Rebecca Wilby – författare

In the trenches of Loos and the Somme, two disaffected young subalterns, Munro and Tate, struggle to find humour and purpose in a rapidly disintegrating world; brothers unto death - with a firmer bond than anything in their real families. A world away, in another time and place, Katherine is startled when she starts to recover memories - someone else's memories - of the first world war trenches. These involuntary glimpses into the life of a lost soldier open up a visionary world and a search across the fields of northern Europe for the historical truth behind it. A powerful story - fused with many realities.

A re-issue of a remarkable little novella published in 1918, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle praised as "a unique experience". It comprises a fictionalised account of a psychic upheaval the young Margaret went through in 1913 while living in a disturbed house in Bayswater, London, with her sister. A casual experiment with table-turning triggered an intense and terrifying haunting, beginning with odd patches of shadow and light and soon developing into a full blown poltergeist manifestation - household items vanishing and reappearing in odd places, writing appearing on window blinds, and malevolent presences who began to materialise in various disturbing forms. Margaret Lumley Brown went on to become a significant figure in the Western Mysteries revival, and her remarkable mediumship gift was sparked by the experiences described in Both Sides of the Door. This re-issue includes an Introduction by Gareth Knight and an essay by Rebecca Wilby explaining the locations and historical background to the story.

For a period of ninety days in 1993, Gareth Knight received a sequence of communications which seemed to come from three inner plane communicators who had worked regularly with Dion Fortune for much of her life. Forming a series of teachings and practical meditations which later became important knowledge papers issued to the Gareth Knight Group, the scripts construct an elaborate and multi-faceted magical image of an "Inner Abbey" which serves as a focal point for a wide variety of magical purposes and the evolution of consciousness. As well as providing vivid magical forms and pathworkings within the structure of the abbey, the papers discuss at length the development and use of such magical images and how to establish the magical vortex which empowers them. Three years later, while working with the Inner Abbey papers, Knight's daughter Rebecca received a further series of communications which augment the original material and add a practical example of its use, culminating in the Chapel of Remembrance ritual, a magical vortex focused on spiritual resolution for war victims.Now published together for the first time, the scripts provide a tried and trusted construct for personal magical work along with a fair amount of practical advice on occult and mystical techniques. It is open to the reader to follow up on this to find their own way into the Inner Abbey and come to a personal judgement of its experiential validity.