Gareth Knight's Blog, page 12
May 9, 2012
FAERY LOVES AND FAERY LAIS
Appropriately for May Day and at a time when the Moon was not only at the full but closest it ever gets to the earth in its ovoid orbit, thus appearing a huge in the sky, Skylight Press has just published my latest book - FAERY LOVES AND FAERY LAIS. The Breton lai is a relatively short narrative, usually accompanied by music, that appeared in France some time about the middle of the 12th century, spread by travelling musicians and story tellers called ‘jongleurs’ and containing a great deal of faery and supernatural lore.There was also at this time a demand in courtly circles for long romances to be written and recited by court poets such as Chrétien de Troyes, who was the first to exploit the popularity of Arthurian legend. A major source for such romances were the lais told by the travelling jongleurs, who in turn derived their tales from the Celts of Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. Their versions were not for courtly consumption however, but were a cruder and less sophisticated rendering of the stories, with more direct reportage of the marvels of the supernatural. They catered to a different audience – wherever a crowd could be gathered, in inn or market place or servants’ hall.Their main theme is the appearance of faery, a supernatural being, usually feminine, who is young, ravishingly beautiful and richly dressed, who possesses magic powers to help a human being she likes and loves. Although woe betide him if he gets the wrong side of her or fails to obey the rules of a human/faery relationship.There are also feisty male equivalents of the female faery. They may take the form of a young and handsome knight clad in red armour and riding a white charger (possibly with red ears) that is capable of galloping underwater or, on dry land, faster than a bird can fly. They may appear off their own bat in order to father a child on a lady, or to instruct or test a young knight, or in response to the invocation of a lonely damsel or mis-treated wife. Also transposing into the form of a hawk or a stag. You can learn more about these exciting goings on by visiting the Skylight Press web site, www.skylightpress.co.ukand their accompanying blog “Through the Skylight”. And even if you do not want to buy the book, it is worth going there if only to see the most evocative cover that Rebsie Fairholm has dreamed up, inviting even the most prosaic of readers through a mysterious arch into the faery forest.
April 9, 2012
Bringing the Golden Dawn to life!
Our perceptions of the Golden Dawn system have come a long way over the past 120 years or so. And I lay emphasis on the word "perceptions" because while these have changed and been for better or for worse in terms of vision, the egregore of the Golden Dawn has been what it ever was – the framework for a very powerful spiritual impulse capable of being expressed at many levels of understanding and practice.
It is my belief that Peregrin Wildoak's new book – By Names and Images – marks an important milestone upon the way. In fact I would go so far as to say that he presents us with an Owner's Manual for a very complicated set of parts that have been bequeathed to us –and the analogy holds good for various ways in which we may look at it.
We are talking about a magical system, which is not an easy concept to get one's head round. However it is not a million miles away from the predicament of a buying a flat pack from a DIY furniture store with non-existent instructions on how to put it together – or at best – or possibly worst – a mess of garbled notes in words we do not understand hacked together by other amateurs who have been in much the same predicament as ourselves.
To add an additional piquancy to this analogy we might consider the dilemma of an aspiring amateur mechanic in receipt of a complex set of parts in order to make up his own motor car. Without perhaps being entirely sure of what kind of car it is meant to be. I have been guilty myself in the past of likening the Golden Dawn to a veteran car – of romantic interest but perhaps not the best way to get from A to B. However, I also recall – from real life – an American friend who sported what purported to be a Model T Ford but which had a three and a half litre Chevrolet engine concealed under the bonnet. There is not a world of difference between such a hair raising monster and a powerful but ancient magical system. Look out for spills!
Again, whilst in the confessional mood, I have been guilty of likening the Golden Dawn to a wedding cake – all silver gilt and decoration but without a lot inside to live up to the promise of a gourmet's delight. And it is perhaps true that some may confuse the gilt and decoration for the cake inside and content themselves as best they may by chewing on cardboard, however I draw back whatever I might have said about the quality of the cake within. Although this might in turn depend on how best you might have baked it.
Anyhow, whether it comes to furniture making, motor mechanics or culinary preparations for a mystic wedding, Peregrin has much to recommend him as an instructor. I say that as a regular reader of his blog "the magic of the ordinary" which reveals a balanced individual exceptionally well grounded with a breadth and depth (both are important) of knowledge and experience in matters mystical and magical.
