A Chase is Afoot...

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.

Whist travelling to the south-west of England, I stopped in the ancient city of Chester where I encountered a demonic presence. I confronted this spirit in the riverside Groves. The following morning I was conveyed downstream in a spectral boat, where I found the residual traces of the demon dragging a man into the water. I rescued the man by inviting and absorbing the demon into my own soul before meeting three strange observers...

‘I was feeling rather down, well I won’t bore you with the details...’ Mr Yardley, the man I had plucked from the embrace of the Death Goddess stated before proceeding to bore us with the details.

The casual reader may detect some indifference or callousness on my part to Mr Yardley’s predicament. Such an interpretation could not be further from the truth. My self and, I concede, the three representatives of the Dead, were all deeply concerned with human suffering; I in particular am all too familiar with the despair caused by a devotion to material goods, the pursuit of sensation for its own ends, the obsession with status and power, the need to observe displays of subservience and the attendant vices of pomposity, vanity, pride...

At that moment it was the acute awareness of how these behaviours and urges rain all manner of misery upon humans that allowed us to hold Yardley at arm’s length: we cannot wallow in the minutiae of an individual’s trauma – we were not trying to extract money from the wretch – our aim is to liberate all those who languish in the coils of a despair not of their own making; we strike against the forces of the ego and the id!

Anyhow, it transpired that the man was in the depths of a deep gloom and we concluded that the demonic entity I had cast downstream attuned to his mood and drew him into the water.

‘I was tying to drown myself; I have been battling depression for some years now and this morning I woke to find that I had lost the car keys; we were due to visit our daughter who has left her university course and moved in with a nightclub grime rapper...’ Mr Yardley went on whilst I tried to explain the real reason why he had headed for the water.

‘Silence you, that life has passed and a new life opens before you, a life free from worry over cars and universities and the dirt and debris of everyday life, your concerns will be with the battle between the celestial order and the blank powers of the abyss which seek to leak within it!’ Parkin snapped, his eyes bulging somewhat.

Mr Yardley did not look too enthused by the prospect of exchanging minor irritations for cosmic terrors but Parkin continued regardless, ‘we shall use our lives, our wealth, our power to serve the earth and the souls which inhabit it; the spirits of the dead must exist without interference, they shall not be a backdoor through which the abyss seeps into our world!’

Parkin then looked at me and stated with some satisfaction, ‘it appears that his excellency was, as always, correct; we have found a gifted medium.’

Gereint, the young, bare-chested man had retreated uphill, where he was engaged in some obscure contortions. Lance, the lean, bearded man, glared at me whilst Parkin continued, ‘you conquered the beast within, along with the fear and the rage and violence which it breeds; Gereint there,’ he indicated the youth, ‘has also done that, although he will regress into that state when the situation demands it; you however, have absorbed a demonic entity into yourself and stand before us in control of your faculties, truly, the moon is beneath your feet and you are crowned with the rising sun!’

I am not partial to praise, only to the acknowledgement of the majesty of the divine within us all so when Parkin went on to state that I was a ‘free spirit’ who could ‘walk among the misty mountain winds’ and ‘a moonlit solitary walker’, I began to form the opinion that I was not in the company of charlatans.

When Parkin deigned, eventually, to describe the order to which he and his companions belonged, I listened with growing interest and approval:

‘We are the Dead; we have returned to the state of the unborn; whilst the living are manufactured by social and economic pressures, we, the Dead, are untouchable; the living are manufactured by changing circumstances, even as they are infiltrated by agencies that seep into their deepest, darkest lizard brains. There is a destructive power, from beyond our cosmos that in slipping through the cracks and fissures of time and space and consciousness, feeds on the minds of the populace and in particular upon the energy of spirits that linger after death; the purpose, rather the instinct of this power, is to allow their world, a formless sea of blankness, to spill into our own.’

I have a great respect for formless seas of blankness, although I have never considered a career in the Civil Service or indeed any other branch of government. What I disapprove of is the need for different spheres of existence to colonise others – balance is desirable to enable an appreciation of the transcendent ideal.

