BEGINNINGS
In the alchemical work of Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, the practitioner starting out in alchemy is advised to ‘go to the woman washing clothes, and do the same yourself.’ Basically, this phrase is that is normally interpreted as meaning it is necessary when proceeding towards the Great Work to be instructed in the correct procedures, but I would also like to add that the things we tend to overlook can have profound lessons for us if we observe them properly. Today, I want to mention some things that might not seem very likely inspirations, especially for those who are embarking on a life of magical exploration or learning.
BOREDOM AND PHOSPHENES
At the top of the list, I would like to include ‘boredom’ as one of the most important of overlooked things that is formative to our magical understanding. Boredom was one of my first incentives, making me seek out the spaces where inspiration lay. Staring at the design on the carpet while endless heated discussions raged at my grandmother’s house every Saturday afternoon, as all the uncles thundered and swore about politics, football, and tropical fish – which they each kept. Or, in the early reaches of my childhood, in default of toys – I didn’t have many - lying on the floor with a blanket tucked in about me, so I became a rock on the floor, where I communed with the phosphenes behind my eyes and learned about the universe from the entoptic images that arose as I lay still and quiet.
Phosphenes (literally, ‘the light that shines forth’) are the luminous shapes and patterns that we see in the darkness behind our eyes when there is no visual stimulus. The artist, Aaron Ross, defined them as ‘ephemeral signposts marking the landscape of inner space.’ Everybody, except people blind from birth, sees them. They can appear as concentric or spiral lines, waves and swirls, pulsing in moving patterns that, like cellular organisms seen under a microscope, dance, swirl, rotate and meander. These shapes form a universal pattern book that can be seen reproduced in everything from cave-art to artists like Miro and St Hildegard of Bingen, who herself suffered from ocular migraines, during which attacks the phosphenes are seen to streak, morph, flash and zigzag in a more pronounced manner. I have also started to have ocular migraines over the last 20 years of my life, but they don’t phase me, as I recognise their patternings. For me, these half hour episodes are triggered by very bright light. For Hildegard, these were treated as mystical sendings. A few years back a client came complaining of being psychically attacked: when I asked what the symptoms of this were, she described phosphenes so well, that it was clear that she was having ocular migraines too: I sent her away greatly relieved and keen to look at some Hildegard illustrations.
If you want to experience phosphenes for yourself, an absence of light will enable you to see them, as will pressing gently on the eyelids. Being in darkness gives the best viewing, but you can also lie outside in sunlight, and close your eyes, also putting your arm over them will help you discern their movements. This is especially interesting at sacred sites. Turning off your directing brain will also enable you to notice phosphenes and pay attention to them – as they are all too readily dismissed. Mathematician G. Bard Ermentrout explains that pressure upon the eyeballs inhibits signals from the retina, thereby encouraging the brain's cortex to fill the void – perhaps it is the body’s way of dealing with horror vacui? But I have experienced them as primally important, though they seem everywhere to be overlooked.
Certainly, phosphenes have been called ‘the prisoner’s cinema.’ I was in this cinema all of my young life for long periods, not just in bed, but during the day too. The rearrangement and the dancing of the images kept me entranced for hours – who needs a kaleidoscope? But this was not just a passive experience. I learned that if I asked questions while I attending to them, that the phosphenes, whom I called ‘the Shapers,’ would respond, and I would comprehend their answers at a level of cellular understanding. Between the phosphenes and the constellatory patterns of the stars, we have a wealth of meaning. Extraordinarily, most of us have had access to phosphenes all our lives, but few have bothered to notice them: some people find them exaggerated under the effect of some medications, drugs and certain medical conditions; others worry that they are hallucinating or suffering from something pathological. Be assured that most human beings have this ability.
Within the joyfully exuberant phosphene cinema, I came to grasp things mystically for the first time. Since I couldn’t see stars at all, due to my wretchedly bad sight, I had a celestial experience behind my eyes, giving me an interior view of the greater universe, and an unfailing source of greater wisdom. Under my childhood blanket, the phosphenes pulsed and rippled their answers to me, as they still do today.
BOOKS WE DON’T RATE ANY MORE BUT WHICH INSPIRED US STILL
When we are young, the smallest and meanest of things can open windows into other worlds for us, because they communicate strongly, awakening and engaging the imagination.
