[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

Was the triangle solid or in outline (see sketch below – apologies for the quality!)?

Yellow trinagles….hmm. Didn’t the Illuminati like Pyramids and triangles? I’m in Ireland for Easter (just back from a trip to the Hill of Tara which was magical in the sunshine) but when I get back I’ll have a shift through some reference books on secret societies and see if anything matches.

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Doh! At least someone is on the ball – thanks, Michael.

It’s on Sunday 6th May (2007).

Cheers,
Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Quote:

When I finish my article I’ll be touching on the Lydian Maeonians.

Hi Michael,

I was really looking forward to seeing how you were going to weave the amputee Lydian Maeonians into your article; I’m gutted now

Seriously though, do Herodotus and Homer mention them in terms of being amputees (as this seems debatable at best)?

Happy New Year!

- Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi ObYsnat,

I’m not sure about the Maeoniae connection but with regards “Meonia” I believe the other theories were that it could be (a) an anagram, (b) a magic power word (both of these are expanded here: [url:372xy0ze]http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/Arch.htm[/url] in an article by Andrew Collins citing Kenneth Grant’s “Ninth Arch”). I also seem to recall (although, to my shame, I don’t have the Seventh Sword immediately to hand ) that there was a theory that the secret society of Catholics might have been called Meonia. Maybe somebody else can confirm or deny…

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

The internet is a marvellous thing. The following unsolicited response to the Larchill post came into my in-tray by someone who happened across the article via a search engine.

Seamus Cullen Says:

“I am the authur of the article in Oughterany and I own the property where Mary Watson lived in Baltracey. Unfortunately nothing remains of the house where Mary lived and nothing further has come to light of Mary or her child. As a member of the Society of Friends she was treated better than other christians who gave birth to a child out of wedlock in 18th century Ireland. Her relative Margo who lived subsequently in Larchill also had a trgic life. She was orphaned at a young age married off to her first cousin for property inheritance reasons and died childless aged fifty.”

Thanks for the update, Seamus, and for the original article.

It would be interesting to do a meditation in the Baltracey house and see what images are produced there and how they compare with the Larchill sequence.

[imported_SimonMember]

Merry Christmas to y’all from me too.
Thanks for everyone’s support during the year and looking forward to trying some new things for the New Year.

Cheers,
Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Cakey,

Thanks for this. I see that it didn’t sell at the original asking price of £150 and is now back on for £135 or nearest best offer. Herne’s Son is certainly known to pQ.com as a contributor and legitimate trader of psychic questing books and items so I hope someone buys it. Yuri posted a review of the video elsewhere on these pages if you’re interested in what it contains.

I miss the ebb and flow of the psychic questing trade on eBay. Bizarrely after all the hassle I had with the eBay scraper/RSS feed I wrote (it’s a fairly dumb piece of software and every time eBay made a change to the layout it stopped working properly), I just tested it again and it still seems to work just fine. So if anyone is interested in monitoring psychic questing items on eBay (plus occasional fishing rods and hair dryers!) the link again to put in your RSS feeder is: http://www.psychicquesting.com/ebay2rss.php

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Well the forum visibility changes appear to be working in one sense. November was the busiest month (20695 Hits) so far in the life of psychicQuesting.com and it also had the single busiest day (19 November – 1505 Hits).

The forum articles have definitely begun to be indexed. My unique combination now shows a pQ result if searched from Google or Yahoo which is great.

Looking at the search words that are actually bringing people here though, it is still very much “Andrew Collins”/”Psychic Questing” but that should start to change as more obscure words are picked up and indexed.

It would be great to think that this increased activity will bring more unsolicited contributions but no sign of that as yet…

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

Interesting feedback on your local St Anne’s – I think the Brittany link is very likely.

I have already tried Microsoft Maps and can get tantalising close but nothing I can actually identify. Here is a screenshot of the back garden that I believe contains the well (rough boundary marked in red, the well, I believe is to the bottom right of the boundary approximately where the dark circle – a tree? – is):

I’ve been in contact with a helpful lady in East Riding council who sent me some photocopies of articles in the Hull Daily Mail that mentioned the old manor and I’ve also confirmed with Ordnance Survey that the well appears on an 1890 map that they have. The house in whose garden I believe the well (if it still exists) now resides has just been sold and the new owners don’t appear to have taken up residence yet so I’m going to see if I can talk the estate agent into letting me in to have a quick look around. It’s a long shot, though!

Finally, I came across this further reference to the Templars and St Anne (which ties in with one of the themes in my other post) in Addison’s History of the Templars:

On the opposite side of the church, corresponding with the doorway and staircase leading to the penitential cell, there was formerly another doorway and staircase communicating with a very curious antient structure, called the chapel of St. Anne, which stood on the south side of the Round, but was removed during the repairs in 1827. In times past, this chapel of St. Anne, situate[d] on the south of “the round about walles,” was widely celebrated for its productive powers. It was resorted to by barren women, and was of great repute for making them “joyful mothers of children!”

