Albion Still Asleep

A little under 7 years ago Bruce Charlton started a blog which he called Albion Awakening to which he invited John Fitzgerald and me to contribute. It touched on a variety of subjects to do with the spiritual mission of England and Great Britain and, by extension, the whole English speaking peoples, often centred around the myths and legends of the country, its writers, poets, artists and even prophets and also the land itself. It hoped to contribute towards the stirring from deep slumber of Albion which is the spiritual counterpart to Great Britain, the soul of the land if you like. It roughly coincided with the movement for Brexit but was not directly linked to that in any way as it went beyond a simple question of national sovereignty to spiritual awakening which would be to Brexit, even in its deeper sense, what soul is to body. The blog came to an end in 2019 but is still to be found here.

It might seem that the enterprise was in vain. Brexit has fizzled out into nothing partly because most of the Establishment worked and still work against it and partly because it was wrongly motivated anyway. That is to say, the majority of the people who voted for it did so egotistically and without a sense of service to the country or an understanding of the deeper meaning behind the political and social entity that is a modern nation. However, the blog was a shot fired against the enemy which is atheistic materialism. You might also think of it if you were fancifully inclined as a flare going up into the night sky that briefly illuminates the surrounding darkness and reminds those who see it that light exists.

John and I compiled a book from our writings to which Bruce wrote the foreword.

Albion is very obviously still asleep but that is the point. It is asleep not dead. Like Arthur, and numerous others heroic figures from legend and folklore, Albion lies hidden in the land waiting to be recalled to consciousness. The question is what might prompt this awakening? The stories about sleeping kings usually say that they lie in a kind of suspended animation in a mountain or deep cavern awaiting a time when their countries are in dire need. However, I think it is not so much need that calls them forth as readiness of the country to receive them. In the case of Albion this would imply that a critical mass of the population should be spiritually receptive enough to respond to the quality of Albion. After all, if you can't respond to it then it can't help you. Ask and you shall receive remains a profound spiritual teaching. The converse to that is if you don't ask then you won't receive. The question is how many people now even want to be saved? Unfortunately, the number does not appear to be great which is why we are in the state we are in. On the other hand, every individual who does start to wake up and ask serious questions adds to the voices calling for Albion to awaken.

The paperback version of the book can be found here.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1708664955

and here 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1708664955

Kindle versions are here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B085376XC2

and here

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085376XC2

Peck, Peck, Peck (Without Regret) *

 I had an argument with a peck enthusiast the other day. It was about the excess deaths figure which is very high at the moment both within the UK and elsewhere. I asked him if it could be the pecks that were responsible for this. He got very angry and said that this was complete conspiracy theory nonsense. He is triple pecked but has had constant cold-like symptoms for the last 3 months. He says he's never had a cold like that before and doesn't understand what could be causing it. When I questioned the virtues of the peck he got impatient and went on about "the science" and how he trusted doctors rather than weirdos on the internet before asking me what possible reason could the media and the medical establishment and the politicians have for lying to us? Then he said that I should have had enough courage to get pecked myself. I must admit this annoyed me. I said it was precisely a lack of courage, i.e. excessive fear of a disease that a little research would show to be harmless to most people who weren't very old or obese, that prompted people to take an improperly tested procedure based on a completely new technology with no long term data about its safety. I told him the reason I rejected the peck was not fear of its physical effects so much as realising that I did not need it and why would I subject myself to an untested and potentially risky intervention that I did not need? But a much deeper reason was the spiritual one. I said it was obvious that we were being manipulated and cajoled, made to take something unknown because of fear being whipped up, and I had no wish to respond to such patently devious behaviour. The psychological pressure being brought to bear made the whole thing smell bad and it was quite clear that something rotten lay below the surface.

Obviously, this remark fell on deaf ears. To a materialist, as this person is, it just sounds nonsensical. This is the problem. We can only see evil when we understand that evil exists. Otherwise we come up with the feeble why would people do such a wicked thing line. Wickedness exists and if you do not have this spiritual insight you are like a lamb to the slaughter.

