Carr Gomm Quotes

The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children

Ultimately, the purpose of magic is to free our potential, not bind us to ideas.

The risks involved in the pursuit of magic are--put simply--either getting frightened by unpleasant perceptions or becoming deluded. Unfortunately it is possible to suffer from both symptoms at the same time.

Whenever ye have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, then ye shall assemble in some secret place and adore the spirit of Me who am Queen of all Witcheries . . . And as the sign that ye are truly free, Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men And women and ye shall dance, sing, feast, make music, and love, all in my praise. —The Charge of the Goddess

Treadwell’s stocks plenty of second-hand books, which Virginia Woolf called ‘Wild Books, Homeless Books’, because, explains Christina, ‘they have already had a journey, so they have extra energy in them from where they have been before, and they’re looking for a home’.

In the seventeenth century Sir Walter Raleigh wrote that ‘The art of magic is the art of worshipping God’.

The Cheltenham magician W.G. Gray was more specific, and held quite a different opinion to Raleigh, when he wrote in 1969 that magic is: ‘Man’s most determined effort to establish an actual working relationship through himself between his Inner and Outer states of being. By magic, Man shows that he is not content to be simply a pawn in the Great Game, but wants to play on his own account. Man the meddler becomes Man the Magician, and so learns the rules the hard way, for magic is concerned with Doing, while mysticism is concerned with Being’.

But what exactly is magic and what inspired our ancestors to begin its practice? Magic begins in darkness – the darkness of the earth, the sky and the body – and an awareness of it is born with light. Seeing green shoots appearing out of the dark soil, the sun, moon and stars rising and setting in the sky, babies emerging from the womb, fire leaping up in the midst of a cold night, were all primal experiences that awakened that sense of awe and wonder that lies at the heart of the magical experience.

It is as if there is another world just waiting to be discovered if only we can learn to see in a new way. Up until the seventeenth century most people in England took little notice of the prehistoric monuments that littered the land. Viewing them as a nuisance, they often dismantled them to clear fields or to provide building materials. Even so, folklore and stories lingered around many of them,

Stukeley was fascinated by Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, and the Egyptian Mysteries, as well as Druidism. His friends called him ‘The Druid’, and after he had met Augusta, Princess of Wales, the mother of the future George III, he wrote to her as ‘Veleda, Archdruidess of Kew’.

George Watson MacGregor Reid was a highly eccentric character, prone to exaggeration and passionate enthusiasms. An ardent socialist all his life, he campaigned for dockers’ rights in New York, before returning to England to promote the ideas of natural health, fairer distribution of wealth and the freedom to worship at Stonehenge.

He injected a passion for Celtic mythology and seasonal celebrations into modern Druidism. He was aided in this work by fellow Druid Vera Chapman, founder of the Tolkien Society and one of the first women to matriculate from Oxford University.

While he was at Oxford University his fascination for the Anglo-Saxon period intensified. It was a couplet from Cynewulf’s poem ‘Crist’, which ran: ‘Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men’, that inspired his creation of the imaginary world that would form the setting for most of his writing.

And as Anglo-Saxon scholar Stephen Pollington says: ‘All our hardiest words – mother, father, land, earth, tree, field, sky, love, hate, live, die, eat, drink, sleep, wake – are Anglo-Saxon words.

The folklorist Katharine Briggs believes we can divide traditional British fairies into two groups: ‘trooping’ and ‘solitary’.10 Trooping fairies congregate far apart from human society, while solitary fairies are either of the domestic or non-domestic variety. Solitary domestic fairies live alongside humans in their houses, outbuildings or gardens. The non-domestic fairies, rather like hermits, live far from human and other contact.

With the invention of electric light, none of us in the twenty-first century is aware of how it must feel to experience darkness consistently and have no control over it. Wilby suggests that ‘the early modern poor would have lived much of their lives under the powerful thrall of darkness, and their perception of the world and its inhabitants would have been sculpted by its mystery

Here in the sixteenth century one of the most unusual and talented women in England’s history – Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke – maintained an alchemical laboratory, assisted by Sir Walter Raleigh’s half-brother Adrian Gilbert, who also created an elaborate magical garden in the grounds, based on sacred geometry. And although the garden and house have undergone many changes since their time, through fire and restoration, it still seems as if its former inhabitants were here only yesterday. Mary Sidney is remarkable for being one of the few women whose names appear in the history of alchemy in England and, indeed, the world. She was also the first English woman to achieve a significant literary reputation. Some even believe that it was her genius that lay behind the plays of William Shakespeare, which they claim she either wrote herself or collaborated upon with the group of literary luminaries that she patronised.

She kept for her Laborator in the house Adrian Gilbert (vulgarly called Dr Gilbert) half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh, who was a great Chymist in those dayes and a Man of excellent naturall Parts; but very Sarcastick, and the greatest Buffoon in the Nation; cared not what he said to man or woman of what quality soever.

