QUESTCON07

Sat/Sun, 3rd/4th November

Assembly Rooms,

Glastonbury


WEEKEND TIMETABLE

SATURDAY, 3RD NOVEMBER

09.30 - doors open

10.30 - Brief opening ceremony in honour of the goddess Brigid with Caroline Wise.

10.40 - Caroline Wise - The Coming of the Cailleach

Brigid, whose feast day is 1st February, which coincides with the migration of the first swans and geese back to their breeding grounds in the Arctic region. In ancient times this ancient British and Irish goddess ruled the spring and summer months, but was partnered during the winter months by a dark counterpart - the Cailleach Bheur. Her influence was felt from Samhain (Hallowe'en) onwards through till spring, and she was feared and loathed everywhere. Writer and practising priestess Caroline Wise follows her opening ceremony with a brief audio-visual presentation on Brigid and the Cailleach, setting the scene for the weekend.

11.25 - a 15 minute break. Make sure you descend downstairs to explore and experience the various stalls selling everything from antiquarian books to works of art and Cygnus-inspired jewellery. Food and drink are available all day in the Assembly Rooms' café beyond the foyer area.

11.30 - Nicholas Mann - Glastonbury's Astronomical Observatory

A few years ago mysteries writer Nick Mann made a wonderful discovery. He found that on the winter solstice each year the rising sun is seen to roll up the side of Glastonbury Tor from a certain vantage point. This stunning spectacle led him to investigate Glastonbury as a Neolithic stellar observatory, and the fruits of his work appear in a new book entitled 'The Astronomy of Avalon: An Ancient Observatory Revealed'. As he will explain, his findings include ancient astronomical alignments featuring Orion and Cygnus, as well as how Glastonbury's star clock is counting down the days to 2012. Website: www.webadore.co.uk/bmsa/index.html

12.25 - Lunchtime.

13.30 - Geoff Stray - 2012 and the Return of the Nine

Last year mysteries writer and professional cobbler Geoff Stray, author of bestselling book 'Beyond 2012' and the newly published 'The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars', introduced the Questing Conference audience to the concept of 2012, the belief that as a date it is seen universally as a culmination point of current world cycles, most obviously among the Maya of Central America. This year he expands on this subject by investigating the uncanny relationship between the 2012 phenomenon and the Nine, alleged alien entities, Egyptian and Mayan gods who since the 1950's have communicated through the mediumship of Phyllis Schlemmer and others including Israeli psychic Uri Geller. Whatever the true nature of the Nine, their influence permeates through to the highest echelons of society, and accounts of a collective of nine higher beings controlling world events is found in ancient myth and legend. Website: www.diagnosis2012.co.uk

14.25 - 20 minute Break

14. 45 - Kathy Jones - Glastonbury's Landscape Goddess

In the 1980s, Goddess expert and writer Kathy Jones, author of various books including 'The Ancient British Goddess', 'Spinning the Wheel of Ana' and 'Priestess of Avalon', noticed a gigantic three-dimensional impression of a swan or goose emerging from the Glastonbury landscape. Delineated by all the town's major hills, this landscape effigy defined Glastonbury's extent as a pagan Isle of the Dead, which it remained through until the receding of the Bristol Channel some 2,000 years ago. Overlaid upon its back was the curved form of an earth goddess, identified by Kathy as the Crone of Avalon riding the sacred bird of winter. These discoveries led Kathy not only to investigate the mysteries of the Goddess in Glastonbury, but also to redefine her mythos against the backdrop of the town's super legends - King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea. Website: www.kathyjones.co.uk

15.40 - 20 minute break

16.00 - Paul Weston - St Michael Line and the Green Stone Story

Sixteen months after the discovery of a talismanic cabochon called the Green Stone or Meonia Stone back in 1979, Andrew Collins and Graham Phillips embarked on a psychic quest to unlock the latent knowledge and wisdom they believed it held. Unwittingly, they found themselves following the course of the so-called St Michael line, a corridor of ancient, prehistoric and sacred sites stretching from one end of the country to the other. Nine primary sites were chosen for the quest, and many secondary ones, where astral and physical guardians were encountered in a most bizarre fashion, creating the psychic mythos that became known as the Nine Lights of Knowledge. Everything seemed haphazard at the time, but as Glastonbury mysteries expert and visionary Paul Weston will explain, what occurred back in 1981 adhered to a strict understanding of the Hebrew cabbala reflected in the British landscape, creating a vision quest that others can embark upon with equally dramatic results. Website (coming soon): www.avalonianaeon.com

16.55 - 20 minute break

17.15 - Andrew Collins - Cygnus and the Primal Cosmic Mother

The first Palaeolithic cave art appeared quite suddenly when our earliest ancestors entered Europe some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Almost overnight Cro-Magnon man was creating veritable Sistine Chapels deep underground, filled with beautifully defined images of Ice Age animals displaying a realism comparable with modern art. Mammoths, bison, cave bears, ibexes and horses adorn the walls of caves such as Lascaux and Chauvet. Alongside them is other more obscure imagery such as animal-human hybrids, chimeras and strange anthropomorphic forms, which Graham Hancock will show were the product of interactions between the cave artists and supernatural worlds co-existing with our own. Beyond even these are frescoes that seem to show star groups and constellations, particularly Cygnus, revealing how our Palaeolithic ancestors saw a relationship between themselves and the starry realms, the Milky Way in particular.
The Palaeolithic peoples also created movable and sculpted Venus figures, as well as the earliest known examples of the female body in pictorial form. Andrew Collins, author of 'The Cygnus Mystery', provides compelling evidence that these images now become the key to piecing together an original sky-religion based on the concept of a cosmic mother, from whom the sun and thus life itself were born. Website: andrewcollins.com

18.10 - 15 minute break.

