Allen Chester's Art - Templar Tarot Deck

With the kind of synchronistic timing students of the metaphysical love, the New Moon in Scorpio, the astrological sign ruling communication with "the other side," clocked in around 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 9, just before two separate events at the Oceanfront got underway with the shared theme of channeled information.

At the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) it was a talk by Kevin Ryerson, a West Coast-based psychic reader who, while having professional credentials long and deep, is probably best known for the prominent role he played in actress Shirley Maclaine's spiritual quest, documented in her book and subsequent film, Out on a Limb.

Further down, on Laskin Rd., the Heritage Center opened an exhibit by Poquoson painter Allen Chester, featuring a number of original oils he created for his energetic and dramatic Templar Tarot deck, whose subjects and images, he believes, come through him from a spiritual source he identifies with the medieval Knights Templar.

Both Ryerson and Chester are channels, though Chester leaves it to his wife Cathy to say so of him.

For a channel, the barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds is not the solid obstruction it is for most of us but a thinly veiled portal through which conversations are held and information exchanged between our dimension of existence and another.

And while Ryerson goes into a self-induced trance, after which one of several entities he's channeled over the years "comes through," Chester accesses late-night heavy metal on the Internet to help stimulate "a spiritual force" which seems to guide his brush.

Ryerson regularly channels a personality known as Atun-Re, who spoke to the overflow crowd at the A.R.E. about states of consciousness in the daily life of Egypt in the 14th century B.C., when he and "the instrument," as he calls Ryerson, became friends.

Chester paints figures, images and symbols which, he's been told-and has since verified through his own research-reflect what might have been the secret doctrine of the Knights Templar, an austere Catholic order of European nobles whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Lands in the era of the Crusades.

The Templars were eventually charged with heresy and, with the blessing of Pope Clement V, arrested under orders from French King Philip IV on Friday, Oct. 13, 1307 (the origin of "unlucky" Friday the 13th). Following gruesome torture to extract confessions, they were methodically eliminated.

Yet it has long been suspected that the Templar heresy was in reality a version of an ancient esoteric tradition whose teachings contradict official orthodoxy, but were preserved for centuries within certain sects in the sophisticated, multi-cultural and spiritually fertile mid-east.

These teachings, an integration of nature with the divine in a drama of evolving cosmic consciousness in which all beings participate, are the substance of Chester's art. That he has embodied them in Tarot cards he calls Templar Art may be a stretch for scholars, but both he

and wife Cathy speculate that his Tarot deck may represent the Templar heresy recovered from Time's subconscious archive, with the artist serving as a conduit to restore them to canvas.

If that seems far out, imagine Ryerson, a casual, good-humored, beefy Californian, who, after a few neck rolls for relaxation, abruptly breaks into a foreign accent to explain how, in his Egypt of 1350 BC, matter was "plasma-like" rather than rigid and could be regenerated "so

time, space, and consciousness become one" in what amounts, for example, to a regeneration of the body.

Ryerson's message, a broad synthesis of traditions, he says, which include his own channeling, the Edgar Cayce readings, Buddhism, Native American prophesy, and modern psychology and parapsychology, is upbeat and hopeful, informed by what he calls "spiritual intelligence" rather than a fear-based crisis intelligence engendered by the nightly news.

He aligns himself with 55 million American "cultural creatives," who, he theorizes, "maintain the peace" against the world's reactionary forces "until the next big wave of consciousness in 2012."

Then, he predicts, green alternatives will go mainstream, and "a new heaven and new earth" will unfold, powered by renewable energy technology and marked by the eradication of war, illness and malnutrition, a doubling of longevity from mid-20th century averages, and discoveries of new resources, like fresh-water lakes under the African deserts.

All this will happen as altered states like those he enters for channeling become common, as people increasingly learn "to ask the right questions" of themselves-and to meditate for the answers.

Meditation is the key to Chester's process, as well. He says he paints from a meditative state, rather than attempting to control his images from his conscious ego.

Setting the ego aside to allow the flow of life to express itself directly, without conscious editing-which is the purpose of meditation-is, for both men, the door to altered states where creative solutions to our difficulties, personal and cultural, may, with patience and regular practice, be revealed.

People should emulate Leonardo da Vinci, says Ryerson, and take meditation breaks (instead of coffee breaks) every four hours.

That might not be practical for Chester, who has worked for 27 years as a Navy design engineer. He paints at night, looking forward, at 50, to when he can retire and paint full time.

Even so, he has assembled an impressively large body of work over the years, both before and after his Templar Tarot, which he began in 1996 and published in late 2001, but with 79 cards instead of the standard 78.

That addition happened when his spiritual muse prompted him just before his publication deadline to add an extra card-a dancing, winged youth deeply absorbed in playing a flute. Chester now believes that card represents a higher spiritual octave of the familiar Tarot Fool

and is the first in a new series he's been working on since as he envisions expanding the Tarot with 22 new cards depicting each of the Tarot trumps-the standard figures of the Major Arcana-at a higher level of consciousness.

That deck will have 100 cards, upgrading Tarot for a new age with an expanded series of divinatory keys which are also symbolic repositories for the study of timeless metaphysical truths.

The Templar Deck, with an explanatory booklet by former Smithfield resident Daria Kelleher, is available online or in many metaphysical bookstores. Chester's paintings will be on exhibit at the Heritage Center, 314 Laskin Rd., through Nov. 30. To view samples of his art, visit his website, www.allenchester.com.