Ever since Marie was a child, she has felt connected to nature and the universe. She always felt comfortable being in nature, she always decorated trees and collected flowers. She would climb trees and pass many hours gazing at the stars. She loved exploring her creativity by taking anything she found in nature and trying to make it even more beautiful than it already was. Despite this, she decided to follow a different path and started a career as a lawyer, but something was never quite right. She tried various jobs before realising that her soul was being neglected and that it was time for her to start doing her life’s work.

She started her journey of self-discovery - a journey that led her back to her childhood and her unfaltering creativity. A journey that led her back to her spirituality and her hunger to be connected with something bigger, the wider universe. A journey to unlock her true purpose. 

Magic Alchemy was this purpose. Marie created Magic Alchemy as a way of expressing this need to feel connected with something bigger whilst being able to channel her creativity and her way of seeing life through her creations. It took her over a decade to navigate back to her spiritual life through her own journey of self-discovery, however if there is one thing that is very important to Marie which is also ever-present in her artwork, it’s that it doesn’t matter how long the journey is, but that we always keep going. Sooner or later we will find our way. All the magic in our lives happens during our journey and not at the arrival. 

Throughout her journey of self-discovery, which she is still on, Marie wanted pieces of art to help motivate and inspire her towards her true potential. With this in mind, she started designing pieces of art. Art which beautifully captured the essence of being that she was trying to share. Art which showed the world that it was time to “re-kindle your inner fire” or “awaken the divine in you”. To remind everybody that “we come from the stars” and “we are here to evolve”. As some of her early work wonderfully depicted.

As time progressed and she evolved, her artwork too evolved. With a change in colour palette and a broadening of her message, Marie was able to bring in so many other aspects of her journey. From “blooming wherever we are life” to “feeling grateful” Marie was able to enhance her message that our internal journey is the most important one. What Marie can do so delicately is to show everybody, from all walks of life, that we are not a finished article. Instead, we are always evolving, and our journey of self-discovery and the wider universe (or God) will always open the right doors for us if we are willing to listen to the voice that is already within us. Her art and products have touched so many people, with raving reviews from all around the globe.

We can see Marie’s journey in real-time, as her art is always a direct manifestation of her mindset along her journey. Marie doesn’t just create based on ideas, but she creates and designs from inspiration taken within her own life or even from her dreams. Just as Marie’s journey is ever continuing, as too is the beauty which see encapsulates within her art and, thanks to her art, so many people are now able to accept who they were, honour who they are and celebrate who they’ll become.

Alongside her desire for capturing her feelings and thoughts through art, Marie also wanted ways to help to document the journey, write notes to herself and otherwise feel connected to her broader spirituality. As such, alongside her art Marie designed journals and notepads to help, not only give inspiration with her art, but provide the tools for others to guide themselves down their own paths. She shares her discoveries in each of her creations. 

If there is one thing that Marie passes with her fantastic products, it’s that the most important journey we will ever take in life, is the internal one. The one where we realise our true potential and create our dream world around us. The one where we become perfectly in-tune with the majesty of the universe around us and are able to follow our divine calling. There is no better way to summarise and capture that essence, than with the art she is ever-creating.

Pete Ardron is a writer, producer, engineer, remixer, performer and DJ who has released over 20 albums of his own solo, band or collaborative projects, including the band Orchid-Star, and before that Glow & the Dept. of Luminosity, and 3 albums of Kundalini Yoga mantras, and more, with Kwali Kumara. He has worked with a variety of other artists including Afro Celt Sound System.

He has conducted at the Royal Albert Hall and was awarded an Hon PhD from the UK School of Esoteric Crystal Sciences for his first album – Crystal Matrices.

He has worked in a number of very different scenes, styles and genres but a consistent thread of psychedelic, world and classical influences is present throughout. He is also a reluctant producer of visual art to accompany it where necessary.

His interest in spirituality in music was inspired by an enduring passion, since the age of 13, for the music of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, who died believing he could elevate humanity (not just those attending) to the next stage of its evolution with one 7-day performance in India incorporating all the senses.

“Even I’ll admit that Scriabin was probably a bit delusional but it inspired an interest and belief in the transformational possibilities of music which has always been important to me. He also led me to explore theosophy, which taught me, if nothing else, that searching for the truth – in your own thoughts as much as in books – is far more important than believing in something.

My own ‘spiritual credentials’ might seem pretty poor – the older I get the more agnostic I become about even the most core of beliefs, but the less that bothers me – I’m a happy sceptic, though an instinctive cynic any time I meet someone who wants to sell me something new off the God shelf.

I've produced Kundalini yoga mantras without ever having practised Kundalini yoga and crystal meditation music having never experienced anything remotely out of the ordinary from a crystal (or meditated). But there’s no conflict or hypocrisy there to me. I do not need to fully believe in the science or teachings behind someone’s practices to respect what they are trying to achieve and want to aid those practices with music if I can.

And you don’t need to believe in god or an afterlife to believe in spirit. To me the two things that most show our evolution/advance as a species are not space travel and microchips, they’re music and laughter. And they’re also the two best reasons for discussing the existence or definition of God.

I wouldn’t even try to explain humour but we have evolved a brain that will subconsciously process mathematical relationships between the frequencies and volumes of sound waves and interpret them, in a fairly universal way, as portrayals of specific emotions or even experience those emotions themselves – crazy, huh?! Whether that’s the result of some external divine guiding hand or the natural evolution from a gravitational singularity 13.8 billion years ago it’s pretty incredible, and if it’s the latter that’s enough for me to consider that whole process divine – to call it God for want of a better candidate for the title.

So for me the spirituality of music is essentially a self-contained thing - the power of Mozart's Requiem does not rely on the existence of the god that is prayed to therein, but is evidence on its own of something more to this world than can be easily explained by physics. Music will always be our direct physical connection to both nature and supernature. It’s not a man-made language – nature did that for us, we just create the different dialects and decide what we want to say in it.”

Pete’s first contact with the new age music scene came after a request to provide ‘crystal meditation music’ to play on a stall at the 1987 Alternative Medicine Exhibition (Here’s Health). Although not a crystal user he wanted to make the music specifically relevant to the subject and spent several weeks first trying out mathematical formulas to find a system where he could musically represent the physical structure of different crystalline structures, the idea being that if our brains are subconsciously perceiving the mathematical relationships in music they might also pick up these additional relationships and somehow align easier to the vibrations of the crystals. Two weeks before the event he decided to rush-release it as an album and the first copies were sold there.

It was well received by crystal practitioners with a number reporting some fairly exceptional results, including John Armitage, who presented Pete with his Hon PhD after running a series of tests with various practices, with and without the music, and had consistently in all areas had better results with, but Pete remains sceptical even of his own work.

“There was a lot of maths but no real science here and I am inclined to believe that the music’s suitability to the task probably had nothing at all to do with the additional maths. Generally speaking, artificial methods for constructing music do not work as well as natural intuition working within the frameworks music already provides us.”

Pete’s second album – Music for Colourspace - written originally for an art installation, was used for Here’s Health’s featured charity the Rainbow Tree in 1989 and led to an invitation to write an album for one of the smaller new age labels. The first few tracks of what was to become Goddess were excitedly received but on completion Pete was told they couldn’t release it as it was, as there would be complaints about the last track! Rather than change it he released it himself, but it was an awakening that the new age scene as it was was not something he had much in common with and his close connections with it ended after that.

“I know a number of musicians, like myself, who feel their natural home ought to be with new age music but are reluctant to embrace that title because of a wider reputation for blandness that the genre acquired in this country at the end of the 80s. I used to joke that the new age movement was a mix of hippies trying to open their minds and yuppies trying to close it down after a day at the office; the problem for me was that the UK new age music scene mostly only catered to the latter.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good reasons to produce quiet, simple, peaceful music, that might be described as bland by some; music is such a powerful tool that it can ruin a practice just as easily as enhance it, if it’s the wrong medicine. But there also should be a place for music which embraces the magical, mysterious and powerful – music that screams out ‘there is more to this world than this’, music that takes you on its own spiritual journey.

That’s certainly been embraced by other scenes/genres – from psychedelic music (and I would not want to argue against the validity of a spiritual experience inspired by the combination of music and psychedelic drugs) to even a lot of Christian music.

Tara, from Goddess, is still one of the best things I’ve ever written, but peaceful and relaxing it is not – it’s meant to be a full-on religious experience! I’m still very proud of it and am currently re-recording the album, over 30 years later, an acknowledgement that however good a writer I was back then I had much to learn as a producer.”

