If you're in Glastonbury over the August Bank Holiday weekend I am presenting a sequence of 3 lectures at the Glastonbury Fayres event in the Assembly Rooms featuring material from each of my 3 books over the 3 days.
Entry to just the Fayre room is £1, Talks Programme £5 Daily, 2 Days £9 or 3 Day £12.50 (there are other presentations, including one by Yuri Leitch on the Monday).
Saturday 28th. 1:15 - 2:15 Avalon of the Heart From Mysterium Artorius, an examination of Dion Fortune’s poetic concept as portrayed in her book of the same name expanded to include a wider sense of the greater ‘British Music’ that the great writers and musicians of Albion have evoked and how we can respond to that.
Sun 29th 2:00 - 3:00 Jung and Crowley A comparative look at The Book of the Law and the Seven Sermons to the Dead. The great psychotherapist had some remarkable mystical experiences in his early years that reflect similar influences to those that led to the creation of Crowley’s magick. A unique blend of material featured in Paul’s book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.
Mon 30th 2:15 - 3:15 Aegypt From Avalonian Aeon, the previously untold spectacular story of a crucial psychic questing moment in the development of Andrew Collins work that linked the mysteries of the Glastonbury Zodiac with Giza and ultimately led to his recent work Beneath the Pyramids
As well as the lectures, I will be selling signed copies of my books and generally hanging out. Be great to see you!
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Avalonian Aeon, a multi-faceted autobiographical look at the complete Glastonbury experience that includes previously unpublished material from the archives of historical mysteries researcher Andrew Collins.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.
My thanks to Liz Williams of Glastonbury's fine Witchcraft shops (Magic Box, Cat and the Cauldron, and Witchcraft) for this very gratifying review of Avalonian Aeon on the shop blog at
'Paul Weston has produced a rare and interesting work – a book about a personal spiritual journey that is erudite, entertaining, intelligent and authentic. It’s also very funny. Usually, spiritual autobiographies tend to be somewhat unconvincing and you often get the impression that they are heavily edited and written to impress the reader rather than to give an accurate account of someone’s history with the esoteric.
Weston, however, doesn’t try to impress. This is the story of a long relationship with one place in particular – Glastonbury - but also the wider spiritual elements of the British Isles. His encounters with the various elements of the Avalonian ontology are oblique, often peculiar, frequently unresolved, and to this resident of Glastonbury, have the ring of truth. Weston covers a fairly long span of time, from the Stonehenge free festivals of the late 1970s and early 80s, to the contemporary Glastonbury of the 2000s, and because this is someone’s real life, as opposed to a glossy New Age account, Weston also takes a look at the music scene, at the drugs scene, at various ways of simply making a living and getting by, which includes a stint in the civil service. He doesn’t attempt to whitewash his own experience, or to present it as anything other than it clearly was.
Nor does Weston appear to have any particular agenda that he is trying to push. Unlike a number of authors, this isn’t a book written to promote angel workshops or law of attraction courses. It’s an experiential account which covers a wide range of esoteric interests, from Aleister Crowley to Katherine Maltwood’s Glastonbury Zodiac, to John Cowper Powys, to the Kabbalistic Tree and 2012. It looks into psychic questing, visionary exploration, and the Geordie response to the divine feminine during an all-night session up Glastonbury Tor. It is grounded, somewhat cynical and commendably open-minded at the same time, which is quite a feat to pull off.
Anyone interested in Glastonbury and its history, or the history of late 20th century occultism in Britain, really ought to give this book a look. As someone who runs an occult business in Glastonbury, I see a lot of esoteric books, many of which are quite simply clones of one another, written to satisfy the demands of publishers. AVALONIAN AEON is, however, a stand-out.'
I shall be presenting a number of events in the Witchcraft shop's new venue, the gallery in Chilkwell St Glastonbury. Further details to follow.
For those finding the astro climate a tad intense, it may be worth pondering the words of Basilides as transmitted by Jung in Seven Sermons to the Dead who spoke of Abraxas as, “ undefinable life itself, which is the mother of good and evil alike.” “He is the brightest light of day and the deepest night of madness.” “He is both the radiance and the dark shadow of man.” “Abraxas generates truth and falsehood, good and evil, light and darkness with the same word and in the same deed. Therefore Abraxas is truly the terrible one.” “He is the monster of the underworld, the octopus with a thousand tentacles, he is the twistings of winged serpents and of madness.” “To fear him is wisdom.” “Not to resist him means liberation.”
A lot of material was pruned from my Avalonian Aeon in the final edit. Some pieces are quite long and capable of pretty much standing alone even where some of the contents do refer to other parts of the book. The section on Rebirthing leading in to an account of my full-on 33rd birthday experiences was originally entitled Rebirthing and the Immortal Yogi and featured an account of Leonard Orr’s guru Herakhan Baba. I have reproduced the second part of it as originally written as the enigmatic controversial being has gathered around himself an incredible mythology full of archaic motifs and was also rather photogenic, hence the inclusion of numerous piccies.
