Charles Upton is a poet, social critic, and lifelong student of traditional metaphysics and comparative religion, as well as a veteran of the counterculture of the 60's and 70's. In the 80's he participated in the sanctuary movement for Central American refugees, and also spent two years in the 90's working with Marin County's homeless. Around this time he discovered the metaphysics of the "traditionalist school," where some of the teachings reflect that the erosion of the energy barrier between the material plane and the world of psychic forces could signal the end of times.