The title of this post is intended to be mildly comical but I don't consider the peck to be at all funny. I'm sure its unwitting acceptance has led to many personal tragedies and my heart  goes out to people who trusted authority and have suffered a consequence. The foundational medical principle of first do no harm has been cynically betrayed or so it seems to me. I know of students at university who were almost bullied and pressured into taking this thing often under the deeply manipulative pretext of protecting others, and some of these had natural immunity anyway. To abandon responsibility for those in one's care like this because of conformity to the bureaucracy is a terrible sin.

* with apologies to Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

The Paths of Peter and John

 It could be said that right from the very beginning there were two forms of Christianity, that of St Peter and that of St John. The former provided an ideal foundation for a public religion with a good, solid structure for orientating believers towards spiritual truth. It gave a framework for belief in the human and divine figure of Christ, moral instruction and ethical guidance that would lead souls towards salvation which is the regeneration of the soul in the afterlife. This approach emphasised faith and works which together form the two pillars of the doorway that marks the entry to the higher spiritual world. However, following this path still leaves the believer looking for spiritual authority outside himself. He is dependent on externals and remains a follower.

The spiritual approach exemplified by St John is different. This is the inner approach. Christ remains Christ but he is no longer simply the Son of God who came down from Heaven. He is also within ourselves, within our hearts, and he can be known. More, not only can he be known but we can start to become like him by opening our hearts to his light and truth which will then illuminate our souls and transform them. We will not be human believers in God or followers of Christ but become transformed into spiritual beings ourselves. It might be countered that we are always spiritual beings and it is true that we were created as such. But we are spiritual beings in embryo only until we develop properly. We are seeds and seeds must bloom and flower to fulfil their purpose.

These two approaches are not mutually exclusive but they are somewhat like body and soul, and just as in our day there are many people who are aware of themselves as minds and bodies but few who are conscious of themselves as souls, so it is with these approaches. Historically, one can say that the Petrine approach has only occasionally flowered into the Johannine but humans have evolved to the point at which Christianity can only remain relevant if the Johannine approach becomes known as the direction in which the soul should proceed. It takes the external truths of Christianity and applies them internally.

I am not talking here about the difference between exoteric and esoteric or hidden teachings revealed only to the initiated. Clearly, there are many things about God and the universe we do not know but what really matters from the spiritual point of view is the proper orientation of the heart to the good, the beautiful and the true, and the spiritually perceptive know these are summed up and embodied in Jesus Christ. But there is the Christ 'out there' and the Christ within and while John includes Peter, Peter does not necessarily include John.

Over the last several centuries humanity has entered into the fullness of self-consciousness. This has resulted in two major problems. Because we have developed a much stronger sense of ourselves we have lost a proper relationship with what is below the self and what is above it. I refer to the two worlds of nature and spirit which can be thought of as our mother and our father. The first we exploit and disrespect and the second we reject and deny. Consequently, we are in total disharmony with the universe and this is the root cause of all our problems.

The self has freed itself from that in which it was embedded. This is not a bad thing because only by doing this can it really begin to know itself, but it becomes a bad thing when the process goes too far and, as it were, solidifies. Then barriers are put up against the rest of life, both natural and spiritual. To seek to return to a union with nature, as many do seek to do, is wrong because it is a return to immature childhood. We must go on to a union of the self with spirit and then a proper relationship with the natural will be included but from the higher perspective not on its own terms. But even this approach to spirit must be the right one. At the time of the decline of the Roman Empire there was great fascination with decayed forms of the ancient mysteries. This was a kind of spiritual sensationalism indicative of a jaded palate and desire for new experience. The same phenomenon occurs today with many modern versions of mysticism and occultism which are viewed as ways to excite and expand the self but this is not where true spirituality is to be found. For us in the West that remains where it has been for the last 2,000 years, firmly centred in the reality of Christ only now our approach must be that of John more than of his brother disciple Peter.

The Journey Home

 If a picture says 1,000 words here are 2,000.

These were possible covers for my forthcoming book By No Means Equal but I didn't choose them because they are a bit cliched. I still like the spiritual message they convey though.