In 2015 Pete was approached by long-time friend Kwali Kumara to produce an album of Kundalini Yoga Mantas. He jumped at the chance to work on something specifically spiritual and their first album Exalted was produced in a few months - a collection of six 11-minute mantras set over psy-chill, dub, liquid drum & bass and other grooves with orchestral and traditional Indian and Celtic instruments and electronic sounds weaving intricate harmonic twists and variations around the static vocal melodies.

What was intended as a one-off project turned into a continuing collaboration with two more mantra albums, Ecstatic and Euphoric, and, in 2022, Elemental Temple - Part One, a double album of ambient and not-so-ambient 31-minute pieces, designed, like the mantras, to work as meditation pieces or pure listening. They are currently working on Part Two.

“If you look through my catalogue you’ll find music specifically written for spiritual purposes, music with a spiritual subtext (or storyline) and music which is only trying to reach you on an emotional or physical level. But in life I don’t see a reason to separate the physical, emotional and spiritual sides of things so don’t expect the dividing lines always to be clear in my music either. Yes, ‘Crystal Matrices – music for meditation derived from the internal mathematics of crystals’ does what it says on the tin, but don’t be surprised if a chillout piece goes a bit mystical or a mantra suddenly turns into a psychedelic Irish jig!

When I was happy, I  never really bothered about the fundamental questions – whether our spirits survive, whether there is a God, how and why the universe came into existence.  The questions are profound, and I was intellectually curious, but only within the limits of an orthodox scientific materialism: I was a lawyer, for goodness’ sake, and a land lawyer at that.  It wasn’t so much my professional training, however, as the fact that I had a wonderfully loving marriage  which meant that I didn’t feel the need to question fate or  worry about  my purpose.  I accepted life as it was and I enjoyed it. 

And then that all changed.  The sudden and unexpected cancer diagnosis and then the death of my husband Patrick three months later left me totally devastated.  Suddenly I needed to know why we exist and what our purpose is, but above all else, I wanted to know if there is life after death.  We had talked about the possibility before Patrick died, when we knew that his death was imminent.  He said that he didn’t fear death, because it was either nothing at all, and so nothing to fear or, if existence did continue, that would be all right because he had led a good enough life.   He felt that nothingness was the most likely scenario, and so did I.  We did not close our minds completely to the thought of a surviving spirit, but we considered it unlikely. 

After his death, I continued to think it unlikely, but I still consulted mediums in a desperate bid to make some sort of contact with Patrick.  I wanted to know that he was okay.  Actually, I wanted to know that he was happy and I wanted to send him all my love and gratitude. I wanted him to know just how much I loved him.  In a classic case of cognitive dissonance, I both didn’t believe in an afterlife and yet worried  about him being lonely or sad.

The first medium I consulted didn’t help me at all.  She didn’t say anything that resonated, and indeed she became rather shirty with me when I kept on saying no, no, no.  I could have given up there, but luckily I didn’t.  I went onto the internet and found another medium whom I rang.  She blew me away.  I just told her that my name was Louise and that my husband had died in February – nothing else.  This was about April.  She responded by saying that it might be a little early to start making contact, but then she said, “Oh, he died in the middle of February, didn’t he.”  I agreed.  She carried on, “Oh, he died on the 16^th of February.”  “No,” I said, “he lost consciousness on the 16^th  but he died on the 18^th.”  “Well,” she said, “he’s telling me that he died on the 16^th,  and so that’s what I am going to write down.”  This was extraordinary. She couldn’t have received the date by telepathy (though that is amazing anyway) because in my mind, Patrick had died on the 18^th, but I could quite understand why he felt he had died  on the 16^th.   When I went to see her the following week she said many more things that were true and that she could not have made up.  I really felt that Patrick was communicating through her and I was truly comforted. 

I was comforted, but not totally convinced.  While I was visiting mediums, I was also apparently receiving signs from Patrick.  To start with, it had been my friends who were getting signs.  The first one occurred just five days after his death.  A friend who was psychic sent me a photograph of an unusual, tall thin flame coming from her neighbour’s garden.  She explained that she had asked Patrick for a sign that morning – and she had specified a flame, but not a candle or in a fireplace.  She had then gone about her daily business, and had rather forgotten her request until she went to draw her sitting room curtains that evening - and had seen this flame.  She rushed to take a photograph of it, which she managed to do before it suddenly disappeared.  She was sure that it was a sign from Patrick, but I was not so certain.  I thought it could have been a coincidence.

Other friends also contacted me about signs they had asked for and received, but I continued to be sceptical.  When I asked for a feather on a train, and the next day I found a feather on the vacant seat next to me in the train carriage, I was still not entirely convinced.  Looking back on it now, I am very grateful to Patrick’s spirit for his determination to get through to me because I was a hard nut to crack.  Even the first WhatsApps, which I detail in my book, were not enough to make me feel sure.  It was not until the sixth of August that I finally realised that yes, our spirits survive.

On that day I had been walking my dog on Tooting Common with my phone in my pocket.  When I got back to my son’s house, where I was staying, I pulled out the phone and the screen said that I had created two WhatsApp groups at 11.06am.  One was called Hamlin Family and the other, Hamlins.  One consisted of Patrick and me, the other of Patrick, his daughter and me.  I stared at the phone.  I absolutely knew for sure that the phone had been in my pocket at 11.06am  and that I had not created the groups.  To be frank, I didn’t even know how to create a WhatsApp group.  I stared and stared at the phone, and I realised that the only possible explanation was that Patrick had created the groups.  He had already shown that he could manipulate WhatsApp and send messages, and here was the final proof.  It was an earth-shattering moment for me – I now knew for sure that our spirits survive death.  There was no other explanation.  This was the pivotal moment when I abandoned my old scepticism and understood life in a fundamentally different way. 

Since that extraordinary day, I have understood that our bodily life is just a short interlude in our spiritual existence.  I have read and I continue to read about life after death, quantum physics, reincarnation, other people’s spiritual lives and insights.  The understanding that this bodily life is not everything is immensely consoling – our loved ones are not lost to us, and if we make wrong choices or grave mistakes in this life, it isn’t the end of the world because we will have second and more chances in the future.  I now understand how everything is connected, and how amazing and magical the universe really is.  I read about quantum physics because I try to understand how it all works, and of course I fail.  But things like quantum entanglement show me that seemingly impossible things are real, albeit inexplicable.  I love how our cutting edge scientists are now beginning to grope towards an understanding that our spiritual leaders have had for generations.  Energy – or spirit – is the foundation of all life and everything is connected. Yes, those WhatsApp groups were my spiritual wake-up call. 

As I detail in my book, many more signs and messages followed and I now know that one day I will be fully reunited with my love, and also able to look down on the material world I have left.  I no longer believe in coincidences, and I feel confident that even the smallest act of kindness has repercussions well beyond one’s imagination.  I think that this is what the spiritual leaders have been trying to tell us for generations, but strangely, it was a new technology that managed to convince me – that and a determined husband who managed to manipulate it so as to make contact with his grieving wife!  Thank you Patrick.

I was born and grew up in Edinburgh where I spent a happy and secure childhood. Following school, I studied textile design in Scotland, which is where I also met the man who was later to become my dear husband, an engineer. We embarked on a travelling life, setting up homes in camps in the Sultanate of Oman, in the Middle East and the West African countries of Gabon and Nigeria. This life of travel expanded my vision and, despite many challenges at times, I learned to adapt to different cultures, searing heat and a plethora of frightening jungle creatures! It was an adventurous life and a very rich one in which to raise our two boys.

In these various communities, I steered clear of the amateur dramatic and musical roles that were presented, but I could always be relied on to turn my hand to set design and decorative projects as my contribution to camp life. I was very much in my element with this work and confident in my field. Whilst of course we missed our family in Scotland, being part of a community that pulled together in these unique settings made the sorrow sweeter.

But then things changed…

When our boys left for boarding school back in Scotland, a spiral of unhappiness ensued for both my husband and me and our solidarity as a couple began to pull apart. To a degree, this was masked by subsequent moves and the practical demands of life, yet each time we felt a little more deplete, less connected to one another. I began to spend more time behind the large canvases of huge flowers that I painted, working through my unhappiness.

A desperately low period in Gabon then saw me take to writing, and the words flowing easily, just as easily as my tears. Writing became all I wanted to do. Sitting in a corner of my house, listening to the jungle noises of the African grey parrots and trumpeting elephants, I delved deeply into the joy and the pain of the life I was experiencing. It was as though I were composing music, my fingers gliding over the keyboard as my heart told its tale in a concerto of emotions played out with the urgent tapping of my fingers connecting with the keys. 

The result of this was, eventually, Spinach Soup for the Walls, which describes my descent into deep lows and then my steps to recovery, by learning to rediscover the beauty in everyday life, in all the things we so easily take for granted. The book is set against this backdrop of wonderful travel and strange, colourful cultures, with a good dose of humour to offset the darkness! Intended, in a way, as therapy for myself, I feel humbled that it was also recognised as uplifting for others, winning a Gold Award in a national competition.

