Different places in the world, different countries, landmasses, landscapes, can make us feel very different things. Alluring or intimidating, homely or hostile, they can call up a variety of images and emotions. This may depend on what we're used to, depend on what we find attractive or unattractive - but some would say that everywhere has its own deva or 'geist', its 'spirit of place' which exists independently of our own perceptions or reactions to it.

Different belief systems, worldviews, religions, often seem to be peculiarly reflective of the land they spring from - and imported religions also adapt themselves in different ways to fit in, not just with the geographical landmass, but with the land's identity, its 'spirit of place'. The worldview I'll be looking at tonight comes from the indigenous people of Mexico, and what we now call California, Arizona and New Mexico. The terms 'tonal' and 'nagual', when I first came across them, were used by don Juan, a character in books by Carlos Castaneda; these books first started appearing in the early 70s.

For those of you not familiar with Castaneda's books, don Juan is the central figure - a Yaqui Indian brujo or sorcerer. The word sorcerer does not have any negative connotations here. It means someone who can 'see' energy - we might say they were clairvoyant or their third eye was open - and who can also manipulate and control energy and perception. This gives them access into other worlds, other dimensions of consciousness - what we might call spirit worlds, astral worlds, dream worlds - places that are not familiar to our waking mind and can bring with them some of the fear of the unknown.

Where are these other worlds and how do we get there? 'World' is a metaphor if you like, for dimensions of consciousness. These worlds are not distant in space, but they are different in terms of perception and consciousness. They overlap in the way that radio waves do. Turn the dial and tune in to a different station. We are all familiar with these different worlds. But most of the time, they do not intermingle or interpenetrate each other. They do not meet.

Castaneda, who initially attempts to write his first book from the typically 'detached' viewpoint of the anthropologist, becomes don Juan's apprentice. His various books describe don Juan's teaching and perception and his ability to inhabit a world where everything is alive, everything has energy, power and meaning. Castaneda is very much changed by this exposure to altered perceptions of reality - or at least, a part of him is. As don Juan himself says

'.every time [don Genaro] (another sorcerer) performed an act as a 'nagual' (i.e. changed Castaneda's perceptions) you were left with a knowledge that defied and bypassed your reason....A few of the 'nagual's' onslaughts should be enough to dismantle one's [world]view; but even to this day, after all the 'nagual's' barrages, your view seems invulnerable. Oddly enough, that's your best feature.'

Castaneda sometimes comes across as being two different people, or inhabiting two different worlds. He does become adept in the training given by don Juan - but its as if this knowledge is not accessible to his conscious mind, which rationalises desperately every time he comes across something he does not understand (which is often). So he appears as a sorcerer, shape- shifter, explorer in realms of consciousness other than the 'normal', or everyday. He also embodies the rather obtuse and overly-rational product of Western civilization for whom objective, conceptual reality is the only reality; for whom rational interpretation and understanding is the only yardstick to measure what is real and what is not. (He identifies, in other words, with the concept-dominated part of the mind that we've come to associate with the left hemisphere of the brain - the part that interprets the raw material of experience through concepts, abstractions and explanations.)

Through his experiences with don Juan, we can see that he knows far more than he thinks he knows. Yet because he cannot interpret or explain that knowledge and because he identifies with the part of himself that does - as most of us brought up in the West do - he cannot accept the knowledge that he does possess and that is part of him - because its not intellectual, interpretive, derivative knowledge - it is knowledge gained through direct experience of other realities.

Don Juan tries to show Castaneda that his perceptions define his reality. He sets out to change Castaneda's perceptions and therefore his reality, through various means, often involving the distraction of his focussed 'awake' consciousness which does tend to seize on experience and devour it in its attempt to explain it and fit it in with his rational worldview. So don Juan's 'trick' of distracting Castaneda's interpretive attention, leaves him open to experiences that are very real, sometimes extremely profound, and which Castaneda cannot explain or fit in to his rational worldview, yet which he cannot deny. Because he can make no sense of them, he promptly forgets. At least consciously. But when he is back in that other reality, the one of direct experience, he remembers, he knows.

An analogous situation for us would be between our waking reality and our dream one. When we sleep and dream, we inhabit a different consciousness. Even if we remember our dreams, we tend to put them aside in the morning and keep our different worlds and different realities separate. We might even deny the reality or the validity of the dream world. But when we are in it, it's very real indeed. So I'm not quite sure why waking consciousness feels it has such a singular claim to reality.

