Under Hoof, Above Horn, Below Root Beyond Branch (to release the inner light...)

A flaccid sheet of flesh, once the hide of a large, hoofed animal, had risen from the water and supporting a mass of twigs and rushes and other river debris that had taken on a vaguely human form, shuddered toward me.

Welcome to the teachings of Sir Swithin Swift.

My words are the words of an enlightened man. I gained my liberation after leaving my native Albion to follow in the footsteps of my maternal Uncle to India. Many years later, once the true, divine nature of us all 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 these deities communed with me, as they 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.<p>


(Meditating at the Cathedral in the Roman city of Chester, I awoke a latent demonic presence. At the time I did not know if this was a projection from my own psyche or if it was an external presence. Taking the form of one of the gargoyles carved onto the Cathedral wall, it pursued me across the river to the Groves, where a shrine to Minerva stands.)

Sitting within a circle of woven willow boughs, and with a mind stilled by meditation, I was compelled to take a pebble and inscribe upon it a leering face surrounded by a rough circle. Clutching the pebble in my hand, I repeated the devotions to Nature’s dark face. Again, I let my body go unto that Goddess, the Mighty Mother who will hungrily receive my flesh, twisting and grinding it beneath Her mighty hand; who will wrench and break the skin, and scoop hungrily the moisture leaking from the body’s dark crannies. Willingly I gave myself to Her, returning the body which I had borrowed from the earth, picturing as I did so, the Goddess as the headless torso which issues blood from Her gaping neck.

I felt the heat and stink of her presence and sweat broke across my skin. I smelt incense offered in adoration and I imagined milk pouring into a bowl before Her.

I saw then a flood of water, its waves laced with the light of the moon; so vivid was this image that the river may have swollen up around my circle. Surfacing from these waters, I witnessed the rise of a smooth, mushroom-like dome which emerged as a human skull. I knew that She, the Mother of life and death looked from that apparition even before a fleshy, female body, rose beneath it.

There was no fear within me as I willed myself to that figure. I was islanded in silence and stillness as She regarded me from the skull and beckoned me to her slick bosom. I accepted the heavy hand that gripped my head and crushed it under the waves. The experience of water bursting up my nose, of feeling my face dragging in mud, of reeds trailing and clasping me in their slick hold did not set fear coursing through me; rather, I regained a sense that I sat still atop the rise, surrounded by water across which a glistening web of blood had gathered into a circle.

There was a moment of stillness, surrounded by water threaded with blood before the apparition broke into the vision, its hide sagging and swaying as the splintered hooves trod the waves; the rider had taken on the form of a slender, ashen-fleshed figure which leaned down into my view. Despite emerging from the waters of the river, the apparition seemed completely dry and exuded a piercing cold. I recall still the detachment with which I registered the dried eyes in the rider’s skull and the hole gnawed into its forehead. I recall the excitement which shivered through the being as the mount stepped across the circle of blood and also the instinctive certainty which seized me, prompting me to stand and as the shrivelled, ashen face drew toward me, I thrust the pebble onto the hole in its skull.

At that moment, my apprehension of the tangible world returned. I saw still the circle of blood, woven through the boughs of willow. I saw the visionary waters pass like shadows over the outcrop and the lime trees beyond. I was aware of birdsong breaking out in anticipation of the dawn. I felt waves streaming around my legs, felt my fingers scoop slopping mud and pull against the clinging sedge.

And with an utter detachment, I saw that I confronted a phantom of myself; that the rider and the mount were embodying my own pride, the animalistic lust for self-aggrandisement. A welter of images flashed before my eyes in which I saw myself, helping others and unaware of a residual desire for attention and power that lingered behind my actions. Willingly, I threw myself beneath this being and a triangle of fire, glowing like the morning sun, opened in my mind.

At the moment the hooves would have trampled my head I felt the hide fall around me, smothering me in its dry, cold folds and a large bird swooped through my awareness, passing into the triangle of sunlight. I saw myself follow in the creature’s wake and radiance received me, gathering me into its infinite expanse. I was divided between that state of total stillness and consciousness of my physical form which enclosed in the hide, tightened into a know of hard, horn-like flesh that began kneading at the earth, pushing down into the soil, to fan into a slow web of roots that spread and thickened. Around me, the hide swelled, as if muscle, spasming, tensing muscle, burst anew under the flesh to stretch upward, until I was enclosed in a sheath of bark, my interior jewelled by a rich damp awoken by the hot clasp of the sun.

