Text excerpt:

CONTENTS

Introduction               

1.  Hinduism

2. Buddhism

3.  Paganism

4.  Shamanism

5. Utopian Community

6. Mysticism

7. Astrology

8. Vision Quest

9. Sacred Sweat Lodge Ceremony

10. Sacred Masculine

Books, Resources and Notes   

The Author
 

Introduction

‘Love cures people, the ones who receive love and the ones who give it too.’

A magical child has been conceived in the modern west. A new spiritual form has been born out of Hinduism, Buddhism, the Pagan religions of Northern Europe, Shamanism, utopian community and astrology. A great new collective discipline or structure is emerging amid this present reforging of ancient spiritual traditions. New tools are grasped such as ritual, meditation, tantra, body-energy-work, trance and vision. The astrological traditions of the Vedas and the West can now converge to give even more concrete and deep perspectives on our purpose and life path. In this spiritual revolution, we find new beauty and power in what it means to be a woman or a man.

I discovered this reclaiming of ancient spiritual paths and reforging of ancient tools, during a five-year social-anthropological field study which I completed with my wife, Janet. The study began in 1998 and was mainly completed in Glastonbury in the southwest of England, but the study’s significance is world-wide because Glastonbury has become, again, a foremost place of pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages, Glastonbury was the second most prominent pilgrim destination in England. Now, its importance is global. Spiritual seekers come to Glastonbury from all over the world to share in this present remaking of ancient spiritual forms.

I see these ageless spiritual forms and practices – Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism, Shamanism, Vision Quest, Sweat Lodge and Sacred Masculine, like a grove of ancient trees on a darkening sacred landscape; their trunks, branches and leaves are wholly enveloped by the firestorm of the spiritual practice of their devotees, but they remain unconsumed by this fire, ever-renewing themselves: a flaming beacon torch for women and men through millennia who sincerely quest for ancient meaning - and the visionary sparks of their conflagration fall out everywhere, on beings in all the realms.

What I found, most of all, is that these hitherto separate spiritual forms can now cooperate with each other; they can reinforce and nurture each other; they have much to contribute to each other, and we lose out if we try to put our spirituality into boxes.

At one level this book is a ‘taster’ of each spiritual form, its vision, its connection to the divine, its rituals, meditations and methods. At another level, I hope you will find this small book quite surprisingly valuable as an amazingly comprehensive ‘how to’ guide, showing the links between the spiritual paths. At another level it is a global exploration of how these spiritual ways contribute to each other and how their methods and visions can be used to enrich and support and illuminate each other, for the healing and empowerment of women and men who seek.

I want to pay tribute to the wonderful men and women I met who shared with, bravely pushing spiritual exploration forward and reaching out to the divine, to healing, to god’s beauty and meaning, lighting a fire to illumine the surrounding darkness that has been created by western modernity. I name them in my gratitude where I feel I can.

I feel especially blessed to have learned the devotional rituals (and the conceptual framework) of Hinduism: god existing behind the deluding veils of this world where we are born fettered and blinded as to our true nature, but devotion, good actions and the grace of god revealing himself when the time is right shows us that the true reality is that we are actually one with god, that our bodies are a microcosm of the macrocosm and contain all we need to become one with god, that we are one with everyone else and all phenomena. I feel blessed to have attended puja to Kali, the Great Mother, who holds us as we transform, as we die to our old selves to be reborn: she has witnessed everything and she wields the cleaver, yet she issues only a torrent of love. I feel blessed to have contacted Vishnu: he whose energy is one of blissful wrapt concentration, who can still all conflict with a blissful wave of his hand; he who lies back in ecstasy on the coils of the world snake and dreams universes in and out of being over aeons. I worship Lord Shiva, great Lord, great Yogin, Lord of Paradox, Lord of Bhang. How wonderful to have been blessed by contact with Ganesha and Hanuman and Durga slayer of demons, and Lakshmi, divine bestower of wealth and Bhairava. The ritual of Chinnamasta, the aweful tantric goddess, can show us so much of the different perspectives on reality between Hinduism, Buddhism and The Craft. Lord Krishna’s Lila is the universe and his devotees contact him through love. It has meant much that some have shared with me their path of ‘surrender’. A big thank you – how can I thank you enough? to David Wharton and Shakira and to Skanda Vale.

