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.
Happy Solstice to all of my students! I apologise that my teachings have not reached you for some time. At the time of writing, most of the devotees of these teachings have yet to encounter them or indeed be born as the incarnation which will find illumination through them. I should say however, that the summer solstice is a particularly important time of year, symbolising not only the radiance of enlightenment but the time when the severing of one’s illusions is most easily achieved. The old feast of John the Baptist, who lost his head, remembers this.
The sun rising, called by the flurry of birdsong from the dense greenery, brought definition to the field, the river and the city walls beyond.
(Last summer I encountered a demonic force in the city of Chester. I confronted the apparitions on the banks of the River Dee, in Edgar’s Field where a shrine to Minerva yet stands.)
Whether the demon I had faced was a projection from my former life or from depths yet hidden within myself, or if it had an external existence to me, I could not say, however I enjoyed the dawn, even finding time to sleep on the sheeting laid on the outcrop.
Dreams took me into the presence of a bull that swallowed a small figure, fed into its mouth by an old man smeared in ashes; as the beast’s lower jaw dislocated itself to accommodate the parcel of flesh, I started awake.
Traffic noise from the bridge skimmed across the bridge and somewhere a dog barked but sitting up, I realised the sun was still low and the cities’ day was yet to start. The dreams remained in mind and I positioned myself upright and entered meditation where assorted figures rose unbidden like waves until the inner light was uncovered and I was received into its embrace.
My journeys last summer were preceded by an encounter with a power that was bound, or housed, beneath a western facing hill. Since that moment I felt myself coming to terms with the stain it had impressed upon my psyche and increasingly, there was a particular episode from my past which lingered in my mind; it had been drifting into comprehension for some time how until it hung there with a disturbing clarity.
Whilst the content and significance of such memoires shall not be divulged at this moment, the acolyte should appreciate that both profound meditation along with further obeisance before the altar of the death Goddess were required before I comprehended their meaning. I was tempted to spend longer at the altar of Minerva, whose form, the Absolute had adopted so recently. Shorn of her temporal and cultural attachments, this particular Goddess came to embody both the universal power of egoless wisdom and the might which can conquer the selfish urges of the lower personality; I know now, that Minerva is one personification of this greatest of powers operating within these isles. However there is a children’s playground built onto the field. Of this I thoroughly approve. There should be more pagan shrines located akin to the playgrounds of the young (although not vice versa). Alas, the parents of the gambolling young do not always take kindly to the prophets of such shrines entering ecstatic states whilst their offspring slide and spin and fall over; I know this from personal experience.
I was debating whether to continue my journey south that day – following the sun in pursuit of my maternal uncle’s old haunts – when an event occurred which decided my course of action for me.
There was a half-submerged rowing boat bedded into the mud which had served as a perch for the heron. It was located close to the grass bank, where it had gradually sunk over the years. Indeed, I had not given it a second thought until I became aware that it was now afloat on the wide, still flow of the Dee. I stood in amazement as the vessel, smeared with mud and its boards half-rotted, danced across the waters as if newly crafted. There was a manner in which its prow glided to face me, nodding with the wavelets that caused me to gather my things. My transportation, if not my destination, was apparent...
