When starting Quicksilver we had hoped to put it out at a price of under 50p so as to make it accessable to as wide an audience as possible. The idea was to put out a well produced publieation to stimulate discussion and active interest in earth mysteries and related subjects with south east England as the immediate area of interest. However, partly as a result of the low number of copies that we've had printed the cost of production on the last issue was 58p each. This meant that for every copy sold in a shop we lost 8p and for every copy mailed out we subsidised it by about 18p ! I wonder what Sir Kieth would think of that. Consequently we've been rethinking and recosting and the following inspired plan for economic recovery and bouancy has been manifested in the mind of your editor. It's a three pronged attack upon the tardiness of the material world (especially in its materia1 aspect) to give Quicksilver a break:

1. We are doubling production to 500 so as to decrease unit cost.
2. Subscription rates are having to be increased so as to pay for their own post and packing by 20p each issue thus making the 4 issue sub £3.20.
3.In terms of subject matter we already deal in e.m., radical philosophy and some strange phenomcna. We are now accepting articles on conspiracy theory. Four basic subject areas inextricably intertwined. For example, in Sussex we have two examples of the Knights Templars being involved in places of significant alignment which also happen to have dowsable energy running around them. The question is begged did this austere order of warrior monks have access to a system of knowledge which enabled them to manipulate earth energies? Furthermore, why is it that Post Office micro wave communication towers are often found in close proximity to ancient sites? For example, there is one such tower next to a tumulus on Newmarket Hill at Woodingdean just outside Brighton. Manifestations of strange phenomena are often found on leys or often connected with ancient sites; Chanctonbury Ring is a well known example. These things inevitably throw up philosophical considerations of a radical nature.

Therefore, without losinq relevance, we are developing the subject areas so as to give the magazine a slightly wider appeal.

Next Issue: Tony Roberts on the micro-wave tower/sacred site connection (some call it conspiracy!), Mike Collier on the Long Man of Wilmington, Your editor on what's become known as 'The Wolstonbury Enigma'- a study of circular and straight alignments near Brighton, Reviews, News, Letters and anything else of interest that appears on my desk in the meantime! DON'T MISS IT.

Once one has mastered rod-dowsing, one may observe that the hand senses equally well. The hand held over the solar plexus will eventually,with practice move in and out like the rod. It is a very powerful pressure at times. Continual use of the dowsing faculty through the solar plexus may cause the sternum, that cartilagonous extension of the breast bone to grow to an abnormal length. It may cause some temporary discomfort but it will settle down, as one comes to terms with it. Such dowsing saves embarassment in public.

Later on, one may merely use the fingers, which is even less obtrusive. Eventually a new phase may be reached in which no muscular reaction at all is involved, but the mind itself does the dowsing. It envisages the rod in its function, and draws its conclusions accordingly. This act of visualisation may consciously be developed into a general awareness in which one first "knows" the answer.

I say this as one who was in no way atavistically sensitive, at least on the physical level. The clue to it all was working with people who were, who 'felt' water and ley energies because their spines tingled or their hair prickled, we eventually showed it was a dowsing reaction manifested in me by a movement of the rod and in them by a 'funny feeling'.

It is, in my view, wrong to attempt, as has indeed been done, to reduce dowsing to a particular and closed circuit discipline, like pole-vaulting or high speed orange-picking, this eventually imposes limitations. For us, dowsing is but one and relatively superficial aspect of consciousness: the dowser uses the rod and intellectualises the neuro-muscular theory in order to come to terms with a phenomenon he cannot or will not otherwise explain. Granted, in order to dowse, a subconscious appreciation of some other form of reality is a pre-condition but the mechanistic view of dowsing seems to me to be a rationalisation of a phenomenon which would otherwise require a total reappraisal of our received views of the physical world.

In our experience, if one is prepared to let one's mind roam further than the end of a twitching rod or a gyrating pendulum one may from time to time, particularly if one is relaxed rather than straining, have flashes of insight independant of this apparently mechanical function. Some might term the experience visionary, and the extent to which such an experience has been validly available to us, one is bound to report that such perceptions are the result of a passive and reflective state of mind, rather than sitting down with an act of physical will which makes the sweat start from the temple, as one might summon up one's resources to take part in a rugby match.

What may be a profitable consideration in this affair, is another adage from the mystery schools 'Know thyself' and another from the oriental seers which is not dissimilar 'Kill the ego'. Such considerations are apparently significant in the secondary and tertiary states of dowsing where one is on the verge of complete clairvoyance.

What I think is meant by all that is that human consciousness is a complex and often discordant affair. What goes on at any given moment in human consciousness is a cacophony of reflected stimuli of the moment, the rush of recollected stimuli and information input, sensual data, intellectual date based on cerebration of a voluntary and involuntary kind.

Transcendental meditation, which is by no means a precise and exclusive state of mind, is nonetheless a concept which seeks to eliminate random and disorganised mental activity - the term transcendental implying a state of awareness which eliminates the random chatter of which we are normally the receptors. It implies a retreat into what may be called the superconscious, an awareness of being aware, which is highly significant, in esoteric and psychological terms. An awareness of being aware that one is aware, a tertiary state of mind is the alchemical state, the dark night of the soul of St. John of the Cross, the neant of the French symbolist poets and the state of mind in which clairvoyance takes place. The reason that the French symbolists called this 'le neant' and esotericists have called it the 'abyss', is because it is an awareness of a huge new reality in which the individual identity is meaningless, in terms of our physical reality. One can retire from it and leave it alone. One can fall into it and experience a total disorientation which is the basis of many patients of psychiatric hospitals, as one can cross it, and become identified an an harmonious and joyful way with greater realities. Transcendental meditation is one way of perceiving other realities and states of being.

One thing is apoarently certain, those who successfully cross the abyss have performed the necessary spiritual alchemy, whereby as an act of conscious endeavour, their awareness transcends in a meaningful way, the conventional sense of identity which is based on an accumulation of sensually perceived data, (and I include intellectually perceived data in this context), as mere cerebration is a function of the cultural and scientific ethos of one's environment, a mirror image; it is not pioneering in perceiving reality but a relatively better or worse system of arranging conventional and established data, within a form of prison, or closed circuit. This type of individual existence is ego-conscious.

Whereas we may arguably have progressed in post-Atlantean terms from tribal, national and racial forms of consciousness to a relatively new state of individual ego-centric awareness, nonetheless it is a form of awareness which is restrained within its particular cultural framework and may even be described as a form of blind arrogance.

At the tertiary stage of dowsing which is an imprecise concept at best, what seems to be essential to achieve it, is an abandonment of that sense of individual arrogance as to ultimate reality. We may say we don't understand things (but make the mental reservation that if we had the time we obviously could, and doubtless the theory of relativity would yield to our comprehension, if we applied ourselves diligently to its study) but the admission that there are more subtle forms of reality which conventional physics are not capable of describing br even identifying, is a form of humility which assists in creating the states of mind in which super-perception takes place. Whereas concepts like subconscious, conscious and superconscious are artificial conveniences, it is somewhere in the superconscious where this takes place.

The abyss is that place we occupy in awareness when we say with all our being that received reality is inadequate. To cross it is to make that air of submission which abandons the intellect, the reason, the sensually perceived reality as the only acceptable fact, and to eliminate from one's being that essential egotistical act whereby we assume that we are capable of rational analysis of reality. When we eliminate that expectation from our being, and say O.K. "I'll sit back ard watch instead of reacting to established criteria" then one is in the tertiary dowsing state and on the fringe of clairvoyance. The ego has been killed and higher realities admitted as a possibility. It is essentially passive and aware rather than active and imposing.

The dowsing of the ley energies can take you into these realms. Ley energies are relative - relatively good and relatively bad. They can be abused and used. If you wish to abuse them, go so far and retain your own egocentric being - some call it Black Magic. If you wish to use them, submit to the spiritual alchemy we have tried to explain, impose your consciousness of higher realities upon them. Do good without hope of any reward, except the knowledge that you do the cosmic will. You will change things and events for the better. It could just make the world a better place - a more agreeable place to live in.