Time to Stand Apart

 The time has arrived when the full meaning of the saying that "He who is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30) has become apparent. There is no more fence sitting. You can no longer simply be a good person or even a spiritual or religious person in a generalised sense for if you are you are likely to be caught up and absorbed by the universal inversion of true spiritual values that is well underway. If you don't consciously see this for what it is and actively stand out against it you will become part of it. Remember that this inversion of values is always presented as a good thing and the acceptance of it the mark of a good person so you do have to make an active stand against the good opinion of the world though without lapsing into egotistic defiance or rebellion for the sake of it. What it does is reverse the hierarchical relationship between spirit and matter, putting the spiritual in a distorted form as existing only insofar as it reflects the requirements and priorities of the material. Good becomes this worldly good only.

We are living at a time when the human sense of individuality has reached a peak. This is at once an opportunity, a test and a real danger. It is a danger in the sense that the consequences of a developed free will mean our choices matter. In the past it may have been spiritually acceptable for our choices to be wrong if the culture in which we lived bent them that way. We were not regarded as so personally responsible because our individual sense of self had not been built up so much. Now we are responsible. The influences of the tribe, the culture, the society are no longer acceptable as extenuating circumstances. This also means that even believing the right thing is insufficient if that belief comes from outside. It must be personal, something we have reached through inner awareness.

I have speculated before that the vastly increased population of the world at the present time may be because many souls are returning to make a definitive choice at a time when that choice will be theirs and not just their culture's. Human evolution has reached the point at which our inner mettle can be tested. The test is made both harder and easier in that religion for most people in the West is no longer the default option. If we are going to believe we must actively develop that belief without the coercion of the past. But then things are also made easier because the results of atheism and materialism are more and more apparent to the unprejudiced mind. God is asking us, "Is this what you want? There is an alternative but you have to seek it out. It won't be given to you ready wrapped as before. If you want it you must look for it but if you do look for it, seriously and sincerely, you will find it."

The Spiritual Immorality of Materialist Morality

Here are some frequently repeated sayings which are believed to encapsulate the essence of good moral behaviour as far as the modern mind is concerned but which are all wrong. Sometimes only slightly wrong but it's the gap between partial and full truth that is critical. These sayings may shine superficially but if you mistake them for sound moral instruction you will stay becalmed in materialistic thought - whether or not you believe in a God or spiritual background to the universe

Number 1. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you don't harm anyone else.

This is the classic. It's the foundation stone of humanist ideological dogma which might sound good at first glance but is highly deceptive. It is certainly wrong as interpreted but it is also wrong as it stands. For it matters very much what you do if you harm yourself and there are many things you might do that may not harm others but do damage you, especially on a spiritual level. And the fact is you do not belong to yourself. You belong to God first and foremost because he created you and therefore if you harm yourself you also do harm to him.

But even if we ignore that, wrong actions and even wrong thoughts that do damage on the spiritual plane are sins, a sin being something that does harm to the spiritual self. Sexual sins, to take the most obvious example, may not directly harm anyone else if the people involved are consenting but engaging in such sins harms the culture and therefore it does harm others who may be influenced to wrong behaviour. There is physical and psychological hurt but there is also spiritual hurt and just because this is not recognised by an atheistic society does not mean it does not exist. I would go so far as to say that even unbelief harms others because it contributes to a culture of unbelief and therefore harms people influenced by the culture as we all are to some degree. Denying God does harm yourself and it also harms others, and, as God is the fundamental truth, one might say that denying God is the gravest sin even though to the secular mind it doesn't appear to harm anyone.

Besides, proper morality is not about simple harm avoidance but has to do with living in harmony with the universe on all its levels from physical to spiritual. 

Number 2. Love thy Neighbour.

The truth is love your neighbour. The distortion comes from misinterpreting what this love means. In the Bible the commandment to love your neighbour follows the one to love God and is contingent on it. This means that the love you show your neighbour must involve an awareness of God. It must be a love that supports the neighbour in his relationship with God, not exclusively but that must be an underlying factor. It does not mean universal altruism (see Francis Berger's insightful post) which is a materialistic corruption of proper love, and nor does it mean you must treat your neighbour with kindness and respect regardless of how he behaves. 

