A
Healing Encounter When
R J Stewart met Israel Regardie, 1976
For this true tale, I am going to
depart (perhaps) from the UnderWorld and Faery themes,
to tell you a story
from my life. I say perhaps, because this encounter had
an effect that lasted for many years, and is still working
today! So it really has benefited my entire spiritual
life, including all the UnderWorld and faery work so
far.
This is the story of how a young ultra-serious
Qabalist, R J Stewart, met one the masters
of the tradition, Israel
Regardie, in Beverley Hills in 1976. Yes I did say
Beverley Hills, and no, Regardie was not
a Hollywood guru in those
days…nor was he ever. Read on for the in depth
report.
In my alter ego as a musician and singer, I had
been booked to appear on the San Diego
International Folk
Festival, flying out from Britain for the event.
I flew on Laker, the very first, and therefore
worst,
of the
cattle truck airlines. When my erstwhile teacher,
W G Gray heard that I was going to California,
he set up
a meeting with Francis Regardie, whom he had never
met, though they had corresponded for years. I
was armed with
a number, and instructed to call when I was in
the LA area.
Now some of this story is rather bizarre, but I
promise you it is true. After the San Diego
festival, I spent
some time with the musicians who worked as stage
backing band for the Beach Boys. This is not
facile name-dropping…I
will come to that shortly, so be patient. This is to
set the scene: I was with a gang of crazy dudes who played
surf music with a leading band. Maybe not the best background
for serious magical stuff, you might think, and more
likely to generate permanent alcoholic or psychotropic
damage than promote healing. However, I was, and still
am, something of a puritan when it comes to drugs, as
I know that you can get much better changes of consciousness
from meditation and magic. So this is not a drug story,
thank y’ all.
Now for the facile name-dropping: I must be
one of the few people in the world who has
discussed Plato
and Pythagoras
with Dennis Wilson. While drinking beer,
hiding in a broom closet, at Brother Studios
where
all
the Beach
Boys material was recorded. Hiding? Yes,
Dennis was not
supposed to drink, but he had some beer hidden,
and I played the psaltery while he hit his
Stick bass,
unplugged.
But that is another story altogether.
The time arrived for my meeting with Regardie,
and I was rather awe -struck about spending
some time
with
the man who, in many ways, contributed
so enormously to the new wave of Qabalah
in
the 20th century.
After my stint with the Beach Boys musician’s
(and Pythagoras with Dennis), I was kindly received as houseguest
in a large thatched cottage mansion
in Beverley Hills, home of a fellow folk singer, whose father was something
in the film industry. So when I called
Regardie, he suggested that we meet in a restaurant in the neighborhood. I did
not know at that time that he had a
journey to meet me:
I only discovered this some years later.
And so we met: the elder with a lifetime
of occult experience, and the ultra-serious
young
musician
and fledgling Qabalist,
recommended by eccentric renegade
William Gray. We had lunch, a prolonged
lunch,
that lasted
for three
or four
hours. And we talked, and talked.
Regardie was kind, treating me as if I
was an
equal, and
was in no way
superior or condescending. Despite
all his years in sunny California,
he still had his East -Ender London
Jewish accent, like the sound of
grey fog.
As we talked, he came out with some
remarkable statements, simply
inserted into the conversation,
and not elaborated
or dramatized. He suggested that
I would write some new books
on esoteric
material,
and that
these would
be unusual.
Before I could catch breath to
ask a question, he moved on to something
else, behaving
as if he had
not said
it.
We then talked for a while about
Dion Fortune and her group,
and how they
had locked him
in a chicken
shack
in the garden of her house
on Glastonbury Tor, during the great
flu epidemic
of the early 20th
century.
He had just come, he explained,
from London, so they enforced
quarantine on him. Then, without
preamble or explanation, he
told me that I would
continue to develop inner
work started by Dion Fortune
and continued by
W G Gray. We
moved on to anecdotes about
other senior occultists, and it occurred
to me to
ask a question that
had long been in my mind.
What
about the Paths of the
Tree
of Life in the Golden Dawn
system, I asked, they seem to
be confused. Yes, replied
Regardie, and intentionally so. There
is
another layout
that is only
taught when you challenge
the published one...but you
know that
layout already. As indeed
I did, having been taught it by W
G Gray. But how…
Stop! I hear you say…this dreary anecdotal
stuff is all very well, but what about the healing? We want
to read about healing,
as promised! Well, Israel Regardie was a chiropractor by profession, like many
of the older
generation occultists who
worked at hands-on healing professions that benefited other people. Bill Gray
was
a physiotherapist and chiropodist
(termed podiatrist in the USA). Now we are coming to the most remarkable
part of this story. Be
patient, oh reader.
Finally it was time to
part. I am sure that
Regardie thought
I was
far too
serious to
be any good to
any one, and far too
intense. He had revealed some prophetic
insights
to me about my own life,
which have
indeed come true, and
are
still unfolding. But
the best
was yet to come.
I had called my musician
friends, and they drove
out, to collect
me in the
van. They
pulled into
the parking
lot, and I bid Regardie
goodbye. As I turned
to leave, he hit
me in the
back,
between
the shoulder
blades.
It was not a friendly
older- man-younger man tap, but
a serious blow. What
in the
Grail legends is called
a Buffet. No
pun on the long
lunch:
a Buffet
(pronounced buff-
ette for you purists),
in the Grail legends,
is a ritual
blow.
People
are always giving
and receiving
buffets
in the Grail legends:
the entire population of castles
must have spent most
their time
staggering around and
nursing bruises. I expect
that hermits and
maidens had
buffet practice every
Wednesday, or something similar. So,
back to my buffet:
I staggered for a few
steps, and turned
in shock to
see Regardie smiling
at me, with
a huge grin
on his
face.
And I started to
laugh. I
laughed from deep
deep within, my whole
body shaking,
still
smarting from
the blow
between my shoulder
blades. Regardie
looked absurdly
funny, smiling
at me, nodding and
waving goodbye. My friends,
all leaning out of
the
van to
catch a glimpse
of the famous
occultist,
looked hilarious,
rather like a scene from the
Monkees TV
show. The trees
were especially
amusing,
and the
high luminous Californian
L.A. sky,
suddenly free of
smog at that moment, was
a source of joy.
I knew with certainty
at that
moment
that
I would
live in California
one
day, and see that
radiant Pacific sky often :
as indeed happened
some years later.
Getting into the
van, I continued
to laugh.
My
musician friends
started to laugh
with me, and
all way back
to Santa Monica,
we laughed together
until
tears ran
down our hairy
cheeks. I laughed
non-stop
for the rest of
the day, and all night,
and
all the
next day.
The band
threw things at
me, but I still laughed.
I was
laughing
on the
plane back to
England…probably
the only laughing
passenger on that
cramped greasy
plane. So I
found a source
of healing laughter
within me that
has been ongoing
ever since, released
from my personal
UnderWorld
by a buffet from
an old Master.
That was the only
time I met
Regardie. I think
that I wrote
him a short
thank you
note, and
we corresponded
for a time,
exchanging pleasantries in
that unique
British manner where nothing
is said. I
do not
have any
of the letters
,
and they
were
brief.
Yet now,
in retrospect,
I can see that
he was an initiator
and a healer
in my
life. All in
one short meeting.
So
that is
the
healing story,
without a faery
in sight.
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