18.25 - Graham Hancock - The Supernatural

In his compelling book 'Supernatural' (2005) Graham Hancock ably demonstrates that much Palaeolithic Art is the product of interactions with very real denizens that inhabit parallel realms co-existing with our own. Their spectral appearance, manner of contact, and changing nature all alter with time, as do their names. Fairies, hobgoblins, nature spirits, demons, devils, angels, aliens and elves have all been used to express the individuality of these intelligences that might well have been subtly affecting human evolution in unbelievable ways for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.
Repeatedly, the means of interaction with these unseen, inhabited worlds has been trance states, induced either by rhythmic dancing and exhaustion, or through the use of hallucinogens - psychotropic substances that break down the barriers of human perception and open up vistas of possibilities. From the Palaeolithic shamans of Western Europe to the medicine men of the Upper Amazon - all still engage in these profound ritualistic practices, using sacred plants and mycetes (mushrooms and fungi) to make contact with the supernatural.
Graham Hancock brings the Questing Conference audience a fully updated presentation concerning his ongoing research into this profoundly important area of human experience, which will soon be the subject of a unique novel written by Graham. Website: www.grahamhancock.com

19.45 - Visit to Local Site

Delegates can leave the Assembly Rooms to journey by foot to a local sacred site where, weather permitting, Andrew Collins will point out the stars and lead them through a creative visualisation in which they can journey to a sky-world accessed via the Cygnus Rift and Milky Way. PLEASE NOTE: THIS VISIT IS WEATHER RELIANT, AND IN THE CASE OF BAD CONDITIONS THE MEDITATION WILL TAKE PLACE INDOORS.

SUNDAY, 4TH NOVEMBER - GLASTONBURY'S CYGNUS DAY

09.30 - Doors open.

10.30 - Ross Hemsworth - Ghost Detective

Ross Hemsworth is a broadcaster, writer and proprietor of the internet's hottest online radio network - Glastonbury Radio. He is also the man behind hit TV series 'Ghost Detectives', which he went into as a sceptic. Yet so many strange events surrounded him that he became a 'believer', as well as a 'psychic' on occasions. Ross will share some of the weirder occurrences that have taken place since the start of 'Ghost detectives', and show how they relate to the modern concept of psychic questing. Ross's digital radio programme, 'Now That's Weird', is on Friday nights at 9pm. Website: www.glastonburyradio.net

11.30 - Richard Ward - Modern Psychic Questing Exploits

For many years Richard Ward, an esoteric book dealer, writer and psychic has worked with Andrew and Sue Collins uncovering mysteries of the past using the processes of psychic questing. This has resulted in some extraordinary exploits, including the discovery of several concealed artefacts described, located and retrieved through paranormal means. Some of the stories behind these events are found in Andrew Collins' book 'Twenty-first century Grail' (2004), but the team's hopes of tracking down the head of John-the-Baptist in Renne-le-Chateau proved inconclusive. We pick up the trail in England when a concealed brass feather, symbol of maat, the Egyptian concept of truth and cosmic order, is uncovered at a church site in Essex, and find out what happened next as the Cygnus mystery knocks at their door and other key artefacts surface in a most peculiar way. Contains video clips of live psychic questing. Website: www.manmythandmagic.com

12.30 - Lunchbreak

13.30 - Yuri Leitch - Gwyn and the Mystery of the Glastonbury Zodiac

Back in the 1920s artist and sculptor Katherine Maltwood, whilst drawing illustrations for a Grail romance, turned to the Glastonbury landscape for inspiration. She soon found sculpted effigies, hundreds of yards in length, that stared out at her from the local Ordnance Survey map. Vary soon she had discerned a whole circle of them. They were delineated by rolling hills, roads, rivers and field boundaries and elucidated by local place-names and folklore. She saw them as a terrestrial zodiac, reflecting the stars of 2800 BC, as well as the ultimate Grail quest, and since that time controversy has raged as to whether these features are artificial or natural.
Artist and writer Yuri Leitch, the author of the book 'Gwyn' (2007), which explores Glastonbury's ancient astronomies, saw a different approach to Maltwood's landscape zodiac when he began investigating the town's own pagan hunter god, Gwyn up Nudd, whose abode is said to have been the Tor. Welsh annals speak of him as one of the three renowned 'astronomers of Britain', offering the possibility that he was some kind of cosmic time-keeper. This became the key to identifying Gywn both as a celestial form among the stars, and also as the personification of a prominent local hill long seen as Maltwood's most famous Glastonbury giant. Website: www.yurileitch.co.uk

14.30 - 15 minute break.

14.45 - Andrew Collins - Giza's Celestial Realm, and the Quest for the Hall of Records

In the 1930s American psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) predicted that beneath the sands of Egypt lay a Hall of Records, a vestige of some bygone age prior to the rise of the pharaohs. In saying this he echoed the words of several ancient writers who believed that something of immense importance lay beneath the Pyramids of Giza. It is a mystery that has fascinated Andrew Collins for nearly 30 years, but how does one go about finding such a hidden realm? In this compelling audio-visual presentation Andrew demonstrates that the key to finding the lost Hall of Records is very basic trigonometry that defines the placement of the Giza Pyramids, based on an understanding of their relationship to the stars of Cygnus. It is knowledge that might well have been preserved across countless generations by Sufi mystics who once inhabited Giza's ancient plateau.

15.45 - Visit to a Brigid Sacred Place. Includes a closing meditation featuring Glastonbury's Great Goddess and the hunter god Gwyn up Nudd. PLEASE NOTE: THIS VISIT IS ALSO WEATHER RELIANT

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