When my spirit had bottomed out and I realised that I had to save myself by making changes, I moved back to Scotland alone, leaving my husband behind. He was thriving, the strange housing estate in the heart of jungle suited him well whilst, as he expanded into it all, I had become a very withdrawn and contracted version of myself.

In the peace of my art studio in Scotland, I would then work through emotions on huge canvases, at times barely able to see through the tears as I held my brushes. Gradually over many months, art brought a lightness and glimmers of hope that began to seep into my heart.  

My work has now evolved significantly, whilst still very much representing a snapshot of the internal world. I have grown to adore still life paintings, particularly those depicting glass vases. Having once associated still life as the domain of elderly ladies who can’t get out much, I now herald it to be an exceptionally special form of art, regardless of age. As the artist sits in peace, connecting intimately with vases and flowers for hours on end, cocooned in stillness, this work presents an incredible space to quieten the mind and connect the soul to the world beyond the tangible. 

Gone are the days of me painting from a base of trauma. Nowadays I am able to focus on joy and peacefulness instead. I would like to think that the light within my art is transformative and will continue to radiate and be felt by the viewer. Shine is available for us all. When we sit beside a glass object and really observe it, we see ourselves reflected back. The sun drops from the sky to fill the glass and there we are, merged and bathed and loved amidst the beauty of it all.

Home for me now is a traditional finca-type house, perched on the top of a beautiful mountain in Mallorca and surrounded by ancient olive trees. I am frequently visited by wild donkeys and regularly interrupted by goats looking in through the windows at me. It is no coincidence that artists have flocked to this area over the years to tap into this effervescence.  

My art has also changed immeasurably here in this exceptionally magical setting and has been instrumental in raising my vibration. Many hours of painting have enabled me to shed the denser emotions and trauma that I had been fiercely holding onto. It is as though each painting allows a bit of space for light to enter. I am more able to see and choose peaceful energies in the life around me than I was previously, and worry much less about any cloud that may float past.

We can all do this by connecting with nature, either physically by going for a walk in countryside or mentally by immersing ourselves in art. In these ways we reach a different level of consciousness.

My village is surrounded by towering mountains reputed to have a very high quartz content, which turn an other-worldly orange at sunset. Witnessing this every day is the greatest connection to the Beyond. Living here, my energy balances to match the surroundings and my art in turn takes on a special quality of shimmer. Brilliance is very easy to add to a painting when it flows from deep within.

It is a privilege to be able to have such clear documentation of my spiritual evolution through my paintings.

Spinach Soup for the Walls has won the Gold Award of the national Wishing Shelf Awards. Spinach Soup for the Walls is published by Local Legend.

A singer, composer and Yoga teacher, Rajesh was born into a family of singers, growing up in an environment of music, nurtured by the music and singing of his parents. Says Rajesh, singing came naturally to him, having inherited his musicality from his parents. They were his first teachers. Growing up in the city of Mumbai, he went on to take formal training in Indian classical music from several well-renowned classical singers, a training which evolved into a deep love of music and a conviction of the connection between spirituality and music.

By the time Rajesh was in his early teens, he had developed an interest in philosophy and spirituality, being inspired by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and the work of the Ramakrishna Mission. This led him to train as a Yoga teacher, and he completed his training at the same time as finishing his university degree. Music and spirituality embraced him at a very early age. As a professional singer, Rajesh was a graded artist with the All India Radio and TV.

He moved to the UK and now lives in Wales. His experience of Yoga led him to the Mandala Yoga Ashram, where he was a resident for 4 years. This experience of “living in Yoga, 24/7” was intense, rich and a turning point in his life. Since then, his work has revolved around music and yoga. Along with creating and producing music, Rajesh also teaches Yoga throughout the UK and abroad, teaching CPD level courses for the British Wheel of Yoga as well as seminars and retreats. He has several courses to his credit, working with the practices and philosophical aspects of Yoga.

His courses on the subject of Nada Yoga: The Yoga of Sound, and Bhakti Yoga, are very popular and close to his heart. In an answer to a question on the interconnectedness of music and spirituality in a recent interview he answered, “My training in music and my experience of teaching Nada Yoga has given me a strong conviction that the World is music – Nada-Brahma! I feel that this entire universe is a grand symphony, with all the different components of the universe, such as galaxies, stars, black holes, supernovas and also all life on earth, playing their part. I believe that music is a spiritual practice.

The sadhana in music is a way of meditation. It is very interesting to notice how a very simple practice of Nada Yoga could develop into a very deep practice which has the potential to transform our understanding of music, the world around us and indeed the Self itself! I will never forget the moment when my teacher told me to sing in such a way that my song resonates with the song of the universe. That very important teaching changed the way I understand and experience music.  

It is at such times, when one is deeply immersed in music, that one deepens the understanding of Nada-Brahma. The Upanishads proclaim that sound is the very essence of our being and indeed the world around us. This has become a central tenet of Indian philosophy.

This sound is OM, the word that expresses Nada-Brahma. ‘Sarvam Omkar eva!  All is OM’ is the teaching of the Mandukya Upanishad.”

One of his passions has been to enfold Indian music with the music from other cultures. He enjoys working with musicians of different genres, bringing music and cultures together. He collaborates in an Indo-Celtic trio, Tŷhai, with two other musicians - guitarist Dylan Fowler and saxophonist Pete Stacey.

As a singer in Tŷhai he bridges the music and culture of the Celtic world and India: singing in Hindi, Sanskrit, English and even Welsh (he is a Welsh language learner), as well as the musical language of sargams, taranas and bols.

As one half of the duo Gitân, Rajesh, together with singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Stacey Blythe, blends his compositions with the rich traditional music of Wales.

Rajesh was recently involved in a project in Sweden, working on traditional Swedish folk music in collaboration with classical guitarist Siddhi Sundt and tabla player, Suranjana Ghosh, culminating in concerts in Stockholm and Uppsala.

Other past collaborative projects include:

CD album Mangalam with Pete Stacey.

With Zambra Flamenco at the Diss Corn Hall and at the Drum Camp Festival in Norwich.

With electronic ambient composers Paul Sharma, and Oliver and Peter Spencer, performing as The Minimal 4tet at the Brighton Fringe Festival. Worked on 2 CD albums with Paul Sharma: Safar and Not This, Not That.

Working with traditional Welsh folk songs. Lisa Lan played on Radio Cymru.

Cover version (Bombay Mix) of Lorraine Bowen’s “Crumble Song”, played on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 6.

Voice of Bobbi Sing-Song in Moshi Monsters – the Movie, singing “Welcome to Jollywood”.

With Indo-Jazz group Jadu, performing at Sharq Taronalari International Music Festival in Samarkand.

Rajesh has produced several CD albums of his compositions as well as yoga practice CDs. His has been inspired by the poems of the Sufi poet Amir Khusro, mystic poet Kabir and Upanishadic texts such as the Mandukya and Isha Upanishads as well as the advaitic text Ashtavakra Gita.

Future projects include musical interpretations of Adi Shankaracharya’s poems, the mystical poems of Kabir, the heart-opening poems of Mirabai, inspiring verses from the Upanishads and other Sanskrit texts and the poems of Urdu poet Ghalib and many more…                                                      

He will continue his collaborations with Tŷhai and Gitân, performing and creating new music. Rajesh’s love of world- and multi-cultural music will continue to be a source of inspiration for future collaborations.

As a CD Baby artist, Rajesh’s music is available on streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon music and Deezer. His collection of music and CDs are are available on Bandcamp.

Manisha
Poems of Adi Shankara - a music album

My profound interest in philosophy of non-duality led me to delve deeply into the works of Adi Shankaracharya, the 8th century philosopher and theologian who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta. He rescued the profound knowledge of the Upanishads from obscurity and made them accessible to humanity, all before his life was cut short at the age of 32.

With his mastery of the Sanskrit language, and the heart of a poet, he composed a great many stotrams (poems) on the deities and icons of the Indian mythology. These form an important part of Indian classical literature and poetry.

In homage to this revered poet and scholar, I have composed music for, and sung eight of the poems in my new album “Manisha: poems of Adi Shankara”.

In Sanskrit, ‘Manisha’ means ‘ultimate wisdom’.

The title track, inspired by the Stotra “Manisha Panchakam”, recounts how Shankara, on his way to the temple, encountered a man of the lowest caste (chandala). Because those of lower caste were supposed to pollute the upper castes, Shankara told the chandala to get out of the way. The chandala’s response was to ask Shankara how social discrimination could be justified, when all human beings, and indeed the entire universe, is nothing but a reflection of Brahma, the one and only reality. Shankara was so moved by this that he bowed down to the chandala, acknowledging him as his teacher. Anyone who could utter such words of wisdom was worthy of the greatest respect.

