Wednesday 25 August 2010

August Bank Hol weekend Paul Weston Glastonbury lectures



If you're in Glastonbury over the August Bank Holiday weekend I am presenting a sequence of 3 lectures at the Glastonbury Fayres event in the Assembly Rooms featuring material from each of my 3 books over the 3 days.

Entry to just the Fayre room is £1, Talks Programme £5 Daily, 2 Days £9 or 3 Day £12.50 (there are other presentations, including one by Yuri Leitch on the Monday).


Saturday 28th. 1:15 - 2:15
Avalon of the Heart
From Mysterium Artorius, an examination of Dion Fortune’s poetic concept as portrayed in her book of the same name expanded to include a wider sense of the greater ‘British Music’ that the great writers and musicians of Albion have evoked and how we can respond to that.

Sun 29th 2:00 - 3:00
Jung and Crowley
A comparative look at The Book of the Law and the Seven Sermons to the Dead. The great psychotherapist had some remarkable mystical experiences in his early years that reflect similar influences to those that led to the creation of Crowley’s magick. A unique blend of material featured in Paul’s book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.

Mon 30th 2:15 - 3:15
Aegypt
From Avalonian Aeon, the previously untold spectacular story of a crucial psychic questing moment in the development of Andrew Collins work that linked the mysteries of the Glastonbury Zodiac with Giza and ultimately led to his recent work Beneath the Pyramids

As well as the lectures, I will be selling signed copies of my books and generally hanging out. Be great to see you!

Sunday 15 August 2010

Beneath Giza: Crystal Chambers of the Elder Race





Here is a second extract from my recently published Avalonian Aeon, a multi-faceted autobiographical look at the complete Glastonbury experience that includes previously unpublished material from the archives of historical mysteries researcher Andrew Collins. This piece is a companion to the section on the Mary Chapel from a few days ago. Psychic questing in Glastonbury with a remarkably talented visionary named Bernard in the mid-eighties was crucial to the later development of his work and led directly to his interest in what may lie beneath the Giza plateau, a subject he covered in Gods of Eden and recently returned to with his spectacular book Beneath the Pyramids.



Andrew Collins







Both pieces are from the Avalonian Aeon chapter Aegypt and link Glastonbury and Giza. The section here has been edited to bring together paragraphs from different pages and excludes some material that links them together in the book. They certainly represent unconventional modes of investigation and I (and Andrew Collins) make no dogmatic claims as to the validity of the ideas. The material is nonetheless striking and therefore may be potentially stimulating. It ultimately served to lead Andrew Collins to something very tangible. This piece is a deliberate teaser, making mention of topics dealt with elsewhere. I would hope it may encourage you to buy Avalonian Aeon which can be done through the cover image on the right hand column from this piece or from the books website

www.avalonianaeon.com

Those in the USA can find it on Weiser Antiquarian

www.weiserantiquarian.com


On April 9th 1985 Bernard was showing Andy his Mary chapel design. He drifted into the Egyptian zone again, stating emphatically that there is a chamber beneath the Giza plateau. Andy was familiar with the famous American psychic Edgar Cayce’s ideas. Perhaps primed by Theosophical and Rosicrucian input, he had talked of refugees from Atlantis travelling to Egypt and building the Sphinx and Pyramids. They also created a “Hall of Records”, an underground chamber filled with the lost knowledge of pre-deluge humanity. Cayce claimed that the place would be uncovered in 1998 and this momentous event would form part of a sequence of massive global transformations that would usher in a new epoch.

Serpent in the Sky was primarily an exposition of an immense corpus of esoteric work by the mystical polymath Rene Schwaller de Lubicz. It was he who had first suggested the possibility of water erosion on the sphinx. The man had spent fifteen years at the gigantic Luxor Karnak temple complex in Egypt. He and his team measured every inch of the place, recording each hieroglyphic and piece of artwork. Schwaller didn’t have the mindset of a typical archaeologist. He was part of a potent stream of European esotericism that is sometimes overlooked in Britain and America in favour of the Golden Dawn and Theosophical legacy.

He was particularly concerned with finding evidence of phi. Conventional history credits the Greeks with this crucial mathematical geometrical discovery. Schwaller became convinced that it was known to the Egyptians. He was clear that it was a glimpse into the working of the divine, the blueprint for reality.

In his later years he told his pupil Andre VandenBroeck that the basic material of Fulcanelli’s work on the cathedrals had been his own and the man he claimed to be behind the Fulcanelli myth, Julian Champagne, had been lent the manuscript and essentially ripped it off, adding material of his own and various associates. VandenBroecks Al-Kemi tells the full story for those who may be interested. There is no doubt that Schwaller was an alchemist. He had a fully functioning laboratory in his home of which photographs exist. Anyone who looks at his Egyptian work could probably see that it is coming from a very high level of insight indeed. Schwaller stated that “I could not have recognised the cosmology of the Pharaohs had I not known the medieval book of the cathedral”. In his own way Bernard rapidly went through a version of the same process, from the Mary Chapel to what he began to call the Crystal Chambers beneath Giza.

