ASH Magazine Archive

Thomas Hickathrift, Lord of the Year (part 2)

2010-03-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Above: Saffron Walden parish church

This is the second episode of Dave Hunt's research into the legends surrounding Thomas Hickathrift. It appeared in ASH number 2 winter 1988 and is reproduced here with brand new images to help enhance and expand the article. Dave, a Cornishman by birth, looks at some Cornish links to the East Anglian folktales and concludes with fascinating evidence of ancient sun worship in the ancient and historic North Essex town of Saffron Walden.

Thomas Hickathrift, Lord of the Year
Part 2: Sun Worship

by Dave Hunt

In the first episode, I related some of the legends of Tom Hickathrift, giant and giant killer. I have since come across a legend from Morvah in Cornwall, which makes it necessary to tell one of the other East Anglian tales.According to tradition, in Tom's later years, he set up home with a tinker, who was the only man who could match Tom's strength and fighting ability. This may seem a rather feeble legend in itself, but when I relate the Cornish legend, you will realise its significance.

The Morvah Legend.
Morvah, in the far west of Cornwall, has always been famous for its giants. The Cornish language did not die out here until the 18th century, and the people were so isolated from the rest of the country they retained their customs and beliefs long after they had become folklore elsewhere.

In one of the tales, the story is told of one giant called Tom, and his battle with another of his kind. As Tom drove his cart from St Ives to his home in Morvah he found the road blocked by a newly constructed dry stone wall. Because he was too tired to remove it, Tom decided to take a short cut across the land of another giant who lived in a nearby castle. As he drew near the castle, Tom was challenged by the occupier, who demanded to know why Tom was on his land. Tom argued that, as the giant had blocked the road with the wall, he was taking his own way home. At this, the giant pulled a small elm tree by its roots, and brandishing it as a weapon, ordered Tom from his land. Tom then upturned his cart and , removing a wheel and axle s haft stood to face his foe. After a battle that made the ground shake with its ferocity, Tom finally dispatched his enemy with a mighty blow to the neck. The victor then took possession of the castle and all the treasure it contained. A point of interest is that the legend states that while the battle was being fought, the local people were dancing round the festive fires in the vicinity.

This legend and that told of the East Anglian Tom are so obviously the same that one wonders how the same story can exist at different ends of the country, a distance of some 300 miles apart. Having said this, it is of interest that East Anglia was, until quite recently, as isolated as Northwest Cornwall. Perhaps we have here a nationwide memory of the old Gods, told by the people of Albion's extreme regions to their children and grandchildren until relatively modern times.

As for Tom Hickathrift's companion of later years, the tinker, the Morvah legend states that Tom eventually befriended a Tinker named Jack, whose strength matched his own. Tom even allowed Jack to marry his daughter Genevra. The wedding took place on the first Sunday in August. One and a half miles east of Morvah stand the Mên-an-Tol holed stone, one of the most enigmatic Bronze Age stone monuments in the country. This consists of two upright stones and a third, which is disc shaped with a round hole in the centre, not unlik a cartwheel.

Ogmios

Ogmios - Ogma Sunface, Son of Breas, Lord of the Sun and the Celtic Hercules was worshipped by the Druids as the inventor of the Ogham alphabet, god of eloquence, healing, fertility and prophecy. He is portrayed in carvings as wearing a lion skin, a nd carries a huge club. His feast day in Scotland is Hogmany, our New Years Eve. The power of Ogmios lies not in his great strength, but is symbolised by the chain that joins his tongue to the ears of those listening to him. He is a hero furthering the cause of civilisation, the god of eloquence and persuasive discourse. In Irish mythology, he becomes th e god Ogma, whose sword tells all the exploits it accomplishes during the battle of Mar Tured.

The Greek Hercules is depicted in similar garb to Ogmios, wearing a lion skin, and carrying a club. He was also famed as a healer of the sick, and Lord of the Zodiac. Ogmios, as Sun God, would naturally carry the same title. The Roman writer Lucian connected Ogmios with Hercules, and in Gaul a similar figure existed in Smertius, the Striker, although this Summer God carried a hammer rather than a club.

Ogmios as inventor of the Ogham alphabet has some famous counterparts. Among his equals we find Hermes, in ventor of the Greek alphabet, Thoth, inventor of hieroglyphics, and Odin, discoverer of the Runes. Ogmios as lord of the Sun also has a counterpart in Helios, the Greek god of the Sun.

Getting back to Saffron Walden, it is time to look for signs of our Sun God around the town. St Mary's church is a magnificent Norman (with later additions) building and is said to be the largest parish church in the country. As with many other sacred and secular buildings, it has many superb gargoyles and grotesques carved on it's exterior. High on the north wall of the nave are spandrels, decorated with, amongst other designs, cart wheels. These undoubted solar symbols are usually symbolic of St Catherine, a fictitious Christian marty r put to death by the Romans on a blazing cartwheel. Lower down the north wall, tucked in beside a buttress, is a charming little carving of a fellow wielding a club, with a most fearsome look on his face. Again, high high up on the north wall, we find a string course of grotesques including a phoenix, symbol of rebirth, another solar sign, two figures holding torches, solar again, and a chained monkey. "A chained monkey?" I hear you cry. "What on earth has a chained monkey got to do with the Ogham alphabet?" Absolutely nothing! However it is of interest that one of the symbols of Thoth, inventor of Hieroglyphs, is a monkey which he led around on a chain!

So what of Hermes and Odin. Can we find evid ence of these two in Saffron Walden? Indeed we can. Of Odin, just a small thing. South west of the town in Grimsditch Wood, in medieval times Grymswich. Grim is another name for Odin, or Woden, discoverer of the Runic alphabet.

Above: Saffron Walden Turf Maze.

Hermes, it is said, discovered the Greek alphabet after watching cranes flying in formation overhead, making letters as they flew. Apart from the figures of Tom and the Wisbech giant on the Sun Inn, we find two depictions of cranes, birds sacred to Hermes. A sculpture above the doors of Barclay's bank in the town, executed during the early part of the twentieth century, depicts cranes flying. Coincidence? Maybe. Of the two Sun Inn cranes, one is shown performing a mating display, or crane dance as it was called in ancient Greece. The crane dance is said to have produced the pattern of the labyrinth or maze into which the sun god descended after his yearly death to be reborn eventually from its centre. On the east side of Saffron Walden common lies one of the countries largest and best turf mazes or labyrinths in the country. One of the streets approaching the common and aligning approximately onto the maze, is Hill Street. In 1468 this was Helestrete (Hele Street) surely a reference to Helios, the Greek sun god. If the alignment is carried across the common, through the maze and continued, we come eventually to Helion Bumstead. May I suggest that before the two and three stories building were erected in Saffron Walden, one could stand looking along Helestrete and see the newly born sun rise from the maze, on a particular day.

This is some of the evidence of Sun God worship in ancient Saffron Walden. However, before I close this episode I should mention a small carving of a Romano-British God found at Corstopitum, a Roman town in the north of England. It depicts a god dressed in Roman type armour, who carries a square shield and a large club. He is accompanied by a single cartwheel.

The Feast of Atargatis

2010-02-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

To mark today's feast of Atargatis, 21st February 2010, we are pleased to present an article that was originally published in The Lighthouse number 2, Autumnal Equinox 1993 issue. The Feast of Atargatis, a strange but true surreal visionary adventure of psychic communications across time and space, of haunting past lives and the battle between a mermaid fish Goddess and a dark sea monster from another dimension. Enjoy.

The Feast of Atargatis

(Four Go Mad at Brean Down)

by Swami Amrit Surlok

Thames Estuary. Isle of Tanit. Circa 900 BC.

Nights darkness. At the rivers edge a procession of robed forms silhouetted as their shadows moved in the moonlight. Selenka, Priestess, Princess, raises her arms and her companions follow. The gateway in the depths to the spaces between the spaces was open and the dragon of the deep stirred. Beyond the moons reflection another light flickered seeming to originate beneath the surface of the water. Selenka was troubled. Something was amiss. The forces she worked with were changing, distorting, as the rituals in her homeland degenerated. She thought of her Phoenician family and how she had travelled to this strange sacred river to oversee the rites associated with the sea on which her people depended. Her brothers Gilgaat and Balaat caused her great concern. All three of them were disgusted by the sacrifices of children to Astarte their father the king officiated at. The brothers were to be initiated as full Priests of the cult and would be expected to continue the procedure. Blood was everywhere. It was coming nearer. The seashell grotto of the water dragon stank of it.