The eight lyrical poems selected in this album are all shimmering with the wisdom of Advaita Vedanta philosophy, radiating the rhythm and poetry of the Master.

Kamini (rhymes with Harmony) Gupta is an Intuitive Artist & Retreat Leader. As a professional artist and designer her 40 year career spans a wide range of experience including designing for theatre, publishing and marketing, teaching and facilitating arts workshops in schools, colleges and the community.

For a number of years Kamini led Creating Space Women’s retreats at Sharpham Trust Centre for Mindfulness in Devon, UK.

Currently working with paint and mixed media on canvas, her creative practice has included multimedia installation, ceramics, live art and moving image.

Kamini’s work has been featured in magazines, books, film, galleries, museums and in the homes of buyers from across the world.

My Spiritual Journey

“As a child growing up in India the very air that I breathed was infused with spirituality. Yet my Indian father and English mother chose not to give me a religious upbringing believing that this was a choice I must make for myself.

Though I couldn’t name it at the time I found solace and rejuvenation in art, nature and especially by the ocean, this was my spiritual home amidst the chaos of Mumbai life.”

In 1986 Kamini came to live in England and it was here her spiritual journey began in 1993 when she went on her first Buddhist silent retreat which changed the course of her life.

“Here I caught a glimpse of how much my authentic being was shackled by my conditioning. I left my ‘secure’ job and conventional life to do a degree in Theatre Design.

The world of theatre and learning brought me into my element creatively yet being at college as a mature student was challenging socially and I struggled to fit in. The isolation triggered a period of depression which brought me to the next turning point in my journey when I started therapy and art became my medicine.”

Jungian Art therapy switched on a light in the darkness opening Kamini’s eyes to the mysterious shadowlands of the unconscious and the magical symbolic realm of archetypes.

“The next fork in the road came in 1998 on retreat when I had, what I can only describe, as a mystical experience of intense sensations moving through my body.

Drawn to express this wild primal energy through my hands I found myself working with clay. The small figures that emerged were described by others as ‘tantric’ and at this point I had no idea what that meant.”

Kamini’s art and spiritual practice converged as she began her journey into Vajrayana Buddhism, Shamanism, Shaivism, Goddess cultures and mythology to discover what is described as Shakti, Kundalini, Source Energy, giving rise to the Goddess, Sacred Feminine, and Wild Woman archetypes across cultures. 

“This is the source of a woman’s power, her wellspring of inner knowing, her deep womb/heart connection to the feminine creative life force of the Universe.”

Art is My Medicine

“Art is my medicine, when I create I connect with my centre of calm and connectedness; I enter a feeling of flow and inspiration and a profound sense of wellbeing. Images and visions that emerge bring insights and wisdom that inform my life.

At the heart of this exploration is the quest for transformation with the knowing that when I express through art (a dance, drawing, poem, song or performance), I am also exploring and healing something in my life. As I approach life this way, challenges, rather than being obstacles, become opportunities to be creative, to use my imagination and intuition, opening to new and healthier ways of being”.

In 2002 Kamini fell critically ill and had to have life saving surgery. The next seven years was a roller coaster of major life stress and trauma culminating in the sudden death of her husband in 2007.

Kamini took six months off work, stepped away from her career in the Arts and for the next 10 years and took a deep dive into her healing journey, exploring her inner world through journalling, writing poetry, meditation, movement and plenty of time out on the land.

“Needless to say I was knocked off my feet.  My usual strategy of picking myself up and getting on with life wasn’t working, my body just wouldn’t let me. I had no choice but to stop and in this time I learned that healing is a journey, like the seasons, has its own momentum and cannot be rushed. My foundation in the Buddhist teachings, the practice of mindfulness, and my capacity as an artist to be creative and solution-focused in my outlook have without doubt been the essential anchors in my healing journey.”

My Prayer

In 2015 Kamini felt her creative impulse emerging again and started painting. She describes her process as working intuitively allowing the unfolding of what or who wants to emerge in the moment.

“My process is ritualistic, an act of worship, my studio a temple, my altar the canvas on which I paint my prayers. Images and visions that emerge bring insights and wisdom that inform my life.

This art making is a journey through ever changing inner and outer landscapes. I work intuitively, standing on the edge of not knowing is an ongoing journey to stay open, spontaneous and willing to be surprised.

A Soul Conversation through art with the symbolic language expressed in the archetypes of ancient myth, ritual art and ceremony; an engagement rooted in the natural rhythms and pulse of the Earth.”

In 2017 after ten years of privately exploring the relationship between her spiritual practice and her art Kamini took a leap of faith and went public with her first solo exhibition Soulscapes at Harbour House Gallery in Kingsbridge.

“ I have to say it was pretty terrifying to bare my soul as, up until this point, I was what I called a Closet Goddess worshipper! My spiritual life had been pretty private until this point and these paintings felt sacred, it was like inviting the public into the inner sanctum of my Soul Temple not knowing if they would tread softly or drag their muddy feet through it! ”

" A unique exhibition"..... ...."Utterly Divine"... ..."Soul warming, celebratory images painted with so much stillness, insight and honesty"... ...."Every work is a world, full and inspirational"......" so moving, brought me to tears”...

Visitors response to Kamini’s Soulscapes Exhibition.

My Passion

At this time in history, as never before, we are being called to take radical action to stop the destruction and restore the balance of the Earths eco system. There is a revolution taking place in the hearts of women and men across the world to dismantle the old ruling structures based on personal greed and power to embrace a new paradigm rooted in service, love and interconnectedness. Kamini’s passion is creating spaces for stillness, wisdom, and beauty to flourish.

“I want to be the change: Gandhi said ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, and I want to live a sustainable life, healthy in mind and body, with a work/life balance that allows for the heart to breathe in the beauty present in every moment. This is what I want for each one of us, a world in which we are at peace with ourselves and others, living in harmony with the Earth.”

Since I was 13 or 14 years old, I've had a fascination with all things spiritual. When my friends were meeting after school to play football, you could often find me sitting in a park tapping into the consciousness of the world around me, talking to the trees, and appreciating the profound emptiness of all things. There was a level of aliveness about the world that it seemed to me at the time, only I was aware of.

For most of my life I think I’ve been on a spiritual journey of discovery, which is to say, a being human journey of discovery. I’ve delved into many traditions, religions and philosophies over the years and discovered much about myself and the world around me.

Over the past, more recent decades I guess I have been inspired to some degree by the practise of Reiki. I came to it in the early 90’s, just as it was starting to get more known in the UK. When I first learned it, however, I was literally the only Reiki teacher for hundreds of miles in any direction, or so it seemed to me at the time. Reiki has served me well, over the past 25 years, as a small (and diminishing) part of my spiritual practice and I've written two books about it. It's a practice that isn’t of any great significance to me anymore, at least, not in the form that most people relate to it. I'm not big on energy healing. For me, Reiki is simply a training wheel for much more significant and impactful spiritual practises that come out of esoteric teachings, which are in the end, the origins of Reiki in any case. I think the point of Reiki is that one SHOULD grow out of it. I don’t think it’s something you want to simply stay with for ever. Reiki always had the exit door signposted and wide open, but most people don’t even see that it’s there.

I do despair sometimes at just how shallow an engagement with Reiki the world has. The Reiki community is not a community I associate with or have any affinity with really and I tend to keep away from it. Although I teach Reiki, I do try to steer my students away from the dominant expression of Reiki as some simple energy healing thing. I’m at great pains to cultivate in them an understanding that energy healing, as the Indian mystic, Sadghuru has rightly pointed out, is a dangerous and crazily immature thing to be involved in unless approached from a perspective of deep knowledge, care and a realisation that it’s not your business to make things happen in a healing context, just get out of the way and let the energy do what it needs to do. If you can mind your own business in energy healing, you can’t go too far wrong. In any case, a 5-year-old can do this. There’s nothing special or sophisticated about it. I try to cultivate in my students a deeper and more immersive relationship to the spiritual heart of the practice and to see energy healing as just one small fragment of a much wider range of spiritual tools that enable the practitioner to get a true understanding of their authentic selves. When you can orientate to the practice in this way, it becomes a thing of beauty, the like of which is barely hinted at within the energy healing mis-orientation.

My latest book, Mindfulness Meditation and the Art of Reiki, aims to refocus the engagement with the practice much more on to its spiritual core and away from energy healing. I hope that it serves some people.

As a professional artist I'm inspired by the work of Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Edward Hopper, amongst many others. I adore Picasso’s work but am really very much wedded to the American Abstract Expressionists. For me Hopper, though not even close to the Abstract Expressionists in terms of his artistic oeuvre has, for me, a real affinity with the emotional and spiritual triggers of someone like Rothko. So, my artistic influences and interests are eclectic to say the least.