Loving your neighbour if it is not founded on the love for God may actually be immoral in that it potentially separates the soul from God which is the greatest evil. Besides, there is no proper love outside of God, certainly not in the spiritual sense and spiritual love is the root of all lesser loves. Without it these lesser loves are like one dimensional representations of a three dimensional solid.

Number 3. You don't need God to be good.

Without an awareness of God you don't even know what good is. You reduce good to material good which may well support spiritual evil. Even Jesus denied personal goodness. How much less can any one of us claim goodness? All goodness comes from God because he is the source and the very definition of it. Not only do you need God to be good, there is no goodness without God.

The point to take away from this is that any form of morality which ignores the primacy of the spiritual and the love due from a created being to its Creator is severely deficient and may actually be profoundly immoral. The word due may confuse because it implies obligation but in this context it merely means that which feeds and makes grow the soul.

Psychedelics and Religion

 I am sympathetic to the people who advocate taking psychedelic drugs to enhance consciousness and to explore inner realms. They would say this is especially beneficial in an atheistic society such as ours for it frees us from the iron grip of materialism and shines light into the dark clouds that obscure the modern mind. We are given the direct experience of something beyond standard physical plane consciousness and we can know for ourselves that we are not body but mind and that mind has multi-dimensional aspects. As a teenager I took LSD a few times so I know the transformative effect psychedelics can have, especially if you take them in a reverential frame of mind rather than for kicks, humbling yourself before the majesty of the universe.

However, sympathy does not mean approval. I believe that the use of drugs, which is very ancient, came about when early human beings began to lose natural contact with the spiritual realms as the material world closed about them. This was in line with the evolution of consciousness which requires the development of a solid centre, the self, and a rational thinking mind that can become a co-creator with God rather than a passive participant in the general spiritual flow of life. A lot of people try to get back to this flow but that is like a reversion to childhood and it is spiritually immature. We must go forward into a new and higher awareness, one in which we do not merge into the all but become full spiritual individuals, mature, responsible, creative. Sometimes people need a cold shower rather than a warm bath in order to wake them up. Drugs were and are an escape. Early man resorted to them to try to recapture what he had lost but his spiritual progress demanded that he move on and did not revert to what he had known in the past.

Drugs are not recommended and never have been recommended by any proper spiritual teacher. The reason is they are attempts to break the barrier God has placed between this world and the next by artificial means. This barrier can be broken but it should be broken by natural spiritual development if the encounter with the next world is to be authentic and psychically healthy. Drug takers may encounter non-material beings in their experiences and these beings may seem to offer guidance and advice but there are many denizens of the inner realms and you will not encounter true higher beings if you seek to take heaven by force. Your experience will be limited and you may well only experience the world of the demons, albeit often dressed up to resemble what seems a deep and exciting mystery to the unwary.

We are not here not to experience the glories of the spiritual world but to learn the lessons of the material one though with the understanding that the spiritual is primary. It is possible that in this benighted and ignorant age drugs can help guide one towards a previously dismissed and rejected higher reality but anything other than brief use will take you off the true spiritual path which is not about experience but the sanctification of the soul. 

 Since the Fall we have been cut off from Paradise. To attempt to recapture the paradisiacal state by artificial means, whether that be a drug or technique, special breathing, prolonged fasting or even excessive meditation, is an irreligious act that seeks to put you above God. The experience gained will be tainted and a counterfeit one to true mystical experience because it will be lacking the humility and purity of motive which alone guarantee truth and ascent to higher realms. It will lead the individual away from God as he really is and towards one of the many imitations that exist both in this world and the next. The fact that so many people who advocate psychedelics report encounter with pagan deities or similar supernatural beings confirms this. These, if not demons and they may well be, are leftovers from previous cycles of evolution. They continue to exist in the inner worlds but not on proper spiritual levels.

Consciousness is a spiritual thing but it is squeezed into a physical body to learn lessons which can eventually take it beyond the physical and beyond the spiritual as normally considered to the divine. In a physical body consciousness becomes severely restricted but can also be focussed and express greater powers of self-will and motivation than when not so restricted. To seek to escape this through drugs is to seek change from without but change to be real must come from within. You reach the divine by becoming inwardly divine yourself not from attempting to steal what is not yours. A truly spiritual consciousness is not the result of what you experience or even what you feel or what you know. It comes from what you are and that to be of the right stuff demands humility, love of God and openness to the spirit of Christ.