Above: Atargatis

Daylight. Selenka stood by the river. She'd seen the scene so vividly. The initiation of her brothers. The bald chanting Priests. The smoking choking incense. At the crucial moment the brothers turn away. Her father the king. They're walking back signalling refusal to accept. The king steps forward. A sword. The brothers slain. Balaats back shredded. Pierced to his lungs. Thrown on a ritual fire. She stood now staring at the beautiful plate she held in her hands. Charged with the energies she loved. An image of a female mermaid type form whose long flowing hair was made up of numerous tiny fishes. The whole framed in intricate patterns. It was all over. Must be shut down. Put into the ethers to return again in another time and space. She hurled the plate in despair into the river. There was still a final process to fulfil. Her brothers were in the great void. Magical destinies were being worked out. Almost immediately they'd been born again and yet not born. Deliberately magically aborted. Brought by the Priests to the river of darkness in the other world island in the west. To the star beacon, the hill of the dreaming dead. To the opposite bank of the very river at which she stood. They had come and placed the foetuses, Gilgaat sliced in half, in this void space to take them beyond normal destiny and prepare them for the right time. Secretly Selenka came to the hill and entered the realm of death working with the souls of her brothers to ensure their well being. For her now as for them this incarnation was to conclude with a sacrifice in the name of good. The black serpent, raw shadow of blood, Qliphotic form, was through the gateway now. Everywhere the feeling of pestilence and violence increased. Standing on the hilltop she called it to her. It wrapped itself entirely around her.

January 1993.
The black serpent was back in the River Thames. Somehow, after the performance of the extraordinary ritual to mark out the chakra points of the Avebury serpent at the winter solstice, a corresponding response in the depths of the Daath doorway beneath the waters in the realm of primal Nodens beyond Reculver had brought forth the balancing shadow form of the river dragon. The great conjunction was near. Uranus and Neptune. Vast karma burning. Past lives. The watery deep. Daath darkness to be faced. Acknowledged. Integrated. The close knit group of friends all were facing their shadows. What on earth had happened to them all? Suddenly they were barely able to talk to each other as they confronted intense agonies in their personal processes. Dispersion. Dissolution. Seething negativity. Violence in the air. Even strangers shared nightmares of a monster in the river.

Above: Eight pointed star depicted in the Margate Seashell Grotto

For Ma Prem Dana the last few months had finally proved to be too much. After her incredible inner plane initiation as Priestess of Ishtar in the Temple of the Blue Flame on Ishtar's feast day in August as Surlok's living room had entirely dissolved and become a Babylonian temple she and he had experienced a roller coaster ride of initiatory dramas beyond anything either of them had ever thought possible. The kahuna shamanic exorcism to remove Hecate from her. Encounter groups. Therapies. Screaming. Vomiting. Reiki. The endless sagas into the early hours of the morning of E.T.'s. Dolphins. Mahakala and Dakinis, Enochian Angels, the Babylonian past life with Surlok, the three eighteen foot tall void beings from Sirius who followed Surlok around, and finally the orgasmic ecstasy of the kundalini energy of Osho Rajneesh, quickly followed by the amazing revelation of Ishtar. Somehow she and Surlok had received in one stunning session a complete vastly intricate life teaching centred on a calendar of the eight pointed star of Ishtar in which everything that they were into was resolved. It aligned to the seasonal festivals of Paganism. This wheel of the year turned anti-clockwise and included a space between the spaces invisible eight point star within it to mark the half-way points between the festivals when, so they were led to believe, the void zones fully manifested. What did it all mean? The short term effect was total burn-out. Having climbed so high and been filled with so much light so did a complimentary stirring of the dark depths manifest. Every problem she'd ever had in her whole life confronted her in its most extreme form.

Swami Amrit Surlok knew that for him 1993 was time to really get into Tibetan energies. Lying on the floor having been reading about the wrathful deities, the skull smashing blood drinkers from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he'd given himself a Reiki treatment listening to monks chanting to Tara. He experienced an unusual physiological phenomenon. Rapid eye movement whilst still awake and in fact intensely conscious. It lasted perhaps as long as half an hour and felt so strong he worried his eyes were about to shoot out on stalks. It concluded with a searing pain in his right temple. When he awoke the next morning both nostrils were filled with blood and he was acutely aware of his skull as he'd never been before and an aching all over it. A gentle pulsation in the forehead persisted on and off for days and eventually months afterwards. He calmly accepted he'd possibly had some sort of astral brain operation. It was not uncommon apparently to Reiki initiates. It fitted with the wrathful deities and Reiki was ultimately coming from a Tibetan space. After all Dana had experienced being taken by Mikao Usui to a mountain top where he'd pierced her brain with a foot long syringe. Extreme psychism immediately followed. It was worrying then to keep thinking of the river and something hideous pulling him there. Keep it under wraps. Don't talk about it to anyone. Don't pump it up.

Alex Langstone was disturbed. Why the pull to the Thames and the feeling of Lovecraftian malevolence? What did 1993 have to offer? Confiding in Surlok concerning the river they realised something was afoot. A get together was in order. Alex's flat. The Temple room. Why not listen to this Tibetan Tara chant. Within moments for Alex the room vanished to be replaced by Silbury Hill. A female form dancing atop it. A Sky Dancer Dakini? Surlok and Dana had both seen after the Avebury ritual, independently of each other on the same night, Tara and a host of Dakinis around Silbury. The figure was changing. The image resolving. It now looked eastern Mediterranean. A communication. A name. Selenka Astarte. Game on. In the weeks immediately following, Alex experienced Selenka as a kind of inner plane contact. It soon became apparent things were far more complicated . Scenes from the past. The river. The plate. Then beyond. The brothers. Death. Selenka the sister. Surlok felt a potential great significance in the shortly up coming conjunction with its aspects of deep karma and Neptunian waters. The black serpent in the river was bringing back what had gone before and it had to be resolved.

Surlok had a feeling about Selenka. Dana was out of commission wrestling with her personal demons. He was convinced Selenka was a past life of hers. On being asked the Selenka contact confirmed this. Here was an unusual case of what the literature of Shamanism called soul loss. There was no physical contact with Dana at all but some aspect of her was guiding a vast process. Some vital part of her she'd lost contact with and was consequently in a shut down stupor. It must be sorted but when? The Imbolc conjunction was the centre of gravity but it was felt unwise to undertake hefty work of a magical nature right in the middle of it. Surlok had been trying to make sense of the Ishtar Star teaching. He knew that this was a space between the spaces scenario. He knew that he was looking for a date somewhere in the twenties of February. Aha! The twenty-first was a new moon. This could be it. Investigate further. It was exactly six months on from the August Ishtar feast of Dana's initiation. The Star Teaching postulated a strange relationship between events separated by six month periods. Wasn't the Tibetan new year the new moon in February as well? This was getting interesting. Alex and Surlok wanted to transcend this past life grunge in order to be able to open up to the Tibetan energies they both now felt were to be the years centre of gravity. Here was a possible nexus point where all the issues could be put into the cosmic blender together. Surlok flicked through Durdin-Robertson's Goddess festival yearbook. February 21st. Atargatis!

