Books by Geoffrey Ashe

Reveals how humanity's first advanced culture originated in the Altai-Baikal region of southern Siberia

When archaeologists dug up the hill of Cadbury in Somerset, the reputed site of King Arthur's Camelot, thousands of visitors came to watch. They never saw anything resembling the Camelot of romance. Yet they kept coming, year after year.Why does Arthur fascinate? In this book, the secretary of the Cadbury project (himself an authority on the legend) looks for an answer. Drawing on varied researches, and on the insight embodied in William Blake's symbol of the shadowy 'Giant Albion' behind Arthur, he plunges into the psychological depths that underlie the tale of the enchanted King, his city Camelot, his mysterious departure to Avalon, his promised return.The enquiry starts from the solid facts of Cadbury. But it opens vistas on a strange world of gods and mortals and immemorial yearnings. The same universal dream that created the legendary Arthur is shown reappearing through many centuries, inspiring many thinkers: Blake himself; Virgil, Confucius, Rousseau, Gandhi; even such supposed rationalists as Robert Owen and Lenin.All the paths converge on a central problem of the human condition, which, the author suggests, must be solved if mankind is to achieve a workable humanist philosophy. It turns out that Arthur remains startlingly relevant: that the prophecy of his return has a serious meaning.

DISCOVERING THE GODDESS A personal account of the new movement of the Goddess by one of the most highly repested authors on religion and paganism in Britain, Geoffrey Ashe. EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK: At Portland State University, Oregon, I give a summer course as a visiting professor, on Goddess myth and history and its implications. When I launched it in 1990 it was, to the best of my knowledge, the only course of its kind at any such institution. Possibly it still is. Looking back over the involvement that has led me to it, I realize that this has been very long and rather curious, and that it sheds light on one or two little-publicized factors in the Goddess movement. Since the movement seems to have to stay, I think the story worth telling. I have never told it in print before. It begins in the 1940s when I was an incipient writer, hardly beyond the stage of doing the odd book-review. My first original piece with any substance was an article on Robert Graves¿s historical novels, which enthralled me, especially I, Claudius and Claudius the God. My article was published in Tribune, then a serious weekly of which Orwell had lately been literary editor. The BBC made use of it. I sent a copy to Graves in Majorca. He replied with an extraordinary letter, running back and forth and up and down on one flimsy sheet of paper. The article, he said, was the first study of his novels that anybody had written. Among several abrupt questions and unconnected remarks, he mentioned an impending new book of his, based, he told me, on a complicated Welsh riddle. I could make nothing of his account of this. When it appeared, it turned out to be The White Goddess. It was ahead of its time. As is well known, Graves¿s usual publishers turned it down. But the book came into its own in the Goddess revival, which it helped to inspire.

Unavailable for a quarter of a century and long sought-after by the author's many enthusiastic readers, "The Finger and the Moon" was originally conceived as non-fiction, and is the only novel to date written by leading Arthurian scholar and Glastonbury resident Ashe.

A definitive, factual, A-Z reference guide offering a global perspective on the role of prophecy in world history, religion, folklore, and literature.

Arthurian expert Geoffrey Ashe presents an investigation into the legend of King Arthur that broke the deadlock that earlier research had reached and gave Arthur a firmer status in history.