‘It is not a coherent organisation that we face, it erupts especially whenever flotsam and jetsam dabble in the occult - it seeks to seep through their invocations. Such dabblers are often not part of a conscious conspiracy, it is their most basic, lizard part of their brains which serves as a portal, they do not understand they are puppets of darkness – note I said darkness not shadow – indeed I should have said blankness again, as dark and shadow are products of, or defined by, light; the advantage we have is that we know our enemy, we have the light of consciousness...and now, as his Excellency predicted, we have you. You shall be our medium walking between the worlds.’

I asked who ‘his Excellency’ but before Parkin could answer, Geraint roused himself from his performance to announce from the hilltop, ‘they are at Eccleston Ferry!’

‘I’ll get the Peugot,’ Lance, cried as his lean frame bound away over the hill.

‘Marvellous, the chase is afoot, let us hope we find our lizards basking in the sun,’ Parkin said, an expectant smile breaking across his face.

We Are The Dead

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.

Whist travelling to the south-west of England, I stopped in the ancient city of Chester where I encountered a demonic presence. I confronted this spirit in the riverside Groves. The following morning I was conveyed downstream in a spectral boat, where I found the residual traces of the demon dragging a man into the water. I rescued the man by inviting and absorbing the demon into my own soul.

‘I thought you were Death,’ Mr Yardley said, once he had been resuscitated and the water expelled from his lungs.

I explained that in a manner of speaking I was, although it was the death of the ego and a subsequent freedom from all delusions which I offered rather than the cessation of life. I do concede that the image of my sage face, peering from the ghostly boat which bore me, would suggest an encounter of a supernatural kind.

After I had thrown him onto the river bank, I had myself collapsed from both physical and psychic exhaustion. I was aware that my encounters with the supernatural had impressed a stain upon my soul yet at that time I believed that identifying with the emptiness of the self and ridding myself of all ego, would allow the demonic to pass beyond my specific organism into the all-encompassing illumination where it would burn away like a moth in the flame.

When I looked up from my position on the riverbank, I noticed three, watching figures. The first was an unusually tall and slender man, more so even than my self, he was bearded and with his greying hair long at the back of his head and his style of dress, he looked like he was probably a motorcyclist. The second was younger, suspiciously young I later thought when I heard his claims to psychic ability; his fleece jacket hung open revealing his tattoos and chest piercings. The third and foremost member of the group was short and squat with eyes that bulged behind his glasses; clad in a body-warmer and wide-brimmed hat, he possessed a rather toad-like look.

They approached us and once Mr Yardley was resuscitated, and I helped to my feet, introductions were made. It transpired that despite watching Yardley nearly drown, then observing my embrace of the demon before dragging the man to shore, they were not engaged in a new form of perverse spectator sport – after all, it was not televised!

‘You came in answer to our call, or perhaps you were sent,’ the toad-like man, Parkin, said.

I pointed out my boat which had now drifted back into the river and would soon ride the current downstream, perhaps back to its resting place in the shallows beneath the willow, before briefly outlining the events of the previous hours. At one point, Parkin interjected, ‘the stone, you threw the stone!’

‘Yes, I bound the entity and threw it downstream where...’

Rather then heed my words further at this point the three men began a quietly heated conversation, from which I gathered that they were waiting for a demonic presence and one who would battle it.

‘If you were waiting for me and you were watching, why didn’t you pissing well help?’ I found myself demanding. Profanities are not a usual part of my speech, however I had spent much time on Merseyside and I was entitled to feel angry on Mr Yardley’s behalf; I had no doubt that the three of them would have left him to drown.

‘We are engaged in matters of the utmost importance, intervention in any mid-manifestation would seriously jeopardise our ability to combat the malign forces against which we are marshalled,’ Parking stated in a manner I considered to be fairly pompous.

‘Who are you gentlemen?’ I asked.

Parkin replied with no trace of irony or humility, ‘we are the Dead.’

Cradled by the River Bed, Suckled on the Waters of Death

My first battle had not defeated the demon, it had repelled it. Now, as it drowned an innocent man, I was bound to intervene!<p>
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.

I had stopped in the ancient city of Chester whilst en route for the South West of England. Encountering a demonic presence in the city, I confronted it in the riverside Groves. The following morning I was conveyed downstream in a spectral boat, where I found the residual traces of the demon dragging a man into the water...

The demonic spirit appeared to me as a sheet of hairy skin billowing through the waves. As it broke the surface, its wrinkled flesh formed into a resemblance of a snarling face and two limbs extended whose tips crystallised into shattered hooves that draped over the drowning man’s shoulders, forcing him under the waves.

