The Call of Isis
by
Olivia
Robertson
5. Uranus the Magician.
I
was standing in the doorway of the Cafe of the Victoria and Albert
Museum, looking around for a young man
whom I had not met. Owen, having heard that I
worked with people in trance, had asked to meet me. At first I had
refused.
Trance sessions took up so much of my time
and energy, that I would only undertake them if I felt that there was
genuine need,
or some gift that needed developing. Owen,
his friend had told me, wished to study the Western Tradition of the
Mysteries,
particularly the Arthurian Quest for the Holy
Grael. She herself was following an Indian method of meditation with a
group.
She knew that I was willing to help people
find their own particular path, as long as I felt it led to good. I was
myself
attracted to the Grael legend, so finally I
agreed to meet Owen. I knew he was nineteen, but had no other
description.
I chose my plates of food on a tray, and then
examined the people at the various tables. My attention was attracted
to one particular young man sitting bolt
upright with a brief case by his side. He had neat short black hair, a
white collar
and dark suit. He seemed to be the only
person waiting for someone. I thought, 'Oh no! Not him!' But put my tray
down
at his table.
Then I became aware of
another young man approaching the table. He was slim and dark; he had
the
air of a gypsy, combined with that of a
medieval troubadour. Yet there was nothing unusual about his clothes. We
acknowledged
each other at once.
I liked Owen. He
had a pleasant personality, warm-hearted and romantic. In my mind I
classified
him according to the Knights of the Round
Table. This was not Percival, nor Kay nor Galahad. Something about him
reminded
me of a musical film 'Camelot'. He was Sir
Lancelot! Owen was half French, half Welsh.
We arranged to
do a series of sessions, beginning in our
friend's flat in London and, if the preliminary efforts were promising,
to continue
them in Ireland.
During the first
session I found that Owen could enter trance easily, though he had not
done
this sort of work before. His gift lay in
seeing an astonishing range of symbols, expressed in colourful scenes.
His weakness
lay in his inability to hear or receive any
telepathic thoughts. His mind was like a coloured film without a sound
track.
I noticed that this correlated with his
personality. For Owen loved the world of nature, of visual impact; but
found self-expression
through thought and speech extremely
difficult. In fact he told me that he had only read about two books on
mysticism and
the occult. He preferred to understand
directly through symbols, without words. And, like Valentine, in
consequence he had
brilliant clairvoyance.
His two
opening trance adventures showed me what his line of development was.
And it was
not Arthurian. It was Arabic. What interested
me was that it seemed to be a pure and mysterious Arabic knowledge,
that concerned
itself with the cult of the Dove and the
White Rose. In his early trance experiences he identified himself with a
small dirty
Arab boy with bare feet, though his earthly
personality rejected this. He wished to be a Knight. Nor were his
instructors
those that he thought he wanted. Here were no
Ladies with white pointed head-dresses, nor did the Sage who finally
came to
him have much resemblance to Merlin, though
he hoped that this was so. And the teachings brought through were new
for both
of us. I had that glorious feeling 'the
Operator' has when suddenly psychic contact with some hierarchy is
established.
We were 'through to our contacts', as
occultists would put it.
Here one must examine what these
contacts
mean. For psychotherapy used to develop
creative imagination may be acceptable to modem science, but not the
existence of
paranormal Teachers. This usually is regarded
as unproven; at worst, hallucinatory. Nor can one prove the Great Ones'
reality. One knows it oneself, and one shares
the knowledge with others. One tries to work with the Great Ones. This
is all
one can do.
However there are certain
pointers that enable one to check on the external validity of a
Teacher.
For one thing, someone in trance will answer
from the subconscious a question put to him. Usually a hypnotized
subject is
asked the routine question: 'Were you happy
at school?' 'What do you feel about your mother?' And the subject
will try to answer truthfully. Psychiatrists
don't usually ask questions such as: 'Have you a soul that survives
death?'
'Do Angels exist?' 'Is there a God?' If they
did, they might get surprising answers.
So I ask
a person in trance questions about Teachers,
and get what I feel to be a reasonable reply. And, when trance is
finished, 'the
percipient' is perfectly capable of giving a
rational assessment of the degree of reality of the experience. Instead
of
the doctor and patient relationship, of
hypnotist and subject, there is in the method I use, collaboration
between two equals
in a mutual experiment. The telepathic
rapport of 'Operator' and 'Percipient' extends also to the Spirit Guide,
whose mind blends with that of Operator and
Percipient, each with individual choice and responsibility for the work
in hand.
