The history of the Cave Junction Project
It began with a search for Mary Cornelius’ autobiography, parts she had read to her ‘coterie’ over the years and at one time she wished to publish. She told me that she didn’t want to write about her time with Ouspensky, JG Bennett or Gurdjieff, (“let the men do that”) but about her time as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse during WWII, looking after children with head injuries from the bombings of London and elsewhere.
I was visiting friends in western Massachusetts near Camp Caravan, a JG Bennett enclave, where George Cornelius had travelled from Oregon after his wife, Mary’s death, in 1991. I had gone to see his former caregiver, Elizabeth St. Lawrence, to see if she had copies. At that time, well after George’s death, all his accumulated files had resided in her basement. She looked relieved-told me she was going to throw everything out—and to take what I wanted and gifted it all to me, along with a letter, giving me possession of them. I packed the entire contents into flat rate Post Office boxes and sent them to myself in Seattle.
That was over eight years ago and they have resided on my bedroom floor every since. I never found Mary’s autobiography, but luckily a mutual friend named John MacPherson had some earlier pages and I have been able to extract some of it—it is on the website.
A couple of years ago, I mentioned the cassettes to Robert Fripp and he encouraged me (due to their likely deterioration) to get them digitized—and help was provided by some of the Guitar Craft crew in Seattle. A special shout-out to the work day participants, Curt Golden, Jaxie Binder, Dorit Goodwin, Janette Rosebrook and Indi Finch, who helped catalogue them all—and to Steve Turnidge who has been my right-hand guy in digitizing the tapes, documents, and now the photographs. Also a shout out to Steffan Soule—the magic man—who helped set up the website—-and to all of you who donated to the GoFundMe to pay for all this overhead—and the domain name—and to keep it up and running. Thanks to all of you
Another round of kudu to Greg and June Loy, founders of the Gurdjieff Heritage Society, who gave me legal advice and encouragement—and told me to just get it up—that perhaps someone will have to sort it out in the future—but all this material needs preserving—those who were with Gurdjieff and spent their lives preserving his teaching and extending it (in ways both useful and sometimes, no so useful) are now mostly gone and it is up to us—the grandchildren of Gurdjieff (for whom the book was written) , to protect and further. Use as you will but please cite both the authors (if known) and this website. Further donations will go to paying for its permanence on the Web.