During the second half of April, Bernard went through an ongoing brainstorm download in which he received a detailed design and explanation for the Crystal Chambers in a similar manner to his Mary Chapel experience. Bernard came to believe that the underground complex dated from the astrological age of Leo, over 12,000 years ago. He didn’t really talk about Atlantis in the usual way. It was sufficient to think in terms of a previous cycle of an advanced civilisation that had all but disappeared through planetary upheavals. He referred to the “Elder Race”. Those dudes were a bit strange. They were etherial, extremely tall, viper-visaged, virtually albino types. They weren’t standard issue Homo Sapien Sapien. They weren’t ETs either. It was a now extinct line but it had bred into the current human race. Their Crystal Chambers were not a repository for books and conventional treasure but a living cosmological temple. The knowledge it held was the understanding of how the present universe came into being. It represented the form of the process of creation and the actual point of creation itself. The rites that Bernard believed to have occurred therein had a haunting otherwordly feel to them that was both archaic and futuristic. They maintained, harmonised, and adjusted the very form of the laws of nature as they functioned within the planet.



Drawing by Bernard G featured in Andrew Collins Beneath the Pyramids.



The whole complex lay beneath a mound island on a lake. At the entrance was a large rectangular panel of polished grey stone. Depicted on this in base relief, on the left, was a man facing right wearing an Egyptian style headdress, a skullcap with uraeus serpent. He held a staff with a curved top. Facing him was a lion with upraised wings, standing up on its hind legs. Ray-like spikes emanated from its stomach. There was a line of glyphs between and beneath the two figures. The leonine being seemed to be a form of the Mithraic Aion cosmocrator Lord of Time.



Artwork by Yuri Leitch inspired by an original drawing of Bernard G featured in Avalonian Aeon



The ground-plan was in the form of a twelve-pointed double hexagram. Domed-roofed chambers were situated on the apex points. On the floor were a series of concentric rings, slightly differently configured in each room. From their central point of emanation, there were also three straight yellow grooves cut into the floor that formed paths outward. The left and right grooves connected through doorways with adjacent chambers, forming paths that marked the twenty four sides of the whole design. The third central groove reached down a long corridor to the central chamber producing a total effect like the spokes of a wheel.




Painting by Bernard G featured in black and white in Andrew Collins Gods of Eden.





The central chamber was twenty-four sided. In the middle was a twelve pointed, twenty-four faceted pyramidion crystal, several feet in height. It was the “Knowledge Stone”. Its facets in combination represented all known colours, dimensions, aspects of reality etc. The last Glastonbury imagery Bernard had seen, at the climax of the first spiral of the zodiac quest, clearly recalled the Egyptian creation myth. Atum caused a hill of creation to arise out of the primordial ocean of darkness that preceded the first morning. The island became the sun temple of Heliopolis. At its centre was a black pyramidal stone with a quartz top representing the Ben-ben stone. The crystal reflected and refracted the rising sun’s rays each morning. This was a living demonstration of a cosmology showing how the one became many. It seemed that the underground Giza complex with its central crystal was perhaps the original temple of this myth. The Heliopolitan form of it told of the phoenix bird that alighted upon the stone at the start of each new epoch. Bernard had seen Glastonbury Tor, the Zodiacal phoenix, arising out of the waters. It was an extraordinary mixture.




Design plan featured in Avalonian Aeon.

In common with the companion piece on the Mary Chapel, this extract from Avalonian Aeon has also been posted on the excellent Ishtar’s Gate site. Do check it out.

www.ishtarsgate.com

For full coverage of Andrew Collins recent Giza work, regular updates on all the ongoing Giza news and controversies, and to buy his books, go to

www.andrewcollins.com



Friday 13 August 2010

Glastonbury Abbey: a message in ye stones


Mary Chapel Glastonbury Abbey.


My recently published book Avalonian Aeon, a multi-faceted autobiographical look at the complete Glastonbury experience, includes previously unpublished material from the archives of historical mysteries researcher Andrew Collins. Psychic questing in Glastonbury with a remarkably talented visionary named Bernard in the mid-eighties was crucial to the later development of his work and led directly to his interest in what may lie beneath the Giza plateau, a subject he has recently returned to with his spectacular book Beneath the Pyramids.







Here is the first of a few extracts from Avalonian Aeon I will post here that link Glastonbury and Giza. They certainly represent unconventional modes of investigation and I (and Andrew Collins) make no dogmatic claims as to the validity of the ideas. The material is nonetheless striking and therefore may be potentially stimulating. It ultimately served to lead Andrew Collins to something very tangible. I would hope it may encourage you to buy Avalonian Aeon.



Andrew Collins



"Around this time, Bernard visited Canterbury Cathedral with his family and viewed what is known as the Opus Alexandrinum mosaic. He mentioned to his wife that there was a similar one on the floor in Glastonbury Abbey and it included a zodiac and lines set into the stones. Having virtually no knowledge of the abbey’s history he didn’t realise until he spoke to Andy that it no longer existed. He was able to see it still with his inner eye so clearly that he could draw it and discuss it in detail.




