Within The College of Psychic Studies is an extensive library archive of historical esoteric magazines. This collection includes a catalogue of Prediction. Established in 1936, Prediction was the UK's longest-running spiritual spiritual publication. Here is an article written by artist Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) and published in the August 1969 issue of Prediction.
Meditation Begins at Home, by Ithell Colquhoun
You don't need to visit the Orient - stimulating as that would be - in order to learn meditation; you don't even need to sit at the feet of an Oriental teacher. (In fact, better not, unless he is a genuine guru – and such are rare - and not someone out to make easy money.) You can find pointers to one-pointedness nearer home, perhaps on your very doorstep.
Don't, if you are a beginner without anyone more experienced to guide your progress, try to 'make your mind a blank'. This usually results at best in boredom or mind-wandering; at worst in tensions which can precipitate neurosis. Not that the latter is an acute danger: in meditation, as in magic; most people do no harm because they do nothing at all. But wasted effort with consequent disillusionment is to be avoided.
Follow a method suited to your environment and capacity: for instance, choose a glyph or focal-point for your attention, a word or picture on which to ponder; it hardly matters what, so long as it is something that interests you. If you choose a picture or diagram, the forms and colours in themselves, as well as what they represent, will become part of your subject. If it is a word not only its meaning but also the shape of its component letters and its sound when spoken will be important. When the actual sound of a word is used as a glyph or starting-point, a branch of Mantra-yoga will have been attempted; but beginners will usually find a visual glyph more useful. It is best to start with a simple geometric diagram rather than a figurative painting: you could do worse than search your parish church for suggestions.
The glyphs at Britain's 'first & last' church
The sixth-century church of St Sennen, 'the first and last' church in Britain, shelters its granite walls behind wind-swept bushes with Land's End to the south-west. Inside, four diagrams painted in gold and outlined in dark red on a white ground hang from the pillars of the south aisle; they depict the Alpha and Omega of The Revelation, the Sacred Monogram
and the Fleur-de-Lys, and invite you to sit and meditate on them one by one.
In a prefatory essay, W. B. Yeats tells us: 'At Oxford I went constantly to All Souls' chapel, though never at service time, and parts of A Vision were thought out there'. However, there are hazards to meditating in a church: a friend of mine tried it when the harassments of family life made concentration difficult at home but he was not left in peace. After peering at him on several occasions, the local vicar approached him with an (unwelcome) invitation to attend services. The clergy cannot give effective help in the technique of meditation - and most of them indeed would be nonplussed if asked even to check a meditation-record - but could they not set aside a secluded corner for those who have to practise unaided?
The Alpha & Omega
Alpha and Omega are appropriate symbols for meditation at St Sennen, at the beginning and end of the land, and they bring one face to face with ultimates, spiritually as well as geographically. They may even prove to be the code words opening the safe of apocalyptic vision. The first and final letters of the Greek alphabet, they are often given their Greek form (Fig 1), sometimes combined (Fig 2), or interlaced (Fig 3) as a single glyph; or they may be separate, as the twin panels in a stained-glass window. However presented they can become the 'seed-word' of a meditation. Often, as at St Neot's church in East Cornwall, the letter M is associated within them in ecclesiastical decoration and signifies Maria, the feminine creative force. Is it mere chance that a combination of these three letters produces a word, AOM, closely resembling the best-known Sanskrit mantram, AUM'?
The Chi-Rho or XP
One of the Sacred Monograms is the famous Chi-Rho, first two letters of the name of Christ, though meditation may reveal in them other meanings. Their Greek form is XP, combined (Fig 4) as the Emperor Constantine saw them, giant sized in the sky above his army. When a voice told him 'In hoc signo vinces', he at once adopted it as his standard. Visualised in gold on a background of purple like the Labarum it replaced, this symbol would provide a splendid device for meditation. In the church of St Just-in-Penwith, a little to the north of Land's End, an interesting variant of it (Fig 5) is carved on a pillar-slab commemorating the saint's brother, St Selus. Another example is a small relief in stone above the porch of Phillack church, on the Hayle estuary that almost divides Penwith from the 'mainland' of Cornwall.
The IHS or Iesus Hominum Salvator
The letters of the other Monogram, IHS, also figure, both separate and interlaced, in the various media of church ration whether glass, wood, stone or fabric. They are the initials of the motto Iesus Hominum Salvator but again, other meanings may lie hidden in the letters themselves. Sometimes the H is represented with a cross standing on the central bar (Fig 6); in this form Gustav Meyrink, author of The Golem and many other occult novels, was meditating on it one winter's night as he sat beside the river Moldava that flows through Prague. An autobiographical note describes how the symbol activated his clairvoyant faculties which developed thenceforward spontaneously - such can be the power of a traditional glyph.
The Fleur-de-Lys
Last of the Sennen diagrams is the Fleur-de-Lys, Shakespeare's 'flower-de-luce' or flower of light, an emblem different from the previous three in that it is not, like them, composed of alphabetical forms. It's symbolic resonance is with the Virgin of the World and it could provide a channel for the forces of cosmic femininity. In heraldry - another abundant source of meditation-glyphs - it is usually charged in silver on an azure ground: tincture of the Moon, a particularised aspect of the letter M mentioned earlier. A cognate image is the Egyptian goddess Nuit wearing the blue of interstellar space spangled with stars.
Where to find these motifs
All these four motifs are frequently found in stained-glass windows: the little church at Gwithian on the sand-dunes of the North Cornish coast features the Alpha and Omega and the Monograms alternately in garnet red and olive green. Such windows need hold no antiquarian interest to provide effective glyphs for meditation: designs in modern glass can prove inspiring and those of the Victorian era when influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Movement are especially rich in symbolism. Having decided on the symbol you wish to explore, obtain a photograph or better still make a coloured drawing of it yourself, and place this in front of you when you sit down to meditate. Soon you will not need the representation as you will be able to visualise the glyph mentally with your eyes closed, but the diagram will be useful to recall at the beginning of each session.
In Paul church, Penwith, dedicated to the Spanish St Pol de Leon (a blackened pillar within still recalling a holocaust by Spanish raiders), an unpretentious window hides profound truths in a few simple lines and colours. Bounded by a blue Vesica - emblem of 'the Mother of God' that precedes all a white brilliance concentrates its unconditioned splendour into the gold of a background to interlaced triangles, the seal of macrocosmic form. Within this agin, a cross of six squares indicates man as microcosm. Meditation on the complete symbol could open to inward sight a whole process of cosmogony, summing up the primal quinary thus:
Ain: the Virgin Mother, the Causeless Cause.
Ain Soph: the Limitless or Unconditioned.
Ain Soph Aur: Light-in-Extension.
Kether: the First Manifestation.
Tiphereth: Consciousness.
With gratitude to the artist Ithell Colquhoun and Prediction magazine for this article - as fascinating and relevant today as it must have been back in the summer of 1969. Ithell Colquhoun wrote quite a few features for Prediction. To find out more, please contact The College of Psychic Studies' archivist & curator, Jacqui McIntosh at jacqui@collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk.
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