Above: A Mermaid by J. W. Waterhouse

Here was the figure on Selenka's plate. Atargatis was primarily a Phoenecian Goddess generally pictured as half woman half fish. Virtually the original mermaid. In some versions she was consort to Dagon on whom Lovecraft had based his awesome Cthulhu concept. Cthulhu who lay sleeping beneath the ocean depths ready to return. Surlok knew that any situation like this could always be made far worse by looking a Kenneth Grant's books. Outside the Circles of Time was the best bet. Grant quoting Michael Bertiaux on translating forces from Universe B through the Daath portal into Universe A: "Dagon will come again, as will mighty sorceries - for the mighty beasts of the deep have been unleashed and they have gone about their pathway of destruction and far worse is expected - only by lycanthropic transformation by being and firstly becoming a monster shall the magician escape". Good news for certain. And Dagon was connected with Sirius. Hang on a minute. Ishtar star six months reverbs. After Surlok, Alex, Dana and others had performed an intense reality-smashing ritual to bring Isis/Sirius down into the Glastonbury Zodiac in July '92 in the brief period before Ishtar first appeared on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary at the Ozric Tentacles gig at Glastonbury, Alex's Dion Fortune contact had spoken of a void portal opened in the Thames. There had been some joking about Dagon being in the river. Shortly before Dana's initiation a series of events had linked Ishtar to the river in a similar way to the Isis Thames connection and hints of Dagon had been present. No one was laughing now. The chums were knackered. 1992 had been a head-banging year. They just wanted to chill out until the pretty flowers came out. Lycanthropic transformation to sort out Daath portals to Universe B they could do without. Surlok had wondered why he'd been feeling like an axe murderer for a month. Now he was starting to suss it.

Atargatis was fascinating. The deities of the Phoenicians had links with the Babylonians. Atargatis was connected with Ishtar. As far as Surlok was concerned she was an aspect of Ishtar. She had strong elements of the love goddess about her. Aphrodite had undoubtedly evolved from Atargatis. Botticellis immortal image of Venus/Aphrodite emerging from the sea was a modern doorway into that space.

Above: The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

Here was the key. A turning point in the year. Winter transforming into spring. A black serpent to turn green. The spring love goddess to transmute the darkness from the depths. Atargatis was in some sense a glyph of a primordial moment in evolution that somehow each of the players in the drama had to recapitulate in their own psyches. Halfway between alien depths and human love she was a mediator who existed in the spaces-between-the-spaces just as, for example, the Trickster archetype was both animal and divine. Where to accomplish this though? At first somewhere along the Thames estuary seemed the best bet.

On a Sunday afternoon in late January Surlok suddenly recalled some Enochian void shenanigans he, Dana and Alex had messed about with the previous June. The whole thing had been quickly closed down when a huge serpent had emerged and started wrapping itself around Dana. What? No way was this not connected. He told Alex thereby pressing the on button for an exceedingly odd scenario. Late that night Alex felt called into his Temple room. Selenka was waiting for him. She pulled him out of his body and took him to Dana's flat where she was sat mute, a hideous serpent coiled around her body. Alex was to remove this serpent from her and give it a good hiding. He later confessed that the resulting tussle was the heaviest do of his life and he'd seriously considered at one point in the midst of it all that he'd taken on more than he could handle and was going to literally physically die. Eventually mission was accomplished.

Now a very surreal sketch. Alex and Surlok journeyed to Silbury Hill for the February full moon. They were guided by Selenka throughout. No contact in the 3D world with her physical current incarnation had happened all year. It was time for lycanthropic transformation. Hurray! A black serpent lay sluggish across the landscape. On the hill Alex's main inner plane contact who was known as Jeremiah orchestrated the scene. Selenka in attendence. Ishtar, Astarte, Tara and Kuan Yin at the four quarters. Surlok's friend Jane danced a serpentine circle around. Alex sorted out vast energies. Surlok allowed the black snake to enter him. He knew from his initiation into Sannyas he could handle it. Back then in November he'd screamed and howled and cried for twenty solid minutes as the awesome transformative life energy had entered his body. Hyperventilating to stop his ribs breaking and his body from exploding he'd experienced ecstasy beyond anything he'd previously known. Dana had seen a huge serpent rising up his spine. Coming back from Glastonbury to Avebury the next day Dana told Surlok that the same snake was in the ground there. Everything evokes its complimentary force. Again crying howling growling screaming writhing wriggling on the ground, on the womb of the Earth Mother, the third eye void gateway of Silbury, Surlok was overwhelmed. His tongue was flicking in and out. He was licking the earth. Find him a jacket that does up at the back. Finally peace was restored. The black serpent turned green. A turning point of sorts. The feast of Atargatis beckoned though. It seemed anything could happen by then.

Above: Mahakala

In the week leading up to the big day Surlok's phone rang. Dana! He'd deliberately not contacted her to lay all this horrendous strangeness on her as he knew she was going through some heavy times. He also knew that their incredible telepathic bond was such that inevitably she would be in some way tuned into the saga but to what degree? She knew an important time was very near. Cautiously they opened up to each other. He said nothing at first of the Selenka story. She'd been dreaming of underwater scenes. Dolphins and mermaids. Yes, she'd felt compelled to watch the movie "Splash" when it had recently been on TV. She'd had a long time affinity with mermaids. There was Tibetan stuff happening for her as well. Most importantly a strong feeling had been building up to travel to the West Country for the coming weekend. All of her commitments had vanished leaving the time free. She wanted to go somewhere beyond Glastonbury. Visions of the sea. A cliff peninsular stretching a long way out into the water. Let's get together with Alex and see what happens.

Above: Brean Down

As Surlok put the phone down he realised where the location was. Brean Down! He practically vomited his dinner up. Brean Down. The physical location for Dion Fortune's immortal occult novel "The Sea Priestess". The haunting past life drama of a woman called from far off lands (in this case Atlantis) to preside over sacrificial rites of the sea and the karmic reworking in the present day of what was left unresolved. Dana had not read the book and didn't know the story. Neither Surlok or Alex had consciously recalled it recently but the whole Selenka story had uncanny resonances with it. Once Surlok got the idea of Selenka as Sea Priestess his legs almost gave way. He and Alex knew Brean Down and the novel only too well. Back in July 1990 in the days of the Grove of the Sky Dancers they'd performed in Essex the ritual the Farrars had got together from the fragments in Fortune's book. When Surlok had got home that night his bedroom ceiling had partially collapsed and he'd narrowly escaped serious injury. Stories circulated that the sea priestess material was well strong and others had had some heavy scenes with it. Undeterred and possibly insane they'd gone to Brean Down later that year to do the ritual again. After a few strange events they’d bottled it and fled in a state of near hysterical terror convinced that certain death would have followed the rituals performance. They knew something big and unresolved was waiting for them there and they'd have to go back eventually.

Above: Priestess by Chesca Potter

Friday February 19th. Surlok, Dana and Alex at Alex's flat. The beans spilled. How much of this saga corresponded to whatever was happening to Dana? A good test case: Alex and the serpent he'd removed from her. Surlok knew when that had been. The movie "The Abyss" (most appropriately) had been on TV that night. Part of Dana's drama of being presented with karma to be micro waved was the reappearance of an ex boyfriend who can be called Bob after the character in "Twin Peaks". He'd come out of the closet and Dana recalled the night in question vividly. On waking the next morning Bob had told her he'd spent the whole night pulling snakes out of her body. At that time in general it was not unusual for him to relate that he'd just disposed of a large snake out of the window. It's a funny old life guv'nor and no mistaking. The unutterable strangeness of this vibed up the coming weekend very nicely.

So long awaited the Feast of Atargatis weekend was here. Tibetan new year. Nexus point. Alex, Surlok, Dana and Ma Sitaram Kola headed for Silbury for starters. Atop the hill where Selenka had first been seen Surlok and Alex burned Tibetan Buddhist incense around a large framed picture of the great protector Mahakala. A statue of the Dhyani Buddha Askobhya (who transmutes the distorted energy of anger, aggression, hatred and violence into clarity and mirror wisdom) and an image of Green Tara.

Dana let out a great scream. On to Brean Down in primal darkness for a preliminary vibe out. Dana was told the story of the Sea Priestess of Dion Fortune. Surlok's three 18 foot tall mates from Sirius were about as well. Finally to a B&B in Weston-Super-Mare. Surlok wasn't impressed by the decor in the bedroom of the lesser spotted whatever it was warbler and up went Mahakala. Out came the statue of Tara. Into the sleep void softly chanting the name of Mahakala.