Om Namaha Shivaya.
Just as Dianetics evolved into the realms of Scientology, Rebirthing expanded its scope. “Ultimately we may learn that rebirthing is a physical experience of Infinite Being which is not exclusively to do with the birth trauma.” It becomes, “a biological experience of religion”. For the breathing technique to work most effectively one must allow the great surging flow of bioenergy that arises to be felt as divine prana. This is accomplished simply through surrendering into the feeling that such a thing can really happen. The more one can luxuriate in the exquisite subtlety of the force at work, the more miraculous it feels. Orr came to feel that Rebirthing was not simply a self-help cult but an authentic American yoga.
Leonard Orr
The main factor in this expansion of Rebirthing was that Leonard Orr had a guru. One of the most notable developments of the sixties saw the meeting on the Californian west coast of the new wave of self-actualising psychology with the mystical techniques of the east. Rebirthing was perhaps the most flamboyant of all the emerging self-help therapies. It was only fitting that Orr sung the praises of someone who could rival Sai Baba in terms of the outrageous claims made on his behalf, for he was, “the Creator of the universe”! Paramahansa Yogananda’s beautiful masterpiece, Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946, had introduced incredulous western readers to Indian traditions of an immortal “Yogi Christ” named Babaji. This being has supposedly existed since the beginning of the world and been hailed as a Mahavatar, a special class of supremely great divine incarnation. He can be seen as a manifestation of Shiva.
Paramahansa Yogananda.
Babaji as depicted in Autobiography of a Yogi.
Whenever necessary, Babaji has created a human body for himself and appeared, sometimes briefly, sometimes for extended periods. He has impacted in significant largely secret ways on the life of humanity. For example, during the missing years, as well as being led by his uncle Joe to the Druids at Glastonbury, Jesus Christ was initiated by Babaji in India.
Lahiri Mahasaya
Yogananda’s own teachers had personal experience of the Mahavatar and considered him to be the head of their lineage of spiritual transmission. It had begun in the 1860’s when Lahiri Mahasaya was called by unusual means to a cave in a mountain where he met a young man who awakened in him memories of a past life as a devotee of Babaji, who he then realised was the man in front of him. That night Mahasaya experienced an initiatory event where Babaji seemed to materialise a sumptuous palace around them. Its purpose was to somehow fulfil and transcend Mahasaya’s previous karma. Whatever it was that “really” happened, Mahasaya returned to the world as a great saint in his own right. An energy and a teaching had been transmitted to him, which he in turn was able to pass on to others. It was known as Kriya Yoga. There were postures and breathing techniques. In combination with the mysterious energy that could be transferred during an initiation, the process was capable of rapidly accelerating spiritual progress. Mahasaya spread the energy to many.
The mighty majestic Sri Yukteswar
The most prominent of his pupils was Sri Yukteswar. He too experienced a meeting with Babaji and wrote a book under his instructions. This 1894 work concerned itself with the meeting, in harmony, of East and West. Yukteswar was also told to expect a pupil who would visit the west. The prophecy ultimately had a dual fulfilment. Firstly, his student Yogananda, who was visited by Babaji to confirm his mission, achieved notable success in establishing Kriya Yoga in America. Decades later, another Yukteswar graduate, Paramahansa Hariharananda, also settled in America to spread the good work.
Thanks to George Harrison, the Kriya lineage appeared on the Sgt Pepper cover. I find it a nice little Kali Yuga/Aeon of Horus interface to see Sri Yukteswar next to Crowley. Two men of more different temperaments it would be difficult to imagine. It may also be a significant sign of our epoch that a representation of Babaji was placed between William Burroughs and Stan Laurel.
Babaji is believed to be able to manifest simultaneously in more than one place. Separate from the accounts accepted by Yogananda’s organisation, The Self Realisation Fellowship, are other stories of a miracle-working saint, active mainly in northern India, between about 1890 to 1922, known as Hairakhan Baba and considered by his devotees to be a manifestation of the immortal yogi. The Hairakhan region carries a rich mythology that bears comparison with Arunachala and again hints at what once might have been believed about the Tor. Its name derives from Hiriya Khand which means “sanctified area”. There appear to be traditions there that seem to speak of the vastly ancient epoch before the current continents had drifted apart and the Himalayas had come into existence. There was a terrifying emanation of Shiva named Virabhadra who had a thousand heads, eyes, and feet, and was armed with a thousand clubs and arrows. He was sent from Shiva to create a sacred centre in the primordial landmass. As it split, the violence of the process was such that it appeared to be a new creation of the world. The great mountain range eventually emerged from the turbulence. Shiva and the gods had originally lived on Mount Meru, the World Mountain. The Hairakhan tradition considers its local Mount Kailash to have been that place. After the upheaval they retreated to another Kailash, the currently famous one, also held sacred by the Tibetans.