The almost casual destruction of Hove's great mound that once stood near Palmeria Square is just one more example of the criminal ignorance and disregard that modern man has for.the culture that built it and the meaning that it represented. Until the last century this monument, the tomb of an important British chieftain made a direct and dynamic link between the distant past and the present; for it was here every Good Friday that hundreds of young people joined together to play the rustic game 'kiss in the ring'. Now it is gone its treasures removed to Brighton museum, its soil used for the ornarnental gardens in Palmeria Square and its sacred ground, (its ground must have been sacred to those who constructed it), used for building. Ignorarice is not bliss, it's dangerous!


Before crass materialism saw fit to exploit this mound as if it were no more than a pile of horse manure fit only for use on the garden, it stood for centuries (thousands) just north of a pathway from Brighton to Hove Church, 15 to 20 feet hiyh and 150 paces round. It must have made an impressive sight standing as it did on a wide coastal plain some 2/300 yards north of the sea. The discovery of a rudely constructed coffin was made quite by chance by the workman employed to remove the earth of the mound to the aforementioned gardens, in the winter of 1856-57. The coffin was discovered just under the surface of the gound lying in an east to west direction. It was 6 foot to 7 foot long and, according to witnesses, appeared to be made of oak. It's safe to assume that workmen of that time would have been able to competently identify different kinds of worked timber. However, soon after ihe coffin was exposed to the air it turned to dust. It seemed to be filled with charred bones and inside four relics were found placed, apparently, on the chest. The most impressive was a beautiful and rare amber cup - so delicate that light shines through the shell of its body, picking out in a red line the movement of the frozen sap. Only one other has been found to my knowledge. Red amber has also been found in barrows near Stonehenge and in the Bronze Age was the colour that represented death in Britain and Greece. The red amber cup, about the size of a small tea cup, has a handle and lip and a line pattern near the lip. Together with the cup there was a double-headed axe, a dagger blade and, what has been called, a 'whetstone', which is a regularly worked piece of stone with a hole neatly drilled at one end. It should be stressed, however, that it is not quite clear what this 'whetstone' really is. The burial has been dated as Bronze Age, about 1600 B.C.

Before looking at the mythological associations of these articles in greater detail let's first look at the folkloric connection that took place on Good Friday, the kiss in the ring dance.


'Kiss in the ring' was perhaps the most important or popular of several different games played on this occasion by 'hundreds' of visitors to the great nound. Its great popularity is an indication of its importance in the living folk tradition of that time. As they danced on the mound during Kiss in the ring they sang this chorus:

'Hi diddle derry, Let's dance on the Bury'

The use of the word bury is important lore. It's an old and obsolete word, (and indeed was obsolete in the 19th century when these lines were recorded), used to describe the place of an ancient earth work. A local example of-this is Wolstonbury Hi11 on the Downs north of Brighton which, apart from other intriging features, is topped by a ringed earth bank and ditch. A rather more famous example is Glastonbury. A similar relationship between Easter games and earthworks took place in Guildford, Surry, (see, W. Johnson, 'Folk Memory' 1908 p.336), and at Kirby Ireleth in Furness, (see, I1. Allcroft 'The Circle and the Cross', 1927). It seems likely that there is a Pagan ceremonial significance to these games. There is no obvious link between these games and the solemnity of the Christian Good Friday. But the ancient mound was sacred in pre-Christian times and Easter falls in close proximity to the celebration of the spring equinox.

This is a critical time of the year for an agricultural community. It's a time when the dormant seed comes to life. It's a time when the people whose lives are integrally bound up with the movement of nature hope that life will return to the barren wasteland after winter. It was common practice in ancient cultures to assist this process through sympathetic magic, (based, quite simply, on a philosophy that like produces like).

Now, 'kiss in the Ring' apparently includes certain well known magical elements. The round or ring dance has played an important part in religious festivities since remotest times. It has often been associated with faries and witches and was a central feature of fertility cults in the Middle Ages, (Margaret A. Murrey, 'Gods of the Witches'). Furthermore, there is a continuing beiief, which has a certain amount of scientific support, that the union of the sexes, real or symbolical, has a beneficial affect in the fertility of the earth. A report in October 1980 in the 'Brighton and Hove Gazette' stated that several farmers in Sussex welcome Pagan groups to hold ceremonies on their land. Furthermore, Marcel Vogel, who has been studying plant consciousness for over a decade, constructed an experiment in which a group of psychologists concentrated on sexual imagery while a plant was wired up with a polygraph to reveal its electrochemical responses to their thoughts. The plants response on the polygraph was typical of excitement. Vogel concluded that ancient fertility rites are not as naive as we like to think.

We are accustomed to think of sport and games as ends in themselves but, in fact, they like dance and drama have developed from a ritual basis in ancient times. In Sussex the playing of marbles and skipping were commonplaces in some villages and in Newhaven the skipping tradition is still continued on Good Friday. Football was considered in many places particularly appropriate to that day. From these ideas it begins to appear that the kiss in the ring game played at Hove's great mound had an ancient, pagan and fertility basis.

Let's now return to the amber cup. Amber has the ability to produce an electro-static charge if it is rubbed. If the cup is rubbed in the dark it will be seen to be producing light. In the ancient world it was sacred to the Greek god of Light - Apollo. Apollo was a late comer to the Greek Pantheon and Greek myth gives him a northerly connection. He was a special friend of a nation called the Hyperboreans, a nation who lived in a wonderful country behind the north wind and whom Apollo visited for three months every year. Apollo was known outside the immediate Greek world. In fact so well known that a Celtic army invaded Greece with the aim of capturing Apollo's temple in Delphi and met with a great deal of success. The Celts were certainly aware of Apollo, but whether the Apollo cult originated in the N.W. Celtic land is a moot point.

The south eastern coast of Britain stood on the amber trade route which linked the Baltic and the Mediteranean. Tacitus calls the sea in which amber was found "dormant and almost motionless" - a sea from which divine figures were supposed to emerge, particularly "a head crowned with rays of light" - surely an image of the Sun god. The Celtic equivalent of Apollo was Belenos - the Shining One. Apollo and Belenos derive their names from the same root as the German apfel, the Welsh aval and the English apple. The word 'Avalon' (also derives from the same root) and means 'the place of apples.' Amber was also thought to have prophylactic qualities. It is the place where King Arthur was taken after being wounded in battle in Celtic myth. Given the number of mythological and religious associations that amber had at the time, its great value and its ability to produce light of itself not only does it appear to be a suitable possession of an important chieftain but also of a chieftain who in some way himself was connected with the sun. A chieftain who in some way embodies or represented the sun. In Celtic mythology the great chief's had the gods as their forebears.

An enquiry into the double-headed axe, produces some interesting results which again connect this mount and its burial to the sun, and also refers to round dancing at Easter. Theseus was the attic sun hero who travels to Knossos and enters the labyrinth to face "the bull headed monster of the double axe". The Greek word for double axe was 'labris' and its from this word that labyrinth is derived. The basic story of the myth is that Minos the tyrannical Cretian King built a labyrinth in which to hide the Minotaurus, a monster with the head of a bull and body of a man. He fed it the youths and maidens who were sent to Crete as a tribute from Athens. One of these youths was Theseus, a prince, who with the help of his beloved Ariadne killed the Minotaur. What is the meaning of the symbolism at work in this myth? Well, one possible explanation is this. If we look at the Egyptian Osiris Cult we find that Osiris was often depicted as a man with a bulls head and that he was the God of the Dead and the Underworld. And if we consider the close geographical proximity between Crete and Egypt and the trading links at the time it seems more than just a possibility that a man with a bulls head symbolised a similar thing (aspect). Theseus enters the underworld symbolised by the labyrinth subdues the god of the underworld and through the help of his 'beloved' returns to the land of the living. The fertility aspect of his return to his beloved is obvious.


The same pattern is repeated astrologically every year round about the middle of April when the sun enters the constellation of Taurus, approximating to Easter. Moreover, this constellation is ruled by the planet Venus and the apple is sacred to Venus, (The White Goddess). J.F. Forbes has said that all the earthworks of Britain are connected with Sun worship and that the great ceremonies of Britain were originally agricultural fertility rites. The day that the sun enters Taurus was the great day of the re-birth, the reawakening of the earth from its night of sleep.