The Way of Wyrd, Brian Bates (Arrow Books, 1983) This book burst upon the modern pagan world, re-establishing Saxon magic in its rightful place after a period of neglect. An Anglo-Saxon sorcerer inducts a Christian scribe into the pagan magical mindset, via experiences of a multilayered world of ceremony and ritual shared with spirits and elves, where every event in the natural world might be either a messenger or a threat.

Pullman’s books, set in a ‘multiverse’ of parallel worlds that include magical creatures, witches and angels, have been criticised as being atheistic, with the Catholic Herald even suggesting they should be burnt. Pullman, however, does not deny the value of the religious impulse, which he believes ‘includes the sense of awe and mystery we feel when we look at the universe, the urge to find a meaning and a purpose in our lives, our sense of moral kinship with other human beings – [it] is part of being human, and I value it. I’d be a damn fool not to. But organised religion is quite another thing.’7

The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum,

The Merlin Quartet, Mary Stewart The four volumes are: The Crystal Cave (William Morrow, 1970) The Hollow Hills (Hodder & Stoughton, 1973) The Last Enchantment (G.K. Hall & Company, 1979) The Wicked Day (Ballantine Books, 1983)

The Edge of Tomorrow, D.G. Finlay (Star Books, 1979) The story of a witch joining puritans making their way to the New World with an interesting subplot: the telepathic communications and psychic battle between the witch and a native American sorcerer.

Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.

But it is his The Once and Future King, a sequence of four novels, for which White will be most remembered, particularly since the musical Camelot and the Walt Disney film The Sword in the Stone were based upon these books.

As some wit has said, the truth is that which cannot be Googled.

BOOKS The Alchemist’s Handbook: Manual for Practical Laboratory Alchemy, Frater Albertus (Red Wheel/Weiser, 1987) Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, Titus Burckhardt (Fons Vitae, 2000) Alchemy: The Secret Art, Stanislas Klossowski De Rola (Thames & Hudson, 1973) Ars Spagyrica – being a rendition of the Alchemical Arte of Spagyrics, G St M Nottingham, (Verdelet Publishing, 2005) Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Michael White (Fourth Estate, 1998) Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician, Lauren Kassell (Oxford University Press, 2007) On Becoming an Alchemist: A Guide for the Modern Magician, Catherine MacCoun (Trumpeter Books, 2009) Path of Alchemy: Energetic Healing and the World of Natural Alchemy, Mark Stavish (Llewellyn Publications, 2006)

Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Michael Joseph, 1983) The Arthurian myth is told here from the women’s perspective, first through the story of Igraine, and later concentrating on Morgaine, Arthur’s sister, and her training as a priestess on the Isle of Avalon, presided over by the Lady of the Lake. War in Heaven, Charles Williams (Faber, 1930) The Holy Grail is discovered in a country church, occasioning a struggle for its possession between the forces of darkness and of light, in the persons of a group of occultists and their black magic rituals, and a parish priest.

When understood in this way, the Grail emerges first as a pagan symbol, embraced by the Celts and Druids amongst others. As a symbol of the Mother Goddess it is ideal as it represents both womb and breast. By the medieval era this vessel of nourishment and rebirth was transferred from Goddess to God, and became the chalice that was used by Christ at the Last Supper, which later caught drops of his blood when on the cross. In recent years writers have attempted to return the Grail to the Goddess once more.

As part of the scientific revolution, we are trapped in a vision that there has to be either a material or a spiritual world. You must have one or the other. The Platonists believed rather that there is a metaxy, an in-between world, which combines both forms.

The modern world tends to think of the Holy Grail as a priceless chalice, the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, sought after through constant danger by the likes of Indiana Jones. The truth, however, is much more ancient and much more interesting. The Grail and its companion icon, the sword or spear, have served as magical images since pagan times, and today, over two thousand years later, they are still used in the rituals of ceremonial magicians, witches and Druids.

Grimoires such as the famous Key of Solomon, the Goetia or the Grimorium Verum, represent a continuity of magical practice over a thousand years old, although there are many different versions of the texts, each with missing elements. Ancient grimoires survive in libraries, and much work has been done recently to restore them to their original forms.

The Princess/Page of Swords inquisitive, objective, aloof You are probably very bright – good at communicating clearly and diplomatically, and you enjoy intellectual challenges. You love a really good conversation and find it easy to be analytical, but because of the ease with which you can be objective and detach yourself from your feelings, some people experience you as distant or even aloof. It is easy for you to become overly critical of other people and even to be tempted into prying into their lives. You sometimes think that you need to get more in touch with your feelings but this makes you feel uncomfortably childlike, and your usual sense of certainty deserts you.

read Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm, The DruidCraft Tarot (Connections, 2004) or one of the books by Rachel Pollack or Mary Greer, such as Rachel Pollack’s Complete Illustrated Guide to Tarot (Element, 2001) or Mary Greer’s Tarot for Your Self : A Workbook for Personal Transformation (New Page, 2002).

