Among the ancient stones, under the sun-lit trees, the Underworld Gods Stir

Along with traces of human spectres, there are greater powers haunting the city of Deva; the Underworld Gods, the Gods of darkness and of death can be sensed among the ancient stones, under the sun-lit trees.

Welcome to the teachings of Sir Swithin Swift. These are the words of an enlightened man. I gained liberation after I left my native Albion to follow in the footsteps of my maternal Uncle to India. Many years later, once my true, divine nature had been realised, the Blessed Powers guided me back to the land of my birth. My awakened spirit was now sensitive to the ancient Gods of this land and they communed with me, as they once communed with my uncle before me. They revealed a path to enlightenment that can be trod on these shores. In these teachings I set forth this path to spiritual awakening as revealed to me by the Gods of ancient Britain.

I did not realise at the time the greater purpose on which I had embarked. I believed I had returned to Albion to more effectively commit the adventures of my maternal uncle to paper; it was the tales of his experiences which had made awoken the spiritual instinct within me. His tales of séances, of exploring haunted downs, of laying spectres in ancient ruins that directed the course of my life. I wished to preserve such tales for posterity; I did not realise that I was fated to effectively re-live them.

Whilst I had made significant progress on the draft of such a book, there were areas of shadow over the sequence of events recounted by my ancestor. Also, whenever discoursing on the narrative with others, there was much contempt directed at my insistence upon its veracity. As a result, I decided to visit the West Country setting of his greatest adventure and find the Sunset Downs and their antique hill carving for myself. (See previous posts or find ‘Binder of Bone, Keeper of Corn’ on Amazon, ed.)

You will not find the name ‘the Sunset Downs’, or indeed any of the other locations from my uncle’s narrative on a map. The names of such places have either changed or equally likely, my uncle used poetic names that conveyed something of a place’s symbolic meaning whenever he discussed them. Last summer therefore, trusting to the Blessed Powers to guide me, I bade farewell to what acquaintances I had not yet alienated and as the moon of July waned, set off for the South-West of England.

Being deprived of any form of physical transportation, I decided to call upon the generosity of fellow road users. This alas, proved to be rather optimistic as the majority of cars sweeping along Bayswater road toward the motorway either ignored me or beeped derisively. I have since learnt that if one seeks to hitch around England, avoid the motorway (it draws the wrong sort) focus instead upon the A roads. One finds oneself in the company of a better class of person and even if one does not arrive where one intended, the destinations are more varied and interesting.

I was picked up eventually by a lorry driver. He was Eastern European, very Catholic and decidedly garrulous, despite his poor grasp of English. Never one to permit others to remain trapped under their delusions, I sought to converse as best I could. Some of my meaning must have become clear as my challenge to his orthodox religious views angered him greatly. I fear we would have come to blows, or I received a beating if he had not bee required to keep his hands upon the wheel and we had not been trailed by a police car. However, my lift was curtailed when he dropped me at the bottom of a slip-road close to the city of Chester.

A heavy rain descended whilst I was on a bus into the city itself and I alighted as the sun happily broke through the clouds once more, gilding the slate roofs, tarmac roads and gutters and the sandstone walls rearing before me, Chester, or Deva as it was known, girdled by sandstone walls and with a vein of flowing water at its side, is soaked with spirits.

Whilst I would never wish to be too technical, it would appear that spiritual residues might linger around water and where it seeps into stone, these ghostly traces may linger. I was to find in this city, that along with traces of human spectres, greater powers, those of the Underworld Gods, the Gods of darkness and of death lingered too.