Feast day. Brekkers. A party of Nuns sat next to the chums crossing themselves before eating. Good job they didn't get a glimpse of Mahakala. He's a fluffy pink pussy cat when you get to know him, but his appearance is that of a terrifying demon. To the beach and the great sheer face of rock to be climbed by steep stairs. Dana confirmed on seeing the place in day light for the first time that it was indeed the place of her visions. Why was a man sitting at a desk way out on the beach? Why was another wearing a straw boater doing some outlandish dance routine a little further up the beach? They were being filmed. Of course that explained it all. 11am. Sunday morning and miles had been walked and to where? The climax of such a saga was hardly likely to be uneventful. Alex began to develop strange physical symptoms. In his recent workings with his Temple of Isis Iseum he kept ending up drowned at the bottom of the sea as some sort of sacrifice. It had been so real he'd tasted sea water and felt his lungs filling. He began to intuit a karmic link with his asthma and recent bouts of pleurisy. Now his breathing was laboured and his back hurting. The image of Baalat’s sliced back and punctured lungs. And out there in the Bristol channel ahead a lighthouse. Haunted since childhood by this image and recently going through events linking it with the goddess he was launching a magazine of that name. Deep, at the very least, Jungian processes of integration were emerging from his depths. As the four chums neared the ruined fort at the cliffs edge Alex felt as if his whole life’s drama was about to somehow be resolved.

Above: The Sea Priestess (detail) by Paul Atlas-Saunders

Surlok marvelled at how the diverse and individual elements of the whole mythic saga somehow harmoniously interrelated so that even apparent contradiction could be integrated within its flow. He had his own personal perspective on what this was all about. When the Avebury ritual had first entered his head his brain was full of Kenneth Grant, nutty stories of Egyptians in Wiltshire and an image of Nuit arched over Silbury painted by Chesca Potter. Nuit equated with Draco, dragon serpent of space, "Primal Goddess of the Seven Stars, which were considered as her spirits, souls or sons. These seven were manifested by the first-born son, Typhon, ie Set." The feeling was that the serpent in the sky of infinite space was lying also in the landscape waiting to resonate again to the most archaic of frequencies. The ritual would "bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men" by aligning the seven stars with the seven chakra points in the landscape serpent. It was a safe bet that such a sketch would have tumultuous results. Two months later he felt he had a preliminary understanding of what had happened, at least to him. Vibing heavily with Crowley and ancient Babylon he was experiencing some kind of blending. He'd often felt surprised in view of Crowley's Babalon cultus how few references to Ishtar as such could be found in Thelemic literature. He believed she should be consciously fully integrated into the Thelemic mythos being a perfect meeting place of celestial Nuit and physical Isis. Here was the original Queen of Heaven and Goddess of Love, War and Magick all in one. After all the Scarlet Woman, Whore of Babylon of Revelations, undoubtedly derived from Ishtar.

There's a strange correlation between the void of infinite space and the oceans darkest depths. Life emerged from both these profoundly alien zones. Just as there was a dragon of space who could be considered as the womb of humanity so likewise a dragon of the deep. In the Babylonian system this was Tiamat. Tiamat, Surlok felt, was a Nuit of the waters. As the seven stars were in the Avebury serpent so they were also in the Thames as he himself had previously discovered in his psychic quest along it in 1991 through seven holy wells to its source at Seven Springs. Tiamat was a benevolent force. A womb of humanity. As Babylonian culture developed something went wrong. As matriarchy was supplanted by patriarchy the male deity Marduk predominated. Tiamat became personified as a chaos monster, an evil force. In a conflict with Marduk she was dismembered. The Phoenicians seemed to have pumped up the worst aspects of Babylonian material the wrong way. Alex's battle with the serpent was a wyrd echo of the Marduk Tiamat scenario. The Thames serpent represented a magical current distorted. Alex and Surlok had no quarrel with Marduk. He was an old matey of theirs. That didn't alter the fact that Tiamat needed rehabilitating. There had been a strong feeling that all of the whole mad business needed to be sorted by the Spring Equinox. This was Tiamat's festival and Babylonian new year when the combat of Marduk and Tiamat had been ritually re-enacted. If the current remained distorted the whole year would be wrecked. Atargatis felt like a meeting of Tiamat and Ishtar who were ultimately the same force. It made perfect sense (to Surlok at least) that She offered an ideal key to turn everything around.

Dagon as a Typhonic force was a watery Set. Set the first born of the Seven Stars from the space between the spaces. A son/consort of the Goddess. This energy is in everyone. No point in putting on a blissed-out New Age smile and surrounding yourself with cotton wool and candy floss and ignoring it or banishing it as evil. Face it, own it, integrate it. Deny it and remain unbalanced for the rest of your life. In Jungian terms at least to claim you haven't got a Shadow is pure stupidity. The void. Ecstasy or terror? Dissolve in it's silence. In space no-one can hear you scream. But...Harpocrates divine child carries the real bliss in his smile and his gesture of silence. The radiance of the sun behind the sun.

Above: Aeon Tarot Trump from Aleister Crowley's
Thoth Tarot, painted by Lady Frieda Harris

Nothingness is always greater than that which apposes it. Fear of the void. Mankind’s endless striving and mechanical desiring all come from it. Distorted energy of distracted being as the Tibetans would term it. Ishtar, Crowley, Tibet, and Rajneesh taught Surlok the same thing: the Void is female. The destruction it appears to reap is always necessary. It is actually a nurturing force. Paradoxically it is empty and utterly full and overflowing simultaneously. This was the Zen Koan life had presented Surlok with that had finally destroyed his brain. The Void is the Tao. It is life itself. Set-Typhon appears as a monster, a dismemberer just like the wrathful skull smashing blood drinkers of Tibet. As the Abyss is crossed and the ego has to have its endless games dissolved, even that which was good and worthy, of course it comes to picture the dynamic energies responsible as terrifying and evil. The Indians knew the truth. Shiva was simultaneously creator and destroyer. To Surlok he was like the Horus-Set duality in one figure. Even an accomplished mystic and magician may hang onto the fear that when all they thought they were and knew is gone there will be nothing left. All of the paraphernalia of ritual is an attempt to hang onto and pump up what ultimately you have to give up. Ra Hoor Khuit the will of the magician is very impressive and powerful and it's tempting to identify exclusively with him but Hoor Paar Kraat is vaster by far and his message through Harpocrates is Silence. There's a Gnostic image of Harpocrates seated on a lotus. Surlok used it in his imagination to blend Crowley and Tibet and to help all of those diverse elements of his mind to harmoniously dissolve into the Void together. The Nothing that is feared is Everything. Only in it, out of the Tao, that Void can the True Will , the star of the Hidden God, the sun behind the sun, manifest. Some challenge.

Surlok knew '93 was an inevitable Thelemic saga. His three mates from Sirius always appeared in Crowleyan situations. He began to intuit increasing levels of subtlety. Having raised the serpent within himself through Sannyas and the Avebury ritual so also did Set-Typhon manifest. The Dagon serpent he'd allowed to enter him served as Hoor Paar Kraat to Ra Hoor Khuit. He was putting on the wings and arousing the coiled splendour within him. This void Goddess space was what Muktananda called the divine Goddess Shakti Kundalini whose body is the entire universe and is all life. As this force got to work in an individual it ironed out the creases. Spasms and convulsions, howling like an animal, all sorts of odd physical symptoms, many not at all pleasant, were standard fare. This was the Typhonic initiation. Surlok longed for the Roses of Isis.

And so they had found themselves, as if in a dream, exploring the ruins of the nineteenth century army fort that in Dion Fortune's novel had become the temple home of Vivien Le Fay Morgan, looking down the steep jagged rocks to the crashing waves of the tumultuous Bristol Channel. There on the rocks at the waters edge the Fires of Azrael had been lit and the secrets of the future seen. A semi-circular ruined gun emplacement at the very edge of the cliffs provided a self contained zone which could easily be mocked up in imagination as a temple. It was a bright morning and looking out and down into the waters, the sunlight glistening through their rhythmic pulsations, it was easy to get a sense of ancient civilisations and their timeless mysteries. Ever since first reading the Sea Priestess in the early eighties Alex had experienced powerful longings to travel to Brean and throw himself into the sea as a sacrifice. The feeling returned stronger than ever. Turmoil boiled within him.

