the occultist

the power of Y Colquhoun reported many paranormal events in her life. They ranged from receiving communications from an unknown occult order and experiencing rifts in time, to visitations from unknown beings during dreaming sleep, some of whom left bruises on her body. But here I focus upon her descriptions of what she called the power of Y: episodes of nocturnal psychic probing. It can be difficult to know what to make of such events as these because they occupy a liminal space where psychology, theology, neuroscience, and social context are all potential explanatory factors. I shall also ask if she was particularly prone to experiences of this sort and, if so, why. Unseen Presences As a young woman, whilst still a student at the Slade School of Art and a member of the Quest Society, Colquhoun was anxious to obtain first-hand experience of ceremonial magic: intellectual knowledge is one thing, practical experience is quite another. Her cousin Edward Garstin, who was also a member of the Society, invited her to a gathering of like-minded people where, feeling ill at ease and rather out of her depth, she signed a form applying to join something called The A∴ O∴ Lodge of the G.D. in the Outer. She understood that her application would be submitted to the Secret Chiefs – whoever or whatever they might be. A few nights later, on the verge of sleep, she had an acute and powerful sense that she was under psychic attack - that someone was acting directly on her mind and testing her: My will was instinctively set on resistance, since I felt that unless I succeeded in this I should be irretrievably swept away. A kind of paralysis descended on my limbs as I fought; and so much energy was drained from my physical form that I found myself for some while unable to stir. (Sword of Wisdom, p. 23.) Shortly afterwards, she received a letter informing her that her application to join the Lodge had been rejected. Only then did she realize that her psychic examination had been part of the selection process. It was the first of several similar experiences that she came to understand as times when she had been subjected to the Power of Y. The next instance occurred one cold November weekend six years later. Colquhoun was attending a therapeutic retreat in Hertfordshire run by Meredith Starr, a one-time associate of Alaistair Crowley. Alone in her room during a period devoted to day-time meditation she was visited in person by Starr, checking – ostensibly - on her progress, but that night his visitation was not on the material plane. As she fell asleep she felt his presence probing her mind. This time, rather than actively resist as she had done before, she was able to attain a slight degree of detachment: “I stood aside, watching” as the probing continued. Subsequently, finding Starr seedy and uncongenial, she broke off further involvement with him and his residential courses. Later still, following World War II and still on the lookout for an initiatory society to join, Colquhoun contacted the Society of the Inner Light. This had been founded in 1924 by Dion Fortune, but by the time Colquhoun made her approach, Fortune was dead and admission to the Society was regulated by a Warden assisted by his Director of Studies, Mr. R. H. Mallock. Acceptance, she learned, could only be achieved by the successful completion of a lengthy correspondence course. This she began in 1952 but after four years of study her membership was refused on grounds that she thought were spurious. Mr Mallock did, however, promise that the Society would contact her in a year’s time to review her suitability. One night almost exactly a year later she again felt the Power of Y probing her mind. Days later she was again contacted by the Society, this time by post, and invited to reapply. But she had enough of prevarication and declined the invitation, causing, it is said, much consternation to Mr Mallock who, despite everything, had come to regard her as his most promising pupil. Colquhoun never doubted that an occult force was responsible for these experiences, but she struggled to understand how the probing had actually been undertaken. Analysing the possibilities, she eventually concluded that, because sleep is the time when the ties between the physical and astral bodies are loosened, she had become vulnerable as she drifted into sleep, enabling her examiners to access her subtle body and commence their probing. A frightening thought occurred to her: what if they possessed a greater degree of occult sophistication than she supposed? They might be capable of carrying out their examination directly at any time and that separation between physical and astral bodies during sleep might not be necessary. She might always be vulnerable. She also reflected on whether she had been wise to resist the probing. Had she not, her initial fear was that the threat to her mental equilibrium was so profound, insanity or even suicide might follow. It was only later, with greater maturity and understanding that she came to regret her resistance and to realise that passivity and receptivity may not have led to profound mental trauma but to “light-in-extension”; the state in which, in silence and forgetfulness of all things, the soul is able to lose itself and bathe in the light of eternity. She had, through ignorance and the fear that accompanied it, missed a golden opportunity. For Colquhoun, the Power of Y was clearly an occult force. Not everyone will be convinced, so how else might we understand these happenings? Sleep paralysis Had Colquhoun not been so thoroughly immersed in esoteric matters, other explanations for the Power of Y might have occurred to her. In other circumstances she might, for example, have recognised her accounts of visitations as classic descriptions of sleep paralysis, a phenomenon that affects many people, particularly at times of emotional stress (such as being assessed for admission to a magical order and/or being in unfamiliar surroundings) and which characteristically occurs whilst falling asleep. Essentially, the sufferer finds that although they are awake, they cannot move. It is caused by loss of muscle tone that naturally occurs during the REM stage of sleep also occurring during the transition from waking to sleeping. Individual episodes do not last long but in the throes of one they can seem interminable. At best they are distressing and at worst terrifying. The mild sensory deprivation caused by lying alone in the darkness of night makes it worse. If we are also pinned into immobility our anxiety levels are almost inevitably raised. On top of that, our fears are compounded when, as frequently happens, the paralysis is accompanied by a powerful sense of being intruded upon, that there is an invisible force or presence that is threatening our integrity and well-being, that our power to control our body and mind is slipping away and that normality will never be regained. The drive to explain our experiences to ourselves in order to make sense of them is a fundamental one. In the absence of explanations, the world is a frightening, random place. Faced with the need to understand the meaning of these strange and unnerving events, rather than think of a phenomenon about which she probably knew little of nothing, Colquhoun did what we all do: she looked at the immediate context for an explanation – in these cases the pursuit of occult experience and learning. The broader context - her long-standing immersion in occult theory and practice, also helped set the scene and helped form her interpretation. Today, with much general interest in the paranormal, she might also have wondered whether she was about to be abducted by aliens. The biological context Our explanations are also a consequence of nature as well as nurture. Our beliefs are rooted in not just our experiences and social context, they are also influenced by our personal biological characteristics. There is a growing volume of evidence that hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep paralysis and other disruptions of the normal sleeping/waking categories tend to cluster together. Their higher incidence in twins demonstrates that this must be embedded in physiological characteristics. In other words, some people have a natural neurobiological disposition to unusual perceptual experiences. In another page on this website (synaesthesia) I present the evidence that Colquhoun was synaesthetic, possessing additional sensory and conceptual responses to external stimuli that are absent in most people. She saw the world, literally, through different eyes, through a neurophysiological system that was demonstrably different to the norm. Synaesthesia gave her world an added dimension. From birth, she inhabited an enriched sensory world. She was tuned to a slightly different frequency. Being different was part of her nature. This is a highly abridged version of the article “What Numinous Tooth?” that first appeared in Enquiring Eye issue 11, Spring 2024. Notes Colquhoun, M.I. Sword of Wisdom; MacGregor Mathers and ‘The Golden Dawn’. London: Neville Spearman, 1975. Further reading Alderson-Day, B. Presence. The strange science and true stories of the unseen other. Manchester, The University Press, 2023.

the power of Y