This post follows on from the one about ancient civilisations in that Graham Hancock, the most prominent mainstream proponent of that idea, is also an enthusiast for psychedelic exploration of consciousness. I just want to say you can be right about one aspect of the esoteric/mystical but completely wrong about other aspects. This is actually quite common and simply shows the importance of real spiritual discrimination and correct understanding of what the spiritual truly is. It is not higher consciousness. The devil has higher consciousness after a fashion. It is orientation of the heart to goodness, beauty and truth in their higher aspects and a humble dedication to bring one's own soul into line with that regardless of what this may cost in terms of personal sacrifice and renunciation. A tall order perhaps but that is what it is and we are all called to that path. There are no short cuts.

Talent

 So often I hear someone comment approvingly about someone else. "He (or she) has a lot of talent." Speaking as someone who has no discernible talents I might be accused of envy in what I have to say next but hear me out. I certainly wish I could draw or paint or compose music or had any one of several gifts but I do not think that having a talent is necessarily a good thing. After all, having a talent just means having an ability to do something skilfully but surely what really matters is what you do not how well you do it? When I look around at what people of talent are doing in the world today I see mostly a trail of spiritual destruction. So few talented people are spiritually creative. Most are actively destructive of higher thought, deeper feeling, elevated sensibility. 

Here's an exchange pertinent to this subject between a spiritual Master and a young artist as recounted in the book Towards the Mysteries.

"Master: People talk of art, of literature, of becoming productive—what do they know about these things? There is the dissatisfaction of discontent in the human, because humanity is not creatively constructive but creatively destructive. Creative power is used for destructive purposes. Nearly all modern arts are blasphemy.

Artist: But they are experience!

Master: Yes—mere experience. But experience is not vitally fruitful unless the absorbing element comes out of it."

What does he mean by the absorbing element? I would say it's the ability to relate the experience to a higher spiritual value and see it in the light of that reality. Any experience taken on its own terms is regarded as not vitally (i.e. spiritually) fruitful. It may even be spiritually poisonous. Similarly, talent, on the face of it a good thing, can be, and often is today, spiritually destructive. If it is not put to the service of higher understanding it is very likely to advance the ends of that which opposes higher understanding. Look at the world around you and tell me I am wrong.

Ancient Civilisations

 At one time it was thought that the world was created in 4004 BC. This was following a literal reading of the early books of the Old Testament by a 17th century Irish archbishop called James Ussher though he was not alone in giving such a recent date. Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton apparently also thought in similar terms. This seems absurd to us nowadays as scientific investigation has shown the world to be much earlier in its origin but I have to say that in my mind 6,000 years is nothing and I can't imagine how anyone ever thought like that. They didn't in India where the age of the Earth has long been envisaged in millions of years with Days and Nights of Brahma (periods of cosmic manifestation and dissolution) alternating ceaselessly. This is a much more realistic scenario.

Modern science estimates the world to be about 4.5 billion years old with life in the form of microscopic organisms first appearing about 3.7 billion years ago. Early types of humans entered the scene around 2 million years ago with homo sapiens originating about 300,000 years ago. This is the current official timeline but is always subject to change as new discoveries are made and old ones reassessed. The first civilisations are thought to have emerged a mere 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia following the development of agriculture.

I believe that last date will one day seem as ridiculous as we now think of Archbishop Ussher's date for the creation of the world. Granted, a slow development may reach a tipping point at which it suddenly accelerates, but still the length of one timeframe, that for the development of man, compared to the rapidity of the other, development of culture, should at the very least raise questions. Is modern civilisation really the first there has been on the Earth, given the vast periods involved? Or are there other possibilities concerning the life of human beings on this planet?

