View from the Big Hills

  I don't normally react deeply or positively to Methodist hymns. As my favourite Gospel singer, the late Larry Norman, sang in the early 1970's, " I don't like none of  those funeral marches, I ain't dead yet!" As a child, Methodists always came across as being even nicer than Anglicans. More a case of "cake and more cake" rather than Eddie Izzard's "cake or death." However, recently, when I heard Irish songstress Joanne Hogg sing the first two verses of an Iona song, "Empyrean Dawn," my heart melted and my spirit soared: "How wonderful this world A fragment of a fiery sun How lovely and how small The smallest seed in secret grows Thrusting upward and so soon The bidding of the Light The bud unfurls into a rose The wings within the white cocoon Are perfected for flight The migrant bird in winter fled Shall come again with spring And build, in this same shady tree" Beautiful imager...

Margaret Lumley Brown was one of the finest trance medium’s of the 20th Century. However, for me her most important life experience was her training, service and work with Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light. While I am fortunate enough to know people present and deceased who worked with her, I never met her and am often left with a feeling that she would have been a great person to have had round for a cup of tea and a slice of cake! Alas, I never had that chance. She corresponded with Arthur Conan Doyle and some other notable figures. Fortunately Gareth Knight has published some excerpts of her poetry, psychic experiences and “communications” in his book “Pythoness”. The “communications” have the strange depth and resonance that are typical of contacted work. It remains a long standing wish of mine that one day her work will be widely and publically available by book or the internet for seekers to enjoy and ponder. Following a short excerpt in “Pythoness” Gareth Knight has rece...

"You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters." Bernard of Clairvaux - Epistle, French Abbot, Saint and Co-founder of the Knights' Templar Rule

Somebody recently asked me what was the correct way to pronounce a particular letter in Classical Greek. There was a difference of academic opinion on the letter in question. My response was that I don't much get concerned about the correct pronunciation of classical greek, latin or hebrew. The intent and meaning behind it should really be the paramount focus and concern. If I had more time to spend on research I may hold a different view - but I don't! In terms of esoteric working, it only becomes a real problem when there is such an extreme difference in pronunciation that other participants in your working don't recognise what you are intoning or saying. That's pretty rare.To make a illustrative comparison, a Geordie will still understand a Liverpudlian accent in 99% of cases and vice versa. Somewhat surprisingly the discussion reminded me of my Gran. Let me elaborate. My sister and I went to different schools. She went to a state school while I went to private...