I have found that usually there is
not one teacher, but a group. This gives a balanced scheme of teachings
to
those on earth receiving the messages; and a
feeling of safety in numbers. The group teaching given to Owen and
myself during
these sessions were led by one calling
himself 'The Sage'. As described by Owen, he was a white bearded man,
wearing
a purple cloak fastened by a crescent moon
brooch. He bore a staff which he used in a curious way as a wand. With
him were
associated the Three Ladies. They first
showed themselves to Owen separately; finally together in a cave.
The
first was the Lady with red hair. Owen saw
her in a woodland scene, wearing fifteenth-century costume. Her hair was
bound
with pearls, and her gown was full, and
coloured yellow and blue. Owen's task was, with the aid of a gypsy, to
bring her
a bundle from a Roman villa with a mosaic
patio. The symbolic head delineated in the centre of the mosiac pavement
was that
of a helmeted warrior. The bundle was given
to the gypsy by an old woman. Owen finally brought it to the Lady in the
wood.
The focal part of this experience was
the nature of the contents of the bundle. Owen realized that this
belonged
to the Lady of the wood: not to the warrior.
And when he untied the bundle he found two candlesticks, and a golden
chalice
with rubies. So his first session brought at
once the Grael which he sought. And he had to give it away, though he
had been
tempted to keep it. The teaching given was
thus conveyed, not in words, but in symbols.
The Grael he sought
was
not, as he has thought, within the
jurisdiction of the Warrior King. Rather was he to seek for it among
humble peasant women
and gypsies, in the depths of woodlands. It
seemed quite a good indication that he should come to Ireland!
The
second Lady who instructed him was the Woman
at the Well. She appeared when we began our Irish sessions in the
library. She
appeared to him as Moorish, her face veiled;
and she gave him a drink of well-water in a pitcher. Her teachings
concerned
the alchemical transmutation of metals, and
the animation of amulets through the co-operation of elemental spirits.
In
a series of vivid dramas, she showed him the history of a scarab amulet
from its creation by a goldsmith in Hittite times,
through battles, sieges and robbery and
recovery, to its present day hiding place in a cave, dusty and without
its green stone.
Again I felt that underlying the interest of
the story and its alchemical implications, lay the philosophical point
that Nature,
represented by the emerald, had been trampled
upon by armed men.
His third Lady was the most exalted. She was
the Lady of the Doves. She appeared to him as
a white-robed figure with great white wings, surrounded by doves. She
presided
over the Home of the doves. To her belonged
the area of purification through the element of water.
But
undoubtedly
the dominating figure in all Owen's trance
experiences was The Sage. The Sage's method of teaching was to use his
staff and other 'physical' objects, and
through them to convey his teachings. Indeed I wondered if this was how
Teachers
taught their disciples in the days when few
could read or write. For the Sage's staff could obligingly become a
serpent,
a pointer, or a wand; his moon brooch the
moon itself! It was hard work for us to get through these teachings.
They would
come during heaviest trance. Trances deepen
through clearly defined stages. Owen's preliminary experience, Stage
One,
would begin in country surroundings,
sometimes in France. The first Helper, whom Spiritualists call the
Gate-Keeper, would
show himself in the guise of a Carter, a
Horseman, or possibly a peasant gathering sticks. This reminded me of a
fairy-tale
etiquette, when the youngest prince treats a
hunchback or an old crone with respect, and so is guided in his own
quest. Owen's
first guide would point the way silently down
the path he was expected to follow.
Stage Two led to a
deepening
trance. The way of entry to the next scene
was usually through darkness and limitation - and I was amused at the
various ways
in which Owen found his doorway! The doorway
could be a tunnel, a pool, a dolmen, a looking-glass; and, once when he
was in
a room and I could see no way out for him -
he went up the chimney!
It was in Stage Two world that he met
the
Ladies and had adventures set in historical
periods and places - in medieval castles and forests. This was a world
of emotional
experiences of love and adventure, like a
Walter Scott novel.
Stage Three was entered through still deeper
trance,
and it is here with many people that memory
cannot be brought back. But Owen could remember. Stage Three was entered
through
the coming of light. Owen could see a star
high in the sky, or simply light. He would ascend into this - and it was
in this
sphere of consciousness that he would meet
the Sage. For this was a world of symbols, of fluctuating forms that
each carried
their enigmatic meaning. Here he learnt of
suns and worlds.
