Albion Awakening Book List

I'm down with a bit of flu at the moment with a brain like a rice pudding that's been left out in the rain overnight. Hence I'm not really up to writing anything requiring much effort. But it occurred to me that it might be an interesting idea to compile a list of books relevant to the theme of Albion Awakening. I hoped that if I started it off then others might come in with their own suggestions. In that way we could have a broad spectrum of works. I'll make a start with the obvious ones.

My two first choices should be uncontroversial. They are C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In the latter's case the books, of course, are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wanted to create a British mythology (English really, I believe) and he did so more successfully than anyone could have dreamed possible. His stories have sunk into the national, and, more than that, anglophone, consciousness. These books have so much spiritual authority that one cannot doubt they were inspired from above. I mean, one really cannot doubt that. I'm not speaking loosely. Tolkien had a spiritual mission and he fulfilled it magnificently. Just consider the arid intellectual field in the mid 20th century at the time he was working. He was going completely against prevailing cultural winds. But he ploughed his own course, sustained by his religion, the power of his imagination and, very probably, his dogged stubbornness.

With Lewis, the choice of books is more difficult because he wrote so many. But I think I would start off with the so called Space Trilogy, especially the last one, That Hideous Strength, which really is about Albion awakening. A cultural and political situation not a million miles away from the one we have now is squeezing the spiritual life out of the country. It is orchestrated by demons who Lewis wittily calls 'macrobes', aided by their human dupes and accomplices, most of whom are not aware of the existence of the macrobes but who can be used because of their own character defects which should be a lesson to us all. A small band of people faithful to spiritual truth hold out against them, and these, in turn, are supported by angelic powers, though only from afar which I think reflects reality. Human beings can be helped and inspired but we must work out our own destiny. Interestingly, one of this band is an atheist. Another is a bear but that's probably not an essential detail. The point perhaps is, though, that in times of great spiritual darkness if even just a few souls stay true to God, or simply, as in the atheist's case, common decency, that can be enough to eventually turn the tide.

Then there are the Narnia stories and any of Lewis's many books of Christian apologetics, Mere Christianity to begin with.

Geoffrey Ashe is an author we have spoken of before on this blog. His Camelot and the Vision of Albion was a ground breaking work that delved into the British myth as expressed principally through the legend of King Arthur. See here for some more on that.

Dion Fortune was an English occultist who wrote a book called Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart which is well worth reading in this context. There's a post about it here.

Finally on my brief preliminary list, there's a book called The Light in Britain by Grace and Ivan Cooke. This may not be to all tastes since it purports to be a clairvoyant investigation into the prehistoric past of some on the ancient sites of the British Isles, notably Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill.  One doesn't have to give it uncritical assent but it certainly stimulates the imagination and that, surely, is what any book on the Albion Awakening theme should do.

So there we are. I've started the list off, admittedly with some easy choices. Please feel free to add some more of your own.