Sometimes there is a sense of continuity in dreams. We find ourselves in places we've been to before, we meet people we've met before - people and places which are part of our dream reality, but not part of our waking one. So this sense of duality, of living in two different worlds is one, I feel anyway, that is not so foreign to us.

Don Juan does not neglect however, Castaneda's need to conceptualise, explain and understand. He recognises that his need to find an explanation for his experiences in altered states is very strong, even obsessive - so he gives Castaneda plenty of time for questions and explanations. What don Juan will not put up with however, is what he calls his tendency to indulge. When Castaneda tends to wallow in self-pity, don Juan gets him to do something that distracts his attention from clinging to negative thoughts or feelings - by giving him something intellectually demanding to do, or something physical or talking about someone else.

When don Juan comes to describe the meaning of the words tonal and nagual, he knows he's up against a big problem. He is trying to differentiate between our waking consciousness world- view, based on our reason, and an altogether other perception of reality. He knows that Castaneda has the tendency to think that he knows something as soon as he knows the meaning of the word. Don Juan is a good teacher and makes the lessons interesting, because he is trying to teach not just the intellectual conceptual side of Castaneda, but also that other part of him that knows through direct experience. And so, as well as describing and explaining the tonal and nagual - or, in the latter case, saying what it is not, he also demonstrates these terms so that Castaneda experiences or witnesses them, himself.

So, before quoting don Juan's description, which I've done at some length, as its quite amusing, I'll recap a little, on the meanings of the two terms. 'Tonal' means our conscious, conceptual worldview; our whole belief system is based on this, and it's what we identify with. So you could say that the equivalent in Western psychology is the conscious mind, the left hemisphere of the brain, or the ego.

The nagual represents everything that the ego or conscious mind, is not aware of. It has to do with realms of experience that are not everyday, that do not necessarily make sense to our conscious mind or our waking reality. The nagual represents all 'non-ordinary' experiences, which the conscious mind may disown, precisely because they do not fit into its world view. And if we identify totally with our conscious worldview, the tendency is to reject such experiences, with labels ranging from 'bizarre' to plain 'mad'.

However, in recent years, there does appear to be a whole new territory opening up in the human psyche. First Freud, then Jung, 'discovered' the unconscious. They came to realise that there were untapped powers and abilities lurking somewhere in the mind. Throughout the ages there have always been people who have had visions, prophetic dreams, unusual powers; shamans are supposedly able to intercede with spirits from other worlds, perform miraculous healing etc. Similarly, there have always been people who are clairvoyant - people who can see beyond the often narrow limits of conscious perception.

But recently, there's been an upsurge of interest in such abilities, as well as an increase in the numbers of people who possess them. People who have developed telepathic and telekinetic and healing abilities. People who channel information, the source of this being either their higher self (or superconscious mind) or an external, more knowledgeable source. People communicate with those in spirit, on the astral plane, spirit guides or with extraterrestrials. Mediums assume the voice and sometimes even, the physical features, of the entity they are in contact with. There's increasing popular interest in what is called the paranormal or the supernatural. It seems to point to the existence of largely latent, untapped resources in the human psyche. Some people can perform healings which, to our minds, are miraculous. But remember Jesus said, regarding his miraculous healings - 'all these things and more, you will be able to do too'

So, all these abilities that are just beginning to emerge and that cannot be explained by the rational mind and that defy the known laws of science, would come under the heading of 'the nagual'.

So - back to don Juan - he begins by describing the tonal to Castaneda.
(From Carlos Castaneda - Tales of Power)

'The tonal is everything we know.. And that includes not only us as persons, but everything in our world. It can be said that the tonal is everything that meets the eye.'
'The tonal is an island' he explained. 'The best way of describing it is to say that the tonal is this.'
He ran his hand over the table top.
'We can say that the tonal is like the top of this table. An island. And on this island we have everything. This island, is, in fact, the world.'
(Castaneda) 'If the tonal is everything we know about ourselves and our world, what then, is the nagual?'
'The nagual is the part of us for which there is no description - no words, no names, no feelings, no knowledge.'
'That's a contradiction. .In my opinion if it can't be felt or described or named, it cannot exist.
'Its a contradiction only in your opinion. I warned you before, don't knock yourself out trying to understand this'
'Would you say that the nagual is the mind?
'No. The mind is an item on the table. Lets say that the mind is the chili sauce.'
'Is the nagual the soul?'
'No, the soul is also on the table. Lets say that the soul is the ashtray.'
'Is it the thoughts of men?
'No. Thoughts are also on the table. Thoughts are like the silverware.'
'Is it a state of grace? Heaven?
'Not that either. That, whatever it might be, is also part of the tonal. It is, lets say, the napkin.'