My first hint that such powers might be at work came whilst I was at the cities’ cathedral. This compact church may not inspire the awe that the larger structures of York, Durham or Liverpool might awaken, however the surrounding lime trees appear to cup its gloomy base in leaves that flutter in and out of the sun’s piercing gold. The exterior carvings around the shadowed base reward inspection. Shut out from the holy interior of the church, facing the world, the hunched figures, leaning and leering out toward the viewer depict the pain and suffering of corporeal life as well as its vices. The demonic curving horns, the perched hooves, wrinkled snouts, the manes billowing in a wind, all seem at home in the lower reaches of the Cathedral, where, like the lower reaches of the human soul, they writhing in their own pool of gloom. Above the ethereal weave of the sun-rich trees, the ornate spires and tower transcend this lower world, reaching toward the sun. Even a ‘heathen’ such as I can appreciate the symbolic power of this imagery. The inner sanctuary of the church signifies the enlightened consciousness, selflessly immune to the pride and folly of the world, towering toward the inner sun of Absolute Reality of the Gods, the Empyrean itself.

I did not go into the church – the charge levied I found prohibitive – instead, I sat in the lotus position in a quiet corner beneath an image of a demonic centaur. I passed into deep meditation, picturing my former vices and delusions. They appeared as external and alien to me as the gargoyles on the walls, whilst it seemed I was cupped within a sphere of light. The peace of none-attachment filled me. My mind was still, consciousness only that I elevated until the cathedral was below me. A being of light, ascended beyond the world, I focused my awareness, willing that this radiance should descend and touch those people who passed below.

Whilst drawing on the light of the inner sun, there came into my awareness a disturbance at the base of the building. Below the fluttering lime trees, there was a wave-like ripple across the stone. It seemed the lower part of the building shivered and dissolved. There was a definite movement within the walls like the contraction and spring of muscle below thick hide. There were several sounds, including a sudden clatter and a heavy thud followed by a fleshy dragging.

At this point my mind drew back to waking consciousness and I returned to my body in the shade as a breeze flurried rubbish across the lawns of the churchyard.

The Path to the Ancient Gods of Albion

Ghosts are a national treasure and they should be honoured and preserved as such, to explore the ghost-lore of Albion is to embark on the path toward its ancient Gods.

Welcome to the teachings of Sir Swithin Swift. These are the words of an enlightened man. I gained liberation after I left my native Albion to follow in the footsteps of my maternal Uncle to India. Once my true, divine nature had been realised, the Blessed Powers guided me back to the land of my birth. My awakened spirit was now sensitive to the ancient Gods of this land and they communed with me, as they communed with my uncle before me. They revealed to me, a path to enlightenment that can be trod on these shores. In these teachings I set forth the path to spiritual awakening as revealed to me by the Gods of ancient Britain.

My previous posts recounted my work on the haunting at the Magazines hotel. Unseen and none- human forces acting upon the hostelry, awoke a visionary world within my imagination. In confronting the darkness and in invoking the aid of protective deities (whom I shall discuss below), I employed instinctively the subtle energy centres known to Eastern thought as the chakras. Indeed the symbolism of a chakra – that of Svadisthana - was actually projected into my consciousness as I struggled against the blank pull of the darkness.

If any reader is unfamiliar with the term Chakra: they are subtle or spiritual centres vibrating within and beyond the human frame. They rise from the base of the spine to the crown of one’s head. The powerful, spiritual energy known as the Kundalini, or the Shakti – the divine presence of Mother Nature within the living – rises up the chakras, its ascent liberating our true, divine self from the clutches of the ego.

Should any seek to awaken their chakras and one should always approach any such exercises with care, ‘shutting down’ or reversing any powers that one has conjured, one should imagine a light ascending up one’s spine or down into one’s skull. One could, for example, meditate upon a star in the night sky and then imagine its light beaming into one’s head and slowly moving down through one’s body; alternatively one could visualise a ‘serpent of light’ uncoiling among the roots and rising up a tree in full leaf, until it passes into the sky above.

Your teacher, dear student, prefers to imagine a robed lady, embodying the spiritual nature of Mother Nature, the Celestial Mother Herself, also known as Lady Wisdom, stood over a bowl on a stone plinth, holding a staff that is speared with light. The light from the staff passes down through one’s body and as it rises again, the bowl emits a growing radiance, which draws one’s consciousness up into a communion with the vast, egoless, ‘none-self’.

