View from the Big Hills

Just outside Thomas Traherne’s Hereford, in the heart of the Welsh Marches, lies the tiny village of Kilpeck. You could miss it in a blink if you are driving into or out of Wales. However, the area known as the Welsh Marches is a strange and magical hinterland. Like many borderland areas, it is rich in its history and mythology. “The Battle of Evermore”, written and performed by Led Zeppelin and accompanied by Sandy Denny, truly captures the in-between nature of this part of Britain in a way that only few other artist have been able to. Cheltenham singer song-writer Johnny Coppin also managed to nail it with some of his music. Kilpeck is perhaps best known for its 900 year-old church which hosts the world’s most famous Sheela Na Gig. While there is little evidence to support the view, for many Sheela Na Gig represents an aspect of the pagan goddess, in full control of sex and birth, unbridled by the controlling influence of Abrahamic patriarchy. This sheela, set high ...

In the appendices of the original first two editions of Mysteria Magica, published by Llewellyn, Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips include some beautiful excerpts from Edward Carpenter’s epic poem, “Towards Democracy”. They say of the poem: “That great and noble poem shows forth the phases of psychosophical development, and the functions and faculties of the psyche, in profound clarity; at the same time it is not a general treatise, and the subject-matter is seen and felt through the idiom of Carpenter’s personality and no other. The student to whom this work appeals is urged not to limit his knowledge of it to the passages given here: he should acquire a copy of the complete work, in which much of vision and power will supplement his study of Volume IV of this series (The Triumph of Light). The given passages, illustrative of the Adept’s quest and attainment, were for many years employed by the Aurum Solis as the basis of one of its recommended mediation seque...