It seemed to be invisible to the drowning man but I recognised it as the apparition which I had faced hours previously and with the boat now halted I was duty bound to act. Shrugging my pack and jacket from my shoulders, I slipped off my shoes and leaving them all in the back of the boat, dipped into the waters. The waves received me eagerly, ducking my head below their surface, blurring my sight was and distorting my hearing. I could feel the waters slopping around the man’s weakening limbs and impelled by instinct I threw wide my arms and willed the demon to myself.

I had no need to weigh up my chances of survival or of success. I simply offered myself in his place. I was aware of a slit gaping hungrily in the sheet as it slipped from Mr Yardley and writhed toward me like one of the membranes from the sea’s depths.

I did not see it envelop my torso but I became acutely conscious of a cold, damp cord wrapping around me. This sensation quickly passed through my skin, becoming a twist of cold that wracked my gut. A ravenous hunger followed and the urge to feed possessed me. I felt myself thrashing through the water, my mouth gnawing the air when an indistinct mass loomed over me. I became conscious of the cord expanding until the cold, slick flesh cradled me. I was dimly aware that my body was on the bed of the river, whilst my visionary self relaxed, surrendering to the huge body which tightly held me.

I recall how my kneading lips seemed to clamp around a cold, fleshy protuberance which injected spurts of grainy liquid into my mouth. I fed eagerly, gulping down the rank fluid whilst looking up to the huge female silhouette that held me to her breast. I could see the swell of the bosom, see the curve of her arm but the moment as I realised she was headless, I was suddenly outside myself, observing how I suckled from a female body, whose neck ended in a nest of torn flesh and a protruding vertebrae.

The vision passed and I was looking upon a roughly heaped nest in which several lumps squawked and groaned. There was a creature, resembling a cockerel that walked on thin, clawed legs, dragging bloodied human remains by a rope snared around one claw toward this nest. As it neared the entrance, the squawking intensified and I beheld a brood of human faces, each stretched from a puddle of flesh. As the corpse was shoved into them, the eyes of each face widened frenziedly and the mouths emitted long, bristled tongues which first probed and then penetrated the carrion.

Reflecting upon these visions, I know that I was willing to be that corpse, to be sucked dry by mindless, groaning flesh; I would freely offer to be the bloodied milk carried in the dugs of the Death Goddess! However this disregard for my own life achieved nothing. I was eager to be a victim of life, a sacrifice to nature; I was unwilling to identify with the half-formed creatures mindlessly squawking from their nest.

It was residual ego which made me resist the idea that it was my face gnawed into a corpse; once I found the detachment to accept that creature, my awareness submerged into its mindless, unquestioning feeding.

Gradually an awareness of my body returned. A wracking agony swelled within the gut until a heave expelled matter from me. I followed vomit the trails of vomit dragging through the waters and saw a light appeared. Drawn toward that radiance, I broke into the air and sunlight was spilling across the river; each wave rose into its embrace, forming steps of light that climbed across the water.

I projected myself across each wave, ascending a ladder of light, until I entered into a sphere of light. All sense of self fled as I immersed myself into the eternal ocean of light from which all descends and unto which it returns; the face of the deity I had identified with Minerva formed within the light, to look down upon me. As She regarded me, the knowledge that I was with the One, beyond all force, before all form, released me into a warm peace; the waters speared the radiance into ribbons that briefly burnished their waves and I knew that She had dissolved Herself into the air, the water and the earth, into the trees and the wind that stirred them, into the serpentine sliding of the holy waters and over all, into the sun.

These visionary experiences can only have lasted moment. As I became aware of the waters rising and falling around my face, I reached out, catching hold of the man’s hand. He pulled away and I lurched forward, until my arms were around his head. Thankfully his struggle stopped and he sank into me, his head against my chest and I half-floated, half-dragged him to the shore.

The flow of the river was strong but thankfully the boat had drifted toward us, diverting the current around us and when I was able to lean a left arm over its side, I was able to make for the shallows. Into the reeds we went, the prow pushing aside the lush fronds, setting the iris nodding, scattering water birds into the air and then the ground sloped gently upward and I was able to roll the man down, so that he lay sideways, his torso out of the water and gasping, I leaned onto the rotting timbers of the boat.

