Psychic questing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Psychic questing can be thought of as a psychic treasure hunt. It is the practice of using intuitively inspired thoughts and information for creative purposes - be it the exploration of history, the search for hidden artefacts or simply the quest for enlightenment. It can begin with a strange dream, a visionary experience or an overwhelming compulsion which prompts the person to embark on a sequence of discovery.
Although every psychic quest will differ, common activities that occur as a psychic quest progresses include: uncovering confirmatory facts, visiting sites and places revealed only by intuition and communicating with perceived external forces and influences through either meditational practices or ritual processes (often this communication with external forces takes the form of contact with a "genius loci" or site guardian, which provides information necessary to take the next step in the quest). Most dramatically, some quests result in artefact retrieval where a physical object of special significance is uncovered by the questers.
However, psychic questing is not just about the finding of physical treasure. On a subtler level, it is concerned with an individual’s spiritual quest and the outcome of a psychic quest may simply be the realisation of some information that is important to the spiritual development of the individual.
In Tibetan Buddhism there is an ancient tradition of spiritual treasure hunting which focuses on the recovery of termas, which is a direct equivalent of modern psychic questing. A monk who becomes involved in Terma hunting is known as a Terton. However, similar methods of discovery have been used for thousands of years and there are many recorded instances of holy men or women being inspired to find hidden relics (e.g. Joan of Arc), occultists using necromancy to find buried treasure (e.g. John Dee and Edward Kelley) and psychics being brought in to uncover archaeological remains (e.g. Frederick Bligh Bond's excavations of Glastonbury Abbey).
The modern revival in psychic questing began in October 1979 with the discovery by Andrew Collins and Graham Phillips of a short steel sword of unusual design, bearing the copper-plate inscription 'Meonia fore Marye' on its blade. It was found behind the dry-stone foundations of a footbridge at a place called Knight's Pool in the English county of Hereford and Worcester. This discovery was followed just days later by the retrieval of a seventeenth-century brass casket in which was found a small cabochon stone in green agate. Graham and Andrew and their colleagues became convinced that the “Green Stone”, or “Meonia Stone”, had once been in a finger ring worn by Mary Queen of Scots.
Modern books dealing with psychic questing include: The Sword and the Stone (1982), The Black Alchemist (1988), The Seventh Sword (1992), The Second Coming (1993) and The Twenty-First Century Grail (2004) by Andrew Collins[1]; The Green Stone (1984) and The Eye of Fire (1988) by Graham Phillips; Bega and The Sacred Ring (1992) by Alex Langstone[2] (1992); Web Quest (1996) by Grace Carey; The Sun and the Moon: The Hill and the Well (1997) by Michael Smith (1997); The Circle and the Square (1997) by Jack Gale.