Art is my overriding passion. When someone asks me what I do, my answer is: artist and writer. It is never, Reiki teacher (or heaven forbid, that utterly dreadful term ‘Reiki Master’). Art is an opportunity, as I see it, for a deep spiritual engagement with the universe on a level outside of the mainstream of traditional spiritual practices. I guess you could say that it’s another form of meditation, even when the creative process is seemingly frenetic and mindlessly chaotic. Can frenetic mindless chaos be mindful? I think so.

When I practice Reiki, I do so in the context in which I practice art. It’s an expression of an inward journey that takes me to the core of who and what I am as a human being and as an emanation of the oneness of creation. Understanding this within the context of meditation and artistic expression, which is a process of destruction and creation, emptiness and stillness, is profoundly liberating. Art, whether that be writing, painting, drawing or sculpture are deeply personal experiences that reveal one’s true nature. When backed up by a serious spiritual practice such as meditation, can be explosive in their insights. My personal journey is now very much centred on my creative work. I may write another book in time. It will almost certainly be focused on art as a creative expression of personal spirituality. At least that’s my current thinking, but one thing that I have learned from life (including Reiki) is to stay in flow because you never actually know what is around the next corner. Life does that.

I dream of a long-lost land of sun and rain, a hearth of warm beauty blanketed by the breeze of summer. This place has many names; all are true and all are beautiful. It is here I long to find my home, tucked safely away behind the shades of murky shadow and the cold bite of winter. Both I know well. Both we all are. Both you shall find here, wrapped in word and song.

So reads the description of Yonas Campbell’s Bandcamp page. Who might this budding young poet/songwriter/singer be?

Growing up in the Hampshire countryside, from an early age Yonas felt a deep connection to the natural world around him. Often playing with a myriad of Star Wars and Indiana Jones action figures in the front garden of his family home he was no stranger to birdsong and the medicinal effects of the great outdoors. His mother bought him his first guitar when he was just 7, and despite taking a liking to his junior school guitar teacher, scales and practice books failed to reach Yonas’s young heart. However, upon moving to a preparatory school at the age of 9, his new guitar teacher recognised an untapped talent within his shy pupil and knew exactly how to draw it out. Out went the grade books and notated sheet music; in came tabs and rock riffs. By the end of his time at this school, Yonas had played bass and lead guitar in the school rock band and enjoyed many gigs alongside his peers, playing some of his favourite songs to large crowds.

As he entered his teenage years, Yonas’s spirituality became an increasingly important aspect of his sense of self. Ever a deep thinker, he had always asked questions of an existential kind; even as a young child, he endlessly pondered the ways of the world, wondering where exactly he might find an artistic or spiritual place to call home. During his teenage years,Yonas’s ear gravitated towards the mercurial sounds of Bob Dylan, Nick Drake and The 1975’s sophomore record, “I Like It When You Sleep…”

However, it was listening to U2’s iconic 1987 album “The Joshua Tree”' which began to fill Yonas’s heart with a deeper, more spiritual connection to the arts. The Edge’s soulful guitar parts combined with Bono’s soaring vocals and beautiful lyricism, held together by Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr’s tight rhythm playing, ensured that this collection of songs left an eternal mark on Yonas’s musical psyche. Music had shown that it could be a deeply spiritual medium.

During his time studying English Literature at Godalming College, Yonas discovered a profound connection to the Romantic poets of the early 19th century. In the work of William Blake, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Yonas found kindred spirits. The Romantic longing for pure human experience, natural beauty and freedom struck a chord with him; and analysis of their poetic techniques would prove instrumentally useful for Yonas in the years to follow. To this day, John Keats remains the foremost Romantic inspiration for Yonas’s writing.

Towards the end of his time at college, Yonas discovered and quickly became obsessed with Oasis, as millions of music fans worldwide have been since the early ‘90s. One of the many CDs on rotation in his car stereo was “Definitely Maybe”, the Mancunian band’s melodically bruising 1994 debut LP release. Such love of Oasis inspired Yonas to investigate both the music which had inspired their Britpop/punk energy, but also the legacy of such sounds on early 2000s British bands. This led Yonas to purchase a copy of The Libertines’s 2002 debut album, “Up The Bracket”.

Put simply this changed Yonas’s life.

Listening to the album severally in his car, he noticed that beneath the ramshackle attraction and chaos of the raw garage rock lay a remarkably witty and well-balanced literary lyricism, alongside a (criminally underappreciated) talent for jaunty and maverick melody. Delving into their catalogue he discovered the hidden gems of Peter Doherty’s work, from his time with Babyshambles to his beautiful solo projects. Doherty’s poetic spirit infused Yonas with a burgeoning desire to begin writing for himself, and reintroduced the budding poet to a more updated form of Romanticism. Visions of William Blake’s “Albion” became real world musical aspirations; and dreamlike impressions of Arcadia a tangible part of present human experience.

The guitar became central to the manifestation of Yonas’s creative outpouring and the primary vessel for the melodic expressions of his inner life. Poems and songs began to flow through him as his obsession with verse, metre, rhythm and rhyme soon transitioned into a talent for chords, lyrics and melody. Drawing from his sense of what it means to have faith and hope, and his own experience of romantic love and loss, Yonas’s songs have an undercurrent of spirituality alongside the more obvious Romanticism. Romance as not merely a fleeting human experience, but an existential path to higher human truths and values. Through real love we become one with “God”, liberated (albeit it momentarily) from the chains spoken of by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the “mind-forg’d manacles” of William Blake.

After releasing a string of lo-fi folk demos throughout 2020, Yonas began working with up-and-coming producer Jack O’Hea to record his debut EP release, titled “Another Side of Paradise” (a play on “This Side of Paradise”, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel). Recording the EP across 2021-22, the final result is a beautifully soulful and honest 4-track release, displaying the range of Yonas’s creative influences. While looking to progress his sound in future releases, Yonas hopes his music will always have a spiritual foundation.

Come aboard the Albion
and sail away with me.
We'll find our home amidst the waves
of blushing melody.

It takes some time to sail the seas
of ancient sound and song.
But rest assured, and hear the word
of Arcady anon.

Album cover art painted by Elaoise Benson.

Starting her career as an actress in 2015, Cheryl Prince was exposed to spirit which allowed her to explore her inner creativity. Communication with spirits led to her working with a shamanic healer with whom she had an interesting past life regression. During the regression, she envisioned being a witch who was hanged on a tree.

Having a limited knowledge of what witches were and why she was killed for being one in her past life, Cheryl was driven to know more. It is precisely this curiosity about witch persecution that made her write her play, AWAKEN. She realized that true witch history has been repressed for a long time, and that writing about it is an effective way of showing it.

In AWAKEN, we meet two characters who are a mix of a fictional story and Cheryl’s own experience as a witch in her past life and a healer in her current life. In her own words:

‘I believe we all have stories locked in our souls of lives we have lived, gifts we have retained and lessons we have learned.  The two characters I play in AWAKEN – both in 1653 and 2023 - are an exploration of awakening to who you are on a soul level, whilst exploring the question; what would happen if you were silenced in one lifetime and came back to tell the tale today?’

AWAKEN explores the possibility of the witches’ persecution having had a much broader purpose behind it, such as preventing the fusion of energy from the spiritual world with that in our current reality.

Granted, the history and identity of witches hasn’t always been perceived in a positive light, and Cheryl hasn’t avoided this. For a long time, she assumed that being called a witch wasn’t a good thing at all, since witches have always been portrayed as ‘haggered old women.’

As Cheryl explains, ‘It’s a very clever propaganda campaign. AWAKEN aims to question the laws that came in which made it ok to torture, abuse and kill off many women as witches.  It also reminds us what we have lost.  We had our ‘knowing ones’, who were the practising cunning folk & witches of the time, stolen from us and their skills buried.  These were people who knew how to work with spirit.  That’s who the witches are to me and that’s what I believe they should be remembered for.’

A distinguishing aspect of Cheryl’s plays is that all of them are based on wisdom gained from her past life regressions, and the trilogy of her plays represent her own soul's journey. Interestingly enough, she tells us: ‘From these regressions I have discovered lifetimes in Ancient Egypt when dark magic & sorcery took hold and lifetimes in Atlantis & Lemuria when the masculine & feminine energy was first split.  ‘

Cheryl says that throughout time, spiritually awakened people ‘have suffered persecution in the most brutal ways by burning their temples, torturing their bodies, mass executions and instilling fear, ridicule, or corruption within their belief systems so we end up forgetting who we are and the power we have within us.’ She acknowledges that by writing this trilogy, she is ‘lifting the veil and honouring who the Witches, Priestesses & Light Warriors really were and how we are all connected throughout time.’