When I was a fresh faced young initiate the four volumes of Israel Regardie's "Golden Dawn" in the Inner Library (mark the word "inner" – not a work to be allowed out for any of the hoi polloi to read) represented a chest of hidden treasures. You can look but you can't touch! One might sneak a look at it but that was about as far as it went in my chosen esoteric boot camp of the time. We have since seen a generation come up who, with the help of a resurgent Israel Regardie, have done much to get the show on the road again. So thank you Chic and Tabatha Cicero, Nick Farrell, and others unknown – a roll call to which the name Peregrin Wildoak can be added, it seems to me, with every confidence. His book, subtitled Bringing the Golden Dawn to life, should help bring the system to life for anyone. As for itself, it has never died, but has waited for someone to put the fragmented parts of the body of Osiris together again. Go to it ye sons and daughters of Isis!
By Names and Images - Bringing the Golden Dawn to Life by Peregrin Wildoak is published by Skylight Press - Go to their web site for more details: http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/
It is my belief that Peregrin Wildoak's new book – By Names and Images – marks an important milestone upon the way. In fact I would go so far as to say that he presents us with an Owner's Manual for a very complicated set of parts that have been bequeathed to us –and the analogy holds good for various ways in which we may look at it.
We are talking about a magical system, which is not an easy concept to get one's head round. However it is not a million miles away from the predicament of a buying a flat pack from a DIY furniture store with non-existent instructions on how to put it together – or at best – or possibly worst – a mess of garbled notes in words we do not understand hacked together by other amateurs who have been in much the same predicament as ourselves.
To add an additional piquancy to this analogy we might consider the dilemma of an aspiring amateur mechanic in receipt of a complex set of parts in order to make up his own motor car. Without perhaps being entirely sure of what kind of car it is meant to be. I have been guilty myself in the past of likening the Golden Dawn to a veteran car – of romantic interest but perhaps not the best way to get from A to B. However, I also recall – from real life – an American friend who sported what purported to be a Model T Ford but which had a three and a half litre Chevrolet engine concealed under the bonnet. There is not a world of difference between such a hair raising monster and a powerful but ancient magical system. Look out for spills!
Again, whilst in the confessional mood, I have been guilty of likening the Golden Dawn to a wedding cake – all silver gilt and decoration but without a lot inside to live up to the promise of a gourmet's delight. And it is perhaps true that some may confuse the gilt and decoration for the cake inside and content themselves as best they may by chewing on cardboard, however I draw back whatever I might have said about the quality of the cake within. Although this might in turn depend on how best you might have baked it.
Anyhow, whether it comes to furniture making, motor mechanics or culinary preparations for a mystic wedding, Peregrin has much to recommend him as an instructor. I say that as a regular reader of his blog "the magic of the ordinary" which reveals a balanced individual exceptionally well grounded with a breadth and depth (both are important) of knowledge and experience in matters mystical and magical.
When I was a fresh faced young initiate the four volumes of Israel Regardie's "Golden Dawn" in the Inner Library (mark the word "inner" – not a work to be allowed out for any of the hoi polloi to read) represented a chest of hidden treasures. You can look but you can't touch! One might sneak a look at it but that was about as far as it went in my chosen esoteric boot camp of the time. We have since seen a generation come up who, with the help of a resurgent Israel Regardie, have done much to get the show on the road again. So thank you Chic and Tabatha Cicero, Nick Farrell, and others unknown – a roll call to which the name Peregrin Wildoak can be added, it seems to me, with every confidence. His book, subtitled Bringing the Golden Dawn to life, should help bring the system to life for anyone. As for itself, it has never died, but has waited for someone to put the fragmented parts of the body of Osiris together again. Go to it ye sons and daughters of Isis!
By Names and Images - Bringing the Golden Dawn to Life by Peregrin Wildoak is published by Skylight Press - Go to their web site for more details: http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/
March 3, 2012
The Magical Battle of Britain
Dion Fortune's War Letters - which I was commissioned to edit back in 1991 under the title of The Magical Battle of Britain has for various reasons been out of print for most of the past nigh on twenty years. In the meantime it has reached astronomical prices on the second hand market and its absence has sparked all kinds of ridiculous rumours about Dion Fortune taking on the forces of the Third Reich almost singlehanded and I know not what else. The truth is better than the fiction - and now you have a chance to see for yourself at a reasonable price as it has just been republished by Skylight Press. Go to it!