Easter also was the time when the Troy Town dances were performed on the earth cut mazes in Britain (T.W.G.). Though we have no evidence of a maze being on the Hove mound, it did contain the double-headed axe, the labris, which can be seen to this day carved into the stones of the ruins of the Knossos palace. Whether or not its a coincidence that the Hove mound and the turf mazes were danced upon at the same festival, I don't know. But, in the light of what's already been said it might be worth quoting Robert Graves in The White Goddess on this (P·329 - p.330: )

'The maze pattern has been shown to represent 'Spiral Castle' or 'Troy Town', where the sacred Sun-King goes after death and from which, if lucky, he returns. The whole myth is plainly presented on an Etruscan wine-jar from Tragliatella, dated from the late seventh century B.C. Two mounted heroes are shown; the leader carries a shield with a partridge device, and an ape-like demon perches behind him; his companion carries a spear and a shield with a duck device. They are riding away from a maze marked 'TRUIA' ('Troy'). 'Apparently the sacred king, though due to die like the partridge in the brushwood maze, and be succeeded by his tanist, has escaped. How he escaped, another picture on the same vase shows: an unarmed king leads a sunwise procession, escorted by seven footmen each carrying three javelins and a huge shield with a boar-device; the spear-armed tanist, whose badge this is, brings up the rear. These seven footmen evidently represent the tanist's seven winter months which fall between the apple harvest and Easter. The king is being warned of his ritual death. A Moon-priestess has come to meet him: a terrible robed figure with one arm menacingly akimbo, as she offers an apple, his passport to Paradise. The javelins threaten death. Yet a diminutive female figure, robed like the priestess, guides the king - if the hero is Theseus, we may call her Ariadne - who has helped him to escape From the maze. And he boldly displays a counter-charm, namely an Easter-egg, the Egg of resurrection.'

We are referred back again to the myth of the solar hero, the end of winter and the rising of life in nature and the once and future king. We have here quite clearly marked out the myth of the king who represents the solar divinity who lurks the underworld and like the sun has the possibility of returning to life. We have here the ancient prototype of the idea that the dead king will rise again. An integral part of the British myth, the story of King Arthur.

There are two other features of the site in Hove which give support to the idea that the burial was that of an important personage connected with the sun. Firstly, the coffin was laid in an east to west direction, i.e. in the path of the sun. Secondly, the coffin was made of oak and according to Robert Graves there was a tradition of the sun king being buried in an oak coffin. He says somewhat cryptically "the evidence of the oak coffin at the Isle of Avalon points plainly to the derivation of the Arthur cult from the Eastern Mediteranean by way of the Amber Route, (p.111 T.W.G.).


The most popular location for the burial of King Arthur (whoever he may have been) is Glastonbury, and its authenticity as Arthur's grave had been criticised on two main points. Firstly, it has been suggested by Leslie Alcock that the monks who discovered his tomb fabricated the whole thing with the aim of giving their Abbey (in which the grave was found), the kind of status which would make it easier for them to attract funds through pilgrimages to help with the restoration and building costs. Secondly, it has been pointed out that the discovery was politically very useful as it happened at a time when the wars of the Roses had just closed and the discovery of the tomb of the mythical king of Britain helped to establish a precedant of one king of the whole of Britain and also gave the English monarchs a good excuse for claiming overlordship in Scotland and Wales. It was discovered in 1190 after the then King of England, Henry II had encouraged the monks to search for it. Up until this time the Welsh Celts had looked upon Arthur as an avenging chieftain who would rise from the dead and clean the country up a bit. Now the Aura of this British King was used to enhance the mystique of the English Kings. So nothing is proven as to where Arthur's bones were finally laid to rest. Furthermore, nothing finally proven as to who Arthur was either. Stones bearing his name and places purporting to be the sites of his battles cover a very wide area. One explanation given for this is that there were in fact two Arthurs, an historical Arthur and a mythical Arthur, (C.Squire) and that over the years and in the telling, these two characters have become one. If we think of a snowball rolling down a hill, all the time getting bigger, it might help us understand the process. This snowball began to roll in the distant past when the conciousness of men was far more closely fused to the mythic than that of our own. To borrow a phrase from the Celtic Scholar John Markale: he says the Celts "saw everything on an ideographical plane".

What significance does the Hove mound terms of Celtic culture? From the evidence presented it appears that it marks the grave of an important chieftain who was seen in some way to embody the solar aspect. He lived at a time long before the components of the Arthur cult had received the embellishments of the Medieval romancers but when the basic features of this myth stood quite simply. As we have seen, the solar hero makes a journey to the underworld and returns; his return marks the fertility and growth of nature in the spring. And so the place of burial of the Sun King with his cup of light and his labris representing the labyrinth is the spiral castle to which he has retreated and to which young men and women came to dance, court and awaken him. Could it not be that this mound in Hove was in fact the real tomb of Arthur? Here we have the grave of a Celtic solar king or chief, and this is exactly what Arthur was. To say that Arthur was a soldier fighting against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, as had been the fashion of late, is to place him far too late in Celtic history. There may well have been a Celtic soldier of the same name at this time, but the power/impact of the Arthur myth transcends this limitation.

The Arthur story as we have it today has grown out of several different strands. The sun her myth or archetype being the most basic and most central. If we allow ourselves to be conned into believing that Arthur was one man who lived at one particular time and who championed the (Roman) culture which had subjugated his own people, then we are playing into the hands of pop historians and commercialism. Arthur has always been more myth than man and it is in this that his value lies. A myth is timeless and valid beyond the constraints of geographical location. The limitation of Arthur in time and place is a product of acedemic materialism. Arthur is as valid in Hove as he is in Glastonbury or Tintagel. Arthur lives potential all over these islands and waits to be awoken in the souls of people and in the landscape.

I'm not claiming that there was simply one King Arthur and that this man was buried in Hove. The Celtic chief who was buried there lived at a time when the mythic solar role of the chief was a fact. There would have been many been many whose burial place fused the sun with the earth. And which spot would have been viewed as the sacred omphalos for each tribal area. Just imagine the whole land full of Arthurs who awaken (metaphorically) each spring. Each tribe had its own gods and myths and as the tribes began to feel a sense of nationhood then these myths merged and gave the whole group a unity. Thus the many Arthurs became one.

This myth is the central myth of British conciousness. It is not a closed book but very much an open one. The wide location of Arthur breathes this central and dynamic meaning into a sense of place. It also indicates the importance of place. In a world ruled by logic and rationality and in certain enviroments dominated by the roar and stick of machines, our sense of the importance of place has become greatly diminished. There is a mystery and undiscovered meaning all around. But we wont find it at a flick of the switch - we'll have to take the time to look. This is our quest - it's a quest of consciousness. The places in which we spend most of our time can become dreary with familiarity, but these are the places which have layer upon layer of meaning if we make the effort to look. After all, who would have thought that King Arthur was buried in Hove?

Bibliography

Ashe, Geoffrey The Quest for Arthur's Britain Paladin 1973
Ashe, Geoffrey The Ancient Wisdom Abacus 1979
Campbell, Joseph The Hero with a Thousand Faces Abacus 1973
Graves, Robert The White Goddess Faber 1967
Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough Macmillan
Markale, J. Celtic Civilisation Gordon & Cremonesi 1978
Oken, Alan As Above So Below Bantam 1973
Wilson, Robert Anton Cosmic Trigger Abacus 1979
Squire, Charles Celtic Myth and Legend Gresham
Tomkins and Bird The Secret Life of Plants Penguin
Forbes, J.F. The Castle and Place of Rotheimay

It is now over half a century since Alfred Watkins in Herefordshire discovered, or possibly rediscovered, the alignments of sites that constitute ley lines, but nobody has, as yet, formulated a reasonable explanation as to why they are there. In an effort to try and get a little nearer to the answer to this problem I thought that perhaps some of the things found by dowsing, and checked many times should appear in print, even though there will obviously be doubt in some peoples' minds as there is, topographically, nothing visible.

Leys themselves I find to be consistent in width but always with a stronger side to them, whether this indicates some form of polarity I do not know. The width does widen when occasionally they are stronger. Sometimes they are off altogether and when they do come back on it is from above downwards. There is nothing to detect below waist height, the energy, for want of a better word, apparently being above ground going upwards.