Hairakhan Kailash
In the new epoch, people settled around Hairakhan. Somehow it represents the meru danda of the world. This refers to the spinal column channel that links the chakras in the human body and the places in the world where the deities manifest, what might now be called planetary chakras. If we are to believe the theories of Kenneth Grant and Robert Coon it could serve to connect Glastonbury and Arunuchala amongst others.
Shiva married Sati and brought her to a place at the foot of the mountain where there used to be a lake. When she arrived she planted a tree that still stands today, the only tree rising from the Gautama Ganga river. The river had originally run underground but Shiva brought it partly to the surface as recognition of one of the seven Rishis, Gautama, whose practice of yoga in the region had been exemplary. Here we have a good example of the world mountain and tree motif linked to Ursa Major. At the mountain’s summit a simple Shiva sanctuary has been established with an altar of bells and a lingam. At the base of Kailash, near the river, lies a cave that supposedly dates back to the time of the creation. Passages within it lead deep underground. Legends say the Gods dwell therein. Shiva periodically retires there for meditation.
In 1890, on several consecutive nights, a bright light was seen atop Kailash, which stayed for some time and then vanished. Local villagers took it as a divine sign and assembled on the summit to sing bhajans in expectance of its return. The light did indeed reappear and a human form stepped out from it. Remember the tales from Arunachala of the lights in the sky and the mysterious beings who lived in the hill and hung out with Ramana Maharshi? It seems an outlandish story for sure and we can’t possibly prove its veracity a century later. It represents nonetheless a tale seemingly from a bygone age acted out in recent times. There are photographs of the mysterious being who emerged from the light. He has some kind of biography, later building a small ashram at the nearby town of Hairakhan. People who knew him left their accounts behind.
All agreed he was miraculously strange. He was seen to apparently go for six month periods without drinking, eating, or sleeping. Stories claim he could make it rain and cause springs to rise by sticking a finger in the ground. One devotee claimed to have flown through the air with him for forty kilometres. To some was granted a vision of his body of light. Others saw weird beings of light around him. In August 1922 he walked onto the waters of a deep, swift river, sat yogi fashion, and disappeared in light.
In June 1970 a local villager named Chandramani dreamt of his long dead father, who had been a devotee of Hairakhan Baba. The old man implored him to visit the holy cave at the foot of Kailash because the guru had reappeared there in the form of a young man. Chandramani awoke at 4am and immediately set off for the cave. He found an archetypal venerable yogi type, big bushy white beard etc, sitting in meditation. The old man told him to go home and come back in three days. When he returned he was somewhat stunned to find a remarkable looking young man in the cave. Imagine an Indian beardless Jim Morrison with dreadlocks, dressed like the yogi aspect of Shiva. The earlier Baba had manifested in light on the world-mountain top. Now there was a seemingly miraculous appearance from the cave system at its base dating from the primordial epoch of creation, a place where Shiva was said to periodically retire. In some sense the mountain with its subtle inner column of light was intimately connected with the true form of the saint. There he was, like Guenon’s Lord of the World.
View from the cave of manifestation
Within a few weeks, as word spread of the mysterious youth, he climbed to the temple at the top of Kailash and sat there in the lotus position for forty five days without moving, taking no food or water and having no toilet break, a feat similar to the kind attributed to Hairakhan Baba. Or so the story goes. There are witnesses to this unlikely performance. A famous photo was taken during the yogic marathon. Contemplation of it can supposedly be a powerful practice in itself, as the mysterious vibrations of the event it shows emanate from it. It appeared that he had clearly demonstrated supreme mastery of yoga.
Photo taken during the alleged 45 day yogic marathon.
The young man stated that he was the old saint returned in a rejuvenated body and laid claim to the ashram properties. In a court case that could probably only happen in India, he was legally acknowledged as Hairakhan Baba or Herakhan Baba as he is also often known. At that time there were still people alive who had been with the earlier version and testimonies were given of strange experiences during the interim period suggestive of a prophesied return and secret signs of its nature that the new youth seemed to clearly fulfil. Whoever he was, it seemed clear that he was no ordinary mortal. As with the original Baba, there were suggestions that he was Babaji himself. He later gave strong indications of this to Leonard Orr.
Famous photo often referred to as the "Angel of the Lord".
A British psychic shown a photo of the youth before he became better known picked up on a Glastonbury Abbey past life connection of some kind and a Joseph of Arimathea link. Hmm. Yogananda said that Babaji initiated Jesus in India. It’s all very tenuous but something subtle yet significant seems to be trying to suggest itself.