I felt boughs rearing like horns over the ground and laden with a greenery that whispered back to the buried roots of the moon’s journey around the sky, of the promise of the fading stars and of the daybreak’s coming blaze. I heard a song, felt its thrill pass through the leaves until all was silent and still again against the world’s flood. Thus, horned and hooved, rooted and wind-stirred, star-crowned and earth-clasped, I stood among a host of beings that momentarily danced and leapt like flame until they shrivelled, dying into a darkness, from which a single figure grew: the Goddess as Nature. Exuding a pale sun-light, the Goddess who bears all, revealed Herself. She wore the sky was a robe, the greenery was woven into a mantle and waters spilled from Her upraised hand.

A profound peace came over me, along with awe and wonder at Her beauty and as my mind readjusted to the tangible world, I beheld Her still. I stood on the outcrop, among a circle of willow and other debris and she reared far above the other where the stone shrine was set. A garland of boughs and summer flowers appeared around Her and as She turned to the east, the vision faded, leaving only a light which radiated from the land and the water. With a heart made glad by the light which streamed from it, I crossed to that shrine. As the waters flooded and stretched into silence behind me, I raised an inward song of praise to the Goddess as Minerva, an expression of the wisdom of nature that frees us from our separate selves, awakening the primordial, ‘Mother Light’ within. Feeling a song well from the sky and earth around me, I felt was borne again across those rays into radiant eternity.

When my consciousness returned to my body, I perceived a heron rise and beat a passage downstream over water that received and smoothed the dawn light; and it was toward that mesh of light and dark that I flung the pebble, inscribed with the circle and the leering face, that I found still in my hand.

Amid a circle of willow, witnessing the rise of the drowned

The pool and spill of the river passes into a silent, sweeping flow and on the bank, amid a circle of willow boughs, I am woven into the ocean of light that sighs within the heart of nature.

Welcome to the teachings of Sir Swithin Swift. These are the words of an enlightened man. I gained my liberation after leaving my native Albion to follow in the footsteps of my maternal Uncle to India. Many years later, once the true, divine nature of us all 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 these deities 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.

The Dee is a holy river. Named after Deva, meaning of course Goddess, it is said that the river never keeps a body, a truth I can confirm although I found that it might keep the souls of those who had fallen asleep within its waters. There are considerably worse fates than to pass eternity within the court of a river Goddess!

Even as I proclaim such words, I am returned to my ‘birth in spirit’ in India, returned back to the shores of the sacred river where the Blessed Powers awoke the celestial fire within me even as they fired life back into dead matter.

The details of my enlightenment must wait for a future lesson.

Whilst visiting Deva (the city of Chester in the North of England)I had entered into deep meditation whilst at the Cathedral. In this state of Samadhi, I envisioned the animation of the demonic gargoyles carved around the building. This experience passed, although I was consciousness that I carried a stain impressed upon my psyche by my previous experiences that summer. (Wind you way through the previous ‘teachings’ for further details, ed./ acolyte)

It was whilst I slept rough on the city streets that I was woken by demonic apparitions approaching me. Fleeing out of the city, I crossed the river at the Handbridge, unsure of whether my own psyche enflamed residual traces of its past attachments, or if I was pursued by genuine spiritual entities and took refuge in the Groves where the Roman shrine to Minerva stands in situ.

It was as I crossed the bridge, that I became keenly aware of the water on the left hand side spilling over the weir to pool around the supports of the structure before sliding silently beyond. The rush on one side and the silence on the other became the refrain of the riverbank and once over the bridge, that hurtling plunge into apparent stillness, allowed me to regain something of my detachment from all phenomena. The Handbridge (as the single-lane, rather monumental bridge was named) hosted four antique lamps which provided the only light, other than the stars and waning crescent moon. The road and houses beyond the field were largely dark and the ancient funerary monuments which had once lined the roads out of Deva, the most ornate resembling houses devoted to the dead, may have stood still, spreading up the hill away from the city.

Now I had crossed the river, onto Edgar’s field (named after the medieval king who once camped there) it seemed that I had entered a place of stillness and silence and I felt ready to stop fleeing and confront the apparitions that pursued me. This space houses twin outcrops of sandstone, the one furthest away from the river hosting the shrine to the Goddess and I strode to that monument to pay my respects to the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare!

(The attribute of wisdom is derived from Her presidency over practical crafts – to devote oneself to a task takes one away from the worldy self and thus from the miserable prison of narcissism; as Goddess of warfare – she was the warriors’ Goddess - we can see Her speared and armoured form as an embodiment of the war against selfish indulgence, it is She who strikes the spark of the divine free from its clay casement.)