The outline of terrestial figures such as, in Sussex, the Stonegate zodiac or the elephant that lies in the country in front of the Long Man of Wilmington, dowse exactly the same as a ley in every respect, with the stronger side always on the outside edge of the figure. The elephant has been found to be off and to give no reaction when the leys are off and to be stronger when they have been stronger, which seems to be reasonable proof that leys and the figures are definately interconnected.

Once, when dowsing at Gote Lane in Ringmer, it seemed that there was a figure, as it felt like a ley but was not straight. However, as this line then runs through Lewes and finally finishes just by Barcombe Church, a distance of several miles, it can perhaps tentatively be assumed that it is virtually similar to a ley but non-straight. It was interestinq to observe here that, whereas a ley will go through a religious structure, although sometimes they do stop short and then start again the other side, this line avoids and goes around them.


All old churches and sites I have dowsed have a remarkable revolving "beam" although more modern structures on leys do not appear to have it. To give other examples, I have found this by Lake Windermere coming from a mound in a park and by the Kentish border coming from a place on a slope that has a ley coming from it. The mound in St. Anne's Well Gardens in Hove and the earthwork on Mount Caburn near Lewes both have it. It is perhaps best described as being like the beam of a lighthouse revolving extremely slowly from the centre of the site, 150 paces in length and 30 paces wide, always going round in a clockwise, or sunwise, direction. Any old illustrations I have seen of processions going around the outside of churches show them to be going the same way.


Something totally different moves southwards from beyond Lewes and goes out over the cliffs at Newhaven. These are lines of circles, strictly speaking slightly elongated sideways like lemons, 27 paces wide and with 8 paces between them. There are 24 of these in a straight row and 8 paces behind them another 24; if you can imagine them, rather like a giant fruit machine and always moving at a slow walking pace. I have found these also near Glyndebourne and at Bodiam Castle although not in such quantity. Now the important thing about these is that when the leys are stronger the 24 circles are no longer there but reduce to only eight at the eastern side. It seems as if the leys are drawing their increased strength from the circles, in which case perhaps the two should be considered together.


There are also large, fairly slowly moving, bands of energy 30 paces wide that can come together to form multiples of 30; 60 is common and the largest I have eneountered is 420. The edges are straight or serpentine and they are strong enough to swamp everything else including leys.

If you examine the O.S. sheet 198, Brighton and the Downs, it is fascinating to see how many churches, earthworks and other sites are 9 kilometres apart. It is not such a curious distance as it first appears as it does; in fact, work out at 10,800 megalithic yards. On this one map there are over a hundred of these 'lines' and they do dowse exactly the same as a ley but at a much reduced strength.

I hope that these examples will make us realise, perhaps, that we should look in other directions as well as keeping our gaze along the old straight track.

County Histories and guide books, as well as many other volumes of like nature have been written by the score. Excellent as many of these are, they are descriptive in the main of all that can be seen and enjoyed by visual experience. They bring back the history of a place, of the people who have lived to make it famous or noteworthy. Many of these books speak of the events that have gathered around places and of the character and disposition of a people who have impressed their way of living on certain areas. This has happened to the extent that it is often said that a certain type of person will be found in this place and a certain type of person in that place.

But to look at the countryside and to get to know a certain area you have got to plumb the depths far deeper than that in order to discover not only the lasting quality of a place that endures through all generations but even to sense that measure of impregnation given to a country long ages ago. This quality persists even into some areas more than in others. This 'spirit' that has been given to a place more often than not transcends all other influences; for many people it simply makes the place; it appeals to them for reasons they are not able to define. One can have a contrary experience in other places, places which are outwardly beautiful but which repel the moment we come within their boundaries.

Archeology is helpful to a certain extent if only to reveal with accuracy the location of a prehistoric culture as having been established and followed by subsequent cultures. As well as archeology, anthropology and folklore are necessary to the compiler of a history because she or he must know all the component parts that have brought that history into being. These subjects make up the scaffolding of a study of a place but there is a certain essential substance which is usually untapped and that must be tapped if we are to discover the true spirit of a place.

Neither I nor my partner Miss Cambell lay claim to having been the means of conjuring up a truly accurate picture of parts of this small area of Britain. What we have set out to do is to function together with the attributes with which we are endowed and which, (I for my part), have been at pains to build up. I have gone deeply into the archeological and anthropological recesses of many parts of England and can vouch for the accuracy of such cultural establishments as have been recognised and built into the archives of Great Rritain.

My partner on the other hand does not claim to any knowledge of the nature nor even to the language of archeological terms used. Our method of coordination comes into being when we visit a site and, given that the circumstances are favourable to bring into play what amounts to the outcome of a co-operation that is threefold. We have discovered in the course of our work that the power does not function without this threefold agreement.

Quite briefly stated then it requires :

(a) A particular site which is suitable from having been strongly activated in the past;

(b) It requires the sympathetic co-ordination of what I am able to bring unconsciously to certain sites built up, in all probability from former contacts with prehistoric cultures; and finally:

(c) It requires the unique powers which my partner has of picking up these strong 'radio-active' waves and translating them by means of psycho-metric interpretation.

It would be helpful here I think to quote part of a statement which Miss Olive Pixley sent to me as a forward to my original work on pre-historic Britain as setting out most clearly what the art of a true psychometrist really is. In this statement she said, "the psychometrist is the human instrument that receives into the brain, during normal consciousness, the invisible radio-activity of material substances that have, in their form, received direct from the human mind thought wave lengths of great intensity transmitted through mental emotional energy.

All forms of ritual can thus be received by that most delicate of all instruments, the brain, according to its receptivity.

In the following script I propose to set out the psychometric findings drawn recently from certain areas in the Sussex Downs that come within easy range of Brighton. After each interpretation I am adding such testimony as I am able to subscribe from my own angle leaving the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

I would like to add however that this small work is merely tentative; my partner and I feel most strongly that there is much discoverable still in these Islands; that England awaits a great awakening as to her real history. And also that writers and others have failed lamentably in the past to record the true story of this land and her people, mainly because they have scorned the means whereby such data could have been arrived at. Should this first effort meet with a ready response, we both purpose to carry this work further in an attempt to get at the hidden story of many other "untapped" areas. Such a possibility can only come into being according to the measure of response and support that may come from others who read these lines. We will both, therefore, be glad indeed if such facilities can be forthcoming to bring this work further forward.

Crossways, Hassocks, Summer 1942

The Mount in Lewes has, popularly, been classified by the lay public as the spoil heap of an adjacent rectangular depression called locally the Dripping Pan. This is a comfortable, easy supposition and tends to close a discussion of the matter.

But is it? Further enquiry produces more questions.

First and foremost, why construct it at all? From the earliest 18th century maps, it can be seen that the Mount was already in evidence; a vast human effort was needed to produce the Pan and the "spoil heap". Why was this effort made?

The two, continuous needs in any culture must be protection and food with some form of religious ritual a close third.

If the question of protection is taken first, then one can see a limited value in building an artificial mound on top of which a fortification could be placed. Certainly, this sounds feasible, as the Ouse Valley regularly flooded to that point and therefore it would provide a good immediate vantage point. But so does the hill directly behind it on which the Norman duke De Warrenne opted to build his castle. Also the uppermost proportions are so small that nothing but a watch tower could have been built: which seems a lot of work to house a comparatively small number of men. Being virtually in the grounds of the cluniac Monastery of St. Pancras, which was separated from the main town by the Winterbourne waterway, it could have bourne more significance to the monks as a protective measure, but by then, the Normans were surely fairly secure in their settlement of England.

If the Mount itself is totally disregarded, then the resulting hole in the ground becomes the important feature. The name Dripping Pan suggests fishing or salt drying. Both important in earlier times, but surely there were enough natural salt pans all along the meandering Ouse Valley and fish were again plentiful at close quarters. The Priory appears to have had a fish pond inside the grounds for just such a purpose. The bank on the southern side of the Dripping Pan would have had to be breached to allow a controlled flow of water into the Pan and there is not such evidence today.