I have learned so much from the gift of the Dharma. Buddhism is of such great value in the lessons it offers about the nature of consciousness. The meditation practice, anapana, or ‘mindfulness of breathing has become part of my life, as are the people who introduced me to it: the yogin Dharmabhandhu and Helen Drever. And how wonderful to have been blessed to encounter the meditation practice the Mettabhavana, (the ‘Loving Kindness’ meditation); I nearly cried when I heard it could be done, because had just met a spiritual group that was merciless, not loving or kind. Again thank you so much to Dharmabhandhu.  I went on to contact and become the resplendent glorious Bodhisattvas: Tara, Avalokiteshvara, and Manjushri and to learn something of the Bodhisattva’s saving way. Thank you to Sumana and his group. Having been melted by the Bodhisattva energy, may I never depart from it. And from there I went to arise as Heruka and Vajrayogini and to be blessed by entry to their resplendent Pure Lands.

I was so fortunate to contact the magical beauty, strength and power of the Craft. I am blessed, honoured and strengthened to have worshipped and to have become the god; I am honoured to be the servant of the goddess. I am awed to see the magical power of the Craft: when we cast a powerful containing circle to work magic in and call in the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The tools of Wicca are so magically and spiritually powerful in the ways they serve us: the athame, the sword, the wand, the Cup, the pentacle. The incenses and the herbs so tangible to earth the vision. The words of the rituals we have inherited from Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente are so beautiful and such a magical spirituality. Thank you to Nathan for telling me that once you have felt the prick of magic your life is lost and you are bereft if you neglect it and let it wither. Deepest thanks also to Autumn, to Lindsay, to Jon Connell, to Nathan, to Pagan, Nik and Niky and Morgaine.

I have been made the greater by discovery of my power animals and by journeying shamanically through the realms, learning the healing power of shamanism: its power to find your deep self and magical allies to help you, its power working with karma, its ability to restore lost parts of yourself and remove hooks others may have put into you: oracular gifts, dream work, working with the land, drumming. Thank you from the depths of my heart to Pete and Sue, to John Matthews, to Dharmarucci and Catherine. Sweat Lodge has taught me the seriousness and honour of being a man (or a woman) the value of honour: thank you to Bethlehem.

The menswork movement has brought all these into the one person: me, as a man. These spiritual forms only have value if they are integrated into the man (or woman) so that you can, indeed walk your talk and treat yourself and others well. A most heartfelt thank you to Ron Pyatt; to Marcus, to the pagan lads n dads' group, to the wyrd earth fathers and sons and vision quest at sacred masculine.

And to Jeremy Thres for introducing me to Vision Quest. Vision quest is so empowering and beautiful. You go off away from the psychic clutter of living near others and are fed and stripped down to the basic power of your own soul by your living in nature alone, fasting for three days. You can enact this several times at key times of death and rebirth in your life. You gain great strength and dignity. Vision Quest is a wonderful ‘rite of passage’ for boys on the brink of manhood and for girls on the brink of womanhood, supported by their families, their elders and their community. You can read about it in my novel: The Tribe. The hills, the land, the waterfalls, the stones all feed us. We can experience vision there or we can make a ceremonial transformational rite.

Astrology has been fundamental in giving me the knowledge, trained insight, conceptual and evaluative framework and power to give accurate meaning to the energy states which were implanted at my birth and which I pass through on my journey through life, and the ability to give more accurate readings, to predict the timing of events and impart perspectives of meaning and understanding to them. I am so pleased to have learned how to get the best out of the union of western and Vedic astrology. I am so pleased to have learned and developed and now teach a very rapid-read method of great depth and psychological accuracy using chart aspect shapes. Thank you to Jean Kessler, and especially deepest appreciation to my most spiritual of master teachers of Vedic Astrology, so consummately able to give such insight into your destiny and karma: Steven Hubball.