February 12, 2012
Gwenevere and the Round Table
Here is a book not to miss if you have any interest in the Arthurian, Grail or Faery traditions. By Wendy Berg, to whom I passed over the running of my group when I retired.
Gwenevere and the Round Table
puts the faery elements of Arthurian legend into practice, showing how the Round Table was an actual, practical system of magic. A series of meditations, magical exercises, guided visualisations and a full ritual will take you into each of the five faery Kingdoms described in the legends, Lyonesse, Sorelois, Gorre, Oriande, and the central Grail Kingdom of Listenois. At the heart of these mysteries is the Round Table of the Stars, an experiential journey through 12 constellations, which very neatly and remarkably demonstate the continuing work of the Round Table into the future.
I think this is a classic! Not only a lucid guide to faery dynamics in Arthurian and Grail legend but what to do about it, why, and how. A practical follow up to Wendy's mind blowing Red Tree, White Tree . Highly recommended.
For more details go to http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/ or Amazon or your usual book supplier.
I think this is a classic! Not only a lucid guide to faery dynamics in Arthurian and Grail legend but what to do about it, why, and how. A practical follow up to Wendy's mind blowing Red Tree, White Tree . Highly recommended.
For more details go to http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/ or Amazon or your usual book supplier.
December 26, 2011
Merlin and the Grail Tradition
First publication of mine for 2012 is
Merlin and the Grail Tradition
- available from 1st January.
Few figures from myth and legend have impressed the imagination like that of Merlin, Archmage of the land of Logres, whose shadowy, compelling presence plays a key part in the tales of Arthurian legend and the Quest of the Holy Grail. In this collection of essays I trace the historical importance and esoteric influence of Merlin and the Grail tradition from its mythological beginnings right down to modern times, including Dion Fortune's Grail work at Glastonbury, the Merlin archetypes, the "Elizabethan Merlin" Dr John Dee, the bluestones of Preseli which were used to build Stonehenge, and the connection between Merlin and Tolkien's figure of Gandalf.
First published at the turn of the millenium by Sun Chalice Books, this new edition contains three new topics The Faery Tradition in Arthurian Legend and a new analysis of Chretien de Troyes: the First Arthurian Romancer. Additionally an old manuscript has come to light on Sir Gareth: the Quest of a Round Table Knight, resurrected from a private lecture given to the Martinist Order in Paris in 1987.
For more details go to http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/ or your usual book supplier.
Few figures from myth and legend have impressed the imagination like that of Merlin, Archmage of the land of Logres, whose shadowy, compelling presence plays a key part in the tales of Arthurian legend and the Quest of the Holy Grail. In this collection of essays I trace the historical importance and esoteric influence of Merlin and the Grail tradition from its mythological beginnings right down to modern times, including Dion Fortune's Grail work at Glastonbury, the Merlin archetypes, the "Elizabethan Merlin" Dr John Dee, the bluestones of Preseli which were used to build Stonehenge, and the connection between Merlin and Tolkien's figure of Gandalf.
First published at the turn of the millenium by Sun Chalice Books, this new edition contains three new topics The Faery Tradition in Arthurian Legend and a new analysis of Chretien de Troyes: the First Arthurian Romancer. Additionally an old manuscript has come to light on Sir Gareth: the Quest of a Round Table Knight, resurrected from a private lecture given to the Martinist Order in Paris in 1987.
For more details go to http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/ or your usual book supplier.
December 1, 2011
Gareth Knight and Magicfolk
As a change from scribbling books I have just made my debut doing voice overs for a couple of tracks on the new Magicfolk album, just out. My contribution appears quite appropriately on The Faery Ring and on Winged Bull. For more details or to buy a copy of this very evocative album go to http://www.magicfolk.co.uk/
November 19, 2011
The Best of 2010 Occult Fiction
Anthony Duncan: Faversham's Dream ISBN 978-1-908011-11-4
Rebecca Wilby: In Different Skies ISBN 978-1-908011-02-2
Margaret Lumley Brown: Both Sides of the Door ISBN 978-1-909011-37-4
Alan Richardson: On Winsley Hill ISBN 978-1-908011-00-8
For all that much of Dion Fortune's practical teaching, (that which in the secrecy of her times she did not care to put into textbooks) is to be found in her novels there is often a reluctance to seek knowledge and wisdom in occult fiction – yet this is maybe the best place to look for it. Provided of course that the authors concerned are experienced at first hand and know what they are talking about.