One of the main problems of surveying the site is the raised ground around its base. Soil had been deposited in large quantities all around the lower section to a distance of 50-50 metres outwards and 3-4 metres in depth. This may well have come from the railway cutting bringing the track from Brighton to Lewes in the l9th century. Early maps indicate a mount in a field and undoubtedly gave rise to the name of the adjacent Mountfield Road. If the cartographer is to be believed, then his striated bands showing the Mount have an additional spiral which may well have taken it down to the existing flood plain, which makes it an even bigger manual task by its originators and yet more difficult to study.

In a religious or spiritual context, the Mount commands an interesting position. Many early Chrlstian sites often occupy an earlier pagan one, in many cases on or near a man-made mound of earth. The Lewes Mount is directly East of the 11th century Priory and must have virtually overlooked the High Altar within it. This could presuppose that the Mount was already there before the 11th century and therefore connected to an earlier religious function. From personal experience, it is possible to observe the sun rise and set on both the longest snd shortest days of the year from the top of the Mount. Whether this line of investigation is of any value, I don't know as it has not yet been pursued, but it does present an intrigueing aspect from the ley-hunters point of view.

More tangibly, the pre-Roman trackways on an East-West line could have made positive use of such mount to align themselves with the high ground on both sides of Lewes and eliminating the necessity to cross more than one river on the journey. The high ground to the East of Lewes runs down to a long narrow spur, with the Mount sitting on its western tip. If, at this point, the journey is continued on a slightly south westerly line, the River 0use can be crossed, just south of the junction made by the Winterbourne stream and directly in line with Mount Caburn; known to have been inhabited well before the Roman Invasion. There is archaeological proof to support the existance of a Roman route at this point across the Ouse to Caburn, so its perfectly plausible that they adopted this route from an earlier culture.

Where does all this conjecture and supposition get us?

It does suggest that the Mount is of considerable age and could be linked to an early socio/religious function of which there may have been more than one. If this be the case, then the investigation is now shrouded in the same myths as Silbury and other large, man-made mounds. It has, as far as the writer is sure, never been extensively excavated, so its true dating has yet to be placed. Trigonometrically, it holds some interesting features being almost on the Meridian and yet in plain view of most of the prominent high ground in the area. It offers a link in an early communications route and, due to the close proximity of the Priory, appears to have some religious or spiritual overtones.

The writer does not suggest that it is the last resting place of an ancient king, but neither is it just the spoil heap from a hole dug in the ground for an equally unknown reason.

There appears to be two courses of further investigation. One, to dig or bore the mount itself. Secondly, to collect information from other sites that have similar prevailing conditions.

For the city-dweller, the countryman, the straw-chewing bumpkin seated on an inn-bench staring vacantly out at the village green, has been an endless source of mirth. The countryman has always had his revenge, of course. For every story of which he has been the butt, there is a counterpart where his native cunning and knowledge of nature's ways. has been turned to the disadvantage of the supercilious visitor from the city.

The battle of wits between smocked yokel and sophisticated "townie" is one so deeply imbedded in history its beginnings are lost. Jibes at the expense of each are to be found in the literature of Classical Greece. Rus et urbes enshrined a distinction as clear to the Romans as to ourselves. And the more on examines it, the more one is forced to the conclusion that it represents something deeper than can be explained by a vein of humour. It begins to look more like a division of the human race as real as, say, the class divisions of orthodox Marxism or the introvert/extravert dichotomy of Jungian psychology.

It is the French ethnologist, Jacques Soustelle who, in The Fourth Sun, points out that the city is not simply the village overgrown. The village is a collection of households living in proximity one to nother for a variety of reasons, though where each household or farmstead remains an entity to itself. There are unlikely to be communal services, for instance. The social structure of village life is family - tribe - chieftain. By contrast, the city is a total organism where, as in the beehive or anthill, each has his role which is subservient to the needs of the whole.

Notwithstanding such differences, one might still suppose that the city grew out of the village; that the one was the other in nucleus. Historical fact tends not to bear out this thesis, however. Though the origins of the city are uncertain when first we encounter it, it appears to have come on the scene, as it were, full grown.

What is more it invariably appears as an interpolation, a colony. Sumer, Babylon, Athens, Rome not to speak of Paris or London, Dublin or Belfast, were all founded by settlers or invaders who, finding themselves surrounded by hostile populations, protected themselves within defensible, walled enclaves. I1any British place-names remind us of this fact. Manchester, Chester, Lancaster or Chichester all have as suffix a form of the Latin word for "fort". It was this which gave the city the character which for the countryman it has never quite outgrown, of being an alien imposition, something akin to the Castle of Kafka's novel.

Naturally, once established, the colony had to trade beyond its own walls. Its people needed the food or, at any rate, the labour, which the countryside afforded. And it is this fact of trade which becomes one of its distinguishing marks. Invariably, situated at the point of intersection of many human currents - the confluence of two important rivers, the junction of roads or caravan trails or else clustered around some natural harbour, its commerce quickly extended beyond the locality. It would exchange its produce against those of other countries. The international trade in silks, spices, wines, amber, minerals like tin, even in worked flints or china clay, has an enormously long ancestry and we know such goods were conveyed over long distances.

In this way the city's advent altered the form of agriculture. Subsistence farming gave place to growing for cash. The city as market came to dominate the economy of the countryman.

Its obvious advantages as a form of human organisation plainly led to emulation and so cities sprang into being spontaneously as manifestations of local populations. Indeed, one interpretation of our own stage of human evolution can be made in terms of the extension of city far beyond its own boundaries. This has affected our mental perspectives. The very word "civilisation" is closely linked with the Latin word for "city", as though civilisation cannot exist without cities. Words like "politics", "policy" and even "police" are derived from the Greek word "polis", and it forms part of our own "Metropolis", the great city. Not only has the modern, industrialised world become, in a very real sense, one gigantic city, but it is city-attitudes which dominate thought. Even such diametrically opposed philosophies as capitalism and Marxism share that much in common! The inference is that city ideas alone are worthy of consideration. Al1 that lies outside them is rustic, primitive, laughable.

The city, the fortress-enclosure, substitutes for tribalism, the nation-in-embryo. It is not for nothing we speak of Rome, Athens or Carthage as "city-states". They are points of convergence. All roads lead to Rome. And so we find another change in fundamental attitudes: that in the view of the supernatural. Because it is the great centre, the city must, can be the only lodging place of the principal agents of the supernatural, the gods. And as the city is founded on the twin pillars of hierarachy and order, the only qualified human mediator with them must be the occupant of social pyramid's apex, the ruler or king, though he may delegate his more tediously mundane duties to hirelings - the priesthood. (The Egyptians word for "priest", for examples, means "servant of the god", by contrast, the king is "the son of the god"; an honorific implicit in the title, Ra).

And it is, here that the most.significant of all distinctions between city and country lies. The countryman is, above all, the pagan - by derivation, the word simply means "one from the country". To the city-dweller he is a being so eccentric that he rejects the true gods and adheres with idiot stubborness to his own quaint notions of the universe's operation.

That same arrogance which leads the city-dweller to see himself as the sole bearer of civilisation, blinds him to other perspectives. Where his environment is man-made, familiar and protective;. the countryman's is a capricious one, dominated by powerful, incomprehensible, forces. We have, also, to recognise that the countryside of these early times was quite unlike the domesticated one we now know. With comparatively small populations and rudimentary tools only the most fertile plains could be brought under cultivation. Behind them lay desert or thick forest - both inhospitable and terrifyingly mysterious. Even in so small a country as Britain and as late as Elizabethan times, there existed large tracts of "wilderness" into which not even the most imprudent traveller deliberately strayed.

One does not have to go back very much further to find it as something still more awesome, a Brothers Grimm world of unpredictable spirits and dark menace, a veritable Other World whose inhabitants did indeed include the shades of the malevolent dead, animal and vegetable, as well as human.

Even where the cultivator's spade has tamed this environment, the great supernatural forces of weather, health and sickness, light and darkness, the seasonal cycle, birth and death, still dominated existence. Where the city-dweller knows the anger of elements only on those rare occasions when disaster - earthquake, erupting volcano, tidal wave or freak storm - strike, the countryman "knows" it all the time.

Like the sailor who "knows" the sea, he takes no chances with it. He entrusts mediation with it to a special category of being: the shaman-magician. His essential distinction from the priest is that where the latter seeks to ensure subservience to the gods, which, indirectly is subservience to the city-state itself, the latter aims at control of the supernatural forces.

