Meeting the Ascended Masters

I encountered the "Saint Germain" mythos while working at the New Age bookstore in Cambridge, Mass, "Sky Light Books." The bookstore carried a series of tiny books, printed in purple ink with green covers, written by "Godfre Ray King." They were visionary literature of the kind I have been discussing: descriptions of heavenly worlds and beings of color and light. "Godfre Ray King" was the pseudonym of Guy Ballard, a mining engineer near Mount Shasta in California who had founded an esoteric group devoted to the "Ascended Masters" who lived in or above Mount Shasta. The group was kept going by his wife Edna, and part of it morphed into the much weirder "Church Universal and Triumphant," once headed by the now-ascended "Elizabeth Clare Prophet." None of these groups have a connection with "Unarius," the UFO contact group I mentioned in an earlier post.

The little green books were a rich source of illustration ideas. The writer describes the ascended realms in lavish detail, from palatial interiors filled with gold and diamonds (and cosmic-industrial descriptions from the mining engineer) to crystal chambers filled with flames, rainbow energies, fountains of light, and celestial music. He meets Ascended Beings clothed in radiant garments of light, all of them golden-haired and very tall. His guide in all these journeys is the Master Saint Germain, a legendary "immortal" alchemist and adventurer who has been the subject of many a novel or conspiracy theory.

This picture combines my own imagination and the Saint Germain mythos. In the image, the narrator (on the right) is introduced to the Ascended Master Royal Family by Saint Germain (in the blue cape). The family has two parents and five offspring, thus making seven colors of the traditional rainbow. I've dressed them in what might be called "Hollywood Byzantine." I made up the Royal Family, but it is similar to other groups that Ballard/Ray King describes in his visionary narratives.

I haven't done pictures like this for a long time. They don't make visionary religion like they used to. The mainstream religions are all embarrassed by this kind of stuff, let alone the visions of the Bible such as Ezekiel's or the Revelation. The rational, progressive, philosophical types won't touch it. I really miss it.

"The Ascended Master Royal Family" is watercolor and ink on illustration board, 11" x 14", December 1987.