A script in hand reading of AWAKEN was filmed in Scotland and aired for a short period from the Summer Solstice in 2022. Because if its success, Cheryl hopes to air the film again on her website from Samhain. Her larger plan is to take AWAKEN on tour in places where witch persecution was common, such as London, Bury St Edmunds and Scotland. Still, there are 7 countries in which witches are persecuted to this day, and Cheryl hopes to exhibit the play in those lands too.

In spare free time, Cheryl loves to dance, and carry out ritual practices, such as building altars or creating sacred spaces. She also invites and works with spiritual beings, such as loved ones who have passed on and the souls of people who wish to have a say on her work. 

‘We all have a type of spiritual practice gifted to us which serves our soul and can be called upon in our creativity.’

In working as an actress, writer and healer, Cheryl has experienced spiritual awakening at its peak, whereby her creativity allows her to channel spirit completely. Like most spiritually awakened people, Cheryl’s creativity stems from tuning into the multidimensional energy that exists within and around her all the time. It’s this ability that has allowed her to venture into the world of spiritual creativity and set up her own company, 5D Theatre, which always embodies the spiritual dimension of her work.

Nowadays I see having been rejected at birth by my father on account of being the ‘wrong’ gender as the greatest gift I’ve received in my life. If that sounds strange, I’ll explain: had I had the idyllic childhood that my two young grandchildren in Devon are at present enjoying, I would certainly have become neither a writer nor a therapist and – apart from my wonderful family – these are the two things that have brought me the most satisfaction. Being brought up strongly Catholic had instilled in me a belief in God that I treasure, yet it took many years and a great deal of excellent therapy firstly to be able to believe that I was lovable and secondly to rid myself of my father’s brainwashing that I was ‘stupid’.

When, at the age of forty-seven, I first became interested in holistic medicine, my religion initially got in the way of following my friends who believed in reincarnation. Then, in 1991, a lecture I heard about the strongly Christian 'sleeping prophet’, Edgar Cayce, caused an instant conversion! Furthermore, through subsequent study, I discovered that acknowledgement of reincarnation had been pretty much universal in the early Church – until the Council of Constantinople in AD 553, when the power-hungry clergy were happy to follow Theodora’s desire not to return to Earth as anything other than an Empress!

Joining the Edgar Cayce Association then led to my obtaining a ‘Past-life reading’ from Aron Abrahamsen, his one-time associate, who not only described five previous lives that rang true for me, but also said that I’d “come this time partly as a writer, to disseminate information on the spiritual life”. This resulted in my embarking upon a book entitled KARMIC RELEASE, which was aimed initially at showing from my personal experience how the past can affect the present. Later, however, after obtaining a Diploma from the Jungian psychotherapist, the late Dr. Roger Woolger, I completed the book by demonstrating in it how his unique brand of past-life regression (not using hypnotherapy and which he named Deep Memory Process therapy) worked in practice. I also at this point included self-help exercises at the end of each section. This book was published in 2006 by Sai Towers in Bangalore, but that company suffered a demise after my personal ‘guru’, the avatar Sathya Sai Baba, had left His body in 2011. Second hand copies, however, can often be found on the internet and I even still have four spares myself, which I would happily pass on at a low rate.

My second book, SOULS UNITED – The Power of Divine Connection, arose thanks to my youngest sister, Philippa Merivale (previously a colour therapist, Philippa was the founder of ‘Metatronic Life and Healing’), introducing me to the now very renowned clairvoyant, Edwin Courtenay. After he had explained to both of the concept of twinsoulship and I had also studied Edgar Cayce’s definition of the three different types of soulmate, Edwin suggested that I write a book on that subject. Then people who were either with their twin soul or suffering on his/her account started to land in my lap in my therapy practice! And I added to these clients’ case histories by researching obvious twin-soul relationships in history. This book, published in 2009 by Llewellyn Worldwide, USA, went out of print several years later, but again can readily be found on the internet and in this case I have fourteen copies remaining from those that Llewellyn sold me at a reduced rate.

The third book, DISCOVERING THE LIFE PLAN – Eleven Steps to your Destiny had a very different type of conception. As a ‘recovering Catholic’, one thing I had against the Church was that it taught nothing at all about the Afterlife and so I fancied the idea of writing a book giving information on that important subject. Although I was already learning a good deal both through reading and the practice of my therapy, I felt I needed more input on the esoteric side and so I approached the clairvoyant Lilla Bek. She then invited me to spend a day at her house to discuss the project. English not being her mother tongue, Lilla had already made use of ghost writers for her previous books, but the idea she came up with was much more comprehensive than mine, i.e. a book that would cover the whole of life in stages, starting from pre-conception and ending with the Afterlife. Back at home I typed up the notes we’d made between us, which Lilla then submitted to her publisher, Thorsons. They, however, had another project in mind for her, which left her with no time for continuing to work with me. So I hung onto the plan in the hope of finding another clairvoyant to give me the sort of information that Lilla had had in mind. I showed the plan to one or two people, who responded by saying “That’s a book that needs to be written!”, but eventually, as time went on with no other clairvoyant putting in an appearance, I decided that I had no choice other than to embark upon the book myself. It made sense to me to use for the various stages of life (which Lilla Bek had named the ‘Eleven Steps’) material gleaned from experiences of friends and clients (the latter of course always with their permission and more often than not with the names being changed). The end product was inevitably different from the original plan, but thus, in 2010, began my long and happy journey with John Hunt Publishing!

DELAYED DEPARTURE – A Beginner’s Guide to Soul Rescue, published in 2013, had a very different type of conception. Having attended an Introductory workshop on Shamanism given by the shamanic practitioner Simon Buxton, I leapt at the opportunity a few months later to attend a weekend with him on the topic of Death, Dying and the Beyond. On the first afternoon, after talking about the importance of freeing the souls who were unaware of having died and were consequently polluting our planet’s atmosphere, Simon drummed us into a journey to the underworld. To my astonishment, before that journey was complete, I heard a clear voice in my head saying firmly “You’re to continue doing this work at home on your own every Friday afternoon.”! Well, I had during various previous workshops I’d attended over the years made resolutions that I’d failed to keep for more than, say, two or three weeks, but this one was clearly different. So, before boarding my train home, I bought a notebook at the station in which to record my experiences.

At the time, following my husband, David Pearson’s, retirement from his Chair of Mathematics at Hull University, we were living in Ludlow and, on account of, for instance, the Wars of the Roses, that town is simply riddled with ‘ghosts’. It was consequently a particularly important place in which to be doing shamanic work of this nature. Although I wasn’t at home every Friday afternoon, I did meticulously record so many of my interesting and varied journeys that one day it suddenly occurred to me to gather some of them into a little book. Then my artist friend, Karen Roberts, kindly agreed to enhance it with several delightful illustrations. DELAYED DEPARTURE – A Beginner’s Guide to Soul Rescue was published in 2013. (Here I’ll just mention that bringing out that little book didn’t see the end of my interest in ‘Death, Dying and the Beyond’, but I won’t breathe another word on that before my final one, which I’m working on now, has been accepted for publication!)

David and I produced our first two children in fairly quick succession. While he was totally content with our ‘pigeon pair’, for me, having been the oldest of six, this was more difficult and he has ever been a very obliging husband. He had particularly strong views about not adding further to the world’s population and I anyway didn’t fancy being an ‘elderly tertia’. So, in November 1979, we were given the immense privilege of receiving into our home a two-week old son via Barnado’s. I, who had an enormous amount to learn, naïvely imagined that – apart from being saved the pains of childbirth and having some difficulty with breast feeding – it wouldn’t be that different from our previous exciting new arrivals. This was also long before I’d started to learn about reincarnation, but some years later I found out about various karmic links that all four of us had with our amazing Christopher (previously a basketball scholar in the US, then a highly successful player in Europe who also ran his own recruitment agency, now doing well as a Maths teacher, but – if only this country’s political climate could change in time! – with the potential of making an excellent Green PM. Here it is only fair to add that our two older children are equally amazing, Paul being a mathematician working in software development and Alice a digital editor.)

We, however, are among the lucky ones who adopt. As with the ‘twin soul’ book, after I’d conceived the idea of writing one on adoption and karma, people with relevant experiences (many of them clients) started landing in my lap. The book, whose gestation period was a good seven years, expanded to include the related topics of fostering and step families and THICKER THAN BLOOD? A Fresh Look at Adoption, Fostering and Step Families was eventually published in 2015. Like life, its stories range from heart-rending to very happy and, also like life, none of them is without its challenges.