The current year has seen the publication, via Skylight Press, of no less than four examples that can teach you more what occultism is all about, than umpteen textbooks. And highly entertaining as well!
The key to all this is being true to life. What otherworld experiences really are – albeit put into an apparent fictional context with the benefit of an intriguing story line upon which the facts of experience can be strung. There has been a tremendous surge of interest in my own autobiography I Called It Magic showing that a record of practical experience is of consuming interest. With this in mind, let me draw attention to the fact that all four of the authors mentioned above feature within the story of my magical life. And they all know what they are talking about.
Anthony Duncan features in a whole chapter, Rebecca Wilby is a major player in a couple of others, Margaret Lumley Brown played an important role in my early initiatory experiences, and Alan Richardson gives personal witness of what he experienced at one of my major Hawkwood workshops.
With this in mind, you will be missing a great opportunity if you do not make it your business to read something of what they have had to say in fictional form – for all is soundly based upon fact.
Anthony Duncan's Faversham's Dream exemplifies a great deal of what I have experienced in my own magical life in the resonance of historical occurrences with events and impressions in present time. Sparked by coincidental (!?) – (how often does so-called coincidence play an important part in esoteric experience!?) – acquisition of a volume of poems by a minor 19th century poet John Faversham discovers that its author had previously lived in the same old house as himself – and as a consequence of house and book of poems coming together begins to experience the same obsessive dream. Following up on this he discovers vivid "place memories" in the local area, rooted in highly emotive events in the 16th century.
Margaret Lumley Brown's Both Sides of the Door is a fictionalised account of real happenings that occurred to her when as a young woman after a casual experiment in table-turning in what turned out to be a very haunted house which had once been an opium den and bordello situated close to the Tyburn, the former site of public executions in the west end of London. It is memoir of a terrifying event that developed into full blown poltergeist manifestation, with writing appearing on window blinds and materialisations in various disturbing forms. Originally privately published in 1918 this re-issue includes articles by myself and Rebecca Wilby on the life and work of Margaret Lumley Brown and a history of the locations involved.
Rebecca Wilby's In Different Skies brings to life much of her own experience in formulating the redemptive magical work concerned with the amelioration of the inner world suffering of victims of war as described in the latter part of my autobiography. On a visit to Tewkesbury Abbey the heroine is startled to begin to recover memories – someone else's memories – of the 1st World War trenches. These involuntary glimpses into the life of a lost soldier open up a visionary world and search across the fields of Flanders for the historical truth behind the vision. This provides another viewpoint on some important modern practical esoteric work as briefly described in I Called It Magic and also in the new expanded edition of The Abbey Papers and the play-script This Wretched Splendour also published by Skylight.
Alan Richardson's On Winsley Hill is set on a very real location on a plateau near Bath, and is the moving story of Rosie Chant, a psychically gifted young farm worker aged 17 in 1908 who can pick up impressions from objects and places, and thus assists a visiting American folklorist in his research into the era of standing stones, long barrows and sacred wells. Nor does she complain when he uses her in other ways. As a biographer of various major figures on the modern occult scene Alan Richardson's background knowledge in this finely observed tale provides a great deal of insight into psychic and psychological dynamics as well as human nature in general. It is also a vivid evocation of the west country world of Rosie's youth culminating in a profoundly moving magical conclusion in the present day when she climbs the ancient site on the occasion of her 100th birthday!
All four of these books are heartily recommended, not only as means of personal instruction and entertaining but as highly suitable and inexpensive seasonal or birthday gifts to your friends. A means of expanding insights all round into the inner worlds behind physical appearances.
Rebecca Wilby: In Different Skies ISBN 978-1-908011-02-2
Margaret Lumley Brown: Both Sides of the Door ISBN 978-1-909011-37-4
Alan Richardson: On Winsley Hill ISBN 978-1-908011-00-8
For all that much of Dion Fortune's practical teaching, (that which in the secrecy of her times she did not care to put into textbooks) is to be found in her novels there is often a reluctance to seek knowledge and wisdom in occult fiction – yet this is maybe the best place to look for it. Provided of course that the authors concerned are experienced at first hand and know what they are talking about.
