9 papers in the library · 10 citations · publishing 2009-2023
July 13, 2023 Nevill Drury 1 citation
In 1887 Dr Wynn Westcott, a London coroner and Freemason, acquired a manuscript in cipher from a Dr Woodford. The grades of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, for Masonry loved grades, were designed by Westcott to correlate with the Sephiroth or stages of mystical consciousness upon the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Westcott established the Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden...
July 13, 2023 Nevill Drury
The pioneers of the psychedelic revolution, among them Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, the triumvirate of Harvard PhDs, found themselves adopting Buddhist and Hindu frameworks for inner space. Leary took seven of the sacred mushrooms in a Spanish-style villa in Cuernavaca in August 1960. It was this initiatory experience which led Leary towards a systematic exploration of inner...
July 13, 2023 Nevill Drury
The crucial stage had now been reached - the borderland area between sleep, and lucid dreaming or astral projection. The act of transfer was all-important. Modern occultists use the term ‘skrying’ for this type of activity. In essence it resembles the shaman-istic journey into the hinterland of the subconscious. Carlos Castaneda’s transformation into a crow now assumes special significance as...
July 13, 2023 Nevill Drury
The astral projectionist would thus find himself sometimes engaged in a confrontation with ‘spiritual images’ in a fantastic drama, sometimes enacting very powerful cosmic ‘events’ which impressed him deeply at the time as being equally as true and valid as the phenomena of everyday reality. Sylvan Muldoon, who is best known for his book ‘The Projection of the Astral Body’ first published in...
September 10, 2019 Nevill Drury, Gregory Tillett
Shamanism is the magic of ecstasy, of leaving the body and soaring to great heights of mystical illumination. Mircea Eliade, the famous scholar of comparative religion calls the shaman ‘the technician of the sacred’. In the strict anthropological sense, shamanism is best represented in Siberia and in South and Central America among the native Indian tribes. Perhaps the most impressive role of...
Oxford University Press eBooks February 2, 2011 Nevill Drury 1 citation
Abstract If we are to understand the nature of contemporary magical practice and its relationship with the "virtual" world of the Internet, it may well be that new paradigms are required—new paradigms for research into altered states of consciousness and new paradigms for the study of magic, as well. This chapter explores magic in the digital age, commencing with Terence McKenna's "cyberdelic"...
Oxford University Press eBooks February 2, 2011 Nevill Drury
Much of the current interest in Western occultism, and contemporary paganism in particular, is directly related to the rise and importance of feminism as a contemporary social movement. Contemporary witchcraft—often referred to as Wicca—and its more eclectic variant, Goddess worship, both focus on the veneration of the sacred Feminine—the Universal Goddess—in her myriad manifestations. There...
Oxford University Press eBooks February 2, 2011 Nevill Drury
Abstract This chapter profiles three notable twentieth-century occultists—Dion Fortune, Austin Osman Spare, and Rosaleen Norton. All three can be regarded as key bridging figures linking earlier generations of magical practitioners with the contemporary neopagan movement. Dion Fortune (1890–1946) studied psychoanalysis at the University of London. Through her friend Maiya Curtis-Webb, Violet...
2009 Nevill Drury 8 citations
The modern magical revival has been unfolding for over a century. This chapter explores the principal sources of the Western esoteric tradition that helped generate the revival of magical thought and practice in the modern era. According to Gershom Scholem, widely regarded as one of the pre-eminent authorities on the origins and symbolism of the Kabbalah, the medieval Kabbalah belongs to an...