggested that the three Giza pyramids deliberately mapped out the form of the stars of Orion’s belt. This concept has been so widely repeated that many now take its veracity for granted. Bauval contributed an undoubtedly outstanding work, Secret Chamber, examining the history of the Hall of Records myth.
Andrew Collins pivotal Cygnus Mystery proposed an alternative star alignment theory and an epic online debate with Bauval followed on Graham Hancock’s website forum.
By their fruits ye shall know them. Andy’s Cygnus work has led him to discover and investigate a cave system beneath the Giza plateau not previously catalogued by the Giza authorities. In an audacious adventure worthy of Indiana Jones, he and his wife Sue entered some way inside it, discovering indications of human habitation predating the time of the pyramids.
The imminently available Beneath the Pyramids tells the whole incredible tale. Although the glittering gold of Tutankhamen is absent this epic saga really does have the potential to lead to the greatest discoveries in the history of archaeology.
Andy produced a teaser You Tube video of cave footage which he has now removed on the advice of his publishers following the beginning of what may well become a prolonged debate with Giza archaeological supremo Zahi Hawass who is disputing Andy's conclusions.
Paul is the author of Avalonian Aeon, Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus, Mysterium Artorius, The Glastonbury Zodiac and Earth Mysteries UFOlogy,, Glastonbury Psychogeography, The Michael Line, the Qabalah and the Tarot, Atargatis, William Blake and the Glastonbury Gnosis, The Occult Battle of Britain, and Glastonia Aegyptiacus.
Paul is available for lectures, tailored Glastonbury tours and Reiki initiations.
