View from the Big Hills

"It is to this Avalon of the Heart the pilgrims still go.  Some in bands, knowing what they seek.  Some alone, with the staff of vision in their hands,  awaiting what may come to meet them on this holy ground.  None go away as they came." - Avalon of the Heart by Dion Fortune

“ For the egg was now red-hot, and inside it something was moving. Next moment there was a soft cracking sound; the egg burst in two, and out of it came a flame-coloured bird. It rested a moment among the flames, and as it rested there the four children could see it growing bigger and bigger under their eyes. Every mouth was a-gape, every eye a-goggle. The bird rose in its nest of fire, stretched its wings, and flew out into the room. It flew round and round, and round again, and where it passed the air was warm.” The Phoenix and the Carpet by Edith Nesbit In the biography Dion Fortune and the Inner Light, Gareth Knight writes an illuminating chapter entitled “The Flight of the Phoenix.” Appearing towards the end of the book, the chapter summarises an important transformational point in the story of Dion Fortune and the Society of the Inner Light. Somewhat like a pressure cooker, the weight of circumstances—which had been building in the background since th...

“If magic isn’t for the common weal, what good is it?” - Alan Richardson, The Logos of the Aeon and the Shakti of the Age Service is a fascinating term which is often overused and misunderstood within the Western Esoteric Tradition. Gareth Knight explored the subject in his blog a year or so ago with a post entitled, In Order To Serve:- http://garethknight.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/in-order-to-serve.html Having pondered what he wrote, I thought I’d pull together some additional thoughts and provocations on the concept. Interestingly, if my memory of school Latin is correct, I don’t think the Romans ever had a word that quite captured our modern concept of service, at least not one that really captured it adequately. From what I can see, the Latin “servus” (which our modern day “service” comes from) meant “slave” – and just that. For the Romans there appeared to be an absence of the concept whereby service could mean a voluntary offering by free will of one’s ...