Once I had called inwardly upon the Goddess, I turned to the outcrop nearer to the river. This was thick with vegetation, particularly hawthorn, holly and nettles and once I had climbed it I stamped the nettles down and threw my plastic sheet over them.

A line of lime trees stood, rather like a shield, between the field and the river where willow and sycamore grow from the muddy bank. The leaves gently shivered and I heard in them the voice of the Goddess breathing reassurance through her sacred trees.

Before I sat and entered into meditation however, an inclination prompted me to gather assorted materials from across the outcrop and place them into a circle across the plastic. When I finally sat, it was among a circle of willow boughs, adorned with a shattered egg shell, gossamer threads and feathers. I had entered into a state of profound peace since crossing the river and the residual traces of my former self and its craven obsession with its personal existence had fallen away from me. As I sat in the lotus position, my composure was disturbed by an irritation with the cold in the night air and a rumble of hunger in my stomach.

These uncomfortable sensations presaged a resumption of the haunting.

On the bridge a light shimmered and I turned to see a slick web glistening through the air. It stretched and quivered like jellied, protean life swelling under the sun. I thought that it erupted, scattering pellets but a sudden disgust caused me to look away.

When I looked back, dark shreds of matter floated from the bridge, like shreds of rubbish and wisps of ashen paper cast on a breeze and their approach suggested that writhing shapes thrust themselves over the edge of the bridge before collapsing back into the night air.

‘My mind is expunging its debris, or perhaps I am assailed by the underworld,’ I recall saying to my self as water spilled on over the weir, pooled around the supports of the bridge and slid silently beyond.

Taking my cue from the ceaseless flow of the element and seated in the circle, I called upon the darker aspect of Mother Nature. I called upon the underworld Goddess, She who rends and tears, who takes Her young into Herself, who melts their fibres and hollows their bones and who, gorged on the mess, bears fresh life.

I offered my little life to Her and in my imagination I beheld the Goddess. She had impressed Herself upon me in my recent adventures and it was something approaching love that rose in me as She appeared within the circle as a headless torso. Her naked form swayed and staggered before me, blood splattering from Her severed stump, spraying from the arms that swung and thumped at Her sides. With the scattered spray veiling my face, I prostrated myself before this vision.

I saw jewels of blood fall across the plastic and alight upon the foliage and over them a blue mist gathered. I followed it ascending into a paler radiance overhead. The illumination intensified and on unseen wings, I rose from the realm of death, passing into the light that lies in the heart of Nature, away from the transient blooming and withering of the world to bewoven into a sighing, radiant ocean.

Within this abode of stillness, there was yet an awareness of the physical self sat amid the circle of willow, holly and stones and of the spill of the water over the weir and its silent glide beyond the pools at the supports.

I was drawn back from the silent detachment, when an impression grew of a grinding, creaking noise. I had not yet returned fully to my body when I became conscious of a break in the flow of the water at the lip of the weir. Water flooded around an object bobbing there until the gathered volume heaved it over. I grew aware that my body had stood and I looked through its eyes at a flaccid sheet that drifted under the bridge and was snagged on an islet close to the shore. It appeared to be a hide that was held, the waves winging beneath it, until with a volition of its own, it expanded and rose, dripping and glistening under the lamplight, to walk through the shallows to the shore.

There was no sign now of the apparitions on the bridge or ghosting across the air but I knew that the power which had lain behind them now propelled this drowned residue of a cow or horse. I lost sight of it when it ascended the steep bank, but it soon flopped over the wall before the lime trees and righted itself before stretching a hairless, veined leg forward and proceeded toward me. As the remnants of its hind hooves cleared the wall into the field, the air above it was disturbed by shreds of blackened matter that descended and anchored themselves across the apparition.

By the time it had crossed the path and passed under the trees, the shreds of matter had solidified into a humanoid figure of skeletal twigs whose arms flailed and writhed atop the sodden hide. And as the night broke into a host of figures that crept and leered in its wake, I recognised in that spectre, something of the proud centaur which had reached from the wall of the Cathedral...

Facing the phantoms In the groves of Minerva

In the groves of Minerva, I determined to face the pursuing phantoms. Whether they were projections from my own psyche that rose against me or entities personifying the pride and sin of mankind, under the aegis of the Goddess, I would make a stand.

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 had 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 had embarked upon a journey to the south-west of England, intent upon researching my uncle’s adventures and I had stopped off at the city of Chester. Whilst meditating at that cities’ cathedral, I had envisioned the demonic gargoyles animating and detaching themselves from the stone.