To explore the Tarot court cards more fully, read Mary K. Greer and Tom Little, Understanding the Tarot Court (Llewellyn, 2004), and Kate Warwick-Smith, The Tarot Court Cards (Destiny, 2003).

Alan Richardson has written the definitive biography of Dion Fortune: Priestess: The Life and Magic of Dion Fortune (Aquarian, 1987).

The English Physitian, or an Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation,

Dzogchen Tantra when it suggests: ‘As a bee seeks nectar from all kinds of flowers, seek teachings everywhere. Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze, seek seclusion to digest all that you have gathered. Like a mad one beyond all limits, go where you please and live like a lion, completely free of all fear.

In addition to his first love of ‘Natural Magick’, he was an avid antiquarian and founder of the world’s first public museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford. Fascinated by dreams, he kept a personal dream diary, which was studied by Jung. It offers the earliest substantial record of dreams in the seventeenth century, just as his notes on his initiation into Masonry offers the earliest account of that experience.

Ashmole was a mathematician, a scientist, a founding member of the Royal Society, a lawyer, an astrologer and an alchemist. And, just like the legendary figure of Merlin, who acted as wizard to King Arthur, and the historical figure of the Druid who was counsellor to kings, at the height of his career Ashmole became the adviser to the court of King Charles II.

The magics that were born here may have originated in the English landscape but they were informed from the very beginning by different cultures. The Druids were influenced by the Classical world, as was that world by India. Alchemy was influenced by Arabia, Medieval magic by Jewish cabbalism. The Golden Dawn was inspired by German Rosicrucianism, the French Occult Revival, and the religion of Ancient Egypt. Thelema was a result of Crowley’s explorations in Far and Near Eastern religion and magic, which informed Gardner’s Wicca too. For Dion Fortune, Christ, the Egyptian gods and the gods of the British Isles were equally inspiring, and as for Chaos magicians: they would claim the Universe and the world of physics as their inspiration.

Although the thirty-six volumes of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, published by Transworld Publishers, present an elaborate fantasy world that removes Pratchett from the genre of ‘occult fiction’, contemporary magicians enjoy reading his humorous portrayal of many of the ideas and figures that people the world of twenty-first-century magic.

As I extended my studies, I soon realised that this spiritual association with arts and crafts had been common knowledge since the third century. Plotinus, one of the most famous Neoplatonist magicians, wrote in his Enneads that ‘the arts are not an imitation of nature, but human-mediated expressions of the spiritual source of which nature is only the outward form.

Sometimes, the last experts in a dying craft consciously destroyed their knowledge. For example, the labyrinths, still seen as mazes throughout England, once had a magical function of trapping spirits. Fishermen would construct them to trap these sprites, which stopped the wind blowing, and there are examples that are over a thousand years old. Yet the last great ‘Labyrinth Master’ refused to pass on his skills as he thought no one was worthy enough.

As conscious interest in the subject waned, however, a peculiar phenomenon occurred: more and more people began engaging in activities that were in essence magical, but without seeing them as such. This was due to the success of Freemasonry. To be led blindfold in bare feet or with one foot slip-shod, with clothes rearranged to expose parts of the body to the gaze of unseen initiates, to be challenged at the point of a sword, to have a noose around one’s neck like a prisoner bound for the gallows or a foetus entangled with its umbilical cord, and to swear loyalty before being ‘reborn’ into the light and welcomed into a select group: this is an experience that is based upon the same principles that were used by the Ancient Mystery Schools. They can also be observed to this day in the rites of passage of indigenous peoples around the world. Clearly such a ceremony touches upon the most basic human experiences of birth itself, of fearing death and of surviving ordeals – and it was this activity, clothed in all the pomp and ceremony required to make it acceptable to eighteenth-century gentlemen, that made Freemasonry such an enduring and successful phenomenon.

As the institution of Masonry grew, its original founding impulses of mutual support, the protection of trade secrets and the use of secret rites were so appealing that these ideas were imitated and adopted almost wholesale by many trade institutions. Millers, coopers, printers and dozens of other similar groups developed rites that involved Masonic-style initiations. In 1830, the Shoemaker’s Union in Cheshire, for example, bought ‘a full set of secret order regalia, surplices, trimmed aprons, etc., and a crown and robes for King Crispin’, the legendary patron of their craft.1 Magic had crept into the professional life of England through the back door.

The story of Rosicrucianism highlights an issue that in the end must be confronted by every student of magic and its history. The magical quest is – in one of its deepest senses – a philosophical quest for the truth, and yet the story of magic is one of endless fantasies, fibs and fictions. Much of the recounted history, certainly before the end of the twentieth century, of Druids, witches, Freemasons, alchemists and Rosicrucians is simply not true. Sometimes this is the result of deliberate deception, sometimes of poor scholarship combined with wishful thinking.