An enlightened practicinor such as myself can instinctively awaken the chakras, as happened in the haunted inn. There were two levels of haunting at the ‘Mags’: residual traces of people who had dwelt at the inn or in the surrounding area and a presence that lurked on a deeper, pre-human level. It was this latter presence, like a deep stratum of rock beneath the soil and on which later accumulations rested, that I overcame. It was this presence which attuned me to the mythic, archetypal nature of my experiences.

In short, in exploring the ghost world, I encountered that of Albion’s Gods.

After investigating the inn I understood that whilst there (and in the house before it – see my previous teachings) I had communed with three distinct, divine or daemonic presences in the subtle realms. The first was female, whom I identified with both the Goddess Kali and the Shakti; She was an expression of the Goddess of death and destruction, the maw which crushes and rends, splinters and swallows, yet who will spark new life, energising the land without, releasing the spiritual energies within. It was the dark aspect of this being which allowed me to face the monstrosity that was the second of the Gods, while the energising aspect of the Goddess allowed me to transcend and conquer this second force. In both the house and the inn there was a presence in the darkness that grasped and bound the spirits of the living. It could be perceived by the sensitive as a debilitating, depressive force and I identified this as an aspect of Saturn, the overthrown God of the Latin peoples. Whilst seeking to grasp and merge the spirit into its own presence, there was also a dual aspect of this deity; just as Saturn was the lord of the Golden Age, the father of Jupiter, grand-sire to Apollo, so this presence was equally dual-natured. For once accepted, this ‘Saturn’ freed the true self, the soul within from the snares of the ego and in the following selfless abandon, the third deity could be apprehended. Once the urge to grasp at one’s mortal existence has been overcome, the enlightened mind perceives a profound, primordial light underlying all that is. My imagination personified this power as a moon goddess and I have called upon Her using the names of Sophia and also Minerva (of which I will reveal more in a future lesson). Indeed, the first Goddess I sketched can be thought of as aspects of the waning and the waxing moon respectively, the other, the full moon. What is key however, is that once free of the ego, the acolyte can encounter a profound blankness which feels like the cosmos is a veil behind and through which a rich luminesence radiates.

Raised, apparently in a rational age, any of you could be forgiven for asking if these Gods ‘real’. If so, are they derived from a particular pantheon. I offer no pantheon in these teachings, I simply document my own experiences on these shores, experiences which retuned and enriched my enlightenment. The gods are as real as they need to be and I aim to offer guidance and techniques which will assist the reader in attuning to the powers woven into the stones and hills, the woods and waters of the scared isle.

I should also add that whilst I have employed my own Hindu frame of reference in these posts, I have encountered specifically British faces of the Absolute and as a result I wish to employ epithets that are native, or at least European. This is not because I wish to denigrate the beliefs of the East, far from it, Hinduism was my teacher and I would recommend Hinduism for all. Many however, will not be comfortable with the deities of a different culture and the Gods themselves should be allowed a diverse range of habitats in which they can dwell, thus I will hence forth refer to the Gods using general epithets.

Before I conclude this teaching, I should address the ghostly traces of humans at the inn. As with the house before, I liberated the celestial fire of each which remained. I did not exorcise them or banish them or anything like that. Ghosts are a national treasure and they should be honoured and preserved as such. Having since returned to the ‘Mags’, I can confirm that there remains a residue of these spirits. Those with the gift may be able to sense them, however that which was of the Divine has returned to its true home.

Adrift on the Silent, Ethereal Waters of the Seas Beyond

I carry darkness within me. It is the shadow of my former sins and cravings, a shadow magnified by the presence of something other...

Welcome to the teachings of Sir Swithin Swift, I am a man who found enlightenment in India and returned to share this blissful liberation with Albion’s children. Any who are new to these teachings should consult my previous posts which form an account of an investigation into a haunted house, carried out by this author and some assistants in a Northern English town during the summer 2010.