The author Graham Hancock has a recent series on Netflix in which he explores the idea that a great civilisation was destroyed at the end of the last Ice Age when fragments of a comet from the Taurid meteor shower hit the Earth causing massive floods that swept away all traces of that culture. It is thought to have been a seafaring, therefore coastal, civilisation, and as sea levels are supposed to have risen nearly 200 feet since the time of the presumed impact 12,800 years ago, this fact would explain the absence of any remains that could bear witness to its presence. Nevertheless, myths and tradition from all over the world speak of a global devastation by flood and the destruction of an advanced civilisation. Plato's story of Atlantis is known by everyone and, curiously enough, the date he gives coincides with the date of the presumed comet strike and the rising of sea levels. Hancock is actually only one of many people who have speculated on this subject but he has done his research and presents a good case for the open-minded which, unfortunately, is not the scientific community.

Occult tradition knows all about ancient civilisations and it speaks of not just one but several. Because these originate at different times in the Earth's evolution when consciousness is not the same as it is today, and even the material environment is different, they are not all the same type as ours. Atlantis, or the civilisation that we call Atlantis today, had technology but it was a very different sort to ours, some of it being indistinguishable to what we would think of as magic. In some ways their capabilities would be greater than ours, in others less. What seems to be the pattern though with all these civilisations is that they rise and fall, progressing to an advanced level of sophistication and then succumbing to hubris though it may be that even their genetic quality deteriorates too as ours is said to be doing since the Industrial Revolution which was a two-edged sword in that it allowed for the survival of individuals with maladaptive mutations who then go on to have children themselves. This is an emotional subject but if one looks at it logically and without judgement the facts and the consequences of those facts are clear. Abundance, a comfortable, safe and secure life, will allow for the survival and prospering of individuals who would have previously died because they were not sufficiently fit for the environment. The basic human stock will slowly deteriorate. No one can do anything about this unless one resorts to unacceptable, rightly unacceptable, actions but it helps explain why advanced societies tend to self-destruct. In a way their achievements work against them. But there is also the fact that as human beings carve out a comfortable world for themselves with wealth and power and a surfeit of pleasure to be had they lose connections to the gods, the spiritual realm, and this leads to their downfall. All the traditions speak of the flood having come about because of human arrogance and wickedness. The inevitable comparisons with the world today and the state of our civilisation, materially and technologically advanced but spiritually impoverished, must be made. Indeed, it may be that we are rediscovering this idea of destroyed ancient civilisations now as a warning.

Hancock draws attention to the stories of many societies from all around the world relating how their cultures were started off by mysterious visitors, usually from beyond the seas, who gave primitive peoples the foundation stones of civilisation, agriculture, arts and crafts, architectural skills, astronomy and so on.  These were often regarded as gods but it may be that they were survivors from the destroyed civilisations trying to sow seeds for a rebirth. At that time it is probable that primitive hunter gatherers coexisted with the advanced civilisation for there is no reason other than ideological prejudice to assume that all human groups progressed at an equal pace or were equally developed. The civilised society may have been more vulnerable to environmental catastrophe as, apart from existing in areas now submerged, they would have been less familiar with a hand to mouth existence than the hunter gatherers who could have adapted much more readily to the new circumstances.

Given the long time homo sapiens has been around, even by current estimation (it may, of course, be even longer than presently recognised), it seems very reasonable to think there have been previous civilisations that have vanished, witness to their presence being obscured by earth changes. And, in fact, that is just what myth and legend tell us. The present cycle is just that, a cycle in the ongoing evolution of the Earth, and each cycle starts afresh though with some input from the past as the survivors of the putative Atlantis are said to have kickstarted civilisations in Egypt, South and Central America and even (I would maintain) Great Britain. We have forgotten so much about our past and who we are. We have forgotten our earthly history and we have also forgotten our spiritual history. The fact that many different sources are currently trying to remind us of both of these indicates to me that there is a concerted effort to get us to wake up. Obscuring the past may once have had a purpose as it enabled us to get on with building a new present but that time is over and it is now time for humanity to rediscover its earthly and spiritual heritage. This is all the more urgent as there are several signs that what happened before with Atlantis may happen again to us. We are a civilisation that has forgotten the gods and lost its sense of reality. It is widely accepted (though publicly ignored) that we are facing economic and cultural collapse but it may be that other factors may also play their part in determining the future as they did at the end of the last Ice Age.