When I finally looked up, I saw them, three figures, silhouetted on the bank above us.

On Singing Waves, through Sighing Winds...

Sunlight touched the crest of each wave snaking alongside the boat which, until recently, had lain, half-buried and rotting, among the mud of the Dee....<p>

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.

Mr Adam Yardley floundered, half-willing each muddy wave that flooded his eyes and swamped his nose, to suck him under, into the untroubled depths. As each wave broke around his face, a fleeting, gasped glimpse of the sky and the fragile trees was allowed before the watery circumference closed over once again.

Gulping air and water, Yardley was torn between a desire for the slop and slap of the buffeting waves and a yearning to rise into the clear heavens beyond the sighing breeze; that is until a shadow fell over him and the waters were plunged aside under the prow of a rowing boat. What appeared a dishevelled apparition sat within that craft, formed into an old man, gazing down upon him with eyes that exuded a pity for and an understanding of the human condition; this vision was fleeting and the waters closed, eager for Mr Yardley’s company.

Or so I imagine Mr Yardley’s experiences to be.

I have immersed myself in numerous rivers, most recently the Dee within sight of the shrine to the Goddess. As public nakedness is not encouraged in Chester or its environs I waited until the hour was late before I slipped through the willows and immersed myself under the watching moon. Of course all such immersions attune me to the alma mater of rivers, the Ganges. I cautiously paddled into those fast-flowing waters and lowered myself into waves that bare sacred offerings and ashes of the dead and once emerged, I found a figure stood among the crowds on the ghat, looking upon me...

So I appeared to Mr Yardley. My account of his final moments on the water is not just constructed from memory or empathy; I forged a mental union with the man, entering into his awareness even as he sought to take his own life.

I had been enjoying a leisurely morning on the banks of the Dee after defeating, or deflecting, a demonic assault, (see previous posts, ed. / acolyte) when I was interrupted by the appearance of a semi-ruined boat drifting atop the waves.

I had observed this craft bedded in the mud at a lopsided angle just below the wall of the field where I had spent such as eventful night. I did not realise however that the wrench and grinding noises that had arisen from the riverbank were the ancient timbers freeing themselves from the sodden earth. I thought that a large animal, possibly a deer, were tearing at the sycamores below the wall but as I stood to look, I witnessed the boat lurch free and in defiance of the river, pitch and judder before me.

One should never ignore such a call from the Otherworld and after sweeping my effects into the my pack and paying a final respect to the shrine of the Goddess, I cautiously lowered myself down the wall and found my way through the undergrowth to the muddy shore. The Gods accommodated me, sending the boat into the shallows and I was able to pick my way across the mud and lower myself into the wooden shell. I sat uneasily, clinging onto the slimed sides as the craft slipped easily away and turning began to drift upstream. The murky waters slipped an inch away from my right foot, forcing me to lean back into the boat as it passed under the bridge and then swept swiftly and evenly up the weir. I have no idea whether any saw me as I sailed against the flow of the Dee, away from the city and out toward the fields. The prow forged a crest that briefly cupped the sun before cascading golden snakes around us; insects flitted before our passage rising wisps that were swallowed in the rising light. Whispering trees reached overhead, their reflections shivering through the waves and I felt the immanence of the Goddess, shining through the water, the light, the fragrance and the earth’s subtle song.

The peace of the journey was ended when we rounded a bend and the figure of a middle-aged man, floundering in the middle of the river came into view. The boat glided still, indicating the end of my journey and I looked for the first time upon Mr Yardley. I saw too, that which had ensnared him. He did not see it, but I knew that he felt it, burrowed within him, clamped throughout him, driving him into the waves, dragging him into the gulping depths, down through the yearning reeds, toward the touch of the eager mud...

I was thrown by the sight.

It was not just the man balanced precariously between life and self-willed death. The past was peeled back and I saw another who floated flaccid, lifeless ...I was again that youth who could not act. I might have drifted by and allowed Mr Yardley to drown whilst wallowing in memory, had not the power which held him, reasserted itself and I looked again upon the demon which had attacked hours previously...

Under the Morning Sun, Minerva Awakens the Vessel that Shall Bear Me Beyond...

Parents do not always take kindly to the prophets of pagan shrines entering ecstatic states in the playgrounds where their youngsters slide and spin and gambol...<p>

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...

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...