The Finger And The Moon

Unavail­able for a quar­ter of a cen­tury and long sought-after by the author’s many enthu­si­as­tic read­ers, The Fin­ger and the Moon was orig­i­nally con­ceived as non-fiction, and is the only novel to date writ­ten by lead­ing Arthurian scholar and Glas­ton­bury res­i­dent Geof­frey Ashe.

ISBN 0–9649553-2–6, 304pp, 5.5 x 8.5 in, soft­cover
SRP: UK £12.99, US $19.95, CAN $26.50
Pub­li­ca­tion date: June 21, 2004

How to buy this book

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Note that this title is a Print On Demand book. As a result, dis­trib­u­tors may show stock lev­els as zero. This does not mean that the book is not avail­able! Con­tact us if you have any dif­fi­culty obtain­ing copies.

The Fin­ger and the Moon

“Do what you will – but be very sure you will it” is the motto over the entrance to All­hal­lows, a col­lege of magic and mys­tery set deep in the Eng­lish coun­try­side, in the shadow of leg­endary Glas­ton­bury Tor. Here, under the guid­ance of for­mer psy­chol­o­gist Mar­tin Ellis, peo­ple come from all walks of life to study – what, exactly? – and leave with their lives deeply changed.

Free­lance jour­nal­ist Geof­frey is deter­mined to find out what is going on at All­hal­lows, and what makes Ellis – and his grad­u­ates – tick. But from his first moments in the time­less atmos­phere of the Geor­gian man­sion, the gar­den with its strange sculp­tures, the mys­te­ri­ous tem­ple and the enig­matic maze, he feels sure that the answers to his ques­tions will not come eas­ily. To reach his goal, he will need a great deal more than the­o­ries on magic and mys­ti­cism: he will need to expe­ri­ence these ancient forces and tra­di­tions him­self — a process that will lay bare his soul, cul­mi­nat­ing in a mind-expanding vision from the very heart of the leg­end of King Arthur and the Mat­ter of Britain. It’s an expe­ri­ence not to be missed.

Unavail­able for a quar­ter of a cen­tury and long sought-after by the author’s many enthu­si­as­tic read­ers, The Fin­ger and the Moon was orig­i­nally con­ceived as non-fiction, and is the only novel to date writ­ten by lead­ing Arthurian scholar and Glas­ton­bury res­i­dent Geof­frey Ashe.

This new edi­tion includes a specially-written intro­duc­tion and exten­sive anno­ta­tions by the author — unusual in a work of fic­tion. These new ele­ments answer many ques­tions and bring a new per­spec­tive to the book’s pow­er­ful themes of magic and the nature of human­ity, plac­ing them in con­text with the author’s other works.

Cover by Jan Billings. Designed by Richard Elen.

Reviews

Excerpts from reviews of ear­lier editions

‘An unusu­ally intel­li­gent story’ — Oxford Mail

‘Bizarre, excit­ing, sin­is­ter, with mag­i­cal hap­pen­ings galore… Mr Ashe’s author­i­ta­tive touch lends cre­dence to much that this dra­matic and shiv­ery story implies’ — The Scots­man

‘A haunt­ingly mem­o­rable achieve­ment… and all the more so because Mr Ashe sees clearly, and states at every point, the case for the oppo­si­tion’ — Times Lit­er­ary Supplement

‘A strik­ingly impres­sive vision’ — The Econ­o­mist

About Geof­frey Ashe

Geof­frey Ashe is widely regarded as the world’s lead­ing expert on ancient mys­ter­ies and mythol­ogy in gen­eral, and the Arthurian Leg­ends and the Mat­ter of Britain in particular.

Author of two dozen books on these and other sub­jects, and con­trib­u­tor to a num­ber of learned jour­nals over a period of many years, Geof­frey Ashe has held vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor­ships at sev­eral uni­ver­si­ties in the United States. He also lec­tures exten­sively on both sides of the Atlantic and is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor and advi­sor to tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries and series on King Arthur and British his­tory and legend.

In the mid-Sixties, Geof­frey Ashe co-founded the Camelot Research Com­mit­tee, which was respon­si­ble for the exca­va­tion of Cad­bury Cas­tle in Som­er­set, one of sev­eral loca­tions to have a rea­son­able claim to being the site of King Arthur’s Camelot. He was also involved in exca­va­tions on Glas­ton­bury Tor.