'For each thing I named he found an item on the table to serve as a counterpart...Don Juan seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He giggled and rubbed his hands every time I named another possibility.
'Is the nagual the supreme being, the almighty, God' I asked 'No God is also on the table. Lets say that God is the tablecloth.'
'But are you saying that God does not exist?'
'No I didn't say that. All I said was that the nagual was not God, because God is an item of the tonal. The tonal is, as I've already said, everything we think the world is composed of, including God, of course.'

Later, Castaneda tells don Juan about some 'inexplicable feelings' he sometimes had. They seemed to be

'momentary lapses, interruptions in my flow of awareness. They always manifested themselves as a jolt in my body followed by the sensation that I was suspended in something. They seemed to stem from an area independent of everything I knew.'

Castaneda asks don Juan 'Does the nagual have consciousness? Is it aware of things?'

'Of course. It is aware of everything. That's why I'm interested in your account. What you call lapses and feelings is the nagual. In order to talk about it we must borrow from the island of the tonal, therefore it is more convenient not to explain it but to simply recount its effects.'

Don Juan later simplifies his explanation, saying that tonal and nagual are two different ways of perception. Initially, he's at pains not to explain nagual at all, because he knows if he does, Castaneda will turn it into another item of the tonal, i.e. another concept.

Tonal and nagual are therefore, two different kinds of perception and two different kinds of consciousness. Tonal is our world description, the kind of consciousness we're familiar with, in waking life. In the tonal's terms, other kinds of consciousness or perception do not 'make sense'. And if we have a strong need for everything to make sense, then we may deny the importance and even the existence of other kinds of perception.

The norm in modern Western thinking is very tonal oriented. Anything outside of the confines of reason's interpretation, if not denied, is considered suspicious. If it can't be explained, it's highly dubious. We identify with the reasoning, interpretive, conceptual part of us. I think Descartes encapsulated this sense of identity with his 'I think therefore I am'. I'd like to quote an amusing - I think! - anecdote from Natalie Goldberg's book 'Wild Mind'- Katagiri Roshi, a Zen Buddhist master, is speaking '"I have been reading your Descartes. Very interesting. 'I think therefore I am' He forgot to mention the other part. I'm sure he knew; he just forgot to mention, 'I don't think; therefore I'm not.'" There it was! Western mind blew up in my face.'

So, in Western thinking, anything non-rational becomes irrational and therefore condemned, despised or even denied. Yet I'm sure there's very few people who have not had some kind of non-rational experiences even when not in the sleep state - ranging from inexplicable feelings of 'knowingness', odd coincidences, telepathy, to visions, waking dreams, out of body experiences, near-death experiences etc.

Astrology is an interesting case I feel, as it has elements of both tonal and nagual, of both modes of perception. It is quite logical and rational in terms of its meaning of signs, planets etc and their application, but it has one foot in the camp of the non-logical perception right away , as it works in terms of association through affinity, like attracts like, as above, so below, or sychronicity, which is meaningful coincidence, with the emphasis being on meaning.

People say of astrology - but how does it work? Of course it is a highly sophisticated logical structure, but the glue that holds that structure together is meaning, not cause and effect. The meaning or value, that you give it, or it gives to you. The fact that at the moment of your birth Saturn e.g. was at 10 degrees Pisces, square to the moon at 12 degrees Gemini, is meaningful to you personally.

If we talk about 'astrology' it then becomes an item in the 'tonal'; its something we know, something that can be described. But there's a difference between the names and meanings of planets etc and our experience of them, the effects of astrology on us.

When we interpret a chart, I'm sure you've all felt this - sometimes you are describing the meaning e.g. the Sun in Libra, you're applying a description that you know, you're talking from intellectual knowledge and there is a separation between your words and what it is that you're describing. But at other times, something else happens, something seems to 'take over' - or you unite in some way with what you're describing. That is the creative because its something new, unexpected, it takes you by surprise, you gain an insight that you did not have before. You and the chart, you could say, become one, just as in Yeats poem, he says 'how do you tell the dancer from the dance?'

