Literary Diversions
So what have I been up to? For reasons I won’t go into I have become quite absurdly involved with John Milton’s Paradise Lost. This was partly because of a nudge from the Greater Unknown, partly because of the rolling thunder of Milton’s verses, and partly because it is a…
Tempus Fugit
Something like nine months has passed since my last update and I had an enquiry wondering if all was well with me. The answer is yes, things are mostly well.I am fast approaching 69 years old and each summer is more precious than the previous summer. Last winter seemed endless…
C. S. Lewis: The Planets
A few posts back I briefly reviewed The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis. As a world-class scholar of medieval literature he was not only informed about the medieval worldview, he was intensely moved by it. This is a feeling I share. As a lifelong student of Kabbalah and the Hermetic…
A History of the Tarot
In November of 2018 I gave a talk at the Bristol Theosophical Society on the History of the Tarot. I thought I could use the content to make a video, so here it is. I apologise for deficiencies in production – I will attempt to do better next time.
Dion Fortune / V.M.Steele
Over the years I have given the literary output of Dion Fortune a goodly share of my time. I have read about three-quarters of her occult non-fiction and all of her occult fiction. In most cases I have read a book (e.g. The Mystical Qabalah, Psychic Self-Defense, The Sea Priestess,…
HGA
I have found my Holy Guardian Angel to be sly and subtle. As I cannot be instructed in what I do not comprehend, I must be led to comprehension via an accretion of vocabulary, new concepts and unfamiliar imagery. I must become a fit receptacle, and so I must be…
The Discarded Image
Those who are interested in the esoteric and the occult tend to read books written by others in the field. I did this myself. Back in the early 70s I read a great deal by Crowley and Levi and the various authors of Golden Dawn teaching material (mostly S.L. Mathers).…
The Extended Tree
Most students of the Hermetic Kabbalah will know (sometimes obsessively) about the Golden Dawn and various splinter offshoots that carried that tradition into the period between the two world wars. WW2 was hugely destructive to esoteric traditions in Europe. The history of the generation that began again after WW2 is…
Tree of Life (“Ilanot”) Database
My friend Sally Annett has been kind enough to point me at this database of Kabbalistic diagrams, many of which are based on the Tree of Life. http://ilanot.haifa.ac.il/site/?page_id=11
Paradise Lost/Gustave Dore
I have spent months reading Paradise Lost, and because I tend to deep-dive into topics, I have been reading around the poem and the poet. The story of Adam and Eve in Eden is an amazing story that is fundamental to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (although the story in the Koran…