The shaman goes back as long as men began to hunt in organised groups. He is to be found depicted on the Lascaux cave drawings. He occurs in myth and legend, for example, as a magician Merlin in the stories of the British hero-king Arthur. He haunts fairy-story as the wizard and magician, benevolent or baleful.

His milieu is far from human habitation in qlaces guarded by the limbs of trees which stretch out like grasping arms, the interwoven tentacles of climbing plants and where the webs of spiders are unbroken. There he has to be sought out as diviner, astrologer, herb-doctor, shape-shifter, caster of spells and maker of charms. The city-dweller, of course, sees in his rituals only ridiculous mumbo-jumbo and in most ways was perfectly right to do so.

Yet there remains something which refuses to be dismissed quite so easily. The megalith-builders, that strange and gifted people, who travelled up from North Africa along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe as far as the Baltic leaving their trail of stone monuments had their magicians. It was almost certainly they whose laid down the incredibly precise dimensions we now know the stone-circles and henges to possess. At least one classical observer, Aristeas of Proconnesus travelled among Scythian magicians and claimed to have been initiated into some of their secrets which bear a surprising resemblance to what we now call paranormal manifestations. One of mathematics' founding-fathers, Pythagoras, was schooled by magicians, perhaps those of the Tracians, and indeed it is likely that it was from them he got the idea of Cosmos of a total, informing unity pervading the universe. His famous Brotherhood was certainly based on fundamentally magical ideas.

Aristotle ascribes the beginnings of philosophy, which encompassed natural science, to the magicians of the Celts, Ilindus, Babylonians and Persians. It was Persian Magi, a name which is the root of our own word magic, who were the "wise men" who visited the Christ-child and recognised him.

There is general acknowledgment that we owe the foundation of our own sciences to what were in origin magical practices. Mathematics from numerology, astronomy from astrology, chemistry and metallurgy from alchemy, medicine and pharmacy from magical herbalism. One can go still further and say that it was only in very recent times, later than the era of Isaac Newton, that the separation between the magical and scientific according to our understanding of that word, became complete.

Nor can we escape its underlying influence on the world religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, Persian Zoroastrianism, Druidism, Tantrism and Taoism are examples. The Chinese Yin and Yang has a marked similarity to ideas found among the magicians, as is Aristotles's "Ladder of souls" - the ladder being an important and potent symbol, like that of the "narrow bridge" found wherever the hand of the shaman-magician has lain.

However, in building up our picture of the shaman-magician we are not limited to the fragmentary information left to us by their Classical observers. In remote regions of the world, where the influence of the city has not yet spread or been fully felt, they are still to be found. The picture of them which emerges whether it comes from travellers in the Twenties like Rasmussen or the Wendts, from contemporary Soviet anthropologists or from Western scholars like Mircea Eliade, shows a marked similarity with what we know of them in the past. This extends not only to beliefs and practices, but also to the method of training.

An article of this kind is not the place to dwell upon this in detail, but it must suffice to say that the consistency is such and extended over So wide an area from the plains of Lappland and the snows of the Arctic to the Australian Bush it must call into question Sir James Frazer's famous contention that these resemblances were "no more than....the effect of similar causes acting alike on the similar constitution of the human mind in different countries and under different skies".

Although I have spoken-of "training", it could more accurately be called a self-disciplining to which he is called, often against his will. Like Buddha and other religious leaders he is called upon to renounce not just material comforts, but the day-to-day fellowship of men and to withdraw to the isolation of forest or desert. Now the archetype of the fairy-story magician becomes understandable.

His first act is to throw himself, as it were, on the mercy of his environment. Cold, hungry, certainly frightened he becomes the prey to terrible hallucinations or, as he would call them visions. These reach their climax in one in which he suffers an appalling death, often with the dismemberment of his body. When he recovers it is not only as a being reborn, but as one reborn with new senses.

Those who have described these to outsiders say it is as though they had become attuned to the entirety of the universe, part of the forces which inform clouds, stars, trees, oceans, animal-life, even the rocks. And there is one thing which unfailingly impressed these outsiders: they did indeed display a marvellous sense of the workings of nature. Presented with a professionally-produced, modern weather-forecast, for instance, one of them shook his head sadly and tendered his own prediction. It was his which came true. One cannot fail to be reminded of the "enlightenment" achieved by the Buddha.

Besides this they are invariably found to practice paranormal skills: telepathy, divination, clairvoyance, hypnotism. Rut even more important was yet another capacity. It is that which the greatest authority on shamanism, Eliade, reqards as his defining mark. By means of self induced trance, usually assisted by hallucinatory drugs, he can leave the corporeal housing of his bcdy to travel at will even into the Other World itself. It is no coincidence that the arrival of "Spiritualism" from North America in the eighteen-seventies corresponded with the time when the first tentative contacts were being made between Europeans and Indian medicine-men and this would account for the popularity of Indian "guides" among the first Spiritualist mediums.

In relation to the tribe, the shaman-madician's role was extremely diverse. He was not merely the conjuror of spirits, the controller and placator of the supernatural forces, he was also his society's doctor, teacher, lawyer and mythologue. He was inevitably the principal adviser to the chieftain, sometimes he served as chieftain himself, at others he was responsible For his selection and, if necessary, his removal.

It is now perfectly clear why the ruler of the city-state should see the shaman-magician as a threat. In these circumstances two courses are available to him. He can prohibit the practice of magic under severe penalties, as was the Roman way. Or he can seek to woo and tame him as happened in Egypt so that he became a court appendage, his oral knowledge codified into the books in the royal libraries. It is likely this also happened in Sumer, the lineal predecessor of Babylon. The capital of knowledge he brought is still being drawn upon. Oecinial reckoning is one example; the division of the circle into 360 degrees is another. modern astronomy still employs the Babylonic word "saros" to denote the interval of 18 years 11½, days between one solar eclipse and the next.

Since the shaman-magician's knowledge is made generally available and he himself free to practice his arts within the palace precincts, it might legitimately be asked whether his domestication was necessarily a bad thing? In many ways it obviously was not. On the other hand, it entailed his removal from his natural habitat, that in which his knowledge is dynamic. Instead it becomes static, written knowledge passed on and reworked, but according to his view, never actually extended.

So is all this an argument for abandoning scientific orthodoxy in favour of vision, trace and intuition as practised by the shaman-magician? Should we place the Caribbean obeah or the African witch-doctor above the Nobel prize-winner?

Obviously not.

What one is saying that the city, established as a colonial fortress among alien populations, as part of deliberate policy of imposing its hegemony, poured contempt on those systems of ideas whose roots were in the countryside and close to the natural world. That concept which men of earlier times had of the forces informing that world was once charged with personification and superstition. That many, probably most, of the practices of the shaman-magicians were pure mumbo-jumbo, is certain. But on the available evidence there is reason to declare that they also acquired real and testable knowledge using methods we are only just beginning to comprehend.

One of the most interesting manifestations of our times has undoubtedly been the rediscovery of a respect for nature demonstrated in an interest in natural foods, herbal medicines and, more significantly, in ideas about ecology and an essential "Cosmic" partnership between man and his environment. A quarter of a century ago, Marxists, for example, were saying that victory in the class struggle would leave humanity free for his next great contest, that against nature. This seems a far cry from present attitudes.

This notion of a partnership between man and nature is a fundamental shamanistic one. Perhaps we must go further than just acknowledging this contribution and consider how they, as nature's partners sans pareil, achieved this situation.

LEYS OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE by KURT GERLACH
Translated by Michael Behrend.
Pub. Institute of Geomantic Research.
24 pages.

This booklet is a series of four essays written by a German researcher which first appeared in 'Germanien' between 1940 - 1943. 'Germanien' was a German publication of the Nazi period which published material on folklore and alternative archaeology. This new translation, put out by the ever productive Institute of Geomantic Research (see 'Ancient Mysteries' in Exchange Journals section), has a concise and erudite introduction by the translator Michael Behrend. The carefully detailed research that has gone into the making of this work provides the reader with a wealth of sornetimes fascinating aspects of the local history of sites upon the alignments. Though this approach is to be applauded I found the minute detailing of strange sounding place names and people almost on every line somewhat distracting. The book includes three maps of alignments and if these had been on a larger scale showing more clearly the nature of the work points on the line, the text would be more accessible to the foreign reader, at least.