This slipping into the unknown, this becoming one with what was previously something separate and other, is, I believe, the 'nagual'. We know it through its effects and the effect is of direct experience, no barrier, no separation. The action of the logical mind, with its propensity for detachment and abstraction, relaxes sufficiently to join with something else. Thinking links up with a different flow of energy. You can relate, verbally, the thought-processes, the insight gained during this time. But usually, you cannot adequately convey the feeling involved.

You experienced it. You know what it is. But you can only use language, descriptive terms, to communicate it and these may or may not, convey something of your experience. Language can be very exciting - I think! - when it can combine both description and what is being described - the dancer becoming the dance again.

Without that sense of merging, language is purely conceptual, objective and detached; the dancer does not become the dance and experience is not direct, it is filtered, translated, interpreted. What is talked about is known in the sense that we recognise the label and we refer it to a category in our mind and we know that category, we recognise it, just as we recognise that Sun in Cancer equates with certain qualities such as sensitivity, nurturing, imagination and self-protection.

That is the tonal. Everything that we know with our minds, in the sense that it can be labelled, categorised and understood. The other kind of knowing - the nagual knowing - is the direct experience, the becoming one with something else.

Astrology of course, is not the only avenue to experience the nagual or any altered state of consciousness. There is no particular activity that has a monopoly on that access although the creative arts seem to have a strong connection with altered states. Whether we are the ones involved in the creation, or viewing or hearing the finished product, the arts seem to invite participation, a leaving behind of our everyday identity, leaving the door to the unknown, ajar.

When I thought of where you might find the nagual in astrology, I thought of the outer planets. If we want to equate the polarity of personality/soul or conscious/unconscious within the solar system I think we would look at personal/transpersonal planets. We know that there's something in the action or effect of the outer planets that is beyond our conscious control.

So for the effects of the unknown, the unconscious, the nagual, I looked at them. I think of the outer planets, especially by transit, as bringing us a particular gift. This gift is not always appreciated or even recognised, by our conscious self, who might have a vested interest in keeping the comfortable and familiar status quo. Change might involve conflict, upheaval, loss of something we've identified with or attached to. Nevertheless, if the outer planets are affecting our natal chart by transit, change will come, one way or another.

In astrology, I feel it's the outer planets, whether natally or by transit, that may give us the experience of 'the unknown.' We may resist this, but the opportunity is there.

With Uranus, the higher mind and the nervous system are involved. Our usual, mundane habit patterns and routines may be drastically altered, lessening our connection with the ordinary and everyday - we may sleep and eat less, feel restless, excited and enervated. A well-known way of altering consciousness is to deprive the body of food and sleep. People do this deliberately, as part of a spiritual discipline. With Uranus, this is quite likely to happen, not as a conscious choice. But through its disruption of patterns and routines it can offer insights and experiences of other states of consciousness.

Neptune too, brings its opportunities for visionary experience, through an increased ability often, to appreciate life's fluidity, to merge with whatever might appear separate whether its other people or beings or other parts of oneself, more empathic, more visionary, more imaginative. Neptune's blurring of boundaries and categories can help us to experience the oneness of life.

Pluto's action on the psyche brings all our negativity to the surface - we discover obsessions, resentments and dislikes we may not even have known we had. We may sometimes even wonder if we're going mad, as our usual sense of identity is severely disrupted as we face the bogies in the basement, our shadow counterpart to the 'nice' person that we thought we were. Facing fears and releasing negative emotions that we've held onto for a long time, allows a healing to take place. This can alter our perceptions of ourselves and others to such an extent that we can experience a sense of rebirth and release. This can be so profound that we can't help but be aware of something very powerful in ourselves, something we're normally unaware of, but which the action of Pluto has connected us with.

So in their different ways, the outer planets can put us in touch with that other mode of perception, that part of us that we're usually quite happy to pretend does not exist.

And then I thought of Saturn, which is not usually associated with higher states of consciousness at all. Saturn has to do with responsibilities and duties and work in the world - the basic, earthing things we need, like structure, profession and income, so that we can function in a space/time bounded world. And then it occurred to me that Saturn was the key for all of us, like Alice's key to unlock the door to let her out into the garden. You need to get your Saturn function right, to be able to do it. Alice had to eat and drink the right amount so that she was the right size - big enough to be able to reach the key on the table and not so big that she could not get through the door into the garden. And so I felt it was through mastering our Saturn function - our ability to overcome our fears and inadequacies and so to operate successfully in this world that would equip us - not to experience other perceptions and other realities, for anyone can do that from a very young age - but not to be frightened or overwhelmed by them, so that we cannot also function in this world.