The current year has seen the publication, via Skylight Press, of no less than four examples that can teach you more what occultism is all about, than umpteen textbooks. And highly entertaining as well!
The key to all this is being true to life. What otherworld experiences really are – albeit put into an apparent fictional context with the benefit of an intriguing story line upon which the facts of experience can be strung. There has been a tremendous surge of interest in my own autobiography I Called It Magic showing that a record of practical experience is of consuming interest. With this in mind, let me draw attention to the fact that all four of the authors mentioned above feature within the story of my magical life. And they all know what they are talking about.
Anthony Duncan features in a whole chapter, Rebecca Wilby is a major player in a couple of others, Margaret Lumley Brown played an important role in my early initiatory experiences, and Alan Richardson gives personal witness of what he experienced at one of my major Hawkwood workshops.
With this in mind, you will be missing a great opportunity if you do not make it your business to read something of what they have had to say in fictional form – for all is soundly based upon fact.
Anthony Duncan's Faversham's Dream exemplifies a great deal of what I have experienced in my own magical life in the resonance of historical occurrences with events and impressions in present time. Sparked by coincidental (!?) – (how often does so-called coincidence play an important part in esoteric experience!?) – acquisition of a volume of poems by a minor 19th century poet John Faversham discovers that its author had previously lived in the same old house as himself – and as a consequence of house and book of poems coming together begins to experience the same obsessive dream. Following up on this he discovers vivid "place memories" in the local area, rooted in highly emotive events in the 16th century.
Margaret Lumley Brown's Both Sides of the Door is a fictionalised account of real happenings that occurred to her when as a young woman after a casual experiment in table-turning in what turned out to be a very haunted house which had once been an opium den and bordello situated close to the Tyburn, the former site of public executions in the west end of London. It is memoir of a terrifying event that developed into full blown poltergeist manifestation, with writing appearing on window blinds and materialisations in various disturbing forms. Originally privately published in 1918 this re-issue includes articles by myself and Rebecca Wilby on the life and work of Margaret Lumley Brown and a history of the locations involved.
Rebecca Wilby's In Different Skies brings to life much of her own experience in formulating the redemptive magical work concerned with the amelioration of the inner world suffering of victims of war as described in the latter part of my autobiography. On a visit to Tewkesbury Abbey the heroine is startled to begin to recover memories – someone else's memories – of the 1st World War trenches. These involuntary glimpses into the life of a lost soldier open up a visionary world and search across the fields of Flanders for the historical truth behind the vision. This provides another viewpoint on some important modern practical esoteric work as briefly described in I Called It Magic and also in the new expanded edition of The Abbey Papers and the play-script This Wretched Splendour also published by Skylight.
Alan Richardson's On Winsley Hill is set on a very real location on a plateau near Bath, and is the moving story of Rosie Chant, a psychically gifted young farm worker aged 17 in 1908 who can pick up impressions from objects and places, and thus assists a visiting American folklorist in his research into the era of standing stones, long barrows and sacred wells. Nor does she complain when he uses her in other ways. As a biographer of various major figures on the modern occult scene Alan Richardson's background knowledge in this finely observed tale provides a great deal of insight into psychic and psychological dynamics as well as human nature in general. It is also a vivid evocation of the west country world of Rosie's youth culminating in a profoundly moving magical conclusion in the present day when she climbs the ancient site on the occasion of her 100th birthday!
All four of these books are heartily recommended, not only as means of personal instruction and entertaining but as highly suitable and inexpensive seasonal or birthday gifts to your friends. A means of expanding insights all round into the inner worlds behind physical appearances.
October 22, 2011
Follow up to "I Called It Magic"
Copies of the standard paperback edition of "I Called It Magic" will soon be available through Amazon and other trade sources. The limited edition hardback of 150 copies signed by me remains available, but only direct from Skylight Press (see their web site http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/). There has been a strong demand for these so if you want to get one as a Christmas present for anyone or as a financial investment for the future you had better get in your order quickly. I am down to my last box and there won't be any more!
Response from those who have read it so far are very positive – the first being very heart warming from a fellow writer on the esoteric scene:
"Just finished your autobiography. Still thrumming with it. It's wonderful. I won't make you blush with superlatives that you probably wouldn't believe, but it's everything I hoped to read. You weren't coy, you didn't pull any punches, you gave the sort of hard detail that makes it all real – and added a dash of élan, too. That's your inner frenchiness for you! Really, it is the best book of its kind. Perhaps the only book of its kind. But remember…you're not finished yet!"