I attributed this vision at the cathedral to residual, egotistical attachments that I had yet to completely discard and I left the church, spending the remainder of the day exploring other sites of interest, notably the shrine to Minerva left by Roman craftsmen in their quarry. Today it occupies a field on the banks of the river opposite the city.

If one should find oneself in a city dedicated to the Goddess of craftsmanship, one should never spurn the craft of the brewer. That would be tantamount to impiety. The hostelries of that city are very fine, many of them being of considerable age and harbouring a host of ghostly atmospheres. I had intended to leave the city during the late afternoon but such was the quality of the brewer’s wares that I found myself leaving one inn at ‘kicking out time.’ Unable to secure any form of reasonable lift at that hour, I opted to seek rest.

I took refuge under one of the rows – roofed timber walkways raised above the streets running between the cathedral and the river. The oldest of these features date from the Middle Ages and there are still sections of centuries-old stone or timber housing assorted shops, businesses and apartments. The rows are constructed so that there is a broad section of wood panelling sloping from the walkway up to the rail that overlooks the street and it was on one such platform, under a particularly ancient arch, whose massive timbers afforded the most protection from any disadvantages of the elements, that I laid down a roll of plastic for the night. Although several people did walk by, including a police patrol and although there was even a late night encounter in the street below which veered between the familiar and the threatening, it is possible to make one self unseen and by turning away from public view, breathing slowly and thinking myself out of existence, I was able to escape detection and enjoy some rest.

I was woken by the sound of something flapping against the wood below me. It sounded like paper flustered across a breeze. I allowed my mind to drift a little and the sound persisted until it became a distinct slapping and dragging sound; at that moment I sat up, suddenly convinced that something was clambering up toward me from the street below. My movement coincided with a scratching rattle, like a can hurried across stone. This was followed by the idea that wet footsteps padded up the stairs from the street not far from my resting place.

I stood and hastily rolled my sheet up, animated by an uncharacteristic feeling of fear and a sudden desire for home, and the comforts of pubs I knew and for the park where I could pitch my tent and for my dear acolyte’s house where I was permitted to stay and forced to bathe once a week.

Such sentiments brought feelings of guilt and I decided it was time to move to a place where I could meditate and rid myself of these volatile feelings; I told myself I was haunted by remnants of the days when I was languished within the waves of the ego and throwing my pack over my shoulder, I hurried away from the sounds, determined to leave the city and cross the river. As I went, refusing to glance back, I heard a moist, flapping sound that kept pace with me and I thought of my vision at the cathedral when the gargoyles had appeared to writhe free of the stone.

I told myself that such a building embodied the cosmos – its exterior a leering, grimacing parade of the instincts, alleviated by visions of selflessness, whilst within, the emptiness of all save devotion to a selfless, compassion rose to the heavens. I told myself that any apparition descending from the images of sin, would be powerless against a mind anchored upon a selfless compassion but as I crossed a small bridge over an alleyway, my imagination was assailed by the image of a particular carving; it was a representation of a snout-faced, bearded figure, whose body split into great wings and a hoofed body. Of all the bodies, grasped in the stone, it was this which glared out with an imperious pride, the pride that sets one’s individual urges and needs against all else, the pride the Christians would attribute to Lucifer.

It was great relief that I made the end of the rows and still the sound of some thing or several things, heaving and sliding after me, assailed my consciousness. I only looked back after I had descended to street level and hurried into the empty road. The broad, pedestrianised street, lined with shops was empty. The gloomy timber rows were blank but as I turned to face downhill, I caught from the corner of my eye, a suddenly, expansive gleam. I was left with the idea that several people were suddenly illuminated in a flash of light and they all were craning toward me.

I looked back, my heart apace and walking downhill as I went, but the street and the rows were dark and nothing appeared in pursuit.

I hurried down hill, passing under the ornate bridge set in the city walls and looked behind. Up the street, the air was streaked with strands of light; they sparked, glistening, rather like light reflected on waves and from this viscous, glistening weave, matted shreds of shadows slipped out that were ghosted to and fro on an unfelt wind. In my mind’s eye such shadows became the figures that crawled from the cathedral. Terror resurrected itself within me and I turned intent on running when I crashed immediately into the slick torso of a shrouded figure. I felt it give and collapse under me as something gushed from its headless collar. I threw myself onto the road before I realised that I had fallen over or run into a bin bag that was suspended from the railings bordering the bridge.

Fearing that my mind was collapsing, I strode across the ‘Hand-bridge’ into the groves of the Goddess, Minerva, determined to gather my resolve and confront whatever dogged my psyche.