I want to give a special thanks to Chris Ratcliffe of Heb Web for all his efforts in creating my websites and for his steadfast vision in bringing community together, and special thanks also to Felicity Potter at the Book Case, Hebden Bridge for offering encouragement and making a community bookshop all that it can be as a wonderful resource for its community.

I want to give thanks also to Anne Newkirk - Niven at BBI Media Inc, from Point Arena, California, for producing such wonderful stimulating magazines: PanGaia, NewWitch, SageWoman and Blessed Bee, and for giving support and encouragement, and special thanks also to Allannah Turner editor of the Australian Pagan Alliance’s inspirational and intelligent magazine: Pagan Times, at North Hobart, Tasmania, for her vision and encouragement.

Because I have gained so much from the spiritual paths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism, Shamanism and menswork, from how they contribute and nurture each other, I wanted to share this blessing and write this Guide. But if it is to be a good guide, I also need to include a brief section about difficulties you may encounter, especially as things seem to be ‘closing up’ in the spiritual world in the west. It was freer and more loving in the sixties. Since then, I keep coming across people who set themselves up to control their followers and police others. But I believe that this change of climate must be reversed,  that spiritual paths do contribute to each other and no one should corral Spirit. No one should own others. One of the things that especially had a big effect on me during the field study was hearing the head of a Hedge Witch organization talking about ‘my witches’!

My courses also provide, therefore, great support for those who feel they have been pushed away from, or even made refugees from difficult or totalising spiritual organizations or courses. You can find yourself put in the position of suffering and being unable to go on, in Orders which make you recite affirmations as to how fortunate you are to have such and such as a Teacher, even when you feel there is something wrong there, or being left frightened and disempowered by pagans who have sucked you in by restrictive claims that only covens tracing their lineage back to Gerald Gardener’s or Alex Saunders’ covens of fifty years ago are ‘valid covens’, and who xenophobically warn you not to heed ‘American’ or even ‘Californian’ wicca. Individuals have been hurt and dumped from astrology courses that insist there is only one way to interpret the natal chart or predict, and who refuse to contextualise or adequately discuss or explain ‘their method’ within the great discourses about astrology that have gone on for at least three thousand years. Organizations which focus on ‘ascension’ and ‘light’ and ‘evolution’ and purity can be very brittle about and very damning of, and exclusionary towards, individuals who need to explore the fullness of their identity and life-path in ways that embrace the shadow and the chthonic. It still amazes me that teachers can say ‘mine is the only way’, and how the members of their organizations will gang together and back the leader up and put pressure on others, even when that ‘way’, that ‘tradition’, that ‘order’ that ‘grove’ was only formed within living memory! A lot of people who feel they are on a path of evolution or purity project a lot of their denied, ‘held-in’ stuff onto others. I originally created my courses to share the great gifts which I have been given, but they have also proved to be of value and support to these refugees and to those who just don’t want to get caught up in the power-over people’s trip, who want to feel free to follow their spiritual paths in the way they want to, with lots of support.

Those people who try to say their path, or their way, is the only valid way, are mistaken. They are like someone holding out a coffee cup to the torrent of bliss and beauty, saying that the tiny bit of water in ‘their’ coffee cup is the only water there is: that it, alone, is the only water that will quench your thirst. Restrictive definitions which rely on lineages, organizations, cults and traditions, techniques, the methods of a particular person and so forth, all exclude the wonders and the strengths of all the other paths, all do damage to other people. You do need a structure, you do need a method, if you are going to seek the divine through ritual or meditation - but people who impose these  restrictive exclusionary definitions are often into power over others. Often, they will treat others in a way that limits others’ potential and choice.