The basis of the thesis/discovery is that certain places with the same name on the Saxon/Bohemian borderland align and have as their distances apart multiples of the basic unit of 11 kms. British ley hunters will notice familiar ley features, e.g. hill top shines, pre-Christian sacred sites, monasteries and chapels dedicated to the dragon, Saints George and Margaret. The Teutonic Knights and Hospitallers are found to have been implicated in the use bf this system. Like Watkins, Gerlach says that the purpose of these lines was to guide travellers across the landscape - communication lines.

For those interested in the nefarious dynamics of the totalitarian state, its ability to slip into almost every nook and cranny, Gerlach gets drawn into a bit of Nazi propaqanda when discussing the implications of the lines once or twice. This is an informative booklet and well worth reading for the ley enthusiast.

COSMIC TRIGGER: FINAL SECRET OF THE ILLUMINATI by Robert Anton Wilson
Abacus Books 1979. 288 pages.

Anyone who read the novel 'Illuminatus' and enjoyed it as much as I did must have been almost durnbstruck when they discovered that a follow-up book had been written by one of its co-authors, and that this book is not a novel but a factual account of his researches and experiences around the Illuminati theme.

There I was standing in one of Brighton's better bookshops when my eye caught the eye in the pyrarnid on the cover of a book. Above the picture was written 'The Final Secret of the Illuminati'. I looked at the book, the book looked back at me. It was one of those rare moments in a bookshop which seem pregnant with the promise of just that thing you've been looking for, and you haven't even realised that you've been looking for it at all. Could there really be another volume of that epic of cosmic anarchy which made me so glad before?

The answer was YES! This is a great book. It describes the journey through consciousness of a man who didn't retreat to India for the duration but took it on in urban and rural America. Isn't this approach more convincing and relevant to us as Westerners than to retreat to the East to seek enlightenment? Incidently, C.G. Jung used to emphasise this point when he became excited on this general subject. He insisted that once you've grown up in a culture you take meaning from reality/experience through the predominant symbols of that culture, and that to look for essential meaning in an alien culture is a danger to the psyche.

One of the great features of the 'Illuminatus' trilogy is that even at its most wildly imaginative and paranoid it always remains strongly linked to reality. The authors had set out to write a satire on an epic scale. A satire based in the modern world and built around the legends of the Bavarian Illuminati. The Illuminati are an alleged conspiracy that some people believe rules the world through political and occult manipulations. But in the summer of 1973 when the book was just finished, and Watergate was making history, the authors (Shea and Wilson) began to realise that the political fact was indeed stranger than their fiction. "We had tried to imagine Total Evil combined with Total Stupidity, but Nixon actually lived out our fantasies" (p.92) - (But was Nixon as stupid as all that?. Don't forget the incredible dexterity in the juggling act of his foreign policy).

Wilson researches into the Illuminati took him through a 'cosmic fun house' of double agents, U.F.O's, possible presidential assassination plots, enigmatic symbols on the dollar bill, messages from Sirius, the ambiguities of Aleister Crowley, Immortalists, plans to leave this planet and the latest paradoxes of quantum physics." And it is this cosmic fun house, this ride through the consciousness and the paranormal that 'COSMIC TRIGGER' is all about.

One of the book's more important statements comes in the prologue when Wilson is discussing possible theories to explain contradictory phenomenum, which defy conventional explanation. Drawing on the work of sub-atomic physicist Niels Bohr he comes up with the idea that "The search for one correct model (one theory to explain and pigeon-hole phenomenum) was medieval, pre-scientific and obsolete". Any politicians reading this please take note! He goes on to say that this could be the most important intellectual discovery of the 20th century and that it marks the transition from Aristotelian civilisation (dogmatic, mouistic, authoritarian) to non-Aristotelian civilisation (relativistic, pluralistic, libertarian).

This is a book that gives the impression it's been sincerely researched in great depth - it's both academic and experiential. Its a book shot through with the wisdom and cosmic spirit that go hand in hand in the best zen anecdotes. It'll help you see things in a greater perspective. And boy, do we need it.

The Global Manipulators by Robert Eringer
Pentacle Books, 95 pages

The News medis presents current affairs as happening within the context of a specific stage. The players on this stage are predominently members of governments, political parties,the military,religious orders, academic institutions and so on; who represent the dogmas of the institutions from which they come. Robert Eringer takes us behind the scenes and to continue the metaphor) shows us the script writers and the directors and what a surprising insight this book has for us. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli, "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." The directors and script writers who are under scrutiny in this book turnout to be The Bilderberg Group (The extreme left see them as a right wing group and the extreme right see them as a left wing group), and The Trilateral Commision. Both groups are quasi secret and are made up of prominent people whose aim it is to influence world affairs in accordance with the aims agreed on in their secret meetings. Bilderberg got its name from the hotel in the Netherlands where the first meeting took place; the Trilateral Commision is named after the three basic economic interest areas it serves The USA, Japan, and Europe. The immensely rich and powerful Rockefeller banking and industrial familly were instrumental in setting up both organisations. Certain parties (usually those who in conspiracy theories find an expanation for the patterns of contemporary affairs) think that Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commision have been set up with unstated aim of gaining world control. Mr. Eringer is not the kind of man who labels either of these groups as communists or fascist inspired. What he has done is to produce a well researched and well documented book which should be read by everyone who purports to have a real interest in world affairs. If you have ever wondered at the apparent cotradictions in the Vodka-Cola connection then this book will to some extent help to clarify things.

FLASH GORDON

Flash Gordon is a film where a Busby Berkley Kaleidascopic dance movie enters the mythic world of the American comic-strip hero and ingests a psychadelic substance. Visually the film is stunning the special effeets a wonder to see. And there's a good sense of humour running throughout the film which helps to keep it well proportioned.

The basic plot is simple enough, the struggle between good and evil. And as in all wholesome myths - good wins through. But though the evil power is completely overcome it is not completely destroyed and one is left at the end of the film with the feeling that its challenge must be met again. Ihis is a mature myth Dr. Jung would have liked and probably Rudolf Steiner too.

The hero of the piece, a famous sportsman, enbodies and fights for the human spirit. The evil Ming, is a galactic dictator running a totalitarian Galaxy. What a thought! In the fabulous sets and costumes one gets strong hints of the style of some of the totalitarian states we've known in the 20th century - need I list them? (But I bet Herman Goering, whose love of the theatrical in clothing is best illustrated in his own design for the uniform of Field marshall of the Third Reich, would have loved to have a hand in this!) Ming rules the universe through fear and division. His plan is to heap destruction upon the earth so that in the end its people will be happy to have less (haven't I come across that as an economic plan somewhere recently?) Flash inspires rebellion against Ming by convincing his subjects that unity and brotherhood are better than the old way. Unity and brotherhood (sisterhood too, sister) overcome division and fear and Flash becomes the saviour of the Universe. Was it in the Bible that I came across a plot similar to this?

Thanks for the latest "Quicksilver Messenger" which I've read with interest. Particularly liked your piece on the Goldstone.

If we follow Colin Bloy's line of reasoning, there is nothing in the world except that which our own beliefs have put there. The only reality we see is the reality we seek; leys exist because we are looking for them. The problem is, when we find them we stop looking. It's a very philosophical question, which he has either deliberately ignored to avoid confusing the reader, or hasn't faced yet. On this line of reasoning there can be no facts. By imposing laws on the universe man must acknowledge his own non-existence.

I refuse to be drawn into John Michell's debate!, but do not agree.

Neither of these are criticisms: the articles encourage thought and debate, which is what it is all about. Hope you've got some more lined up like them! However, it is Charles Walker I want to take to task for a rather sloppy account of the Surrey Puma.

For a start the earliest case I know of is about 1775, of a mystery cat-like animal seen near Farnham. There are quite a few cases known before the famous 1964 sightings.

Surrey police did not have the manpower to search after every report, and many searches began hours after the animal was seen, when it could have been miles away.