Whilst a blog review from Australia reads:
"The diversity of magical approaches and traditions worked by Mr Knight and covered in the book is staggering: traditional ceremonial magic, Qabalah, Tarot, Isiac Mysteries, Faery Lore, Rosicrucianism…the list is very long. In addition there are descriptions of non-traditional approaches to the mysteries via the mytho-poetic creations of Tolkien, Lewis, Noyes and others. And while few of the chapters are out-and-out teachings or instructional in nature, there is much to be gained from them – both from their content and the material between the lines. Indeed it is very hard to read chapter to chapter without some break, as there is much in each to stimulate the inner awareness and senses and I felt myself getting a little overwhelmed without regular breaks. The inner contacts and reality Mr Knight writes about live more than on the page, and some descriptions are very moving and very deep."
To read more of this long review go to http://magicoftheordinary.wordpress.com
I might say that my book of letters YOURS VERY TRULY - GARETH KNIGHT published earlier this year by Skylight Press, covering the years 1969 through 2010 can act as a very useful and entertaining companion to the autobiography – literally spelling out what it all felt like at the time! In this respect it provides vivid illustrations of a non-pictorial kind to the later book – arguably more revealing than the photographs in the autobiography.
Whilst as a teaching vehicle, another old book of mine is about to be released by Skylight, THE ABBEY PAPERS, should go well in expanding the inner horizons of the above. Zapped by a trio of inner communicators when I was working on the war letters of Dion Fortune back in 1993 it contains a very full run down on practical magical working, whether individually or in a group.
It was first published in 2002 but the new edition contains a remarkable extra section by Rebecca Wilby working with one of these original contacts, which provides very direct instruction on how such contacts are made and maintained, and also throws a revealing light on that part of "I Called It Magic" (Chapter 29 'This Wretched Splendour') that saw us ranging from rituals at Hawkwood, plodding through Flanders mud, my playing "Amazing Grace" on a church carillon over the old battlefields, to theatrical performances on the London stage, and an esoteric novel "In Different Skies". All very moving and what the deeper forms and intentions of magic are all about.
One word of warning though – make sure you get a copy of the NEW EDITION currently being announced on Amazon, and not one of the old edition copies, a few of which are still knocking about.
Response from those who have read it so far are very positive – the first being very heart warming from a fellow writer on the esoteric scene:
"Just finished your autobiography. Still thrumming with it. It's wonderful. I won't make you blush with superlatives that you probably wouldn't believe, but it's everything I hoped to read. You weren't coy, you didn't pull any punches, you gave the sort of hard detail that makes it all real – and added a dash of élan, too. That's your inner frenchiness for you! Really, it is the best book of its kind. Perhaps the only book of its kind. But remember…you're not finished yet!"
Whilst a blog review from Australia reads:
"The diversity of magical approaches and traditions worked by Mr Knight and covered in the book is staggering: traditional ceremonial magic, Qabalah, Tarot, Isiac Mysteries, Faery Lore, Rosicrucianism…the list is very long. In addition there are descriptions of non-traditional approaches to the mysteries via the mytho-poetic creations of Tolkien, Lewis, Noyes and others. And while few of the chapters are out-and-out teachings or instructional in nature, there is much to be gained from them – both from their content and the material between the lines. Indeed it is very hard to read chapter to chapter without some break, as there is much in each to stimulate the inner awareness and senses and I felt myself getting a little overwhelmed without regular breaks. The inner contacts and reality Mr Knight writes about live more than on the page, and some descriptions are very moving and very deep."
To read more of this long review go to http://magicoftheordinary.wordpress.com
I might say that my book of letters YOURS VERY TRULY - GARETH KNIGHT published earlier this year by Skylight Press, covering the years 1969 through 2010 can act as a very useful and entertaining companion to the autobiography – literally spelling out what it all felt like at the time! In this respect it provides vivid illustrations of a non-pictorial kind to the later book – arguably more revealing than the photographs in the autobiography.
Whilst as a teaching vehicle, another old book of mine is about to be released by Skylight, THE ABBEY PAPERS, should go well in expanding the inner horizons of the above. Zapped by a trio of inner communicators when I was working on the war letters of Dion Fortune back in 1993 it contains a very full run down on practical magical working, whether individually or in a group.
