View From The Big Hills

Continuing my series of posts on the inaugural lectures of the London Group, included below is Lecture 3, which Alan Adams presented at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London on the evening of 7 th May 1975. Like all healthy esoteric fraternities, much changed and developed in the thinking and practices of the group over the next 4 decades. Some elements are now dated, but essentially this lecture remains of interest historically and  to any seeker after wisdom. It is after all one of a handful of inaugural lectures which hooked the “fish” who subsequently joined the three adepts who seeded the group from Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light. This is where it started.  ELEMENTARY ESOTERIC ANATOMY Clearly, the world and humankind were once very different from what they are now. As the Earth developed, so did the bodies of humankind. In every one of us there was developed a response to each phase of evolution — a vehicle to enable us to live and work in the conditions of...

Going through my London Group archive papers this weekend, I came across a simple guide to drawing your own Tree of Life. This was first published in 1975. I remember following a similar set of instructions while I was working through the Outer Court programme in the 1980s, although this was by then metric!  In these strange times of COVID-19, self-isolation and quarantine, readers may enjoy experimenting with their own drawing skills. Here are the instructions:-   Materials:             Sheet of paper. Pencil (preferably 4H) . Ruler. Compasses.   Stage 1:                   Draw a vertical base line AD, say 8 inches long.   Stage 2:                 Mark the centre point B.   Stage 3:          ...

"Let us feel and obey the urge aroused by the great need of healing the serious ills which at present are affecting humanity; let us realize the contribution we can make to the creation of a new civilization characterized by an harmonious integration and cooperation, pervaded by the spirit of synthesis."  - Roberto Assagioli, Founding Father of Psychosynthesis. Will Parfitt first introduced me to Psychosynthesis in the late 1980s when he came along to talk to my North Kent / Charlton House Green Circle group about his then relatively new book, "The Living Qabalah". I had just bought his even newer book with the unreplicable title, "Walking Through Walls." "Walls" looked at a range of different systems and methodologies for overcoming those things which block us from reaching a greater potential. Star Trek, Psychosynthesis, Timothy Leary's "Circuits of Living" and Qabalah were some of the diverse range of topics cover...