Those who spent time in his company in the following years attest to his endlessly changing appearance. It has often been said that he never looked the same two days running. A deluxe collection of photographs, Babaji Mahavatar, bears eloquent testimony to that. There was something strange about his body. Some saw it dissolve before their eyes into a 2001 stargate with a pulsating Sanskrit Om symbol at its centre. One devotee experienced the guru walking right through her. His personality was often playful like a child, occasionally fierce, always enigmatic.
The combination of his presence and the archaically sanctified surroundings of his domain often opened peoples’ doors of perception onto extraordinary vistas. A modern devotee spoke of an experience in 1976 of seeing the external appearance of the ashram and landscape disappear to reveal a kind of Indian paradise full of saintly yogis engaged in eternal ceremonials and chanting. It’s not unlike the sense of the true form of Glastonbury Abbey, where the monks of the Company of Avalon maintain the perpetual choir and constant devotions. This likewise can occasionally be glimpsed by the fortunate.
The fundamental teaching of Babaji was Truth, Simplicity and Love. This was to be lived through an uncomplicated series of disciplines concerned with constant elemental purification. Everyday life, especially in the west, can expose an individual to numerous noxious influences from pollution to the psychic garbage endlessly emanated by the traumatised masses. Elemental purifications can help restore the natural disposition of vibrant equilibrium. Rebirthing was an appropriate air practice. Herakhan Baba affirmed the veracity of conscious connected breathing. Orr came to believe that his apparently spontaneous, random discovery of the technique had been guided by Babaji. There was bathing before sunrise and sunset. Many westerners, including Leonard Orr, were somewhat challenged beyond their comfort zone to rise at 3am to go and bathe in the river. This extreme isn’t transportable to urban life but regular bathing accompanied by conscious connected breathing can effectively cleanse more than just the physical dirt of the day. There were fire ceremonies. Orr became a great advocate of the virtues of cleaning the aura and energy body by sitting in front of a fire for hours, days or even months. This may be accompanied by offering food to the flames and reciting mantras. Exercise and diet sort the earth element, along with communion with nature; time spent in forests, and so on. The most important of all the practices taught by Babaji was constant repetition of the mantra Om Namaha Shivaya. These elemental disciplines were added by Orr to Rebirthing events and trainings. He encouraged people to try and incorporate them into their lives.
Babaji at Benares by Paolo Polli.
Leonard Orr was emphatic that Herakhan Baba was Babaji and was physically immortal and was here to give us a demonstration of what that meant. The striking youth seemed to have come out of nowhere, simply walking out of Shiva’s cave as the mythos told it. Nobody ever came forward to claim he was really so and so from some village or another. If he’d lived in your vicinity you’d remember him for certain. He had a navel so most would assume he was born from a woman but if he was a being who could mock-up a body from the void any time he wanted that doesn’t make much difference. So who or what was he? Many are agreed that Babaji was an infinitely mysterious awesome being of great beauty. He did, however, die of a heart attack on February 14th 1984. Bummer. In fact, many things he said to his other devotees over the years make it clear he always knew he was playing a gig of limited duration.
Babaji Mahavatar by Paolo Polli
Orr believes that Babaji can have more than one body at the same time and that he was already functioning in another one in 1984. New contenders are appearing with increasing regularity. Orr’s passion for immortality remains undiminished. He has hung out with other yogis who he believes to be centuries old. On this particular subject he may well be a fruitcake but try the thought experiment of being willing to believe he might just be telling the truth and see where that gets you.
As for Herakhan Baba, his popularity and spiritual influence are increasing. Many have been drawn to him through Rebirthing. He has also reached thousands through the spreading of the bhajan chants from his ashram around the world in concerts and recordings by the superb Goma. A performance by them can be considered to be a potent transmission of their guru’s blessings. There are many lovers of Herakhan Baba in Glastonbury and more than one fire pit inspired by him.
Image of the guru at the Samahdi(tomb) of Herakhan Baba.
I am lecturing in Glastonbury on Sunday July 25th between 15:45 to 16:45 on some rather interesting material featured in my book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus. (Above image of Lam by Yuri Leitch is taken from the cover).
My presentation is part of a Glastonbury Mystic Fayres event happening over both days of the weekend. Daily Entry to the fayre only is just £1.00 with £5.00 for a daily talks pass & £9.00 for a weekend, including entry.
Topics covered include: Was Aleister Crowley an ET contact? Who was the New Age Nazi who stood for US president and later claimed to be communicating with the Space Brothers? The early contactee scene was full of people with occultist leanings. Hear about George van Tassell, George Hunt Williamson, Trevor James Constable, John Keel, and Jacques Vallee. Discover the vital consciousness factor in the UFO mystery.
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.