It was first published in 2002 but the new edition contains a remarkable extra section by Rebecca Wilby working with one of these original contacts, which provides very direct instruction on how such contacts are made and maintained, and also throws a revealing light on that part of "I Called It Magic" (Chapter 29 'This Wretched Splendour') that saw us ranging from rituals at Hawkwood, plodding through Flanders mud, my playing "Amazing Grace" on a church carillon over the old battlefields, to theatrical performances on the London stage, and an esoteric novel "In Different Skies". All very moving and what the deeper forms and intentions of magic are all about.
One word of warning though – make sure you get a copy of the NEW EDITION currently being announced on Amazon, and not one of the old edition copies, a few of which are still knocking about.
September 28, 2011
I Called It Magic
At long last my esoteric autobiography I Called It Magic is about to see the light of day. The paperback edition will be out at the end of October but if you want to jump the gun Skylight Press are issuing a hard back limited edition on September 30th which can be signed by me if you wish. There will only be 150 copies printed of these. For full details of how to order and avoid disappointment go to the Skylight Press website and follow the instructions. http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/
August 15, 2011
More about Melusine!
Book Review: The Romance of the Faery Melusine by André Lebey [from Inner Light Journal]
Translated by Gareth Knight
ISBN 978-1-908011-32-9 Publisher: Skylight Press
We owe a debt of thanks to Gareth Knight for making André Lebey's work available to us, in what I found to be a vivid and readable style. It is the mediaeval legend, of course, as we may have learned from Mr. Knight's previous work, but written as a novel, a very French novel. The style may be seen as florid, in the sense that the French "Great Encyclopaedia of Faeries" may also seem florid, but this attention to detail, colour and romance….and this IS a Romance…bring the tale uniquely alive, the imagery is so vital that it is like watching a film.
As you can probably tell, I loved this book. I read it with the music of French folkies "Malicorne" playing in the background, and I savoured every word. Yes, the descriptions are so evocative that one can almost taste them!
Lebey/Knight have achieved a hyperrealism through an almost hallucinatory pageant of minutiae which build and heighten the sense of time and place, of mood, of emotion, creating from the bare bones of legend a world entire. And it's action packed! All human life is there, love and loss, bravery, betrayal…The people are real, though distant in space and time; we are shown, as it were, a myth through a series of masques or tapestries that dazzle and delight the senses.
Comparisons are odious, but if you are thinking to yourself "the reviewer loves it, but will I?" then if you like what Evangeline Walton did with Celtic myth, you probably will. There is in Lebey/Knight's book a particularly French sensibility which makes it unique, of course. Here is a master of story weaving his magic and bringing the lovely lady Melusine back to us once more, impressing the legend firmly into our mind's eye.
Translated by Gareth Knight
ISBN 978-1-908011-32-9 Publisher: Skylight Press
We owe a debt of thanks to Gareth Knight for making André Lebey's work available to us, in what I found to be a vivid and readable style. It is the mediaeval legend, of course, as we may have learned from Mr. Knight's previous work, but written as a novel, a very French novel. The style may be seen as florid, in the sense that the French "Great Encyclopaedia of Faeries" may also seem florid, but this attention to detail, colour and romance….and this IS a Romance…bring the tale uniquely alive, the imagery is so vital that it is like watching a film.
As you can probably tell, I loved this book. I read it with the music of French folkies "Malicorne" playing in the background, and I savoured every word. Yes, the descriptions are so evocative that one can almost taste them!
Lebey/Knight have achieved a hyperrealism through an almost hallucinatory pageant of minutiae which build and heighten the sense of time and place, of mood, of emotion, creating from the bare bones of legend a world entire. And it's action packed! All human life is there, love and loss, bravery, betrayal…The people are real, though distant in space and time; we are shown, as it were, a myth through a series of masques or tapestries that dazzle and delight the senses.
Comparisons are odious, but if you are thinking to yourself "the reviewer loves it, but will I?" then if you like what Evangeline Walton did with Celtic myth, you probably will. There is in Lebey/Knight's book a particularly French sensibility which makes it unique, of course. Here is a master of story weaving his magic and bringing the lovely lady Melusine back to us once more, impressing the legend firmly into our mind's eye.
Gareth Knight's Blog
- Gareth Knight's profile
- 83 followers
Gareth Knight isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
