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.

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.

From a vine of skulls and unearthly blooms, I ascend on wings aflame

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 cellar was the focal point of the haunting at the Magazine’s Hotel, an eighteenth century inn on the Wirral coast. Accompanying a nervous bar-maid down into that space, I found that my presence and the trace of the haunting from St Hilary’s, magnified the intensity of the haunting.

‘Normally it’s just a creepy feeling, or the sound of something moving, like its been knocked over,’ the bar maid said once we had emerged from that space, ‘it’s never been that bad, I’ll never go down there again.’

I am not prepared to go into detail on the particular manifestations which we experienced, however the girl was not in anyway harmed and the damage committed was minimal. I can confirm that there are several spirits residing at the hotel however there was something that had never been human which also lurked there.

What is significant is the means by which I overcame this apparition, initially in the cellar and then finally one night whilst on the promenade when it reappeared to me.
It was not only through intense meditation and invocation of the gods, but also through the instinctive projection of the chakras outward (chakras are the sacred centres within the subtle body through which the Kundalini – the divinity within – rises and falls).

Whilst investigating the house at St Hilary’s, I had thought little about the chakra imagery which arose during my trance state. I assumed the chakra was merely being employed. What I now understand was that I wasn’t just working with the chakras but I was entering them...

At the time I believed, not unreasonably, that it was my personal chakras into which I was passing. Now, I know differently.

As the manifestations raged in the cellar, I invoked the Celestial Goddess whose presence rests within us as the Kundalini.

She announced Her presence with a rumble that set the tangible world shivering like it was a reflection in a pool; the surrounding stone and wood became shadows under sunlight, and soon they were lost under the pool and its delicate gold (emblematic of the Muladhara chakra, in which the Goddess resides before she has been invited into full realisation).

A white illumination spilled around until I passed unto it. Whilst in this trance state, two human bones became evident. I have no doubt now that they remain under the stones of the cellar floor and what I perceived was a subtle impression of them – a haunting if you like. As the psychic eruption burst tangibly around the cellar, within my moon-wrought body, I raised the bones – one of the thigh the other of the upper arm – and formed a cross parallel to the ceiling.

The visionary pool was below me and I might have stood within it, as wisps of mists rose from the water’s shifting gold.

This vapour gathered around the bones and then billowed up into swaying clouds in which I witnessed the bare feet of one who moved above me. I saw the contours of a body, pushing through the contours of the cloud and delineated by scored brands of light. In an instant it was as if I were alongside this being, holding a skull which hung, among many, on a vine of unearthly blooms around Her neck.

Looking upward, into the source of this glow, was to look into the face of the Goddess, the Shakti unbound and unveiled and I departed from my self as if on wings of flame...

... in the house I had channelled the spirit through the brahma within, into the universal Brahma...

...here, I willed the darkness from the physical cellar upward and I rose upon it, riding its swelling crest; the necklace of the Goddess slipped below me and the burning contours of Her face formed in my mind, until I were level with Her gaze and the apparition which had migrated into my trance, settled into the blank spaces between the shining contours of her celestial self.

In this visionary state the disturbances in the physical world were ‘laid’ and the barmaid and I were able to exit the cellar. The young lady was nearly hysterical and it was fortunate that the other gentlemen who had been present had descended, drawn by the noise, to witness myself in trance and the young lady assailed by an unseen force.

I reassured all that the presence was now ‘laid’ within the pub and that there should be nothing more than an eerie atmosphere about the place.

Once the bar manager had been informed of the events, he was alas, less than grateful and I decided to find another lodging.

(Not entirely true, he was barred. I was there when the manager exploded at him, screaming, ‘you wind the regulars up, you buy a half and fall asleep, when you are awake you rant away...piss off and take your bloody ghosts with yer!’ All of which was true, ed., sorry, ‘typist’ - see previous posts for this to make sense, as if anything does on this blog!)

The Leaden Pull of the Sea

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

To any who are new to these teachings, please 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.

In this next lesson, I wish to instruct my readers on how a spiritual experience in one location can leave an impression which draws spectral presences in another.

Last summer, I had spent hours alone in New Brighton's Magazine's Hotel. It is often quiet during the weekdays when I passed most of my time there, either deep in thought or committing memories of my Uncle’s adventures to paper. There is an atmosphere about the place. The face reflected in the upraised glass is not one’s own. A shadow crosses the gleam of a brass hanging when none has moved in the pub. A scent is detected – a hint of a floral fragrance, an odour of roasting pig. Faint sounds emanate from unoccupied corners; I have even noticed a distinct taste of rum appearing in the back of my throat, a drink which I have not attempted in years. It would appear our very senses are haunted by this building.