Above: Astarte Syriaca by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dana sat on the outer rim of the gun emplacement facing out to sea. Surlok sat at her left, Alex to her right. Kola stood behind Alex. Dana now saw Surlok standing above his body wearing a white robe and holding a stone urn that was giving forth clouds of smoke. Smoke of the fire of Azrael. She saw herself in a green velvet robe with gold embroidery. Alex was in red and holding aloft a long sword pointing to his left that reached over the heads of Dana and Surlok. So did Selenka, Gilgaat and Balaat make their return. Had they had some sense of all this then? What had they seen in that fire? Dana had a strong feeling of life in the churning channel, they were being watched from deep within the water. Her throat constricted and she began to experience a physical transformation until she had gills and was breathing through them. A wave of divine energy came from the water and shot through her body up between her legs. Kundalini sea energy. Exactly six months on from her initiation as a Priestess of Ishtar so now did she become Priestess of Atargatis as Selenka was reclaimed and reintegrated. What exactly does a Priestess of Atargatis do in the twentieth century? Within moments she was to find out.

Alex was in agony. He was blind. The sea had entered his head. A blue energy that seemed to say "come to me". This was the end. Kola held him back and put Reiki into him. He had opened his eyes but couldn't see. Or breathe. Coughing. Choking. Water in his lungs. Dana put her hands on Alex. "Get the pain out!" he howled. His back was open. A great gaping wound hole. Burning as if seared with red hot metal. Dana's process of reintegration with her higher self had been instantaneous. Without even thinking she understood what had happened to her and was able to help Alex. "The sea is not your enemy. It's your friend. Use it to heal yourself. That blue energy. Breathe it in. Breathe out, spew out the colour of your pain. What colour is your pain?" Brown. Alex coughed up grunge galore. The cosmic process got personal. He was looking for someone/something to blame for his pain. Dana switched on her Sannyasin therapist aspect. Alex's self exorcism climaxed in a scream to the waters. Sadness. Depths of grief. The forces that Surlok and Dana's Sannyas initiator Manan had called the Divine Energy Dance came down and took Alex's pain away. Transmuted the base matter, the prima materia. Compassion flooded Alex. And then. Love. This was a homecoming. He'd returned to the depths where he'd emerged from. Personally, emotionally, spiritually, magically, totally. Acknowledged, owned, integrated, loved. So is the shadow sorted. He opened his eyes. "I am going to have to take the 1st degree of Reiki" he said.

So the chums walked back along Brean Down and out onto the beach for the finale. The beach was all but deserted. The February sun shone promisingly. Out to the waters edge. An offering of love to Atargatis/Aphrodite and the hope of the coming Spring. Red and yellow flowers and milk given to life’s waters, to the Love Goddess of the Sea who had guided the agonies of transformation from the alien bestial void depth. Ishtar/Tiamat. Yes, the secret of Alchemy. Without love you cannot face your shadow and sort it. Blessings had showered. All praise to the Goddess. The chums were totally blissed-out. Off they went for some well earned tea and buttered scones. On the journey home they stopped for a silent acknowledgement of the awesome mystery that is Silbury Hill and then back to mystic Essex for beddy-byes.

Monday 22nd February 1993. Alex and Dana had obviously got a result from Brean Down, but Surlok wasn't sure if the whole process had been fulfilled for him. Despite some extraordinary material that Dana and Alex had given him concerning his three mates from Sirius he was left feeling that for him personally surely something more spectacular should have concluded this epic saga. He went to bed and entered what he termed "Void Consciousness". This was a space he instantly recognised and had preceeded his astral brain operation. It was somewhere in the realm of Gurdjieff's "Self Remembering" and Osho's "Witnessing". A sense of conscious awareness but without any object or ideas being seized upon for that awareness to maintain itself. It started by just looking at the back of the eyelids and thinking on nothing. No verbal formulation. If this state was maintained sometimes a shift of gear occurred when it seemed the head expanded. He found himself in that space. Now his hands began to throb and pulsate very strongly as they rested palms down by his sides. He was used to strange sensations in his hands from Reiki but this was excessive. He was not aware of any discontinuity in his consciousness at any point in this process. His hands continued to pulsate ever more strongly.

Suddenly he felt a shock as profound as any he'd known. A pair of hands, utterly real, totally physical. were gripping his own as if from beneath, palm to palm. Opening his eyes he saw emerging from below his stomach, joined to him, the upper body of a male humanoid entity whose hands were those gripping his own. Its colour was a blue tinged olive. The face was like some classical God or Angel but somehow familiar. The eyes were burning. Whites incredibly bright. It looked at Surlok. Into him. A transmission of energies through the hands penetrated his subtle bodies. He was aware of endless layers and grids, of energies inside him. Chakras, acupuncture meridians, bodies of light, his human anatomy. The whole lot. Everything. The two figures were merging. Undulating pounding waves of interpenetrating electric rhythms were forming new retuned circuits of energy. Surlok was moaning and groaning orgasmically and then again opened his eyes. What? A dream? A searing pain shot through his right temple. He'd had a complete continuity of consciousness. Intense self awareness in fact but...Whatever the hell had just happened it was certainly no ordinary dream experience.

The face! It was the face of Harpocrates from Crowley's "Aeon" Tarot Trump and it was also Surlok's own face. Get Kenneth Grant's "The Magical Revival" off the shelf. Set-Horus etc. Harpocrates-Hoor Paar Kraat-Set. The concealed aspect of Horus. The Hidden God. Sirius. The form of Horus in Crowley's "The Book of the Law" is Hru-Machis. A twin form with Horus/Ra Hoor Khuit and Set/Hoor Paar Kraat/Harpocrates as its dual aspects. Surlok was already into the Harpocrates form. "Applied to man, these twins embody the idea of the soul and the spirit. The soul is the astral shade, the stellar light in darkness represented by Set and Sirius, the spirit is the solar body of light, represented by the sun. One is of the night, the other of the day." Harpocrates God of Silence seated on a lotus. "The active form of silence...is typified by the secret creativity which operates in the darkness and solitude of gestation." All through 1992 Surlok had got progressively further into the "Aeon" card. Now, amazingly, he'd experienced it as a living reality. This card has been "Judgement" in old Aeon decks. Dead coming forth from tombs. Angels with trumpets. As a backdrop of his personal "Aeon" Surlok fancied he heard Tibetan trumpets. He recalled his skull smashing, blood drinking buddies. The realms of the Bardo. Judgement of the dead. The white light of the Void. Radiance of the Silver Star. So did he integrate his Shadow. This was his homecoming. To the Sun behind the Sun. The Hidden God. Born from the Void. Nothing would ever be the same again. For the players in this drama, Surlok, Dana and Alex this was finally it. The end of the beginning.

From left to right: Surlok, Alex and Dana
shortly before the great adventure.

Bibliography.
The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley.
The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune.
The Magical Revival by Kenneth Grant.
Outside the Circles of Time by Kenneth Grant.
The Goddess of Love by Geoffrey Grigson.

When presenting Alex with the 1st draft of this article on 5/6/1993, a 33 day numerologically, which was 11:11 part 2 and 6 months to the day since receiving the Ishtar star teaching Surlok saw for the first time in Olivia Robertson's "The Call of Isis" the FOI Star and Dragon diagram showing Tiamat coiled around the Star of Ishtar with its matrix of the inner sun and 33 centres. His gonads trembled. Exactly 6 months to the day after the Avebury ritual which had provoked images of Tara at Silbury and talk of helping to bring Shambhala into the British landscape Tibetan Lama Ganchen Rinpoche presented Kalachakra Shambhala teachings of healing and purification under the protection of White Tara a few miles from Avebury. He spoke of the auspiciousness of performing this work near to such an important site at such an important time. So Ishtar and the Star teaching and Tara and the Wheel of Great Time teaching came ever nearer to blending as Surlok and Dana knew they would. Tara, after all, means "Star" and "great void".

"Love one another with burning hearts"

About the Author

Swami Amrit Surlok (aka Paul Weston) is a Psychic Questing, Reiki, Crowley, Fellowship of Isis, Adi Da, Kriya Yoga, Mother Meera, Druid, Osho, Gurdjieff, Scientology, Anthony Robbins firewalking, UFOlogical, Avalon of the Heart, 2012 kind of guy. He is author of Mysterium Artorius, published in 2007 and Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus, published in 2009. His new book Avalonian Aeon will be out sometime during 2010. Check out his blog Avalonian Aeon Publications

Mr Thomas Hickathrift (Lord of the Year)

2009-11-04T05:54:00.000-08:00

William Palmer Robins, 'The Old Sun Inn, Saffron Walden', watercolour, 1941.