The Sage's teachings about the lunar sphere were
of great fascination for us, and I had not read of anything like these before.
He
would use ordinary objects to illustrate great meanings. On one
occasion he
laid seven small stones on the desert sand.
They were coloured red, yellow, green, blue, black, white and purple.
The Sage
pointed with his staff at the yellow stone
and the white one. These became Sun and Moon in the sky, and the Sage's
Violet
mantle became Space. The point of the
teaching was that them was an etheric 'rope' of connecting radiations
linking
earth to moon. This, Owen said, looked like a
luminous white twisted rope from the outside, but was rainbow coloured
within.
He said that there were also these connecting
'ropes' of radiations connecting sun and earth, and sun and moon. In
fact, seen in this psychic way, each coloured
stone became a planet with connecting radiations, like a Maypole, with
the planets
merrily dancing round the central sun, linked
with differing coloured ribbons!
But in the story we were given
the situation was hardly merry. Repeatedly
Owen was shown black clouds, presumably of pollution - either psychic or
physical
- upsetting the earth's balance. He was shown
the 'rope' between the earth and the moon break. What was interesting
was that finally it was the earth and not the
moon that broke its connection with the sun, and flew off into outer
space!
The little moon took its place and took its
turn as an independent planet, joining the maypole dance in orbit round
the sun.
I notice that young people are quite
happy about thoughts of a coming cataclysm. They like drama; and coping
with
cosmic disasters seems to promise more
excitement than spending an incarnation working in an office! In this
case I said that
possibly these visions need not contain a
physical prophecy, but might convey a symbolic meaning. Rejecting his
soul sphere
- the moon - man might also lose connection
with the Spiritual Sun. Or, putting it personally, like most of us Owen
needed
to cope successfully with his emotional
problems before he took on deeper esoteric work.
In these
sessions I always
brought Owen back slowly, stage by stage, in
the way he had come. We would end with sending out Healing, then we
would give
our reports of what had happened, and our
opinion as to what the visions were about.
When dealing with the
subject
of hypnotism, one is generally brought up
against a very natural prejudice. There is the fear that 'the subject'
is
put under the will of some Svengali-like
operator and, even if the subject cannot be made to do something against
his spiritual
will, still there is the suspicion that he
has been subject to brain-washing, called politely 'suggestion'. After
all, in other fields the same relationship
applies: the teacher instructs the pupil, the priest teaches the
faithful. How
alarming is the thought of subjecting oneself
to the influence of another human while one is in trance! It brings
thoughts
of interrogation by intelligence officers as
depicted in television plays. As for a woman Operator, such Ladies are
shown
as very powerful - and therefore alarming, as
in Bulwer Lytton's 'The Coming Race'. In this novel female 'Gy-ei'
are portrayed as sending men into deep trance
by a mere pointing of the finger at the gentlemen's brows!
Therefore
in my work of inducing trance I do not use
the word 'hypnotism'. 'Hypnos' means sleep, and the percipient
in my method does not sleep. Next, I keep
'suggestion' to a minimum, and only give advice when asked. I start
usually
with 'building' an imaginary temple as safety
precaution, for this temple gives the percipient a place of refuge that
yet forms part of his trance. For the dreamer
finds it hard to wake up at once in earth conditions. I bring him back
to the
temple at the end, and from there we send our
thoughts of healing for others. But the intervening dreams are the
individual
choice of the percipient, who decides what to
do, what to accept, and what to reject. Learning to do so in trance
experience,
he hopes to control his waking life in the
same way. If in trance he can face a dragon with equanimity - even
establish a
friendly relationship with it; he hopes to
cope more successfully with his employer, who has an odd dream
resemblance to the
dragon ...
The most dramatic proof of
one's own psychic development and control is the recognition in earthly
flesh of the Spirit Master. Of course this
Master may be a man or a woman. The pupil has been taught during sleep
and trance
state by a Master. He remembers these
lessons. He knows the appearance of his Teacher perfectly. Then one day
he goes to a
meeting, or a dinner party, and, suddenly, in
walks his Teacher in the flesh! And he knows that he is passing from
the lunar
sphere of psychism into the orbit of the
Spiritual Sun. There is a change in his consciousness. He may expect to
face his
Initiation of the Purification of the Moon,
before he can start again in a new school of undreamt of activity.
Back to The Call of Isis
On to Chapter Six
Text presented on this site as it appears in the 1975 edition.