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I remember a comic book which a friend lent to me where a Rider-Haggard She-type character lived for years uncounted, and the person from modern times discovering her abode was stricken dumb by the realization that the worn-down stairs of her cave had been trodden only by this long-lived character’s footsteps. That made an immense impact upon me, as I had a glimpse at immortality. Likewise, when 7-8 years old, while lying in a hospital bed for a childhood operation, reading a book from the hospital trolley by Lobsang Rampa where the lama visited a Tibetan monastery and was shown into a hall where rows of mummified lamas of previous ages had achieved the ‘rainbow-body’. Lopsang Rampa sees his own previous incarnation’s mummy. That also stopped me in my tracks, as I had never come across the concept of reincarnation before. Both these things revealed something very important for me.
Today, I would rate the comic as low-trash indeed, and as for Lobsang Rampa! This prolific author who wrote as a purported Tibetan Lama escaped from Tibet, was actually an English plumber from Devon called Cyril Hoskins, who had never left this country in his life. His were works of fiction. He wrote 18 books in all, from the mid 50s onwards. They were in every library and probably every second-hand bookshop throughout the 60s and 70s, and I doubt I could get through one now without hearty guffaws.
However, in the late 1980s, at an audience with the Dali Lama, which I attended along with 1500 other people – questions from the audience were brought up and sorted ready for his Holiness to answer. One final question was ‘what does his Holiness think of Lobsang Rampa?’ It was read out to him and his Holiness responded with a great laugh, ‘HAH, very good thing for Tibet!’ was his response. For most British people, those books were the first thing they ever read about Tibet – books which moved them to discover Buddhism, and possibly later to help Tibetan refugees. I loved this response, because it was it affirmed the conductive nature of the imagination which leads us to greater things by the path of smaller, disregarded things.
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In my youth, I particularly rejoiced in books that drew upon archaeology and anthropology – even those ones that we would hardly rate today, in the wake of further, more informed research. Books like H.J. Massingham’s 1926 Downland Man, especially the very evocative images of prehistoric sites. I learned recently that Massingham was himself inspired by the 18th century naturalist Gilbert White, which utterly delights me, as we have all have a wonderful heritage of inspirational forebears who read, meditated and researched before us and it is good to acknowledge that lineage behind us which helped us be here as we are. But, looking at this book one hundred years on, there are colonial attitudes and other aspects of Downland Man (quite apart from its title) which I would distance myself from today, although I still heartily endorse Massingham’s enthusiasm and love for the chalk downland where I grew up. Whenever we were born, we are unconsciously marinaded in the opinions and beliefs of our times and country, and I daresay that those who read my books in times to come will find fault with my work because of when I lived. But this and other volumes, gave me a grounding in ancestral belonging and a respect for their achievements which has never left me. It still forms the core of most of my work.
We who seek to follow a magical and spiritual paths, stand on many stepping stones which lead to finally to some deeper and more considered teachings. The things that I have mentioned above prepared my consciousness to understand important teachings about the nature of universal concepts of everlastingness, about the companionship through time of those who walked these ways before me, about the ancestral heritage and the abiding wisdom of esoteric work – these were things that had never been shown to me so graphically in any religious education class, nor in any church. These humble beginnings opened the doors of my imagination and have led me to be more discerning in my deepening pursuit of the soul’s life and I am grateful that I came through these narrow doors to stand where I am now, where my faculty of understanding can fully appreciate the great richness of our shared tradition. These stepping stones were also important, even though I didn’t see where they were leading at the time.
* What were the door-opening inspirations that invited you into your path?
* Who and what were the unheeded influences and encouragers of your imagination?
* What were those early teachings showing you at heart?
Please join me for this conversation which is coming soon, with opportunity for you to make comment or ask questions. The price is £10.75, and the talk will eventually be available on Youtube from Imelda’s website. It is 3pm East Coast time.
So that's what they're called! I saw them all the time as a boy. And Massingham (though I only discovered him in the last decade).
Much of it for me started with three things, simultaneously: discovering music, being immersed in nature, and serving as an altar boy.
Lobsang Rampa was a narrow door for me too, part of my parents’ very eclectic reading. I loved them as a child! It was disappointing when I soon discovered he was a fantasising plumber, but they wakened in me the idea that there could be extraordinary things to experience under life’s surface. Thanks for reminding me about him!