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

The in-fighting within the ever-smaller splinter groups brings to mind the quote attributed to Kissinger: “There is no politics quite as vicious as academic politics . . . because in academia there is so little at stake!”

However, in their defence, the legacy of the Golden Dawn has been profound – not least its influence on Yeats’ poetry. Apart form the Bowie song, the Golden Dawn ritual you quoted reminds me of some Jim Morrison/Doors lyrics:

“Take a journey to the bright midnight
End of the night
End of the night

Realms of bliss
Realms of light
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to the endless night”
- End of the Night

“The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered
They are saying, “Forget the night.
Live with us in forests of azure.”
…
I’ll tell you this
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn”
- The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Forgot to add this to my post above:

“I’m closer to the Golden Dawn
Immersed in Crowley’s uniform
Of imagery”
- David Bowie, Quicksand

Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn alright until the internal bickering, which seems to have been so much a part of the movement, forced a split within the organisation. Crowley and Mathers, having both been members of the same clique within the Golden Dawn, fell out spectacularly after their attempt to gain control of the organisation failed. Both were expelled and while Crowley went his own way Mathers tried to establish a rival to the Golden Dawn called the “Order of the Alpha et Omega”. Yeats and Waite renamed their remaining portion of the original Golden Dawn “The Order of the Independent and Rectified Rite”. This itself split within a short time branching into “Stella Matutina” (which contained Yeats) and Waite’s group who later renamed themselves “The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross”.

There are some good summaries of this sequence on the web although I haven’t seen a family tree which would be the best way to present the series of splits.

Here are a couple of the better links:

[url:a63pwxrn]http://www.controverscial.com/Arthur%20Edward%20Waite.htm[/url]
[url:a63pwxrn]http://www.self-initiation.com/historyofthegoldendawn[/url]

[imported_SimonMember]

Ok – here’s another thread to weave into the Christian/Celtic fabric and this relates to my current mini-quest involving a “lost” St Anne’s well (see my “Well, well” forum post).

For this I am going to quote extensively from a book called “Where Three Streams Meet” by Seán Ó Duinn but I hope you will excuse my laziness and see how it hooks into the Brigit/Christian thread and possibly beyond!

Firstly, Ó Duinn looks at the name of the race who inhabited Ireland before the Celts, the Tuatha Dé Danann:

“The Tuatha Dé Danann…are the ancient goddesses and gods of the Celts of Ireland. But there may be among them older divinities from the megalithic period. While Celtic names such as An Daghdha (the good God), Aonghus Óg, An Bhóinn, Midhir, Manannán Mac Lir, Eithne, and others cluster around Brú no Bóinne, Newgrange itself was constructed thousands of years before the Celts arrived in Ireland. Did the Celtic gods and goddesses take over the sanctuaries of the megalithic peoples as acts of conquest, or was there a blending of different cultures – megalithic, bronze age and Celtic? This would seem to be what happened and perhaps the different peoples had many religious ideas in common…it seems from the folklore traditions…that the dead were also involved with the Tuatha Dé Danann.” (p. 60-61)

“The name Tuatha Dé Danann or Tuatha Dé Anann (Peoples of the Goddess D/Ana) is derived from Dana or Ana. The “D” of Dé may have come over in front of “Ana” to make it “Dana” for ease of pronunciation. Ana is the word for prosperity/fertility and “Ana” is the name of the Goddess of fertility.” (p. 55-56)

So from this it appears that Ana may be one of the “old goddesses” who was most associated with the province of Munster in Ireland. Another variant of the name that I will quote below is Anu which is interestingly the same as the old Sumerian God. Zeachariah Sitchin makes the connection between Anu and Ana, having them husband and wife. Perhaps it is merely the continuing influence of the ghost of great-uncle Myles but I can’t help wondering about the linguistic similarities between the old Gaelic and Sanskrit words.

Some unusual overlaps are then seen to happen (in the merging of the religions mentioned above). Ana becomes the Christianised St Anne, while the goddess Brigit becomes St Brigid. Another, separate(?) goddess, Áine, seems to act as a bridge between Ana and Brigit. Lets look again at what Ó Duinn says:

“Behind the ritual was the belief that Áine returned annually on the holy night [St John's Eve/Summer Solstice/23rd June] to celebrate her own rites. This belief also formed a major part of the cult of St Brigid…The regular, annual return of a saint from heaven to earth on his/her feast day does not seem to be part of the ordinary catholic tradition. In the case of St Brigid, it would appear that this was one of the characteristics of the goddess Brigid which descended to Brigid the saint on analogy with the annual return of Áine.” (p. 62)

This common archetype is also glimpsed in an old Gaelic Christian prayer which is summed up as follows:

“Another night prayer is concerned with disturbed sleep and puts the cross of Christ and the three holy women [St Anne, the Virgin Mary and St Elizabeth] as a protection against nightmare. These same three women
are invoked for a safe childbirth and this may have been the original situation for these three had unusual births. Mary was a virgin and Anne and Elizabeth were barren.” (p. 165)