We need to have a strong handle on this world I felt, otherwise our visionary experiences and psychic abilities were going to drive us crazy which would be no use to ourselves or anyone else. So that good old Saturn, the bogeyman of the zodiac turns out to be the great teacher after all. And I think that's what Edgar Cayce meant in his readings when he talked about turning our crosses into crowns; our biggest stumbling blocks, our fears and inadequacies, the things we feel least good at - can become our brightest jewels, our greatest successes, if we're not put off by our fears.

So, if Saturn is seen as a bridge, between inner and outer planets, between 2 different modes of perception and 2 different realities, then the natal position of Saturn will show us what we fear, where we feel cut off from that other world and what we need to do to build that bridge, to give us access and heal that sense of isolation.

At one point don Juan describes the tonal in words that sound like a description of Saturn. He says

'the tonal is a guardian that protects something priceless, our very being. Therefore an inherent quality of the tonal is to be cagey and jealous of its doings. And since its doings are by far the most important part of our lives, it is no wonder that it eventually changes, in every one of us, from a guardian into a guard. .....A guardian is broad-minded and understanding....a guard on the other hand, is a vigilante, narrow-minded and most of the time despotic....the tonal in all of us has been made into a petty and despotic guard when it should be a broad-minded guardian.' He also says at one point 'a warrior...lives by challenge'

So Saturn's very restrictiveness can chafe us so badly that we want to get beyond it.

I looked at Castaneda's chart for the position of his Saturn, to see what blocks and challenges he might have to face, to gain entry into the garden. He has Saturn in Scorpio: fear of his own deepest emotions, fear of 'the occult' in general, fear of his own unconscious, his own power, fear of the unknown, of his own personal underworld. Saturn/Mars is the focal point in the whole chart. Many Saturn aspects as well as Sun and MC in Capricorn. Which means his barriers are strong, life is very challenging, particularly in the area of personal relationships; a sense of isolation which is probably quite profound.

The following excerpt as well as describing Saturn in the chart, also shows Castaneda's willingness to return to those areas of difficulty and challenge that Saturn represents.
(From Carlos Castaneda - Tales of Power)

'[don Juan] told me that if I did not want to help him I was free to leave and never come back....I left his house and drove away with a mixture of sadness and happiness. I thought of Los Angeles and my friends and all the routines of my daily life which were waiting for me, those little routines that had always given me so much pleasure. For a while I felt euphoric. The weirdness of don Juan and his life was behind me and I was free.

My happy mood did not last long, however....my routines had lost their power. I tried to think of something I wanted to do in Los Angeles, but there was nothing. Don Juan had once told me that I was afraid of people and had learned to defend myself by not wanting anything...in my stupidity however, I had enlarged the sensation of not wanting anything and made it lapse into not liking anything. Thus, my life was boring and empty.

..I began to recollect my empty days. I remembered one Sunday in particular. I had felt restless all day with nothing to do. No friends had come to visit me. No one had invited me to a party. The people I wanted to see were not at home and worst of all, I had seen all the movies in town. In the late afternoon, in ultimate despair, I searched the list of movies again and found one I had never wanted to see. It was being shown in a town 35 miles away. I went to see it and hated it but even that was better than having nothing to do.... I was actually leaving a magical world of continual renewal for my soft, boring life in Los Angeles....I turned around and drove back to his house.'

That excerpt also shows the kind of choice we all have - we can be satisfied with a life of safety, of routines, a life within limits, and possibly boring - or we can face the fears and the challenges, recognising that our freedom comes from that, from going beyond the boundaries of the known.

The chart also shows a very strong Neptune and no fewer than 3 yods - apexes Mercury, Pluto and Neptune. Don Juan '..to be a sorcerer in your case means that you have to overcome stubbornness and the need for rational explanations, which stand in your way...[but] those shortcomings are your road to power.'

