Introducing Lee

In June of 1996, the Findhorn Foundation, an international spiritual center and community in the north of Scotland, hosted a major week-long conference on Magic and the Western Esoteric Tradition. It took place over the summer solstice which inspired the creation of a ritual to celebrate this moment of passage in the year's calendar when the longest day gives way to the progression that will lead to the longest night six months later. This celebration was no small undertaking. Given the presence of a host of trained ritualists and ceremonial magicians, it was certain that this event would be elaborate and well-staged.

The centerpiece of the celebration was a ritual combat between the God of Light and the God of Dark. The former was played by a friend of mine, William Bloom, who is one of Britain's most innovative and magical of spiritual teachers. The latter was played by a man who I didn't know but who could have been sent by some celestial Central Casting for the part. Dressed in black with black hair and beard and piercing dark brown eyes, this gentleman looked for all the world like some chthonic figure who had emerged from the depths. He seemed to emanate power as he moved gracefully through the dance of the ritual combat. I was impressed and wondered who he was. When I asked one of the organizers, I was told simply that he was Dr, Lee Irwin, a professor from Charleston, South Carolina.

The next day, for reasons I no longer remember, there was a shuffling of accommodation among the conference speakers. To my delight, I found myself sharing one of the community's bungalows with the Lee and his lovely wife, Cathy. That evening, discovering that we had a number of interests in common, we talked late into the night, sharing stories of inner world contacts and adventures.

Out of that fortunate shift of accommodations has come a friendship I have treasured for many years now. Our long acquaintance has only confirmed for me the sense of power and depth I felt with Lee when I first saw him draw the Dark God into our midst that Solstice night. Not that there is anything "dark" or negative about him. He is unquestionably one of the most compassionate, loving, light-filled people I've had the privilege of meeting. But he is also someone deeply at home in the vastness of our many-cornered reality, a true shamanic visionary and adept, intimately familiar with many of the forces that go into creating the world we know—as well as the world we only suspect or see just out of the corner of our eyes.

Indeed, I think of Lee as an esoteric and shamanic Indiana Jones, lacking only a hat and whip, either of which I'm sure he could come up with if necessary. And like George Lucas's fabled character, Lee is also an outstanding scholar and popular teacher, in this case of religion and spirituality, particularly in the area of the comparative religions of the Native North Americans. In that role, he is currently the chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at College of Charleston.

Lee listens more than he speaks. But when he does get to talking, my gosh, what stories he can spin. My favorite concerns a time when he was working one night in his study, thinking and envisioning about the Pawnee tradition of putting sacred meteorites in their medicine bundles. The next morning, he stepped out of his house and discovered that a small meteorite had landed during the night right in front of the steps leading up to the house.

Synchronicities and magical happenings like this seem to follow Lee the way cats follow fish. It is the mark of a man deeply integrated with his world.

--From David's foreward to Lee Irwin's Alchemy of Soul: The Art of Spiritual Transformation.