Asha - Calvary Hill (feat. Geza Kremnitzky) (2017)

Deep, deep, deep in my heart I know that there is divinity. As I child I had the instinct for it, but not the understanding, and so what organically developed was an unstoppable impulse to uncover the understanding that could match my faith. Understanding and faith are destined to find each other, like long lost lovers; they are destined to meet and marry. So the power and persuasion of this alchemical romance becomes a Grail adventure.

I made a vow… to never give up on this search. I am compelled to find my mystery lover (the truth about God), no matter what. Even if I lose everything. As I get ever closer, I hear her song. She is virtue.

My inner Grail journey begets my outer journey, and ten years ago this outer journey took me to the ancient kingdom of Hungary. A shepherdess came for me in the form of a muse, and I followed her… then she vanished! There is a Hungarian founding-fathers myth… ‘The Wonderdeer’… in which two princes pursue a magical deer into the forest, only for her to disappear. They became lost until one of them realised that far from being lost, they were actually home. And so Hungary was born. This is what I also feel is happening to me! My ‘Wonderdeer’ vanished, but not until I had found kindred spirits also pursuing this unique Grail path; fellow knights and angels of faith and understanding

The spiritual world is the magical world. It is the only reality, and everything else is illusion. In the material world amongst all the miracles of creation there exists also loss, transience, mortality, illness, fear, combat, competition, function, distraction, deceit and disappointment… many, many formidable serpents and dragons. In the spiritual world there is only goodness, beauty and truth, and these together constitute love and immortality. It ultimately comes down to a question of perception and choice. The magical world of love just IS… the question then arises as to whether we have sufficient faith to offer our whole heart to that, for if we do it will come to meet us.

In that place reality is painted in love, and this is the divinity that I knew of instinctively as a child. Faith and understanding are intertwined inner lovers… through them I believe in order to know, and I know in order to believe.

And so it came to be that I lived in the Buda hills in Hungary, and discovered Kálvária-hegy (Calvary hill) opposite my bedroom window. Now there are many ‘Calvary hills’ all over Europe, the America’s and Australasia, but this one has a particular power that drew me in. It looks over the village of Solymár, just outside the city limits, where my shape-shifting muse and many of my fellow Grail knights and angels live. Up there I feel a coherence, clarity and rare inspiration which brings song after song, all spiritually inspired. Somehow the earth and the sky conjure up a portal of revelation. I feel the presence of angels, as the millions of Knight butterflies flit and flutter, and the unseen world becomes startlingly visible, as if in a spell. Innocence and transparency acquire a virtue not readily understood in the ordinary world, and themselves become keys to the Grail castle.

I spent all summer up there, composing, filming, meditating and communing, and “Calvary Hill” emerged as a collection of treasured songs for me, containing all my newly-discovered Grail secrets. In Hungary there is also a folk-duo called Hungarikum Együttes who’s courtly, chivalric brand of timeless medieval folk songs tinged with blues, completely captivates me. It is Grail music, where Atlantean Celt meets Occidental exoticism! I befriended them, and Géza plays mandolin, guitar, recorder and mouth-organ on “Calvary Hill”… something wonderful on each track!