I was once alerted to a spectral face peering from a tiny, second floor window, by a group of middle-aged male drinkers sat at the next table in the beer garden. It appeared they were all aware of stories of a ghostly presence peering out from time to time light and when one of them called out that old ‘Kieran’ was looking out at us and began waving up at the window, they all turned and waved jovially. It appeared later that only one of the group had seen the image as a discussion followed about sunlight on glass etcetera; however I can confirm that a face, not entirely substantial, peered from that window, looking seaward. It was a tired, pinched face, that of an old man which stared so wistfully from behind the glass for several seconds, before a cloud snuffed out the window’s gleam.

I asked the gentlemen who had spotted the apparition who ‘Kieran’ was and he replied pleasantly enough, stating it was the name of the ghost which various people had claimed to spot looking from the window. Unable to provide any more information on this spectre he advised I talk to the bar staff who often complained of an uneasy atmosphere about the building, before discoursing on the superstitions around the stuffed witches hung in the bar area.

Built two and a half centuries ago, the Mags served the ‘powder village’, the community who grew around the powder store whose remnants survive in the form of turreted walls and gates opposite a row of fisherman’s cottages. Several rooms, including a space barely larger than an alcove, open off the central bar and despite its size, this layout together with the dark beams and panelling render the place a dark, snug pub. The mind that is adrift in the ebb and flow of the material realm finds something deeply reassuring about such places; something womb-like even; ale washes through the body, numbing anxiety, unyoking us from that which anchors us into gloom; pumped froth heaves into bright glasses, its swirling clouds settle into an earthen glow whose richness sets the heart singing, awakening laughter, luring us back again and again into its embrace.

If I were not an enlightened man, I would devote every waking hour to the celebration of ale; as a spiritual leader, I have cast my bond to the temporal world asunder. When I sip on ale I am not immersed in pleasure but I surrender to the life brewed into the drink itself.
What a remarkable life ale has, even in the pub alone. Kept amid the sandstone, until it is summoned forth and fleet-footed, it wings its passage up from the dark cellars to impart the produce of fertile soils and sun-nurtured hops into the shining vessel. Golden life summoned from the rock, bearing the drinker on its wing, even as it binds him to the rock.

Acting on the fore-mentioned gentleman’s suggestion I did talk to one of the chattier barmaids who expressed a general dislike of the ‘creepy’ cellar. It was a quiet afternoon when we spoke and I offered to accompany her down there when she had to change a barrel. She was glad of the company and together we descended into that dank space.

Two things struck me about the cellars. Firstly they reminded me of the catacombs below the house at St Hilary’s and they did indeed draw out the stain those dark depths impressed upon my psyche; secondly, they reminded me of a dank, cramped cell I had dwelled in when I was studying in India, a place that I do not happily recall.

Standing on the steps with dank air wafting up, accompanied by the smell of ale and stagnant water, the briney tang that laced the air with a fresher tinge, suggested we were in the hull of a boat ready to set sail out across the estuary.

I recall the self-satisfied laughter of a couple of gentlemen and the ticking of the clock in the bar drifting down but these were drowned under a flood of impressions that welled upward, poured from the rock itself: I was conscious of the porous stone which enclosed us along with the drag of tides beyond; I felt, as if they were within me, cargos hauled from the swell and then a corpse bobbing like a cork, until turning tides dragged it back across rocks, smearing fleshy residue across the matted weeds; I was the slapping, slopping tides as they retreated and as they turned, rising again, I was pounding into crevices, exploding over humps of rock, collpassing into bubbles skating across the film, skittering across the sweep of sand, until the inexorable, leaden drag of the currents gathered me. It was an impression of moonlight breaking into my senses that roused me, for as the radiance broke through me, I soared beyond the dead pull of the sea...

It was this transcendent state, that saved both of us. Aligned with the sense of the deep currents of the sea, some unseen thing burst through the cellar and dragged itself taut around us...

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My acolyte referred to himself as ‘ed.’ in the last post.

He is not an editor, he is a devoted student of my teachings which he commits to computer.

He is a typist.

He is gaining enlightenment through this service to mankind. Any adoption of titles, or hubristic meddling with my words are manifestations of egoism and they shall be replied to with a sermonising that will scatter as dust, the most impertinent of personalities.

He was correct however, to say that those few who will comprehend its guidance may acquire the history of my maternal uncle’s adventures via ‘Amazon’ on the ‘internet’; it cannot be bought in shops, even those reservoirs, nay, kingdoms of culture - second-hand bookshops!
I must not appear ungrateful of course, I have tolerated the attentions of my hosts recently. My acolyte’s good lady wife permits one evening a week when i may take advantage of their hospitality although i am forced to bathe before I may join the family for dinner. Last week, this was a necessity as I had, on this occasion, been handling the dead – all for the most noble of reasons of course which I shall divulge when you, my loyal readership, is fully prepared.