And finally, we have another connection between Ana and Brigit:

“Brittany is a Celtic country rich in ‘Pardons’ – local colourful pilgramages in honour of St Anne, Patroness of Brittany, the Virgin Mary and numerous local saints. It is surprising how many of these occur during the strictly Lughnasa period – from the third Sunday in July to the first Sunday of August…the Pardon of St Anne d’Auray takes place around her feastday on 26 July while that of Ste-Anne-la-Palud takes place later on the last Sunday of August.
It is thought that both places were probably pre-Christian cult centres of the Celtic goddess Anu…/Ana…who was assimilated to the figure of St Anne by early Christian missionaries.” (p. 322)

Bearing in mind that Brittany is probaly named after Bree (the suggested root of Brigit) there seems to be an ancient tradition linking the two goddesses.

in summary, then, it seems that on good authority we can draw a parallel evolution between Ana and Bree and see a great deal of equivalence between them:

Pre-Celtic -> Celtic -> Christian
Ana -> (Aine?) -> St Anne
Bree -> Brigit -> St Brigid

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Perceval, I think that some geometry was indisputably introduced to church architecture. For example, here’s a nice summary from the BBC’s website:

“Medieval master masons used simple proportional systems, such as ad quadratum (by the square), the Golden Section (b/a = c/b) and ad triangulum (by the triangle) to design their buildings. The most common, ad quadratum, is based on the ratio of the side of any square to it diagonal (1: v2). A rectangle (A4 paper is an example) with these two lengths as its sides has a pleasing shape. A mason could derive a whole building simply by making a series of larger and smaller squares and rectangles based on a single base unit and be sure that every section would connect harmoniously.”

How far the masons would have taken this is another question entirely. And as to whether Callum’s overlay corresponds to the physical reality…I guess you’ll just have to visit Lincoln cathedral to find out

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

You’ve totally pre-empted where I was going with this “At various points throughout the Trimorphic Protennoia, the triple descent of Protennoia and the various forms in which she appears, namely as Voice, Speech and Word, are interpreted by means of concepts which are drawn from the Sethian baptismal terminology: the Voice is said to be the unpolluted spring from which flows Living Water, characterized as radiant light.” (Parzifal’s Blog: [url:2szi2dhg]http://parzifal.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/ritual-in-gnosticism[/url]).

As mentioned, two of Brigit’s main characteristics are (1) association with Holy Wells (=living water) and (2) a constantly burning fire (=radiant light).

I would also point to “The Thunder, Perfect Mind” for more of the same (For I am the first and the last/I am the honored one and the scorned one/
I am the whore and the holy one/I am the wife and the virgin) but you’ve nailed it with Barbelo.

With regards Godfrey de Bouillon (descendant of the Swan Knight), he is one of the nine worthies – and wasn’t it the picture of the nine worthies in Harvington Hall that led Andy and Graham to the knight’s Pool and the Swan’s neck? How’s that for a neat bit of symmetry?

But getting back to Yeats, as a schoolchild in Ireland you get so much of it pushed at you that you tend to form an instinctive aversion to it. I must say that I’ve been getting back into the poems a lot – and of course he was involved in magic up to his eyes. He and his wife produced a book (“A Vision”) based primarily on automtic writing and it’s from this that the poem of Leda and the Swan comes.

“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs,
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”

In fact this was originally entitled “annunciation” and Yeats in his “Dove or Swan” section sees the past two cycles (or “gyres”) as being the old paganism where Zeus in the form of a swan rapes Leda (a kind of brutal annunciation) and the more recent being the age of Christianity where the annunciation is a far more gentle one but still accompanied by a bird (the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove). He thus contrasts the Dove (Christian) with the Swan (Pagan). For the future he predicts the return of Paganism – see his cracking poem “A Second Coming”. If you don’t know it, you’ll certainly recognise many of the lines as they are oft-quoted.

So I wonder does the swan in Gnostic writing represents the Christian divine light or the pagan divine light on the dark waters?

(And as for the concept of primal light – there’s a whole other thread!)

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

I’ve only scanned the paper so far, pending a nice quiet time to return to it and mull it over. However, after reading quickly through it last night, I had a dream that got me thinking… It involved a girl from my old Psychology class called Brid (pronounced “Breed”) who’s boyfriend – in the dream – was a very small man. Anyway it took me longer than it should to make the Brid/Brigit/Swan connection but when I did the lightbulb went ping.

I haven’t yet worked out exactly where this is leading but I get the feeling that Brigid is the link or bridge between your Gnostics and later Christians.

Some random pieces of the puzzle – not yet in place: Jung believed that the swan symbolised the play of light on the water (possibly influenced by the Gnostics); Yeats’ poem the Song of Wandering Aengus; Brigit as the connection between swans and Holy wells; your meditation vision of Brigit stepping out of a swan chariot.; the swan as the whitening process in Alchemy…

More as it crystalises.

But great work with the paper – you make me envious!!

- Simon

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