Also, when New Age ‘techniques’ are ‘extracted’ from these ancient traditions, and (often expensively) packaged in the enlightenment glossies under efficient-sounding gimmicky names or sets of initials, glibly presented for mass sale and consumption, without developing the spiritual consciousness and wisdom, people are fooled, disappointed and ultimately left bereft.

Basically, the field study found that new (actually ancient) tools are now firmly available in the West to transform consciousness via vision. Tantra affords techniques of accessing the consciousness of a god, of entering god realms, and of developing the willed ability to unify apparent opposites by experience of non-dual holistic ecstasy. Meditation provides a vehicle for attainment of insight, peace and ecstasy by ‘presence’ to body- and mind-states in the process of flux, by insight into underlying emptiness, and by perception as illusion that which individuals and society term ‘reality’. Shamanism offers journeying into newly rediscovered soul dimensions occupied by power animals and spirit guides. It can take you down to where part of your soul might have been cut off or to when hooks were put in you. Visions were found to be powerfully used to draw the individual on the ‘contact with the divine’. Body-energy work brings what is described as release of the body’s own energy systems from armouring and blocks – and alignment of these flows, to those of the universe. Ancient forms of body energy work are reclaimed in the service of the attainment of ‘enlightenment’, for example the chackras, the Tibetan system of winds and drops, the meridians. Ritual is immensely influential in self-creation. Vision-work involves the creation of new consciousness under will, deliberate movement between spaces on the landscape of self creation, unifying physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual planes of the self. Intuition and psychism are extensively developed to perceive the nature of reality: a balancing up from the Enlightenment and rationalism that has officially dominated Western consciousness in modern times. Visionary consciousness transformation work was also found to be undertaken to achieve social protest, and to develop new modes of living, new corporeal embodiments, new ‘utopian’ community-building and alternative lifestyle consumption processes. These new spiritual tools allow us to become ‘selves’ that are quite outside those allowed by western capitalist rationalist modernity: for example: the Sannyasin, the Bodhisattva, the yogin, the eco-warrior, The Traveller, the witch, the magician and the shaman. And now, a vision of ‘the natural’ has also arisen: re-enchantment is driven by unhappiness at modernity’s near-total draining of myth and magic, highlighting such issues of modernity as ‘alienation of labour’, McDonaldsization, and economic and utilitarian calculation. The felt proximity of ecological Armageddon has led to a valorization of the ‘natural’, perceiving the healing power of contact with vegetatative power and natural growth:

‘Green shoots are growing’
And a-growing and a-growing and a-growing and a-growing
And a-pushing up the tarmac
And the concrete.’

(The Glastonbury Group:
The Space Goats)

The landscape (of consciousness) that can be used for this new visionary self-creation is actually immense, far bigger than the western culture has led us to believe – and the spiritual forms serve as sign-posts to the track ways across it. Landscape, itself, is a gateway to the divine. It is visionary. It is partly, obviously, the physical landscape supports us; but always we interpret it symbolically, and find visions there, and thus we use it as a ‘prop’ to define who we are: as a ‘gateway’ to attempts to perceive our full reality, a gateway to wholeness and to god.

