View from the Big Hills

In Summer Term 1911, a young Violet Firth joined Studley Horticultural College For Women in Warwickshire. Gareth Knight's book, Dion Fortune and the Inner Light, dedicates a whole chapter to this part of Violet's life. Alan Adams (writing as Charles Fielding), Janine Chapman and Alan Richardson all touch upon aspects of this time with varying degrees of success and accuracy. With the recent improvements in records accessibility and research capabilities, Knight's telling seems by far the most accurate . However, the other works remain of interest and use. A photograph of the College from the turn of the last century is pictured below, giving a sense of some grandeur.   It was at Studely College that Violet allegedly met Evelyn Heathfield who would become a lifelong friend and stalwart. However, there is also some suggestion that the two may have been family friends before Studely. It was also here that she would meet the allegedly overbearing Dr Lillias Hamilton, War...

“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 ...