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.
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