Reflections by Olivia Robertson

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She who inspired me to do the work of the Fellowship of Isis, with others, came to me at night, in 1946 at Imbolc, about February the 1st. I associated her with snow, because she came at midnight in the snow, as Brigid came to me in the year 2000, at the time of the Summer Solstice, at midnight with the sun.

This Lady came with the aura of stars and moon. She told me to get out of bed, which I did reluctantly because of the bitter cold, and I put on my red cardigan. Now I guess that she wished me to know that she was real. I was only 29 then and I'm not used to this sort of thing, never had it before. I was just ordinary Protestant, you know.

She was made of crystallized white light, her hair raven black. Her dress was cut in V-shapes of different cloths, violet and blue-green. I knew that they were blended together in some way, not sewn. Her hair too looked curiously modern - I don't know quite why - sort of, nothing ancient. She unwound a white scarf, which was like lace. Her face had delicate features, like a woman in a Persian miniature.

© art Olivia Robertson; photo Minette Quick

But it was her mind that made me realize I was in the presence of a Goddess. Now how would I know? Well, I had during my life as a girl met various famous people: Yates, Schrodinger, the great physicist - I don't know, you name them. I was introduced to them, my parents did as a child. And none of them impressed me at all particularly as being unusual. But this was of a different order, I want to emphasize this. This Lady had a mind like I'd never met, the aura was totally different from human.

She told me to sit, and she sat facing me. And I was overcome and I was trying to control my thoughts. Now this is the extraordinary thing - I can't remember one word of our half hour's conversation. So I believe I was not meant to remember, that I was to act from my own will in helping to found the Fellowship and all I've done.

Yet this has influenced me all my life as a sort of undercurrent, through dreams. My own feeble telepathic abilities were as nothing in comparison with the clarity and power of her thought-stream. This was the first Goddess who has come to me. This is a very rare occurrence, with years in between. I knew then she belonged to a more spiritual and wise race of being. Yet these beings, because they were more spiritual and wise, loved those who were not, helping us all to grow up. None of this horrible arrogance you get, people who go round being, thinking they're Goddesses, or I don't know what. The very arrogance and assumption of importance shows they're not important, in that sense. They need to come down to earth. And I always say that to myself too. You know, I make one mistake every day - at least - and I'm no better than anybody else. We're all the same - especially with a cat teaches you that.

At the close of our communion she rose and I thought, thinking at the time: "she has a dignity of a queen, the grace of a ballet dancer and the power of a gymnast!" At that date I had not heard of UFO's, so could not make out at all what was this small plane she was expecting? She was expecting a small plane and she had to wait for it, Goddess or no Goddess, she jolly well waited. And above all, what was the giant ship in the sky that I knew that the plane would take her to? I gathered it was big, or bigger than the Queen Mary liner - that's all I could think of as bigness - so imagine to me it was incredible to think of something like that up there. I only got a glimpse of it when I saw a drawing of the huge mother ship seen by Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronaut (astronomer), who first discovered the planet Pluto.

What was her influence on me? It always seemed to be to fight for what was true and good and not to be put down. A year or so later, I had a vision of the Silver Lady, as I called her. Now it's interesting this, that we in my religion, Protestantism, had no Virgin Mary. And she always seemed to be meek and obeying her son, being always inferior to him because he was a God and she wasn't. They always carefully explained to me - Catholics - that I mustn't think that they worshiped her like a Goddess. I wondered why not, but I accepted they didn't, and we didn't certainly. So I was sort of taken aback by this, because she really was a Goddess, yet could have manifested in human form as Mary? - I don't know.

But she appeared in a wretched slum dwelling with an African family in utter poverty and this was in Dublin. I knew the Dublin slums because I worked there for four years. What struck me was her power. She wasn't going on her knees, praying to her heavenly father to do something, she stood, straight and slim, and raised her right arm in command. Her left arm she gestured downwards in utter dismissal of such conditions. It reminded me of the figure of Christ, in Michelangelo's Last Judgment. It was a call to action.

© art Olivia Robertson, courtesy of Minette Quick

That was in the back of my mind I think when I helped my brother Lawrence and his wife Pamela, when we created the Clonegal Welfare Association in 1963. Where we found that most of the people living in our comfortable, around our comfortable Castle, were below poverty level. This in our new Republic. It only got better when they moved oddly enough from local to national government. There had more resources. But the people actually living without enough to eat all round us. We visited 400 families. I thought this must be the spiritual work I was meant to be doing. I didn't know of anything else.

So that went on until we came to the conclusion, my brother was visited by the Goddess, and my sister-in-law had spiritual experiences, and we decided to get together and do something - get guided. We had to be guided, have a Vocation.

© photo Minette Quick

And so we started many orders, including an environmental order. And I chose this Lady as the Patron Goddess of our project of an Order of Tara to help environment in the Fellowship. And Tara - I chose the name - was the Egyptian Taur, T-A-U-R, holder of the Tablets of Fate, Torah of the Bible, Tarot of the lost books of Thoth of Egypt, and the Irish Goddess of hills, Tea or Tara.

So I thought that all over the world this concept of stars and mountains. The Goddess Tara of Buddhism is the only Bodhisattva Goddess who incarnates to save humanity, but refused to change into a man to attain enlightenment. Extraordinary. In fact her descent to earth occurred before Buddhism, which was extremely active, like Kali and Durga and Nu Kua, the Dragon Goddess. She was a rescuing Goddess and destroyer of evil - not evil people, but evil sort of muck that one flows around.

Some months after we'd founded the Order of Tara to help with the environment, I had an extraordinary experience that introduced the God - he had rather been left out. In vision I found myself at night down in our Temple of Isis. A male Being appeared, made of crystallized white light. They always seem to be very powerful, this light, it's more like a power-flow they all have. He radiated Divine youth and happiness and love, really lovely, extraordinary. They always seem to be much, on a quicker vibration to us, very speedy vibration. So extreme that I experienced it in two locations in full consciousness - in the Temple Chapel of Healing and at the same time, in my earthly body, lying in bed. I was given the name of the being - Michael. The Archangel Michael. Or Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. And I was fascinated, he had the power of cloning himself, producing a whole order of beings around him.

© photo Minette Quick

From then on, this curious lightning flash of Isis became part of our initiations. I'd received a vision of Dana and through her FOI Druid Clan of Dana, she awakened the heart chakra, blissful love and happiness, a warm glow within. And how can you live without love? This was different from the lightning flash - it's a golden glow that awakens in your whole body. So therefore I think that however high we aim at getting high spiritual beings, without grounding, without earth, without warm kindly love for individuals, not some vague ideal, is necessary.

A slightly different version of this Reflection may be found here: Listen on YouTube