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members. Out of the strife Cosmic Awareness
Communications, which had the strongest
links to the earliest group, emerged the
strongest. Based in Olympia, Washington, it
survives today and maintains a sometimes
controversial presence on the New Age scene.
Its head, Paul Shockley, continues to channel
teachings from Awareness. His organization
characterizes Awareness as “the Force that
expressed Itself through Jesus of Nazareth, the
Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed and other
great avatars who served as ‘Channels’ for
what is commonly known as ‘God,’ and
which expresses Itself once again as the world
begins to enter the New Age of spiritual consciousness
and awareness” (“Cosmic Awareness
Communications,” 1994).
Awareness teaches that the United States of
America came into being through intervention
with the Founding Fathers. The motive
was to allow personal freedom, which would
accelerate the process of change through
which human beings must go to be reunited
with Awareness. The result will be a “United
States of Awareness, where entities no longer
feel trapped by the physical plane, but may realize
their true identity as being cosmic beings
of life, light and energy” (“Cosmic Awareness
Introduces Itself,” n.d.).
Further Reading
“Cosmic Aw a reness Communications,” 1994. http://
n e t . i n f o. n l / c o s m i c . h t m l
“Cosmic Awareness Introduces Itself to the World,”
n.d. http://www.transactual.com/cac/intro.html
Melton, J. Go rdon, 1996. En c yclopedia of Am e r i -
can Re l i g i o n s . Fifth edition. De t roit, MI: Ga l e
Re s e a rc h .
Cottingley fairies
The Cottingley fairies came into being in
1917 as images on photographs produced by
two Yorkshire girls, Frances Griffiths, ten, and
her cousin Elsie Wright, thirteen. The incident
began as a childish trick to settle a score
with adult authority figures but ended as one
of the more bizarre episodes in the history of
both photography and occultism. It would
take six decades for the truth to emerge.
Cottingley fairies 73
Frances and her mother and Elsie and her
parents shared a house in Cottingley, near
Bradford, Yorkshire, while Frances’s father
served in World War I. When Frances fell into
a brook, one day, and came home soaking
wet, she explained that the mishap had occurred
while she was playing with the fairies
who lived there. She was punished anyway.
Offended at her friend’s treatment, Elsie suggested
that they borrow her father’s camera,
take pictures of fairies, persuade their parents
of the fairies’ authenticity, then later announce
that they were fake. They would then
clinch their case by reminding their parents
that the adults had lied to them about Father
Christmas.
Knowing nothing of the scheme, of course,
Arthur Wright loaned his daughter his camera
and provided her with a single plate. An hour
later the girls returned from the brook and
told Wright that they had photographed a
fairy. He did not believe them, but when he
developed the picture, he saw four tiny,
winged women in front of Frances. The figures
looked like paper cutouts, but the skeptical
elders could not extract an admission from
the children. A month later, a reluctant
Wright gave Elsie access to the camera once
more. The result was a second picture, this
one of a gnome whom Elsie appeared to be
inviting to jump into her lap. Annoyed at
what he took to be a continuing joke, Wright
kept the camera out of his daughter’s hands
thereafter.
That would have been that; however, in
1920, Polly Wright, Elsie’s mother, attended a
lecture on fairy lore. Afterward, she brought
up the photographs to the speaker, who immediately
asked if he could see prints. These
prints soon found their way into the hands of
Theosophist Edward Gardner, a believer in
fairies. The Wrights provided him with copies
of the originals, which Gardner showed to an
acquaintance knowledgeable in photography.
The expert stated, guardedly, that he could see
no evidence of fraud. Excited, Gardner discussed
the pictures in a lecture that May, and
soon Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the revered au-