Group Souls

Reincarnation: An immense and subtle subject. Very few of those now here are in full incarnation; that is to say, the Ego sends down a different ray from itself, one at a time, for the gaining of discipline and experience. It is for this reason that memories of past lives on earth are so very difficult to recover. Ultimately, the Ego absorbs all its rays, and then when the individual’s evolution on this planet is nearing completion sends down into incarnation its completed soul as a single entity.

At least thirty per cent, probably more, of those now on earth are not yet even individualised, being still parts of a group soul. There is no fixed standard by which the umber of incarnations can be gauged, and this number varies in different cases, largely in accordance with the state of each Ego’s development before the present twenty five thousand year round of evolution began.

One who has started seriously on the path of selfless service can call down from the Ego whichever particular rays are needed for the work in hand.

Most people hate the idea that the complete Entity does not incarnate until many separate sections have experienced a series of earthly lives. Those who in a material sense feel complete are the more likely to cut themselves off from communion with their Mother soul. Yet many have the urge to seek out and follow a ‘teacher’, one who is, like themselves, in incarnation. I think it is in Matthew (ch 23) that Jesus roundly exhorts his followers to ‘call no man your father upon the earth….neither be ye called masters’ (or teacher, in some modern versions of the NT). And is all this hunting of the Guru more reprehensible than the flitting from medium to medium, intent on the same quest?

‘Seek and ye shall find’ should be interpreted almost exclusively as a seeking within, that is, a strengthening of the link between one’s incarnated self and one’s whole self; through which a direct road is opened between man and his Creator.

Wellesley Tudor Pole, Letters to Rosamond Lehmann

Group Soul of Hibernia

The racial soul of Hibernia has very ancient roots that include a slumbering magical knowledge and contacts with primeval forces beyond those that effect the mainland of Britain and the continent of Europe…[a] unique blend of cultural currents from immense antiquity, allied to the Graeco-Celtic stream, is what produced the great power of the Druids in Ireland…The contribution of the earlier Atlantean cultures was of an extremely well focused power of the imagination, which, in short, amounted to a magical power.

This immensely strong, deliberately magically built, group soul of the remote past, mingled with the concrete mind contacts of ancient Greece, and the allied aesthetic ability, has produced an Irish group soul that is stronger than most others in the world apart perhaps from the Jewish – which also derives from immense antiquity in another way. The Celtic druidism of Ireland reached its peak long before that of the rest of Britain and Gaul, and it was originally from Ireland that the British and Gallic druids drew their teaching and wisdom.

The great problems which later beset Ireland over the centuries derive from a combination of these early great strengths. Because of the diversity of the contending currents within a group soul, there has ever been a tendency to internal dissension, exacerbated by the other races and religious authorities that have tried to interfere. This flared to a crisis at the time of the restimulation of the group soul of the British Isles that brought about the reformulation of the Arthurian legends in the twelfth century.

The conflict of contending forces has also operated, and still operates, upon the religious level. Through the missionary genius of St Patrick, the Irish Christian church formed a nucleus of Celtic Christianity that inspired and informed the West independently of Rome through the Dark Ages, just as in former times the Irish Druids had been a centre of religious and cultural influence.

Although a Christianized form of Druidism lingered on, and indeed, like the Hermetic tradition, formed a link between pagan and Christian spirituality, this role of leadership was not without its cost. Had the new wine been introduced more slowly, as occurred in the rest of Europe, much conflict and suffering might have been avoided. Many of the highly magically trained Irish druids migrated to Wales, France and Brittany whence we have a rich vein of ancient tradition, much of it manifesting as the Arthurian legends.

The time may not be long before the racial soul of Ireland enters a new phase, manages to synthesize its deep conflicting roots and to work more freely with other nations of the west. The whole trend of Ireland in the past has been to esoteric teaching and knowledge, and a renewal of this, as pioneered by Yeats and Lady Gregory, may have more importance than political and commercial initiatives. It is a little premature to summarily dismiss this resurgence as a literary fad of ‘the Celtic twilight’.

Gareth Knight, The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend