Angelic Contacts
The above are a few of the many wonderful Illustrations by Ethylwynne Quail (R.A.), a gifted South
African painter and sculptor, who illustrated Mr. Hodson’s book, The Kingdom of the Gods,
T.P.H. Adyar (1952). Mr. Hodson would often watch an angel (deva) on station over a mountain top for up to
three days before it would be painted from detailed sketches and descriptions given to Miss Quail. This is such a
significant book that it is still in print today after many reprints, and it is highly recommended as a classic in
its field.
The word “deva” and “angel” are used to a certain extent interchangeably.
“Deva” is a Sanskrit term and means a celestial, shining being, whilst “angel” which is in more common use, means a
messenger, but does not cover the full range of activity of these beings who belong to a parallel evolution to
humanity. There are traditionally seven orders of angels mentioned in The Bible, but in actual fact
according to Mr. Hodson’s perception there are many more, being the creative and directive intelligence behind
various universal qualities such as love, music, power etc. They have been described as “cosmic
engineers”.
The development of Mr. Hodson’s connection with the Angelic (Deva)
Kingdom started as a boy, when he was temporarily ensouled by an angelic being during a waking vision. It
turned out that this was a kundalini deva that he came to know again later in life, a deva of the awakening
force in the universe known as the kundalini (the serpent power):
“I was perhaps only five or six years old …. It seemed
that from within the sun itself, a huge birdlike figure of fire, with a long tail shaped like that of a lyre
bird, descended and entered my whole body through the crown of my head, almost setting up a blazing fire
within me.”
Light of the Sanctuary – The Occult Diary of Geoffrey
Hodson p.1
Then later, many years later whilst resting in a meditative
state on a hillside overlooking a beech forest at the village of Sheepscombe in Gloucestershire, England, his
archangelic teacher, known as Bethelda appeared and communicated with him. This information generated several
books, commencing with The Brotherhood
of Angels and of Men, which have become landmarks in advice on how the devas are prepared to
co-operate with us providing we play our part:
“Jane (G.H.’s first wife)
and I were lying on a hillside at the edge of what remained of the beech forest …. Quite suddenly, and entirely
unsought, I had a tremendous expansion of consciousness. It seemed that the whole heavens opened and became filled
with light, and I was caught up into a height which I had never hitherto attained. All was radiant with “the light
that never was on sea or land”. Gradually, as I tried to adjust myself to this new experience in the higher
consciousness (the Causal level, at least, I believe it to have been), I became aware of the presence of a great
angelic Being from Whose consciousness to mine there began to flow a stream of ideas concerning the life, the
forces, and the consciousness of the universe as these realities express themselves in both angels and human
beings. So far as I was able to discern in the brilliant light, He was supernally beautiful – is supernally
beautiful, I should say, for the link with Him has never been broken. (I use the masculine pronoun for convenience
only.) He was majestic, godlike, impassive, and utterly impersonal. Eventually, He communicated to me that He might
be known by the name of Bethelda. A Hebrew friend, an expert in the Kabbalah, later gave me the meaning of this
name as “the Angel of the House of God”.
Light of the Sanctuary – The Occult Diary of Geoffrey
Hodson p.16
This contact with the Archangel Bethelda subsequently culminated in
Mr. Hodson being met in every country that he visited by members of the Angelic Hosts, who recognised him as an
Ambassador between the Human and the Angelic (Devic) Kingdom - they would sometimes greet him as a "Kundalini
brother" as they observed the same spiritual fire was developed in him as powered their own existence. They would
offer their assistance whilst he was resident in that country and suggest other areas of devic activity for his
investigation. In The Occult Diary he explained how Bethelda had brought about this privileged international contact by
placing a seal within his aura which drew other members of the Angelic Hosts to him. On another occasion he
stated how helpful certain orders of Healing Angels had been in his healing work, not only with sufferers who
came to him, but also in renewing his own energies when they were flagging due to overwork.
His investigation of the junior members of the devic
kingdom, the nature spirits, was initially instigated by the excited behaviour of his fox terrier, Peter
(The Occult Diary pp. 11-12). This started
a project by Mr. Hodson which explained the appearance and function of nature spirits resulting in some
significant early books, Fairies at Work and at Play T.P.H. 1925 and The
Kingdom of Faerie T.P.H. 1927. Of course it is understood that many people regard such a topic
as mere fantasy, but its prevalence in the folklore of every country of the world and the number of people
down the centuries who claim sightings of these beings, should be sufficient to suspect that there really is a
factual basis to fairy lore. That at any rate was an opinion entertained by the famous psychologist C.G. Jung
who answered a question along those lines in the affirmative, during his Tavistock Lectures to a group of
English medical doctors in 1935. In another sense once a person understands that there are subtle etheric
energies which are utilized in the growth of plants and animals, then it does not seem at all surprising that
there should be intelligences which exist to direct and optimize these, which is essentially the
function of the nature-spirits.
Mr. Hodson, being recognized as a seer and prophet by many influential people who were important in their own
culture, meant that sometimes they would open up and tell him about their own inner traditions. Such, for example
happened at a privileged meeting with the Maori Princess Te Puea, described by some as the greatest Maori woman of
her generation, who apparently herself possessed certain mystical capacities. She told him about the
race of fairies known to the Maori as the Patupaiarehe. I see that an interesting and even remarkable
acknowledgement of Maori fairy lore along these lines has been made by New Zealand Post, which in 2000 put out an
illustration of one of these mountain fairies on a postal stamp:
There is also some useful explanation of the Patupaiarehe at
the source site of this illustration:
In the area of fairy lore as in other areas Mr. Hodson simply
documented his matter of fact investigations and through his books popularized the subject in a way that it had
never really been done before in that sort of detail, although of course other people of
other times such as Paracelsus (16th Century) had made
contributions and modern post-Blavatsky theosophists such as C.W. Leadbeater and Dr. Rudolf Steiner (later to
become an Anthroposophist) had given some data from their own researches. Mr. Hodson, however, was the global authority,
of his time on the subject of practical Angelology. His illustrated books on the subject
The Kingdom of The
Gods, T.P.H. (1952) and Clairvoyant Investigations, Quest Books, (1984) contain expert, informative and
detailed data about the appearance and functions of this parallel evolution and can usefully be read by all
students who are interested in the subject matter. His other Angel books (see Booklist) contain
further fascinating descriptions of the Angels and their work and function. His contribution in this area is
also an important piece of demystification, so badly needed today as a corrective in our materialistic society,
when even some religious authorities have relegated the Angelic Hosts to a purely symbolic significance. Mr.
Hodson clearly portrays the Angelic (Devic) Kingdom as a very real, but parallel Kingdom to our own, whose work
brings about the evolution of both consciousness and form on earth and throughout the universe. Although
the devas often help and co-operate with humanity in various ways, it is a characteristic piece of human
self-centredness to think that they exist soley for that purpose. They actually exist to serve God in his
universe along their own line of evolution and consequently function in many different areas (communication with
humanity being but one). When individual humans co-operate with the Divine Plan they are helped by the devas,
when they work against it, the devas become the impartial mechanism whereby negative karma is reaped
through the so called demonic aspect or what in the Jewish Kabbalah is referred to as The Inverse
Sephiroth.
Mr. Hodson found his adopted home of New Zealand a particularly rich
source of research for angelic activity. In 1979 he was drawn to investigate the devic life of Tongariro
National Park in the North Island of New Zealand. A strange confluence of opportunities occurs here. On
the one hand it is very isolated natural region and on the other hand it receives a great number of domestic
and international visitors for its world-famous walk called The Tongariro Crossing - a seven
hour journey through fascinating volcanic landscape which winds between the mountains of Tongariro
and Ngauruhoe. Other visitors flood into the area for the ski fields on the adjoining mountain of
Ruapehu and there are lots of interesting smaller walks such as the Silica Rapids and the Taranaki Falls which
are places of scenic beauty. The volcanic activity and the subterranean fires in the mountains
are also intimately connected with kundalini activity - the primal power - which at the right time can hasten
spiritual awakening in human beings. In fact, from my own visit to the area I formed the opinion that the area
is a vast initiation chamber where very strange awakening experiences may be undergone under the direction of
the great kundalini archangels who preside over those mountains. According to Mr. Hodson in his book Clairvoyant Investigations (1984) some of those
archangelic beings even have a consciousness embracing global activity. An appreciation of this may be
glimpsed from one of the illustrations of the archangelic kundalini deva that was painted to Mr. Hodson's
description and which presides over the area. I have also supplied a photograph taken of Mr. Hodson
when he surveyed the area in 1979 - this was taken at The Tongariro Chateau where he and Mrs. Hodson stayed
and shows Mt. Ngauruhoe in the background. Mt. Tongariro is a smaller volcano which adjoins it, but is
out of view in this picture.
An
important feature of Mr. Hodson’s mission was to mediate to humanity the fact that the devas/angels are already
active in unseen ways in our lives, but they are prepared to play an even greater part if we are able to open
ourselves to them. The following selections that Mr. Hodson himself made from his book, The Brotherhood of Angels and of
Men (1927), explains the angel perspective as communicated to him by the Archangel
Bethelda:
“The first essential on your side is a belief in our
existence.”
“In your scientific studies, as they take you deeper
into the super-physical realms, be ever observant of our place in the manipulation and adjustment of Nature’s
forces. Behind every phenomenon you will find a member of our race.”
“So long as the presence of our invisible hosts is
ignored by science there will be gaps in their knowledge, gaps which can only be filled by a comprehension of our
place in the scheme of things.”
"Those who would find us must learn to contact Nature
far more intimately than is at present possible to the average man. In addition to a deeper appreciation of the
beauty of Nature there must be that reverence for all her forms and moods, for all her manifold expression, which
springs from a recognition of the presence of the Divine of which these forms, moods, and beauties are but the
outward expression.”
“Members of the angel hosts are hovering over the heads
of all congregations, standing beside every priest; yet how often do they find themselves shut out by barriers
upraised by human minds! Let priest and congregation alike throw open their minds to a recognition of our presence
in their midst; soon, very soon, some will begin to hear the beating of our wings, to feel an added power in their
work, and, later, an increasing happiness in their lives.”
“Our sphere of usefulness to God will be enlarged by
sharing yours; your lives will be enriched, your world made glad by the inauguration of the Brotherhood of Angels
and of Men.”
“Discord and ugliness must vanish from the world; to
remove it is our task and yours – but yours first.”
“To every man and woman in every walk of life in the
lower worlds, the angels come. Bearing their perfume, the aroma of eternal ecstasy, they would waken in the hearts
of every man a craving for that everlasting bliss; would give to men the knowledge that they have a heavenly home,
would show them in the mirror of the mind the reflection of their heavenly self – the vision of their own
immortality.”
Finally, the
concluding quotation summing up the essence of Mr. Hodson’s remarkable illustrated book The Kingdom of
the Gods (1952), said to be received from a mountain god:
“The Gods await the conscious re-union of the mind of
man with the Universal Mind. Humanity awakens slowly. Matter-blinded through centuries, few men as yet perceive the
mind within the substance, the life within the form.
"In search of power and wealth, men have traversed the
whole earth, have penetrated the wilds, scaled the peaks and conquered the polar wastes. Let them now seek within
the form, scale the heights of their own consciousness, penetrate its depth, in search of that inner Power and Life
by which alone they may become strong in will and spiritually enriched.
“He who thus throws open his life and mind to the
Universal Life and Mind indwelling in all things will enter into union therewith and to him the Gods will
appear.”
Bill Keidan
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