Within what might be called the New Age movement, however, tantra and the realm of visions is frequently excluded, even warned against. Aldous Huxley produced a highly-influential, wonderful, quite devotional statement of ‘the Perennial Philosophy’ in the 1950s, but he unconsciously marginalized shamanism and paganism, which he knew nothing about. Ken Wilbur, a New Age leader or ‘pandit’, warns against the visionary tantric realms as ‘pernicious distractions’, without apparently ever having encountered or understood them, claiming that they are ‘frightening’, ‘impure’, labelled ‘disturbed’ by ‘orthodox psychiatry(!), and labelled ‘deceptive’ by those he terms ‘Enlightened Masters’. He equates them to the ‘Siddhis’ and says they are ‘shunned by the sages’. This is because his thought is boundaried by a historical background of evolutionary ascensionism, for example Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘towards the ‘noesphere’’ and Theosophical evolutionary ascensionism. New Age’s dominating sense of ‘masters’, and a personal and species evolutionary ascensionism achieved via paradigmatic shift, and its privileging of ‘focus on white light’ and ‘chackra purity’ is in fact used highly dualisitically (This is ironic as Wilbur’s ‘Spectrum of Consciousness’ sets out to eradicate dualism). ‘Spirit’ in New Age speak seems somehow separated from the world, often revealed through synchronicities, ‘openings’ or ‘grace’, and paradoxically, the language of these strands of transcendence in New Age; it is not holistic: it is dualistic and hierarchical.

I am not trying to say that you should not find your own particular spiritual path. Of course, we each need to find the spiritual path that is right for us, the path that meets our particular needs: the outworking of our particular individual fate. Of course, it is imperative that each of us places top priority on developing our own spiritual path. But what I am saying, also, however, is that there are wonderful gifts to receive and incorporate material, methods and understanding from other paths. Much greater power and vision is to be had, this way: if you illumine the path you are on at the moment, with the bright light from other paths and traditions - if you free yourself from the restricted thinking.

Because Glastonbury, where the field study took place, has for over a thousand years been seen as a sacred landscape, a place of pilgrimage, a landscape which acts as a gateway to the numinous, the idea of landscape naturally arises as a symbol for your own spiritual quest: your own spiritual pathway through life. Imagine yourself a pilgrim walking over a landscape formed by the contours of many of the great spiritual traditions, rituals, visions and methods of human-kind’s unbelievably ancient and rich spiritual past. You walk past holy mountains, the sacred groves, the caves deep within the womb of mother earth. The restricted approach is to say ‘don’t move!’ ‘stick where you are'; 'dig in’. But I believe our field study shows that if you bravely traverse the truly immense spiritual landscape that is now being opened up, you will enrich your self as a woman or a man. You can then look very sceptically at the ‘No Go’ signs that the various lineages or traditions put up all over the place. You can skirt round the many barricades, the vested interests and the sniper-posts that they have erected. You can nod to and pass by the gurus, teachers or Magisters who flex their muscles at you as you travel along the track.
           
The whole of this immense landscape is all a gateway to the divine; not just one small part of it. The whole of the landscape is a gateway, a connection point. There is great and wonderful value if we open our arms to all our neighbours, and are warm and kind and let live and share and don’t play power games. Difference is to be valued. Diversity is illuminating and beautiful. It is damaging to build forts and castles on some bit of the landscape and attack others: everyone gets tense; it invites counter-warfare; people get demonized or scapegoated. With the pressure from the ‘religious right’ comes the risk of a mirror-image being created in those it has attacked. The sixties seemed so much easier and more kind. A film like ‘The Wicker Man’ probably could not have been made in the eighties or nineties. Benedict Anderson from Bristol University in his book Imagined Communities (1991, Verso) coined the phrase ‘the reassurance of fratricide’. He saw how people define themselves and ‘gang up’ together reactively rather than out of honourable reasons: they hold the gang together when they cry out they have been the victim of attack by another group or section; everyone happily falls into line to attack the newly named aggressor and fight the enemy without; it’s like George Orwell’s Animal Farm. 
           
Courses which say the method they teach is the only way, are such a bad way to learn. It’s even worse if they dress this up and say ‘we’re just one big happy family’, or ‘you’d have really liked the founder, if you’d met him’. Bad courses are those which make you just regurgitate the course material in slightly different words, at best offering you the chance to tuck in a bit of your own autobiographical material to prove the teacher’s point. Beware courses that ask you to sign restrictive conditions. Beware courses that refuse to explain how they came to the conclusions they came to. Beware courses that refuse to contextualise their method within the great discourses that have taken place over time around the subject. Knowledge must not be trade-marked. Beware courses which have ‘copyright’ written on every page. Knowledge is not to be corralled for profit. Nothing is really new: everyone owes a debt to others - and to those who went before. Knowledge is not a set of facts or techniques to be trademarked or owned and sold: it is a set of discourses that goes on across humanity and through time. These restrictive types of course make me lose my magic and de-skill me. I freeze up if I’m told I can’t say what I know or what I think in the way I want to.
           
My plea is for everyone to show tolerance and kindness and let live. The many different ‘faces’ that have been given to god by humanity, all can enrich and empower. The rituals, the meditations and the visions, all contain power and beauty. Even the terrible and the wrathful, and even ‘adverse circumstances’ have it within them to all connect you to god. For example, even Loki in the Northern Path is a volcanic force for harm, and he gets worse: but there is valuable learning in studying Loki, as we learn about the Trickster and the Trickster’s role in organization and we learn about the destruction principle in life and how to live in the face of it. The Morigan is a tough Deity to contact, but there is value in learning about the primordial force she epitomizes so we can know this better within ourselves, including being able to deal with it in others, and being able to use it ethically ourselves: Padmasambhava, the 8th Century bringer of the Buddhist Dharma to Tibet epitomises this principle of naming and befriending our demons when he compelled all the spirits of place in Tibet to swear allegiance to the Dharma and become wrathful Dharma Protectors, using their huge force this way. This is psychotherapeutic holism. Mithras is a soldier’s god but this can be helpful to us, as we do need to own what we know about fighting and living in hierarchy and sacrifice; these are positive values in the Mithraic path, and he is totally dualistically-perceived – he is therefore connective to the divine, if we really understand him. This is why I say that learning all the different ways of travelling over and understanding the spiritual landscape will vastly enrich you and equip you better for your spiritual travels. From all the spiritual forms we studied, I realise that, ultimately, in the last analysis, what really matters: (a) how you treat others and (b) how you as a woman or a man can incorporate all this and learn to become who you were born to be: one with god.

This book is called The Backpacker’s Guide. This is because we literally put packs on our backs and spent five years living and sharing in the spiritual communities we studied. Basically, we put a pack on our backs and we went out for five years and lived in ashrams, vipassana meditation centres, utopian communities, places of alternative education, eco-traveller camps, bender sites and temples. We interviewed many spiritual practitioners, seekers and leaders, and we came to our own ritual and meditative awareness and experiences of the divine.

We were ‘participant observers’ living in the communities we studied. We shared intimately and deeply in the cutting edge of the west’s current receptions of ancient spiritual forms from right across the globe – and we witnessed how new ways of perceiving self and new ways of experiencing the divine are now powerfully arising in the west.

We saw that ancient and hitherto separate spiritual forms are now communicating increasingly dynamically with each other and how they can in fact robustly cooperate to form the much-needed new visionary consciousness of the west.

We shared in the life of Wiccan covens, pipe ceremonies, Bhajan groups, Buddhist orders and eco-protests, druid groves and hearths. We made shamanic journeys, celebrated the Eight Great Festivals of the Celtic Pagan Year, went to Peyote Ceremony and Sweat Lodge, and attended many magical workings. We shared in detailed psychic explorations, astral journeying and prediction, and in in-depth studies how astrology relates to the new spiritual practices of the west. We were blessed to attend puja to Kali and Vishnu, and we received life-changing Darsan from Amma, a Hindu Holy Woman. We studied what it is for a landscape to be seen as sacred – as a sacred and empowering gateway to the divine, as a place of deep transformation and healing and numinosity, and we examined literally hundreds of ritual forms, witnessing how they allow their participants to access the divine – or even ritually become the divine - and we studied such aspects as the spatial practice of rituals: what are the implications of how we use space in a ritual, and how do the traditions that underlie the various ritual forms serve to empower – or limit – our contact with the divine.