The legend of Tom Hickathrift was a central theme in Dave Hunt's quest for the many secrets and mysteries hidden within the ancient Essex landscape. For many years Dave tirelessly researched the towns and villages of north west Essex, and in this very early article, published originally in ASH magazine No. 1 Autumn 1988, he explains some of the legends surrounding the East Anglian folk hero Tom Hickathrift. This research eventually led Dave to rediscover the legendary Essex Landscape Zodiac. One day I hope that those folk who now hold this research will allow it to be published for all to read. So without further ado, here is Mr Thomas Hickathrift (Lord of the Year) by Dave Hunt.

Mr Thomas Hickathrift (Lord of the Year)

Part 1: The Legend
by Dave Hunt

In Castle St, Saffron Walden, stands what was once the old "Sun" Inn, now an antique shop. This splendid half-timbered building has on it some exquisite examples of pargetting, or plaster moulding, an art much practiced in the Essex of long ago.

Among the fascinating designs are portrayed the images of Tom Hickathrift, giant and giant killer, and his one time adversary, the Wisbech giant. The pargetting is probably 17th or 18th century, but the secret it contains is much older.

Tom, the stories say, was born at the time of William the Conqueror, the son of a Cambridgeshire labourer. By the age of ten, Tom was already six feet tall, and proved stupid at school. Tom's father tragically died, leaving his mother to support him. He lazed by the fireside while she worked hard, and when mealtimes came, he ate as much as five fully grown men.

A Wisbech farmer, taking pity on Tom's mother, offered her two bales of straw, on condition that someone collected them. After much pleading, she prevailed on Tom to fetch the bundles. And so he set off, taking only a length of rope to secure them.

The farmer offered Tom as much straw as he could carry, but was horrified when he laid the rope on the ground and piled on enough to fill a wagon! Then he tied it up, hoisted it onto his back as if it was a bag of corn, and carried it home.

To prevent (so he thought) a similar occurrence on Tom's next visit, the farmer hid two huge boulders amongst the straw, all to no avail. When Tom arrived for the second bundle, he carried it off as if it was as light as the first! The boulders fell out as Tom walked home, so he resolved to have words with the farmer about cleaning his straw properly.

News of Tom's exploits quickly spread around East Anglia and more and more people wanted him to work for them. One such was a brewer in Kings Lynn who wanted beer delivered to Wisbech, a round trip of some twenty miles. For each trip Tom would receive as much food and drink as he wanted, plus a new set of clothes. Tom discovered, after a few journeys, that he could halve the distance by cutting across the territory of a fierce giant in the locality. The giant however, did not take kindly to trespassers, and as soon as Tom set foot on the land, he (the giant) came roaring out of his cave, threatening to knock Tom's head off and hang it on a large tree, which was gruesomely festooned with the heads of previous interlopers.

At this, Ton, being naturally somewhat annoyed, challenged the giant to a fight to the death, and while the giant went into his cave to fetch a huge club, Tom removed a cartwheel to use as a shield, and the axle for a weapon.

The duel began and for a time they were evenly matched. Eventually the giant, being out of condition, began to flag, until. streaming with blood and sweat, he fell to his knees and begged for mercy. Tom's answer was to batter his head clean off his shoulders. In the Giant's cave, Tom found enough treasure to make him rich for the rest of his life.

This deed made Tom a hero throughout East Anglia, and, with other exploits, including driving away a fierce band of highwaymen and even fighting the devil in the church year at Walpole St Peters in Norfolk, he soon became a highly respected citizen, to the extent that people referred to him as Mr Thomas Hickathrift.

This is the most famous legend of Tom, but there is another, less-well-known, but more pertinent to this investigation. It goes thus.

The inhabitants of a certain district were being abused by a dictatorial Baron, who confiscated all their food and cattle, leaving them to starve. At a meeting of local leaders, it was decided to ask Mr Thomas Hickathrift for assistance.

Tom duly arrived on his cart, which carried an enormous club, by now Tom's favourite weapon. As with the Wisbech giant, Tom. after some argument, challenged the Baron to combat and defeated him at the gate of the castle, knocking his head from his shoulders. As a result, Tom was able to restore to the people their livelihood.

Contained in these two stories we find elements of, naturally, the triumph of good over evil, but also evidence that Tom was more than just a local hero. The cartwheel used as a shield, is a solar symbol, as in the Catherine Wheel. The axle represents the pivot around which the months turn and these two symbols alone, being used by Tom to defeat the Wisbech giant (as winter destroyed by the year cycle) and the wicked Baron (more obviously the Lord of winter and deprivation) suggests that he was in fact the Lord of the sun, bringing back prosperity to the land.

There are many other clues to be revealed in future episodes, but one deserves a mention now.

Between the two figures on the Sun Inn pargetting, there is depicted a large circle. Until comparatively recent times, this was divided into twelve segments, surely a representation of the months, or even the zodiac, being fought over by Tom, the summer Lord and the Wisbech giant, the dark bringer of winter.

In the next episode I shall reveal more pieces in the jigsaw that finally portrays Ogma Sunface, Celtic god of the sun, Lord of the Zodiac, bringer of knowledge and eloquence, and inventor of the Ogham alphabet.

In Memorium

2009-11-02T02:28:00.001-08:00

Dave Hunt
1941 - 2009

Friend and mentor across time and space.
A tribute by Alex Langstone.

It is with great sadness that I can report the death of ASH magazine founder Dave Hunt. Dave was a stalwart of the Earth Mysteries and Occult communities in the south-east and his encyclopedic knowledge of folklore and mythology was outstanding. He spent many years researching landscape mysteries and legends around Essex, a county he loved.

Dave was born in 1941 in Mevagissey, Cornwall and he always loved exploring the British landscape. Indeed in 1993, we spent time researching an alignment of ancient sites across south-west England, which was eventually written up as The Eucharist of Osiris, and published in The Lighthouse volume 2 number 1.

But it was in 1985 that I first met Dave. I was a keen and enthusiastic 20 year old, wet behind the ears, but fascinated by esoteric subjects and eager to learn. Dave took me under his wing, and over the months and years that followed I learned much. Dave had a great way of passing on knowledge, and I shall always remember with affection, the years we studied together, and the way Dave always encouraged and supported me. He was the key player in the publication of my book Bega and the Sacred Ring, and without his valuable support I doubt if it would ever have been published!

His esoteric legacy spreads far and wide. Dave worked alongside many within the esoteric community. He was a student of 20th century occultist extraordinaire William G. Gray and was an adept of the Craft of Cunning. Dave worked with Andrew Collins during the early Earthquest group, where he helped Andrew research the Running Well Mystery. He later helped Andrew again in the search for the seven swords, by finding the sixth Meonia sword in Tintagel, Cornwall. This episode has been immortalised in chapter 45 of Andrew Collins' psychic questing classic The Seventh Sword. The chapter is entitled Morgana Awakes and absolutely sums up how I will always remember Dave.

Dave Hunt co-founded ASH magazine, along with myself, Ian Dawson, Claire Capon and Jim Kirkwood, and under his leadership he encouraged us all to write and lecture about what we had researched. He remained with the magazine until its demise in the spring of 1997. He also helped host two very successful ASH magazine Esoterica conferences and was fundamental in the organisation of the ASH Wednesday public meetings, held during the mid 1990s. He was an active member of the Leigh-on-Sea based Temple of Isis Iseum, during the early 1990s and a valuable guiding light, teacher and mentor in the Clan of the Trees. Dave's biggest legacy though was his research. He spent years researching the Essex Landscape Zodiac, and I sincerely hope that someone, somewhere has this document, and that it will one day be published. I recall spending many happy hours out in the field with Dave, whilst he checked and re-checked the maps and the landscape for clues to the elusive geometry of the Zodiac, and he gave many excellent lectures on this subject.

I am very fortunate to have in my possession some of Dave's work, and it will all be published in due course.