The night following the haunting in the cellar (and my subsequent banishment from the pub) I was sat on a piece of grass adjoining the promenade just below the Magazines. The waning moon was in the sky and all was quiet, even across the river where the scrap-yards can often be heard. I was deep in Sabikalpa Samadhi (an egoless trance where the divine within is realised) when the radiance of this egoless state was shadowed as if by a cloud. I envisioned the walls of the inn above me parting and a hunched, old man emerge from them. He was clad in an apron, a plain shirt and breeches of a bygone age and he manifested before me, holding a lit candle. I recognised something in his features as ‘Ciaran’, the spectre who had looked from the sunlight windows of the inn, although there was no trace of anxiety in the features of this apparition.

He introduced himself as the ‘Keeper of the Casks’ and beckoned me inward. Before his little light, the hillside opened and I passed through a dank passage into the cellar of the inn again. The cave-like space with its metallic casks in rows opened before me and the Keeper of the Casks muttered a barely audible line, which I think was, ‘darkness drawn down, light passed back up.’

As he spoke a stream of ideas flowed through my mind; initially I was conscious of the traces of yeast fermenting in the casks – it was like I heard the soft pop and fizz of fecund waters. This impression was blanketed under a sudden sense that the dark presence I had encountered was manifesting around me. I could feel the ghostly presences trapped within it, like a hand feels the water within a sponge.

At that moment, bodies resting and rotting slowly in caskets rose into apprehension followed by the image of a boat where many bagged bodies rested in the hold around which the waves slapped and sighed. Then, like a dial switched on a radio, I conceived of a wooden cask, from which all was released; at once a sudden flood cascaded into the bright air, its exultant passage bubbling across the ocean’s swell, catching shards of sun until the bustle of the westerly breeze cast it up and chased it inland through wood, over field, tearing at fences, streaming through the moaning hedge, to the high hills and the stars beyond where it spilled and settled still into the celestial bowl.

Thankfully I was released from this bewildering flood of ideas by an illumination which ascended around me. I was aware of the cellar, but it was as if I were propelled beyond it on motes of light shed from a molten sphere below me.

Borne on such wings, I rose until I beheld the estuary and the bay spreading beyond. The tangible world no longer chained my senses and the inner world was aligned with it. I beheld the crescent moon under which the sea had drawn back unveiling a titanic shape that heaved its bulbous folds onto the sand. The vestiges of the sun (though long departed in the physical realm) cast a molten bronze across the shallow waves and dead men surfaced the gilded waters to clamber about the quivering, flopping mass. And the idea that sodden flesh and moist scales reflected back the upper radiance tripped me beyond the visionary form that encountered such visions.

Again, there was a pair of crossed bones, above which, She danced; Her movement was as the passage of moonlight through scudding clouds and I departed myself completely for Her, the Goddess that sits among the skulls, the Goddess who garlands Herself with death, even as she unfolds new life through sinuous contortions. Every skull about Her sang, even the crossed bones whined, exuding the divine harmony of the Ohm, the Logos. I understood with perfect clarity how Her light inspired this sound and as it resonated through Her radiance, the universe arose, woven from light and words of love.

To behold all, my self included, as a fleeting flicker of light glowing around a note resonating from the divine harmony, was to pass into the Goddess Herself and commune with the Absolute, with Brahma beyond brahma, the Empyrean itself...

Emerging from this state of blissful self-abandon, I was stood upon the promenade and yet also hovered above it within a burnished sphere hung between the worlds. I was aware of the dank cellar, the dark inn and the sea lapping at the rocks on the shore of the tactile world. Whilst in the world of spirits, the Shakti still shone like a Queen of Heaven and Her consort, no longer a blank force that would drag all into its taut clasp, now uttered the song of creation. From the cellar, glistening shreds slipped from the darkness, out toward a large, single-sailed vessel where the sea monster had been; a shadow crew on this ship summoned the shades aboard and with the moon lowering into the west, they set sail on silent, ethereal waters out to the seas beyond.

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Whilst the minutiae of my day-to-day life are of little concern to my students, I should announce that alongside the funds raised from my ‘donation-only’ spiritualist evenings in a local hostelry, I have also begun to sell second-hand books! I sold two today, a copy of Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound and a guide to ‘Kiddie’ walks in Cheshire.