Overwhelmingly, we experienced how the different traditions actually afford the means for a human being to become the divine. We studied how they enable you to become a god or goddess, to experience the energy of a god or goddess, feel bliss, or achieve enlightenment or ‘salvation’. We meditated on how the quality of ‘emptiness’ relates to these: to the Great Rite in Wicca, to tantra in Buddhism and Hinduism, becoming possessed by spirits and animal forms in shamanism, eco-protest and community action. We studied the ethical and practical ways in which all this can be done, the contexts that are needed.

But perhaps the choice of title was not freely-made? I started writing this book on 30th November 2006, but I remembered twenty days later, when only two chapters were left to go, that my mother had told me that after she had placed me in a convent orphanage when I was three weeks old, that she had then gone to Boston in the US where she had asked a clairvoyant what would become of me and the clairvoyant had prophesied ‘he will have a pack on his back’ – and I had forgotten that until when the book was nearly completed.

Just a point of clarification, here: Tantra is not just about sex, as many modern westerners think. Most of the spiritual forms described in this book revolve around tantra, so it needs to be made clear that. Put simply, Tantra is the form of spirituality that finds the divine at the root of all phenomena and experience. The western reception of tantra plays great emphasis on sex – usually sexual exercises stripped of spiritual context; but tantra is not that. Tantra is the spiritual tradition that finds connection to the divine in everything. You can connect to the divine through your body, through meditation and ritual, through landscape – even through ‘adverse circumstances’; even through finding yourselves in hell realms. In every hell realm depicted on the Tibetan Wheel of life, there is a Bodhisattva there, blessedly pointing the way out: they way of using your hellish experiences to find enlightenment. In fact, in Buddhism, the greatest mediation seats can be found in the deepest hell realms.

So, basically tantra is the spiritual approach that uses all phenomena and experience as connective potential to the divine. It is a way of looking at the world. It is usually visionary, meditative and ritualistic. It is very similar to shamanism, where shamanism knows there are other realms and spirits and the shaman accesses these. In fact, I believe that shamanism is the archaic bedrock of tantra. The perceptions and techniques of Shamanism are the bases of the spiritual forms that followed. Tantra is also very similar to mysticism, where the mystic knows that the psycho-mental-physical realm we live in is not the end of the story; it is not the true reality: the true reality lies beyond the veils of matter. These are the spiritual forms and methods we will be looking at.

From Beltane 1997, I have been co-running celebration of the Celtic Eight Great Festivals of the Year, with Autumn, a Priestess who sadly died untimely young recently. Building on the findings of the field study, courses have been added in focussing onto the tantric spiritual forms: Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism and Shamanism. These tantric spirituality courses are all a combination of both reading and study, as well as, crucially, personal experience. Courses have also been developed to teach astrology: both western astrology and Vedic astrology, and their union – an astrological method which gives rise to the most powerful astrological interpretation and prediction. Vedic Astrology is the astrology of Hinduism; it is also called Jyotish.

The great thing about my courses is their flexibility: basically, you can enrol for one course and then you can side-track off to any of the modules of any of the other courses if you feel your spiritual journey needs to take you to an exploration there as well, and then you can come back to the course you started from. You can go off into as many of the other courses modules as you please.