The thing that will always stay with me most of all was Dave's infectious sense of humour. Many times I recall situations that needed the lightness of his humour and he always made everyone laugh, and this was one of the joys of belonging to some of the groups he was a part of. Dave was a wise soul, who would tell it as it was! He will be sadly missed in the communities he served.

Below is a poem from an early issue of ASH, that Dave wrote. I can recall talking to Dave about it at length at an editorial meeting, where it caused much discussion. It is a particular favourite of mine and seems a fitting conclusion to this obituary.

Years End

2009-11-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

Years End

by Dave Hunt

In the hours between the hours when day has
died and night not yet begun
and this old Earth is made to sigh by Autumn's dim
and dwindling days,
over hills and vales made mellow by the mists and
setting sun.
The Mother of the mystery walks her secret ways.
As old as time, and born of time itself She passes,
quiet, stealthy and unseen.
Shuddering with the cloying cold that surely
soon will come.
Making Summer's sun and warmth a half
remembered dream.
And as She passes, with caressing touch, She
plucks the life from all She does survey
and drops it, gently as a falling leaf, into
a basket made of dark decay.
Over all the land She wanders, dogged by
shades of darkness and of fear,
pausing for a while at homesteads locked
against the Crone,
to scratch at door and window or to
freeze the child's tear
who hears her in the chimney softly
moan.
When She has passed the land is
locked in Winter's sere and snowy hold.
The now dead sun hangs like a pearl in
the pewter bowl of sky,
yet folk in Albion, huddled round the
fires against the cold
quietly wait to hear from far a future
Child's cry.

Written in 1989, and originally published in ASH magazine no. 3.

The Witch and the Stone

2009-07-26T04:13:00.000-07:00

Folklorist Ian Dawson was one of the founder editors of ASH Magazine, and was at the magazine until the very last issue in 1997. He spent the nine years that ASH was in print, as a loyal and leading light within the editorial team. He wrote more articles than anyone else, and was a champion of the Green Man in Essex, along with being a mine of information on Essex Witchcraft and Cunning Lore. The article below, was one of his earlier ones, and was published in the second issue, which hit the streets in the winter of 1988!

The Witch and the Stone
by Ian Dawson

For years Essex has been known as the witch county, because of the many witchcraft trials held there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is hardly surprising therefore, that there are many stories about witches and their craft, coming from this part of the British Isles. One such story is that of the Witch of Scrapfaggots Green. For years the villagers of Great Leighs knew of large stone that lay at the crossroads known locally as Scrapfaggots Green. Under the stone were the remains of the Witch of Great Leighs, put to death some 300 years before.

In 1944, during the second world war, the roads leading to Boreham air base had to be widened so that military vehicles could travel along them. One of these roads, called Drachett Lane, led over the crossroads where the witch lay, and an army bulldozer pushed aside the stone that marked the witch's grave. From that day onwards. there followed a series of events that defied all explanation and to which nearly everyone in the village was witness to at one time or another. For instance, after a calm and serene night, a farmer awoke to find his hay stacks had been tipped over and scattered around the surrounding countryside. He also found his wagons had been turned sideways in their sheds and it took the farm labourers half an hour to get them out! Sheep were found outside their still secure pens, yet there were no gaps or any means of escape. A builder found his scaffold poles spread all over his yard and some decorators found their heavy paint pots and tools missing, when they turned up for work at a cottage they were decorating. They finally discovered the paint pots under a bed in the attic. The church bells rang of their own accord at midnight and the church clock was found to be two hours slow. Cows stopped giving milk, chickens stopped laying and three geese disappeared without a trace. Not even a tell-tale feather. A chicken that belonged to no one was found dead in a water barrel. Daily the turmoil grew until a reporter for the Sunday Pictorial arrived on the scene and was witness to one event himself. At the village pub, the Dog and Gun, another large stone turned up on the doorstep. The landlord said he had not seen it before and did not know where it had come from. After he and the reporter struggled to move it out of the way, he stated that it would take at least three strong men to lift it.

This, as with the other happenings, had no explainantion. No logical one anyway.The locals though, had their own theory. The moving of the stone at Scrapfaggot Green had let loose the spirit of the witch and it was she who was to blame for all the disturbances. Harry Price, the well known ghost hunter and head of the London University Council for Psychical Investigation, was consulted about the mysterious happenings, and in his view, the events were caused by a poltergeist and suggested the stone should be replaced in its original position. As this action was in accord with local feeling, and that Halloween, the witches night was approaching, they decided that this was what they should indeed do. So out to the stone on Scrapfaggots Green the villagers went and edged it back to its place. From that moment, all the strange activity stopped. They later found out however, that one last trick had been played before the replacement of the stone. A woman who kept rabbits, arrived home to find them all in the chicken coup with the chickens! So what was the cause of all these disturbances?

These upsets, although trivial, were witnessed by nearly everyone in the village and some of them would have required super human strength, ruling out the possibility of any foul play. Earth Mysteries enthusiasts would say that the stone at Scrapfaggots Green was a pagan standing stone or markstone, and the removal of this stone would release the earth energies flowing into it, causing poltergeist activity to occur. Or perhaps the villagers of Great Leighs were correct in their assumption, that it was the witch herself who was causing all the mysterious happenings.

Records show that there was indeed a witch who came from Great Leighs by the name of Ann Hewghes who was brought to trial at he nearby Chelmsford Assizes in 1621. For various misdemeanors performed on the nights of the witches sabbats, the old Celtic quarter days of Imbolc, Feb. 1st, Beltane April 30th, Lughnasadh Aug. 1st and Samhain Oct. 31st, she was put to death at the stake. As burning of witches did not take place after the reformation, this form of execution seems quite strange. However, among the crimes Ann Hewghes committed was the murder of her husband which was considered petty treason and punishable by burning at the stake. She was buried on the spot and covered by a stone to keep her down. There is no record where this spot was but crossroads were traditionally the burial place of witches. Bones and ashes were said to have been found beneath the stone at Scrapfaggots Green and incidentally, scrapfaggot is an old Essex name for a witch.

The stone which turned up at the village pub can still be seen. You will not find it at the dog and gun however, but at the St Annes Castle Inn. It seems that one night, three men from the pub tried to carry off the stone, still known as the witches stone, to no avail. Upon investigation, the stone was found to be too small to be the same one that covered the witches grave, but could it be a fragment of the original stone? The bulldozer that widened the road could quite easily have broken it and a piece found its way to the pub.

The fact that the stone is now at St Annes Castle Inn is interesting. The pub is one of the oldest ion England and is haunted by an old lady called Anne. Some say it is he witch herself who has taken up residence at the Inn, arriving with the stone that for so long kept her down.

A strange story but a true one. Whatever the case, the facts remain. I'll leave you to decide for yourself.

Notes.
The image above was published with the original article and is by Jim Kirkwood.

The Sacred Flame

2008-10-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

Jim Kirkwood, aka Lucifaere, The Ancient Technology Cult, Beyond the Fields We Know, has been writing Electronic Music since the late 1980’s when he stepped back from fronting a black metal band to explore a solo career in instrumental music. He has his own unique style of Gothic EM which moves easily between huge symphonic slabs of music, dark ambiance and sequencer driven soundscapes, inspired by the fringe side of life - strange esoteric cults and religion, conspiracy theories, ancient mythology and civilisations, sci-fi and fantasy . Jim was one of the founding editors of ASH Magazine, and he contributed several thought provoking articles to the magazine. He was artist in residence between 1988 and 1991 and he produced 24 drawings for the publication in total. The article submitted here was first published in issue no. 1, Autumn 1988, which went on sale almost exactly twenty years ago today - happy birthday to us! To sample Jim's comprehensive music catalogue click here, or view his brand new website here.

The Sacred Flame

by Jim Kirkwood

Kyrie Eleison.

The air is heavy with incense and the sound of a strange chant. I glance across the small chapel to a statue of Mary the mother of God. I like Mary, which I'm told is unusual for one of a protestant background. It seems only a short step from Mother of God to Mother God, yet the Christian faith is still content with the masculine half of the Tao and gets nervous when the subject of God and sexual equality is brought up.