The discovery of tracks near Godalming led to the search, and were not found as a result of it. The tracks were considered "99% likely" to be puma by London Zoo, though they were not dissimilar to bloodhound, and bloodhounds were kept in the area. However, it is unlikely that a dog would keep to a straight line for ½ mile.

Many of the alleged sightings were by townspeople who hadn't given the local wildlife a second thought until they see "puma" all over the local papers. For "puma" read dog, cat, fox, deer. However, that does not explain them all. There was a puma loose in Surrey in the mid-Sixties, which local lore has it was shot about 1968. Sightings since should tell us more about human psychology. (These comments result from extensive research of original press reports and talking with reporters and people involved with the original scare. But I must thank Charles Walker for two Sussex sightings I did not know of.)

CHRIS HALL, FLEET, HAMPS

Readers of Quicksilver Messenger No. 2 will remember how John Michell (sometimes known as "the world's greatest 1ey hunter" and "the gangster of mysticism" did a neat and convincing razor job on Darwin's theory of evolution. Word has it that "The Myth of Darwinism" article caused several heated exchanges over pints of Harveys and Gales in Briqhton and at least one man is reported to have nearly choked on his brown rice when he saw that Darwin himself was being depicted as an ape! Apparent1y he was gasping "unfair" as he coughed up the offending grains. I don't know why he got so excited because that is exactly what Darwin was suggesting, that men were related to apes - ED.

On reading John Michell's article on Darwinism in Q.M.2 I quickly came to the conclusion that the man must be a crank. However, my exploratory reading soon showed me that what J.M. had to say was right in most respects. I had fallen for the myth of the wise white-haired scientist, guru of the West, who has knowledge, but will never jump to unwarranted conclusions, (a dangerous fantasy); and for the idea that whatever is generally accepted by the scientific fraternity may be taken on trust by society at large, (a dangerous fallacy). I used to think that it was Darwin who actually thought of evolution, - he used to appear to me as a man whose genius had afforded him a vision of a radically different and dynamic universe a dizzying change of perspective showing a startling discontinuity with previous world views. It seemed to me that Darwin moved aside the last vestiges of a superstitious religious authoritarianism which based much of its power on purporting to know the answers.

It seems I was totally wrong. Darwin didn't think of evolution - the idea had been around for a long time. The crux of Darwin's theory was the means of evolution - natural selection, an idea which had been aired before by Edward Blyth, (See Darwin and the Mysterious Mr X by Loren Eiseley.), as a means of preserving, and not changing, the specific character of species. It now appears, after intensive experimentation, that it is not possible to get a species to vary beyond certain parameters, so Blyth may turn out to be closer to the mark than Darwin.

Darwin, then, seems to have been given credit for more than he was actually responsible for, but he has also been given a lot of stick for developments he was not directly responsible for and this is where I differ with J.M. As a scientist, he presented the evidence he had collected in support of his theory, and did not make any qualititive judgments upon it. In human terms his theory has obvious right-wing and Nazi uses, but the fact that his theories have been used to promulgate these ideologies does not mean that they are right-wing or Nazi theories in themselves. The right wing immediately espoused the theory of natural selection, and applied it to the human race. This resulted in the school of thought of Social Darwinism, which saw the development of civilisation as a process of natural selection, with the stronger and more dynamic races overcoming the weaker ones. Behind this ideology lies the assumption that whoever wins is best, or vice versa, and it has fortunately gone out of fashion. It is politically dangerous, but in its results no different from previous concepts, such as the Manifest Destiny policy of the U.S. Government in the nineteenth century, which decreed that the extermination of the Indians was in accordance with the Will of God. In the writings of Rosenberg, chief ideologist of the Nazi party, there seem to be no references to Darwin, perhaps because the idealistic German concept of the Nordic super-race (descended according to Rosenberg, from the inhabitants of Atlantis) was not felt to be dignified by the notion of descent from apes. No doubt Darwin's name was used to support Nazism, but in Rosenberg's writing many other distinguished names were used for this purpose, and in any case the vague myth-making which is Nazi ideology does not require a scientific case, but only a pseudo-scientific excuse, to which these names lend an aura of authority and academic respectability.

The myth behind Darwinism is surely the myth of progress, which has been around for a long time. It is in the nature of things, the evolutionist will imply, that the situation now is better than anything that preceded it. He won't say 'better', of course - 'more complex', 'more developed', or something of the sort, but the message is there. This myth existed before Darwinism - it is perhaps the great myth of the Victorian age, and the great excuse of imperialism. People, in the belief that they were more advanced, were sending trousers and missionaries to natives long before Darwin expounded his theory, and even today (see? I'm doing it myself!) only a few of the more enlightened among us (such as the readers of this magazine!) are prepared to look at so-called 'primitive' cultures without the deep-rooted, xenophobic, conditioned reaction - "I'm better I'm more advanced than this."

TONY RIDGEWAY, BRIGHTON

Shortly after two foxhunters set off for one of the first meets of the seaaon they encountered an unfamiliar animal. They were following a rough track which had once been a Roman road in the Sussex countryside, early one autumn morning in the 1930's.

Then the horses shied, and a "gigantic wolf-like creature came loping across the field". It crossed the road yards ahead, paying the riders not the slightest attention, and made off over a hill. Later enquiries were made in the aree but no-one knew of such an animal; nor had anything escaped from zoos Nor could any trace or spoor of the beast be found. The hunters were left wondering if what they had seen was a phantom of a giant wolf speared by a Roman soldier centuries before, or was this one of the werewolves of Sussex legend? (1)

The instance is not unique. Doris Metcalf hes come across similar creatures a number of times in Sussex. She believes them to be huge grey foxes which are the last in a line of ancient hill foxes, and which could easily have lead to many of the werewolf legends. But her accounts also date to the 1970's.

Near Jevington one summer afternoon both she and her canpanion saw what they first took to be a large Alsatian. It crosaed the track ahead of them, but ignoring them and loped out of sight. They expected to see its owner but no one was in sight; there was only an earth where presumebly it had gone to ground.

On another occasion one of theee huge creatures walked only a yard or so ahead of some hunters in the wooded grounda of Glenleigh Manor, then loped away across the marshes towards Pevenaey (2), All of this leaves me as one unfamilier with Sussex folklore with unanswered questions. Have they for example been seen in the laet 40 years? In all three accounts the wolves acted as if they were unaware of the witnesses despite the closeness of the encounter. This is not typical of wild animals, and is an almost ghostlike quality. There are silver and grey types of fox, but they are no larger than the common red fox, and are not native to Britain. If these were involved we would simply have substituted one out of place animal with another.

It has been suggested (3) that these Sussex wolves might explein some of the many puma sightings of south-east England there has been at leeat 500). Certainly the puma are said to be "Alsatian-sized", but at that point comparisons end.

That being aaid, the Following may be of some relevance.

A search for a puma seen at Fernborough, Hampshire in 1964 Flushed out "one of the biggeet foxes you ever saw bigger then an Alsatian", The animal was not caught, but it "solved" the puma mystery. (4, 5).

Two weeks later a bus driver, on a wooded route after dark saw a gingery, sandy animal with a wolf's snout and a bushy tail. It was about three feet hiqh, but he wes sure it was not an Alsatian. Nor could it be a puma with a description like that. (6).

The Farnborough animal was also said to be sandy, but with a tail unlike that of a fox. The two sightings were within about three miles of each other.

A month later the body of a "huge" Alsatian was found in nearby woodland. It was black and grey, and had died of old age (7),

We left wondering if it was really an Alsatian, or one of the huge grey foxes or wolves of Sussex. These accounts also suggest that occasional foxes may grow significantly larger than normal.

Which all goes to show there is more to British wildlife than the text book will tell. As to pumas, there is no reeaon why they could not survive in Surrey or Susaex, and almost certainly there was one once, and true wild cats too. And perhaps huge foxes or wolves as well.

Sources:
(1) The Countryman, Winter 1957, p.635
(2) The Countryman, Summer 1958, p.357
(3) Aldershot News, 6 Nov, 1964, p.10
(4) Surrey & Hants News l5th Oct, 1964 p.1
(5) Farnborough Chronicle, 16th Oct, 1964 p.1
(6) Aldershot News, 30th Oct, 1964, p.12
(7) Aldershot News, 27th Nov, l964, p.1