NOTE: In the following post, I am using the spelling ‘Kabbala’ for the traditional practice of Jewish mystical teaching, and ‘Qabala’ for the Hermetic practice in the Western Mysteries, to avoid confusion. Just to reassure you that my spell-check has not gone mad!
A VERY GREAT SURPRISE
The Western Mysteries have drawn deeply upon the teachings of the Kabbala, and are now the common requisite in the teachings of most Hermetic mystery schools. My own training in Qabala has given a firm foundation for my work, and I would like to share how it all began.
My very first acquaintance with the Kabbala was triggered by a poster advertising a series of lectures on the Kabbala with a Mr James Sturzaker which I kept seeing on advertised on tube station: every time the tube doors slid open, there that same poster would be. I had just come up to London at the age of 18 to begin drama school, and was still wet behind the ears. Knowing absolutely nothing about this topic whatever, I signed up and duly went off to the Theosophical Society at 50 Gloucester Place. (1-see Notes below) It was a daunting place, smelling to high heaven of nag champa, and hung with what I can only describe as ectoplasmic portraits of ascended masters and the like, but I took my seat with the rest of the public on that rainy night.
Onto the platform bounded an energetic but very ordinary-looking man in his late middle age. He could have been a brush salesman, for all I knew, there being no discernible clue from his mere exterior to any arcane wisdom that he might possess. (Alas, when young, we do expect some scintillation of the inner light to shine more brightly! But I was soon to learn very differently.) He affixed a diagram of the Tree of Life to a stand, to which he referred throughout, and proceeded to unfold the basic elements of the Tree of Life with great efficiency, gradually gaining his audience’s trust by means of his evident experience and enthusiasm.
Within about ten minutes I was aware that something very weird was happening to me, because I was having what was the biggest and most continuous déja vu of my whole life. As the lecture went on, I had the clear sense that I knew what Mr Sturzaker was going to say next. But I also struggled to ‘translate’ it- as if I knew this information well, but from a different language entirely. After another twenty minutes, the complexities of his diagram had settled into a very familiar place in my remembrance - my being had somehow cracked the translation. After that, I could have taken the audience for a tour around the Tree – not its lines and circles, but paths and sephiroth – yes, I knew their names! - as if the Tree of Life were my parental home. How could I possibly know any of this?! I had never even read a book on Kabbala in my life. I sat gibbering in my seat, like one of those proverbial monkeys to whom Einstein was alleged to be able to eventually teach differential calculus in the remote possibilities of time. By the end of the evening, I had reached such dizzy heights of incredulity that I remember nothing about the journey home to my tiny flat in South Kensington.
At this point, it would have been a good idea to speak to Mr Sturzaker and discuss my experience, you might think, but I was young and easily Freudened, so I said nothing. I lived with this bizarre experience of a foreknowledge that I could not possibly have had for some time, having neither the space to continue going to many more of these lectures once the hectic curriculum of drama-school performance greedily consumed my life, nor the opportunity to extend my knowledge and check it out further, or to make the acquaintance of those who knew more about what I had experienced.
That I had foreknowledge of Kabbala from a Jewish and not a Western Magical Qabalistic viewpoint became apparent to me, and many times since that night, I have had glimpses and very physical memories of a male life in medieval Spain during the Convivencia, in Córdoba. I have still, at the age of 72, never been to Spain, although I’ve taught and travelled many times in Portugal. I also have no Jewish ancestry whatever, though my dna contains a minute trace of Basque blood, and in early black and white photos both myself and my aunt looked like very pale Spanish women.
To borrow a term from the 21st century, I seemed to have come ready-loaded with data, in this matter.
However, I did not neglect the pursuit of this remembered wisdom. After my career in the theatre was abruptly ended by bowel disease, I actively went out and looked for someone or thing who would enable me to deepen my understanding because, no matter how good your reincarnational memory is, or how focused your studies might be, you still need human teachers who – from their very example and practice – you can learn how these things are done in everyday life. James Sturzaker and his wife Doreen founded the International Order of Kabbalists, which is still going, but my steps were led elsewhere.
MAKING CONTACT
In the wreck of my life at that time – still in mourning for a craft that I had yearned to follow and very resentful that a faulty genetic immune system should take me away from it – I found the Servants of the Light (SOL) Qabalistic meditation course. (2) The Servants of the Light course had began life as the Helios Course in 1964 when Gareth Knight and John Hall appointed W.E. Butler as Director of Studies of a course they had already begun, with six lessons already written. Ernest Butler added another 44 lessons to the Helios Course and then in 1973/1974, this became The Servants of the Light Correspondence Course. It is run today by Dr. Steven Critchley who took over from its director of studies, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki who became my teacher in the late 1970s. She not only oversaw my qabalistic studies but she began my proper ritual training, which was to be continued further by the late Gareth Knight, with whom John and I worked in the 1980s.
I took the SOL course over the late 1970s and consolidated my understanding of Qabala. As W.E. Butler said of the Tree of Life, ‘It is essential to realise…that the Tree is not a map of the undiscovered country of either the soul of man or the universe in which he lives, but is rather a diagram of the mutual relationship of the underlying forces of both.’ (The Magician: His Training and Work)
A background in meditation based upon Qabala gave me a foundational stability and an ability to move in a grounded way into the discipline of every-day rituals of connection. The centring, breathing, concentration and path-walking of daily practice do not readily leave you, and the underlying roots of the Tree of Life continue to form the background and support for much of other work.
As anyone who has moved in the world of esoteric training knows, one of the mainstays of a student’s foundational training is their coming into the orbit of a spirit contact that stands behind one’s teachers – the teacher and guide of our teachers is like a current that moves the waters in particular directions and this was the shore where I washed up.