The Company of Avalon monks of Glastonbury Abbey as depicted in large painting on display in museum there.



The design on the floor of the Old Church referred to by William of Malmesbury and Bligh Bond’s monks was apparently reproduced in the new Mary chapel, signifying the position of the original building. John Michell had paid particular attention to it when suggesting that the abbey’s foundational geometry embodied the ancient wisdom code and represented the New Jerusalem celestial archetype during the Christian cycle.

Bernard saw an outer and inner circle. Within the two were twelve spheres, in four groups of three, containing symbols for the signs of the zodiac. In the middle of the inner circle was a square. Its corners could not be seen as they were cut across by a Maltese cross whose points reached out to the edge of the inner circle. From the sides of the square that were visible, four triangles reached out to the edge of the inner circle, indicating the cardinal points. Sixteen lines ran out from the centre of the design, through the twelve spheres and four triangles beyond its outer circle to sixteen small pillars along the base of the chapel walls, each about two feet tall, on which were further symbols. The twelve lines passing through the zodiacal signs could be continued out beyond the building to the locations of the fabled twelve huts and further across the Glastonbury landscape and beyond.

The twelve zodiacal spheres and central point were coloured gold by ochre tiles. The outer circle in which the spheres were set was red terracotta as was the Maltese cross and cardinal point triangles. Beaten lead lines marked the geometry of the design. Somehow the whole thing was to be perceived as in motion. Each part of the levels of geometrical design was revolving. The Maltese cross was moving at one speed, the triangles from the square at another. A series of colours was produced by this that came to form one colour. The colours also had sound correlations."






This text has also just been posted on the excellent Ishtar's Gate site but with only the grid plan diagram as visual accompaniment.

Check out the site for a wide range of topics concerning historical mysteries of mystical and magical interest.

www.ishtarsgate.com

Sunday 8 August 2010

Another good review for Avalonian Aeon

My thanks to Liz Williams of Glastonbury's fine Witchcraft shops (Magic Box, Cat and the Cauldron, and Witchcraft) for this very gratifying review of Avalonian Aeon on the shop blog at

http://witchcraft-shop.livejournal.com


It is reproduced here.

'Paul Weston has produced a rare and interesting work – a book about a personal spiritual journey that is erudite, entertaining, intelligent and authentic. It’s also very funny. Usually, spiritual autobiographies tend to be somewhat unconvincing and you often get the impression that they are heavily edited and written to impress the reader rather than to give an accurate account of someone’s history with the esoteric.

Weston, however, doesn’t try to impress. This is the story of a long relationship with one place in particular – Glastonbury - but also the wider spiritual elements of the British Isles. His encounters with the various elements of the Avalonian ontology are oblique, often peculiar, frequently unresolved, and to this resident of Glastonbury, have the ring of truth. Weston covers a fairly long span of time, from the Stonehenge free festivals of the late 1970s and early 80s, to the contemporary Glastonbury of the 2000s, and because this is someone’s real life, as opposed to a glossy New Age account, Weston also takes a look at the music scene, at the drugs scene, at various ways of simply making a living and getting by, which includes a stint in the civil service. He doesn’t attempt to whitewash his own experience, or to present it as anything other than it clearly was.

Nor does Weston appear to have any particular agenda that he is trying to push. Unlike a number of authors, this isn’t a book written to promote angel workshops or law of attraction courses. It’s an experiential account which covers a wide range of esoteric interests, from Aleister Crowley to Katherine Maltwood’s Glastonbury Zodiac, to John Cowper Powys, to the Kabbalistic Tree and 2012. It looks into psychic questing, visionary exploration, and the Geordie response to the divine feminine during an all-night session up Glastonbury Tor. It is grounded, somewhat cynical and commendably open-minded at the same time, which is quite a feat to pull off.

Anyone interested in Glastonbury and its history, or the history of late 20th century occultism in Britain, really ought to give this book a look. As someone who runs an occult business in Glastonbury, I see a lot of esoteric books, many of which are quite simply clones of one another, written to satisfy the demands of publishers. AVALONIAN AEON is, however, a stand-out.'

I shall be presenting a number of events in the Witchcraft shop's new venue, the gallery in Chilkwell St Glastonbury. Further details to follow.

Wednesday 4 August 2010

Abraxas Intensity





For those finding the astro climate a tad intense, it may be worth pondering the words of Basilides as transmitted by Jung in Seven Sermons to the Dead who spoke of Abraxas as, “ undefinable life itself, which is the mother of good and evil alike.” “He is the brightest light of day and the deepest night of madness.” “He is both the radiance and the dark shadow of man.” “Abraxas generates truth and falsehood, good and evil, light and darkness with the same word and in the same deed. Therefore Abraxas is truly the terrible one.” “He is the monster of the underworld, the octopus with a thousand tentacles, he is the twistings of winged serpents and of madness.” “To fear him is wisdom.” “Not to resist him means liberation.”