Any experienced therapist will tell you both that, for profound healing to take place, a safe environment is essential and that it’s important for the therapist to continue working on her/himself. I was blessed all the way! When, at the age of twenty-nine, I managed to escape from the oppression of my family by going to Geneva, where I worked for five years as a Romance linguist, a friend recommended a psychotherapist and she became for a while a mother figure for me, giving me much that I’d missed out on as a child. She also nursed me through a devastating heartbreak, thus preparing me, when he came on the scene, for a much more suitable partner. David was doing research at the University of Geneva, on two years’ leave of absence from that of Hull, and so it was in the North East that we reared our family.

It was partly Christopher’s ‘bad behaviour’ that initially sent me to Mark Young, who runs the Ripon Natural Healing Centre, and he remains to this day my chief mentor. He it was who first encouraged me to study reincarnation in greater depth, who first told me that I should write a book and who supported my decision to train in Deep Memory Process therapy, ultimately inviting me to practise the therapy in his clinic. He knows me inside out, never hesitates to challenge me, is a great confidant and has treated me successfully with numerous homoeopathic remedies.

The Woolger therapy works, as its name suggests, on the deepest possible levels and this necessitates courage and insight on the part of both therapist and client. Looking back over the training workshops that I attended (always a whole week), my mind never ceases to boggle at the transformations that I witnessed. But launching out into working on one’s own with people who very often have truly profound difficulties requires a great deal of confidence. Here again I was greatly blessed because, when Roger decided that I was ready to be awarded his diploma, he invited me to present a case history at a Graduates’ weekend in Devon. This coincided with the one to which Kris Misselbrook had come over from South West France in order to receive his diploma. At the time he and his partner Steve (one of the world’s best chefs!) were running Le Moulin, a guest house there, and he came up with the wonderful idea of a group of us new graduates going to stay at their place in order to practise working on one another. The ‘Mouliners’, as we named ourselves, carried on meeting annually for a number of years until, inevitably, some went off on other paths, but during those precious weeks of profound work, well mixed with fun, laughter, French wine and delicious food, some major things occurred for all of us.

For me personally the most important of them all was when I at last solved the mystery of why, at the age of sixteen, I’d fallen so deeply in love with the composer Sir Edward Elgar that I’d believed I’d never get over the fact that he’d died six years before I was born. At the time I already had the idea for my eighth book, WOMAN THROUGH THE AGES, firmly in my head and at first I imagined that the story of that regression would simply be one section of that book. However, following a talk I went to in Elgar’s study in Plas Gwyn, where he’d lived during the family’s years in Hereford, a series of imaginary letters between the composer and his former fiancée, Helen Weaver, who had emigrated to New Zealand, started writing themselves in my head. So gradually a little book took on a life of its own and LIFE WITHOUT ELGAR – A Tale of a Journeying Soul was published in 2014. This publication gave rise to a fascinating follow up, which I recounted in the eighth book.

Before, however, that very hefty book finally saw the light of day, I realised a long-held dream of visiting the Galápagos. While there, to my great surprise, the giant tortoise that we’d narrowly missed seeing started telling me his story. I named him Carlos (after Darwin of course) and he was followed by a frigate-bird and then an albatross. Upon our return I typed the three tales up and then, not knowing what to do with them, I circulated them among a few friends and colleagues, one of whom suggested I make them into a little book, together with some of my photographs. At that point firstly a sea lion and secondly a Galápagos zigzag spider kindly obliged by putting their oars in. I saw this book mainly as a bit of fun, but between the five of them, the narrators gave quite a bit of interesting information about these ‘enchanted islands’, at the same as making cogent comments on matters both spiritual and ecological. (The frigate-bird even drew upon his scribe’s linguistic training!) John Hunt Publishing found the book “too short” and were also unable to reproduce my colour photos, so I self-published it in 2015.

Throughout these years of both writing and practising DMP therapy, with clients in Hull then Ripon and Ludlow, more of my own previous lives began to surface – often through flashbacks to other countries that I was visiting – and this caused me to hold in the back of my mind the notion of one day writing a follow up to my autobiographical first book. When, however, I finally embarked upon this new project, the idea came to me of focusing on womanhood and I soon realised that my own past-life experiences seemed between them to cover most aspects of that subject. Here, too, my rejection at birth no doubt played a role in my interest in women of the past who had either been initially ignored or subsequently forgotten purely on account of their gender. Sometimes I learnt on my travels about women I’d never heard of, but obviously should have. Upon returning each time, further research led to my discovery of other significant women in the country concerned. (The only problem was that, over the years of writing the book, I kept hearing of more and more remarkable women, but one has to be firm and draw the line somewhere!)

When it came to writing my own very long story, the fascinating thing for me was to find that a great change had taken place. This was because, on Woolger workshops, the students would learn from him how to get others into a relevant past life, guide them through it and then help them to release the samskaras, i.e. remaining traumas, from which they were still suffering. (This not only helps to gain healing for the present life, but also to note the learning from the past one.) Whereas now, after reflecting upon the glimpses that I’d had of the past, each time that I sat down to write each story, the details came of their own accord.

The worst that happened was on a visit to beautiful Myanmar, where I got bombarded with memories of being a dreadful queen who’d thrown Buddhists into prison. Not something one would at all want to remember, but fortunately I was with a close friend who was able to nurse me through it! In Ravenna, on the other hand, I saw not just one, but two past lives! One was of a martyr who’d set herself the task of ‘rescuing’ prostitutes by converting them to Christianity; the second was of a young girl who’d been forced into prostitution after losing all her family and their abode in a fire. Of course unpleasant in a different way, the latter gave me some insight into how brothels are run!

Rest assured, however, that not all of this book is that gruesome! When it comes to more recent times, I’ve recounted the marvellous stories of, for instance, the pioneering black tennis player, Althea Gibson, plus one of my personal heroines, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, mother of the seven siblings who are all brilliant musicians. At one point a chapter on ‘Loss’ felt appropriate and then the year 2020 seemed to merit one of its own. In conclusion (while not ignoring the horrors of, say, the Taliban) reflection upon the massive changes for the better that I’d observed in my then eighty-one years brought me much hope for the future. The completion of WOMAN THROUGH THE AGES suffered a variety of holdups – a massive downsize from a four-bed house in lovely Ludlow to an apartment in a new retirement village in marvellous Malvern being not the least of them! – but at least the lockdowns gave me some of the time I’d been craving and this book was finally published in the summer of 2022.

Thida Nathalie is a die-hard nomadic self-taught filmmaker who is so infatuated with human stories that she has been consistently diving into them ever since teaching herself how to use a mirrorless DSLR camera and sound recorder back in 2015. Having ingratiated herself in more than twenty countries, she has developed a huge curiosity for the characters, places, norms and cultures that she has befriended along the way. A travelholic, fascinated with the weaving narratives of documentary-style filmmaking, she often subtly delves into metaphysical and spiritual subtexts via her human and cultural stories that stir the heart and intrigue the soul. Her ten completed documentaries all reflect this obsession, which was ignited by a dramatic spiritual event she experienced more than a decade ago.

“In mid-2012, I had my first out-of-body experience. My consciousness was flung out into the top right-hand corner of the room where I was working. As my fingers continued to type on the computer keyboard, I became aware that the body and consciousness are two entirely different things. I then heard muffled sounds, and it took some time before I could navigate back to hear those sounds become the legible voice of my father asking if I wanted some grilled fish!”

“During the following two years, my experiences increased, and my awareness expanded. I felt I had a clear path to manifest anything I desired, and I began travelling in vigour. A friend encouraged me to carry a little Panasonic Lumix camera and hit the record button wherever I went, as he thought that the places I was visiting looked intriguing. I also discovered I was attracting some of the most interesting, light, dark and other-worldly beings, and I wanted to tell their story.” This marked the start of Thida’s journey into the world of filmmaking.

In June 2015, Thida visited Ladakh, ‘The Land of High Passes', in a last-minute spontaneous invitation by a fellow traveller to the ancient kingdom. The day she arrived she went to 'Ladakh Cafe', the closest cafe in the bazaar that had Wi-Fi (a temperamental technology in the 11,480 feet mountainous region of this seasonally busy Himalayan town.) Next door sat Mr Tashi, running his Tibetan prayer beads through his fingers, long hair tied back and a turquoise stone dangling off a piece of red, waxy cotton threaded through his earlobe. Entranced by his ‘Tibetan-ness’, a culture she was witnessing for the first time, Thida went to the market to get some lunch mantra-ing, ‘I’m going to make a film on that man, I’m going to make a film on that man’. True to her word, her first documentary Mr Tashi was completed that year.

“A vegan cafe, my first ever review in the Lonely Planet, a couple of avalanches and a hundred stories to tell the kids (if I ever have any) later, the first ever film that I could only dream about making is alive - just how I saw it the very day I laid eyes on Mr Tashi.”

