GLASTONBURY, England – The Gareth Knight Conference took place on Saturday, March 25, at the Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury. Organised by Knight’s daughter Rebsie Fairholm, among others, the single-day event is the second such conference: the first took place in 2022. These conferences are to explore Knight’s substantial body of work and influence.
Knight himself died about three weeks before the first conference, but the work of the Gareth Knight Group continues. Fairholm introduced the audience to that work, including the regular meetings at Hawkwood College in Gloucestershire, in the first lecture of the day. Her lecture included some details about her father’s approach and also her own history in the practice of ritual magic and trance channeling.
Knight was, she explained, averse to being regarded as a ‘guru,’ and saw the way of the esoteric teacher as being analogous to one who walks across the fields, leaving a faint trail in the grass behind him for others to follow, rather than being placed upon a pedestal and seen as possessing superhuman abilities.
For those who are unfamiliar with this influential occultist, Gareth Knight was the pseudonym of Basil Wilby, who was born in Colchester in 1930. In 1953, he joined the Society of the Inner Light, the organisation formed around the work of Dion Fortune, and in later years edited the magazine New Dimensions and started his own publishing company, Helios Books. He worked with many of the key figures of British esotericism in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, initiating a course on the Kabbalah with Walter Ernest Butler and having a fractious friendship with William Gray, whose books he published.
Gareth Knight 2013 – courtesy of the Gareth Knight Facebook page.
Knight also published many works of his own, including A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, White Magic, and The Experience of the Inner Worlds with Christian priest Anthony Duncan.
The second lecture focused, indeed, on the Christian aspect of the GK Group, with a
Talk by Jon Poston, entitled ‘A Personal Journey with a Christian Mage – Life in the GK Group 1980s – 2000.’ Poston is an Anglican priest with an interest in Poetics of the Imagination and land-based story and myth work as gateways for spiritual encounter. He was a member of the GK Group from 1981 for over 15 years, and in addition he established and ran the Company of the Inner Abbey study course.
Through the story of his own involvement in the GK Group Poston introduced the audience to what it was like working with Gareth Knight, the Christian roots of the work and its breadth, and the transformative nature of working in a dedicated and committed esoteric group.
After lunch, Julie Petrie delivered a lecture on ‘Black Diamonds – The story of a GK Group ritual on the impact of British coal mining.’ As a longstanding member of the Gareth Knight group, Julie Petrie spent her professional career as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, with many years of NHS experience. She is also an academic student of myth and the sacred, having completed a master’s degree in Myth, Cosmology, and the Sacred. Her main magical interests are the mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien, the relationship between the psyche and cosmos, and the divine feminine. She is also a miner’s daughter.
Her talk focused on an example of a GK Group ritual on the topic of coal mining and drew upon Petrie’s ancestral contacts, with a rite focusing on healing – of people, of animals, and of the land.
The final talk of the day concerned ‘The Magical Landscape’ and was given by Dr. Steven Critchley, Director of Studies of the Servants of the Light school. He has academic interests in Neoplatonism, particularly in the work of Thomas Taylor the Platonist (1758-1835), who works publicly as a Spiritualist Medium and has a background in Wicca, Traditional Craft, Esoteric Christianity, as well as teaching about the Mystical Qabalah and the Western esoteric tradition in general.
The Land of Logres, the matter of Britain, can be encountered as a folkloric and literary phenomenon, particularly in Arthurian literature. However, there are dimensions on Logres that can be worked with on inner levels of the soul in practical theurgic work. In this talk, the “Matter of Britain” was explored as an inner aspect of work in the esoteric tradition of Britain and as part of what is often called the “etheric plane.” Practical aspects of working with the “Magical Landscape” were considered in the light of knowledge shared with us by our ancestors and the tarot keys. Critchley detailed a number of personal esoteric experiences that he has had in the Peak District, in particular, and discussed the experiential nature of ‘mystery’ religions.
Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury – Image credit: Neil Owen – CC BY-SA 2.0
Finally, Fairholm led the audience in a guided visualisation.
The day ran smoothly and on time, and talks were well received by the audience, some of whom are longstanding members of the Gareth Knight Group and others who were new to Knight’s work. There was also the possibility to buy some of the books published by Fairlight Books, Knight’s own work included (I purchased his highly entertaining biography, “I Called It Magic.”).
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