Sweet Albion, My Land of the Dead

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

To any who are new to these teachings, please 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.

Like any spot that is long-settled, yet also lightly-populated, even lonely, the Downs and the Vale had their share of hauntings. Shadows cast by the accidents and tragedies of rural life had, through the long ebb and flow of the seasons, blended into the rustling woods and mossy rocks that bordered the flowing waters. Perhaps a lonely traveler, passing late over the moors, picking their cautious way back through the steep, wooded hillsides to the comfort of the village inn, might catch a glimpse of a pale, grief-stricken figure looking from across an abandoned mill pond; they might hear faint voices, their strands of song splitting faintly from the wind, or perhaps they may catch a whisper from the creaking bows of an oak, but to an inhabitant of the vale, these shades were as much part of the landscape as the stones and trees that they had known all their lives.

So I wrote about the haunted Wessex that my maternal Uncle, Sir Parnassus Mang, explored at the end of the last century but one. I composed these lines shortly after my experience in the house at St Hilary’s in my hometown of Wallasey on the Wirral peninsula.

I was in India, a country from which I had never thought to return and which I still miss – how I pine for thee, Mother of my Sadhana (spiritual path), Mother of Samadhi (an experience of enlightenment) - when I received a vision in which I was instructed to commit Mang’s experiences to paper. I began composing what I could recall of his deeds although as I progressed I found new memories and insights surfaced into awareness.

Several drafts were started, one even completed, before I finally heeded the growing urge to return to the land in which my ancestor found his true Self.

(These ‘adventures’ are now available as ‘Binder of Bone, Keeper of Corn’, in down-load form from Amazon, ed.)

It was hard returning home from a land where amid the frenzied commercialism, the desperate poverty and self-absorbed wealth, there were poverty-stricken saints, whose chants billowed forth on palls of incense from shrines; where the endless, arid plains and crammed, squalid cities were relieved by sacred hills and holy rivers that swept the devote beyond the glare and the stink and the choking dust into luminous contemplation of the Absolute resting within and beyond the world of sense.

It seemed appropriate that, as Sir Parnassus oft reminded me, the Romans had conceived of our Albion as an Island of the Dead. Here, at the edge of the world, fallen Saturn was bound. It was to this island that boatmen would ferry the souls of the deceased and the voice of Dis Pater could be heard, calling all to their beyond .

It was after the investigation of that house by the church and after the experiences which unfolded from it, that I began to think anew of this island. It was certainly that of the dead but not in a faded, hopeless fashion, but as a treasure trove of haunted sites where the temporal world slows and we glimpse something of the lives, deaths, passions, hopes, frustrations, injustices of other times.

Within such cracking of the prison of space and time implied by Ghost-lore, there can be found the understanding, the enlightenment even, that the self is only a shadow of the true Self; that our spirit’s true home is with the collective storehouse of all spirits, Prakriti, or Brahma, the a divine self beyond our earthly self.

The blanking out of the ego brings a peace so profound and deep that one can never leave it and so initiation is offered into the spheres beyond, where the consciousness of the incarnate dissolves in communion with the eternal stream of the ancestors circling Absolute Reality.
Although I did not realise it at first, over last summer I understood what Sir Parnassus had tried to teach me: communing with the phantoms on this mist-haunted island is to commune with the Shakti within and without – the Goddess of this land and with her counterpart, the Father of the dead and Lord of the sun-bathed fields...

Before that understanding and communion could occur, there were many adventures that I engaged in. I did not seek these experiences out. All I required was a place where I could scribe the history of my Uncle’s enlightenment. Initially I found this in the ‘Magazines Hotel’ where I passed hours in one of the back rooms engaged in work; there were many distractions, notably in the form of the other clients. One such individual, who had goaded me with the label ‘homeless’ (I see this as a mark of esteem rather than a source of amusement or contempt) even reacted to my claim that I was resident there, by arguing that the establishment no longer accepts overnight guests. I am at a loss to explain why my domestic arrangements may be of interest to anyone – the devil is certainly not in these details! It is true that I am not an overnight guest at the Mags. I chose to spend my night hours engaged in deep meditation whilst communing with nature. The frailty of the human form demands alas, periods of ‘dis-engagence’, which may occur whilst I sit, composing my thoughts in a quiet corner of the pub when not committing them to paper.

As I indicated in my last post, it was not just the living patrons of the hostelry that conspired to draw me from my literary labours; there were other presences in that building, soaked into the wood, seeped into the stone. I could sense them as I wrote and even when as I was forced to converse. Although I sought to leave them be, it was the power that bound them to the hotel which was drawn to be, magnifying the stain the otherworld had left within me as it did so.