Whilst couch surfing in New Mexico, a guy called ‘Jeff’ who lived on a farm in Taos stood out to Thida. Jeff’s miniature farm and positive reviews began ‘itching' her intrigue, and suddenly she felt like making a film about it, although she had no idea why. An accepted CS request, a broken down Greyhound bus and a hitchhike up the Cerro del Oso mountains later, she found herself admiring the sunset from Talpa Gardens, where she met and filmed her second documentary with Jeff, the farmer, painter and car renovator, whose intelligence, light-heartedness and wisdom went hand-in-hand with his ability to manifest the lifestyle he desired - far from laissez faire, yet cleverly appearing to be just so.

“In life we tend to stumble upon just what we need when we need it. In un-mindfulness we brush it into the categories of ‘chance’ or ‘fate’ without realising how the Universe is in constant service towards our personal evolution. Meeting and listening to Jeff has been an incredible confirmation that our own self-empowerment really knows where to take us. His views of freedom, and what that means to him, his interpretation of the way the world works, his diligent practices towards a subtle and far greater goal that he innately and instinctively follows, are just some of the empowering insights Jeff offered me, both vocally and non-tangibly at times. During the interview, I also discovered that Jeff is an artist that has sold over one point three million dollars’ worth of paintings!” Her documentary became entitled The Man Who Paints Monkeys.

During a last-minute trip to Sardinia in 2017 someone on a Facebook forum suggested Luigi Muscas to become Thida’s local guide to explore the archaeological Nuraghe sites scattered across the Mediterranean Island of Sardinia. Luigi, then considered an 'outcast' or 'madman' by the village where he grew up, had made regular giant skeletal discoveries as a child, and he continued to receive visitors from around the world. Contrary to public belief, Luigi told a very different tale about an ancient civilisation of giants.

“If giant remains are truly being discovered around the world, what do these remains relate to and why are they here on Earth? If legends are true and 'hybrid offspring' are walking around the planet, where did they come from and more importantly, why did they intermingle with local Earth inhabitants when they came? Was it just our beautiful looks as legends say...or was there something more?” This became Thida’s third documentary Walking With Giants.

During the filming of Driving Miss Rebecca, Thida’s love for character driven travelogues only intensified, and in a period lasting over eight months from mid-2017 to early 2018 she found herself following in the footsteps of Dr Rebecca C Rivera as she took Thida on a journey of her life, beginning at her home in New Jersey, USA, and continuing on a spontaneous trip through France, Spain and Italy to finish in Luzon, Philippines. Thida’s narrative eye continued to wonder with her film ‘To Be’, which explored ‘The 'Gallegos', an autonomous community with a distinct cultural heritage, climate and geography, filmed in the summer of 2018 in Galicia.

That year also marked a return to her spiritual roots when Thida interviewed the artist and spiritual ‘grid-keeper’ Yunah Ray, prior to her death from cancer, in her documentary Petals of Steel.

“We open with a story linked to Yunah's childhood memories whilst growing up, before moving into subjects surrounding her country of origin, current lifestyle, the meanings behind her artworks and her ongoing struggles. Yunah died a month after she gave this interview from her cancer. It was important for her to speak her truth in a variety of ways, and for me, the editor, to highlight her incredible strength and beauty. This film above all else, is a tribute.”

Thida’s relationship with India began when she embarked on a journey into one of the least accessible parts of Nagaland to make 'Tribe', a human story which focused on Penjun, one of the few remaining tribe members of the fiercest headhunters of Nagaland known as 'The Konyak'. Encouraged to follow God in his latter years, with only an opium pipe and a few trigger-happy tourists to keep him busy, Penjun faithfully walks his grandchildren to school whilst reminiscing on the good old days. The film was requested to be screened at the grassroots community festival Ubuntu in London during March 2019, if not for Covid. 

Thida’s regular visits to Myanmar for her first feature documentary panning a period of 5 years and still in assembly, birthed a new creative vision in her mind: a spiritual science fiction series she entitled The InfinEights. Whilst filming the documentary The Empire Of Good Deeds, she met a young boy of five, who proved to be a natural actor, and this inspired her write her first ever script, on the spot, in a place when censorship in is at an all-time high, and the act of simply carrying a camera is enough reason to get arrested.

Undeterred, she filmed the first InfinEights episode with ‘Kaung Myat Htun’ (gong mee-at tuun), who plays the role of a starseed/indigo child/superhero living in stealth. Appearing as a traditionally obedient Burmese boy coming from a family of tailors, he goes about his day, sharing the content of his electric mind and exploring ancient golden pagodas of which Myanmar is famous for, whilst gradually revealing that he is no ordinary human child. Entitled Bright like the Sun, Thida’s short film went on to win 15 international film festivals and been screened in France, USA, Brazil, Canada, and the UK thus far.

“The storytelling itself is magical. A kind of magic which is beyond trickery or deception. A magic that is alluring and fills one with a feeling of glee. The feeling is enchanting. We are hypnotically transferred to the world away from the cacophony of the one we inhabit…The director does an impeccable job of creating a world of stunning and captivating visuals. The entire story is told in an adroit fashion with so much left to be meditated upon and contemplate about life by the end of it….” - Beyond The Curve International Film.

“I would like each of the InfinEights films to give back to the local communities where they were filmed, through fundraising screenings and ticket donations. I feel that films often take more from their local environment than they put back. I have also scripted my films to provide acting showcase opportunities to those children who are on the spectrum or may have difficulty fitting in with the world around them.” It may come as no surprise that Thida also aims to support orphaned children in the undeveloped and complex country of Myanmar by donating a percentage of the film’s profits to a local children’s charity.

Thida’s second film in The InfinEights series is entitled Auria Rides Time, which she has now finished shooting in the UK and is currently crowdfunding for post-production.

Music composer and producer Clifford White is no stranger to the concept of weaving spirituality into his music. Over 37 years ago, his first album Ascension (1985, New World Music) aptly demonstrated his fascination for exploring astral vistas of sound, and with track titles like Hallowed Ground, The Calling and Eternal Dusk, it was immediately obvious even to the uninitiated that Clifford had a clear affinity for creating the subtle vibrations of spiritual music. Ascension sold over 50,000 copies, establishing a worldwide audience for Clifford’s own unique brand of music production, and kick-started his career.

Spirituality was a theme Clifford continued to explore in his further 20 albums, with titles like Revelation and The Healing Touch, and perhaps less obviously (but just as powerfully) in his mythological explorations of ancient history and legend in The Gods of Olympus, Myths of the Rock and Atlantis. Unlike other artists, rather than attempt to emulate the success he had initially achieved in the 80s with Ascension, Clifford's music continued to evolve and explore new territory, yet somehow always held true to his intention of creating atmospheres of peace, joy and serenity mixed with emotional sentimentality and reflection.

“Music is a beautiful language, yet so much of the music I hear nowadays are like words shouted in anger and frustration. I have always felt it’s my job to remind people that music can be beautiful, emotional and heartfelt. And the idea of spirituality itself seems to be something we are embarrassed about, that we hide from others. I can see no reason why spirituality shouldn't be proclaimed in everything that we do. For me, that's through my music.“

It would therefore come as no surprise that Clifford’s latest opus - his four album series entitled Heaven Sent, released in January 2022 via Clifford's own music label - takes another bold step along his spiritual journey. Four albums is no mean feat, and surely keeping a listeners attention for that long can't be easy? Yet listening to Clifford's albums, one marvels at the variety of music he discovers. One minute joyous, the next deeply emotional, yet each track flows effortlessly, one after the other. Clifford is a master craftsman, and this is revealed no more clearly than on his Heaven Sent series.

“With the Heaven Sent series, I really wanted to take the listener on a journey to heavens highest realms. To the astral oceans and secret gardens that exist in that wondrous dimension. To bear witness to the awe, drama and majesty of spiritual existence.”

We feel that Clifford has achieved exactly that with his latest series of albums. Whilst the first volume Heaven Sent serves as a gentle introduction to the aural landscapes he enjoys to paint, the second album Higher Power is far more dramatic. The third album Mystic Heart is wistful and bittersweet, and the final album Healing Waters joyous and uplifting. All different, and all excellent. With the Heaven Sent series, Clifford has truly captured the beauty and mystery of the spiritual dimension; perhaps unlike any composer that has attempted to do this before. At 36 tracks, spanning four 70 minute albums, it is a colossal achievement, both subtle and sublime, and one that we believe is destined to become a true classic for the history books.

Hear the Heaven Sent series by Clifford White on Spotify.

Purchase the Heaven Sent series on CD from Clifford's website:
https://www.cliffordwhite.co.uk/

Visit Clifford's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/21ctv

Connect with Clifford on Facebook, LinkedIn or Bandcamp.