SOL’s deeper antecedents and its Alexandrian contact can be traced back to Robert King, who had been one of the evidential mediums on the staff of Julia’s Bureau (3) that was set up by the Spiritualist pioneer W.T Stead. From Robert King and the teachings of Dion Fortune, who was the teacher of W.E. Butler, that contact continued onwards. Standing in that Alexandrian current, brought me into a deepening place where the influences of Hellenic-Egyptian world, where every kind of esoteric, mystical and magical strand met at this strategic crossroads. And no, I did not suddenly proclaim any Egyptian antecedents like Crowley, but I did pick up the strands that cross-tracked our esoteric origins, where Platonism, philosophy, Gnosticism, Jewish, Christian, where the far older Babylonian and Egyptian elements met together. Some of those strands lay dormant in me, only to become more active in my later life, while others led me immediately into deeper waters.
I also studied traditional Kabbala, tracing back that extraordinary lineage of practitioners and their teachings, picking up once more upon the Spanish link that has so often presented itself to me.
Although Hermetic Qabala is taught in slightly different ways in many places today, alongside many traditional Kabbala groups, I look back on the extraordinary chain of connection that links me with contemporary Qabalists and Kabbalists today - with the late Warren Kenton, who biked all the way from Hampstead to come the launch of our book The Western Way in Chelsea in 1984; with Cherry Gilchrist who was involved in Saros, a Kabbalistic organisation with many descendants (4); with the late Gareth Knight and Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki - who is now in her 96th year; with my dear friend, Ian Rees, who was taught by Ernest Butler and Tom Olloman; and all those known and unnamed people who have walked these ways. Thanks to James Sturzaker, who was the wakener of long-lost memories and whose teaching held the spark. We are not the end of the road, just links in the ongoing chain of transmission that finds its level in every generation. Its roots are under us all, but its branches will bear fruit everlastingly.
NOTES:
The Theosophical Society is in the process of moving outside London, and its premises are now closed.
2. https://www.servantsofthelight.org/knowledge/introduction-to-qabalah/
3. You can read more about Julia’s Bureau here: https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/w-t-stead-the-review-of-reviews/julias-bureau-an-attempt-to-bridge-the-grave/
To read more about the London Kabbala scene in the 1970s, I highly recommend this very wonderful site which speaks about the parallel experiences of my friend, Cherry Gilchrist, and the group to which she belonged, which included a young Warren Kenton, before he wrote his books under his Hebrew name Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi. How our past histories shine from out of the past! http://www.soho-tree.com/blog
I have great pleasure in announcing this upcoming residential Qabalistic Masterclass with Ian Rees, which I will be introducing. This course is open to all!
THE TREE, THE GARDEN AND THE HEALING OF THE WORLD
23-26 August 2024 at Hawkwood College, Stroud, Glos. U.K.
The tradition of the Qabalah is central to the development of the Western Mysteries and at its heart is the ancient image of the Tree of Life that unites opposites, deepens the web of connection and irrigates soul and world.
Working with the Tree empowers and embodies our imaginations so that we discover ourselves to be B’tzelem or the living image of the Divine and we are helped to understand our capacity to create and bless.
We will explore the roots of this tradition in ancient Egypt, go on to explore the earliest traditions of the Kabbalah, drawing on Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple and the Valley of dry bones, the 87th psalm of the Korahite priesthood and consider how these traditions were presented in the work of contemporary Qabalists W E Butler and Tom Oloman, the teachers of Ian Rees.
We will explore the Tree as an inner mandala finding our connection to Malkuth the sphere of the living body and living world, then we meet the inner dialogue of thought, feeling and memory; passing through it into the heart presence of Tiphareth the sphere of beauty and mediation. Through this heart presence we touch on the deep stillness that underlies all manifestation.
A fundamental practice of prayer, contemplation and embodiment will be outlined based on the ancient Egyptian forms of the Eloquent Peasant, the Good Shepherd and the Silent Sage which will enable us to connect with the sacred and become a living icon, connected to the flow of the universe.
BOOKING: Fee: £645 Shared £570 Non-res £465.
Please send your non-returnable deposit of £150 payable to Hawkwood College, Painswick Old Rd., Stroud, Glos GL6 7QW (01453 759034)
https://www.hawkwoodcollege.co.uk/event/qabalah-meditation/
IAN REES is a psycho-spiritual psychotherapist practising in Glastonbury Somerset UK. He has been a therapist for 30 years and spent 10 before that working in Probation Work and Social Work at all levels from Field Worker, Manager to Education Advisor for Mental Health at national level. He is an experienced trainer and taught at the Karuna Institute in Devon from 1999 to 2009; he designed and ran their MA programme as well as being central to the teaching team. Since 2009 he has concentrated on developing the Annwn Foundation workshops and the Awen training and presents this material in the UK and Israel.
He has been a practitioner of the Qabalah for 52 years; his original teachers were W E Butler and Tom Oloman. He has taught Qabalah in UK, South Africa and Israel for many years. His published books include The Keys to the Temple, a guide and meditational work-book to the novels of Dion Fortune, written with Penny Billington, and The Tree of Life and Death, which is an invaluable book on the transformative work of the Qabala. His forthcoming book is The Way of Deep Magic, published in November 2024.
I am so grateful for the life wisdom, spiritual knowledge, personal history, photos, and informative links you share with us here. I appreciate your integrity, wit, and depth. The Servants of Light website is but one amazing resource I simply must explore further!
Caitlin, it is lovely to read of your life path and the knowledge that so obviously was ingrained in your soul-genes. Re-discovery is so rewarding. I too felt the pull towards both the traditional and hermetic from a young age, daring to teach them in my early 20s. Curious how paths are formed yet again. X