None of the courses or modules are ‘standardised’ all are tailored exactly to you. The enrolment is completely individualised to you. What you could do on enrolment is give a preliminary indication of where you want to start your course and where you wanted to go: any special interests, any special paths of exploration you might be interested, any questions. Additionally it would enable me to provide the best support and insight if you gave me your astrological natal data (date, time and place of birth). I would not comprehensively interpret your natal and predictive astrology (that is a module in itself) but I would do a powerful eye-ball interpretation of your ‘egoic self’ and life purpose as defined by a union of western and Vedic astrological techniques. My western astrological interpretation is very psychologically incisive due to the interpretation of the chart shapes made by the aspects between planets. Vedic interpretation is incredibly succinct and graphic as to your incarnational fate and the way it will be worked out on the mundane plane in this life and for giving spiritual perspectives how you can work with it. I like to also use both western and Vedic predictive astrology at this stage. This will give me a powerful insight into the energies driving and manifesting at the time of starting the course, in the future time while you are doing the modules, and at any time period(s) in your life so far where you would want this specific guidance. We would share therefore what astrology says is going on for you right now. And a speciality of mine is generational astrology: how our fate is carved out by our inheritance: by our parents, grandparents, siblings, partner, children, etcetera: what life scripts are running in our blood family. So if you wanted to give me the natal data of your generations, a fuller picture is gained. If you have any questions about presentation of natal data at the enrolment point, email and I would be pleased to sort out each case. Usually the time of birth is unclear in much generational astrology.

Having established this careful and comprehensive basis to the learning, if that was what you wanted, you would then decide whether you wanted to pursue the course individually, or with a working partner, or with a small group around you: whatever your decision here, my course would support the exploration you embarked upon.

We would then start the both study and experiential work of the course side by side. It is flexible it must respond to what spirit brings, but an obvious way to start would be to do some sort of initiatory or dedicatory rite, and I could advice your choice of format: very often a period in nature, briefer to but similar to vision quest, is a good idea to dedicate your start: even if its only an afternoon.

I have supported many individuals and groups in this way, for example someone who wants to start up an exploration into a Craft group in their area, or a Father’s and Sons Group, or an astrology circle, or a ‘Mindfulness of Breathing’ regular Monday evening.

It has become clear that these courses are of great value whether you want to do them on your own or set up a working partnership, or a working group to work with you, and whether or not you also belong to other groups, organizations and courses at the same time. This is because my courses can boost what you are experiencing there, or they can offer you support if there are difficulties. My courses never impose a view on you, they are, therefore, greatly helpful in assisting you find to your own way through these other courses or organizations.

Before I even embarked on the work with Autumn, I felt I had personally gained great benefit from the menswork movement. This has continued as a backbone theme in what you will find offered here. What I want to say is that I do not feel it is valuable to approach these spiritual forms in an abstract, academic way. They are not a smorgasbord set out for your delight, to pick over. On the spiritual path, the moment of truth comes when you find out that these spiritual insights actually transform you, in a real sense, as a woman or a man.

Spirituality must be ethical, kind and compassionate. These ancient spiritual forms offer you magnificent figures of the divine feminine and the divine masculine which transform you as a woman or a man. Their gifts are vast. As I said, Autumn sadly recently died and so the programme does not contain leadership in women’s spiritual work at the moment of writing, but I have been privileged to help with and belong to various men’s and ‘fathers and sons’ movements, over the years, where men who are seeking spiritual meaning in their lives, and more powerful and loving identity as men, where men can join together and draw on the ancient bedrock strength of these timeless spiritual forms, and I actually would like to see a network form of men who want to grow and support each other in the ancient heritage of the divine masculine.

Just a few additional points: Images of deities can be found on my web sites. These are:
www.glastonburyritualtours.com
www.sacredmasculine.com
and www.michaelconneely.com.
Samples of devotional music can be found there also. My websites contain details of the tantric spirituality and astrology courses, as well as the celebration of the Eight Great Festivals in the Glastonbury landscape and the Sacred Masculine programme.

I do feel this book will be of great value in breaking new ground. It is an unusual ‘how to’ guide which unifies the spiritual paths, which few people seem to have done. It offers new freedom and new opportunity for spiritual empowerment and growth. As far as I know, no other book reports on the actual ritual and meditative, visionary practice of all these spiritual forms, and also demonstrates how they can actually all contribute towards each other and strengthen each other.

My hope is that you will get a real, practical, ‘how to’ sense of these spiritual forms and that this book will help you map out useful future spiritual journeys – and above all, offer you a more powerful and beautiful spiritual sense of yourself as a woman or a man, as a mother or a father.