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...

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.