As an antidote to intellect and reasoned explanation, I'd like to read something that describes what we've been talking about, but in a different way - and also returns us to where we started, the effect of landscape, or 'spirit of place'

GRAND CANYON

Below this giant split in the
earth, this indented fissure,
flaky, corrugated - the Hopi say
there is another world.

It has a sky, just as ours does,
and its sky is just below
this red rock chasm,
whose bottom you cannot see -
just the occasional greenish
twist that is supposed
to be a river, but could quite
easily be some smooth rock,
catching the sun's reflection.

The inhabitants of this world,
the Hopi say -
came up from the one below,
through the fissure in the earth,
the split in this red rock.

The inhabitants of this world
drive gleaming trucks
and shiny cars, along the interstate.
There are various roadsigns that say -
'burn lights day and night'
'gusty sidewinds may exist'
'state prison - do not pick up hitchhikers'
and massive billboards advertising
Days Inn, Best Western,
Mexican Diners, Indian jewellery,
kachinas, pottery and rugs
and even one that says -
'nice Indians behind you'

Behind us is also that redstone
emptiness; the birds wheel
and drift far below.
We sat down by the stony edge,
shaded by a stubby tree with
twisted, gnarled, protruding bark.
Heard a chug-chug-chug sound
of an unfamiliar bird.
Then silence.
Blue wavy sky.
No other sound at all.

So we drove on through the desert
and the tawny rocks
and the pink sand and the red stone,
through a wilderness of light.
Navajo country.
A coyote, motionless, beside the road.
Tumbledown houses,
with angled roofs and sloping walls,
a relaxed, homemade,
not quite complete, appearance.
The houses blend in with
the stone colours, the earth slope.
Bits of ancient, plundered cars
lie in the yards; their rusting parts
the colour of the rock.
The sunset too, is rock coloured
and shafts a line of plum-red
light along the mesa top.

During the night, both of us,
at different times, woke
suddenly, in fear,
about to slip over the edge
of that immense chasm.
The Hopi see the world we know
as rising upwards,
out of something far below.
But it seems there is
another force as well -
ready to jostle our unwary feelings,
slip sand and pebbles
under unaccustomed feet
and trip us over edges
of dream canyon rim -
perhaps wanderers from the lower world
trying to beckon us back in.

Morelle Smith

Carlos Castaneda - born in Cajamarca, Peru, on 25^th December, 1925 at 14.00 EST [click here for chart]

Saturn in Scorpio - blocks to profound emotional expression, suspiciousness, mistrust of the occult, exploration of deep emotions, isolated himself by non-commitment; fear of passion, fear of deeper strata of the psyche.

Saturn - lack of friends, affection, company; lack of nurturing and sense of belonging; suspicion of mystical, transcendent states; lack of 'others' partners, affection and exchange.

Yet he became an adept in altered states, and developed unusual abilities; he plumbed psychic depths. He trained in the occult. Sometimes he felt he wanted nothing more to do with it, but he kept going back to it.

Saturn separates, cuts us off from some area of experience and at its edge, limit, we feel fear. Beyond that point, lies the unknown.

Creative work often demands that we shut ourselves off from any external distractions, so we can explore an inner unknown. Castaneda found himself facing the unknown time and time again. Each time he faced his own fear, his own sense of inadequacy and that paralysing sense of knowing you have to do something, but not knowing what - having no previous experience to go by. He kept coming back to the unknown, although he never seemed to completely lose his fear of it.

However, Saturn, our fear, can show the place of mastery, if we find the courage to face it.

So - Saturn is the pivot point - place of fear and boundaries, bastion of the 'tonal' yet the key to the potential of the nagual, where concepts are left behind and we have no sense of what is right or appropriate, neither in terms of social approval or for our actual survival. The fear of being seen as ridiculous is a very strong restraining force!

Within the constraints of Saturn, pressure can build up. We can then either capitulate to our fear (and very often, place authority outside ourselves) or build up enough pressure inside sufficient to prefer risking the unknown to the feeling of suffocation.

3 yods in his chart show a very strong sense of purpose, destiny.

Pluto/Mercury - mutual reception by houses. So he wrote about secret, hidden things, altered states of consciousness, dreams and transcendent states. He was involved in long-established traditions (Capricorn) of sorcery and magic (Pluto, Scorpio, 8th house)

Pragmatic - he involved himself, did not just theorise, and remain detached. He wrote copious notes and anchored his experience through the writing.

Morelle Smith 22/06/01
Email: morellesmith@hotmail.com