Many years ago (I was born before Pluto was discovered) I was a student of much of what is now called New Age material. The only bookstore in London (England) that specialized in esoteric topics, the occult, magic, alchemy, yoga, tarot, kabbalah and such, was Watkins of Cecil Court.
Over time it was possible to meet just about every magician and occultist from Britain and Europe in that store. There was a section only open to initiates whom the owner knew by sight or introduction, and members of many secret occult groups would arrange to meet there because everyone in the know knew about it. And there weren't many around at that time. It was still against the law of the land to be a witch or to call someone a witch.
I was first introduced to the store by my psychically gifted mother when I was seven and visited it often when I was in my young adulthood and studying magic, runes, tarot, Kabbalah and Oriental spirituality.
It was there I first heard the expression "Gates of Ivory and of Horn."
The Gate of Ivory was the gateway everyone goes through to have their ordinary dreams, usually consisting of miscellaneous bits and pieces of the day that have to be processed by the subconscious.
The Gate of Horn was the Gate of True Dreams. These were prophetic, or informative or lucid dreams. Some societies arranged for members from different countries to meet at a place constructed in the dream world by the adepts of the society.
It was not necessary for the Gate to open only during sleep. It could open in a different state of consciouness during the day. The great bard and magician Taliesin was said to have seen it in fields and on mountains, in broad daylight. When he went through he was in a different universe. My own experience has always been of double gates opening inwards from the center into another place that I call the Inner Realms.
When I began to write occult and restricted material in the 50's I called my newsletter Through the Gates of Horn to alert occultists of the kind of content to expect.
Nowadays everybody knows about auras and words that were pretty secret then such as chakras. So in opening this blog site I use the same name in this new generation just to indicate that the thrust of the material is the non-mundane and how it impinges on the mundane.
There will be many articles that I have previously published in volumes called Tid-Bits. These will have the article number and volume number at the bottom for anyone interested in purchasing the volume containing the article or essay.
Also included may be extracts from some of the monographs I have written over the years for customers of an occult store in Illinois. These too are available for purchase for anyone wishing to know more. Some of the material is nowhere else in print.
There will undoubtedly be something to interest the latest crop of unusual history buffs, Wiccans, Ritual Magicians, Tarot and Kabbalah people, crop circle enthusiasts and those vitkar who use the Armanen or Uthark runes.