For the third time in my life I am attending a Roman Catholic church. It is exactly twenty one years since the first, confused encounter. A priest dressed in white walks around the perimeter of the church and back to the altar. The white robe reminds me of something, a Druid I think. I wonder why they walk round the church carrying a burning censer and a crucifix on a pole. Then I realise he has just formed a circle around the people. A different kind of magic.

This time I am singing along with the rest, I now know what the strange chant means. Children are playing in the aisles and the music is accompanied by two ladies playing guitar and keyboards making an ethereal sound that echoes round the chapel. The priest, a Dominican brother, talks about love and reads from the Gospel of John, the gospel most favoured by the Celtic church and the Christian mystics down through the centuries. It is the gospel of fire, so called because of the strong image used in the opening chapter of an eternal flame burning in a sea of darkness. Tolkein used exactly the same image in his book, the Silmarillion, when writing the creation myths of Middle-Earth.

The idea is of course borrowed from the religion of the Magi and it is interesting that the three wise men who followed a star to the birthplace of Christ, were themselves Magi and astrologers from Persia. The worship of fire forms an essential part of the religion of the Persians, called Zoroastrians after their founder Zoroaster who lived, according to Parsee tradition, between 660 and 583 BC. The element of fire though, was sacred to the Persians long before Zoroaster. The worship of Mithras, a sun god, can be traced back to 1500 BC and there are many aspects of this god which have been attributed to Christ, especially concerning his birth. A hymn, sung to Mithras also reveals importance of the sacrifice of blood. "Thou hast saved us also by pouring out the blood eternal". It is It is an interesting fact that Christ claimed to baptise with fire and his death coincided with a solar eclipse.

Apart from the Findhorn community, what do Christians and pagans have in common? To have asked this question a few centuries ago, the answer would have been the stake. Heretics made just as good burning as witches. But it is 1988 and the law, for the moment, is on our side.

The answer is simple, yet it would seem difficult for most to accept. We walk the same earth and breathe the same air. The fire of the sun gives us light and warmth to good and bad alike and the same water sustains all life. If we can agree that there is only one power in and around, creating and maintaining all the elements of life forms dependent upon these elements, then we have found the supreme harmony between our apparently different religions.

Whatever name we chose to give this one power, whether we see it as a trinity or a duality, this one power has poured out His/Her blessing through the elements on all, regardless of their religion or beliefs. This article is the first in a series on the elements, and in particular, the elements as seen from the Christian point of view.

In the closing chapters of the excellent book by Marion Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, Morgaine of the fairies enters the Christian chapel of Mary at Glastonbury where she discovers a statue of St Brigid and recognises the goddess of that name. At last she sees, after a lifetimes struggle with a bigoted Christian church, that the powers that be were not limited to working in the way that she thought they should. The goddess had been reborn in Mary and Brigid and her worship continued.

St Brigid, the abbess of Kildare was born on the 1st of February 450 AD at Fockhart near Dundalk. Her life and that of the Celtic triple goddess Brigid have become so interwoven over the centuries as to be almost inseparable. One particularly close link is that of the element of fire. A perpetually burning fire among the Druid oak groves in the central plain of Ireland was part of the ritual worship of the goddess. When the abbey of Kildare was built on that site the flames did not die but were kept alive by St Brigid and her nuns.

As hinted at in the above mentioned book, the early Celtic church did indeed share much in common with the pagans and the fire of Brigid could be seen right up until the reformation. Today only the ruins remain, but who knows, the wheel turns. The oaks may grow again and the fire rekindled on the plain of Ireland.

The writings of St Francis, himself heavily influenced by the early Celtic church, left us a rich legacy of their beliefs and practices. Brother sun and sister moon are familiar to all of us. His faith was simple, and like the druids he worshipped his God mostly in the great outdoors. The elements, far from being static, to him were living beings with whom he shared his life. This was not a romantic ideal that he lived. At the end of his life, his eyes had to be cauterised with a white hot iron. These words are his reaction to being told what the treatment would be.

"My brother fire, outdoing all things in splendour the Most High
created you mighty, fair and useful. Be kind to me this hour,
be courteous, for I have long loved you in the lord."

Such a belief in the elements as living beings figured very strongly in the religion of the Hebrews.

"Who makest the winds thy messengers,
fire and flames thy ministers."

"Who maketh his angels spirits;
his ministers a flaming fire."

Psalms 104 v4

Above are the same quotations. The first, a modern translation from the RSV bible. The second from the older King James version. The difference between the two give us some understanding as to why the modern Christian fails to see anything spiritual within the elements. One quotation implies that God merely uses creation for a purpose. The other reveals that the elements are living, thinking, moving beings.

In the Hebrew/Christian tradition the archangel Michael was the master of the element of fire as well as being the guardian angel of the nation of Israel. The other three archangels, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel being air, water and earth respectively. Such designations of angels to the elements and cardinal points was an essential part of the belief system of the ancient Hebrews, long before the kabbalah came on the scene. It was during the bronze age, 1200 BC, that the Hebrew peoples, wandering for forty years in the wilderness, developed the idea that the four archangels stood at the cardinal points to protect them, each holding a key to one of the four elements, which were believed to be the weapons of God's judgement. The arrival of Christianity saw the designation of the elements to the Holy spirit, the symbol of fire being a single flame. belief in the angels did not cease, but they lost their elemental significance, being seen more as messengers and rescuers than interacting with the powers of nature.

J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S.Lewis, apart from being very good friends, were also strong advocates of the Christian faith and much of what they believed can be read in their books, Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. In Tolkein's works, angels, or divine spirits, took the form of wise old men with supernatural powers, an idea straight out of the old testament and certainly a prominent feature of the Celtic church where angelsoften appeared as beggars in disguise to test the faith of the religious. Gandalf, the wizard/angel who walked middle-earth dressed like a beggar in grey rags, also possessed one of the three elemental rings of power, Narya the ring of fire. The other two were Vilya and Nenya of the elements of air and water.

According to Robert Graves, the colours of these three rings, white, red and blue, were a reoccurring sequence symbolising the lunar-vegetation goddess as new, full and old moon and as maiden, bride and crone, of which Brigid is certainly an example.

This great work of fantasy, which borrows so much from the mythologies of the Celts and Norse interwoven with Christian ideals, presents us with a vision of marriage between heaven and earth to which both pagan and Christian can easily relate. It is a vision of the past, a vision of the Christianity of Jesus the gentle carpenter from Nazareth whose parables were full of the elements of nature so beloved of the Celtic church.

It is also a vision of the future once this dark age has received the sacred flame. I'll see you there.

Kyrie Eleison

Credits
ASH Magazine Autumn 1988 cover art by Jim Kirkwood
Celtic Cross and Dragon by Jim Kirkwood (was published in the same issue as this article).
Brigid by Paul Atlas-Saunders (not part of the original article).

Beli Mawr

2008-10-20T09:20:00.001-07:00

This article was submitted for inclusion in The Lighthouse Vol. 2 No. 2 - the lost issue, and it is with great pleasure that I can now finally publish it for all to read. Beli is the earliest known deity of Britain. Very little is known about him for sure as his origins are lost in the thick smog of unrecorded history that predates the dark ages. Glastonbury artist and author Yuri Leitch goes in search of his origins.

Beli Mawr

The Origins of an Ancient British Deity
by Yuri Leitch

Beli Mawr is the father god of ancient Britain, the Dis Pater of pre-Christian Europe. In Ireland he is Bile, husband of Dana, mother of the famous Tuatha de Danaan. Beli and Don are the British counterparts of the Irish Bile and Dana; all are Celtic. Links have been made between Beli and the Babylonian god Bel because of the obvious similarity between the names, however this remains subjective. Yet there is a link between Beli and the Orient in an obscure piece of folklore which gives Beli a Phoenician origin.

In a Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology by Marian Edwards and Lewis Spence a story is given, that in far ancient Phoenicia there was a huge tower from the top of which the entire world could be seen. One day three men upon the tower; Ith, Beli and Mile espy Ireland. So won over are they by Ireland's beauty that they decide to live there. It now being known for sure that the ancient Phoenicians had much interaction with Ireland and Cornwall, the above story could hold some hidden truth.

All that is known for sure is that Beli is a Gaelic personification of Dis Pater the God of Death and the Underworld. In British he is Beli, In Irish he is Bile (pronounced Bill-lay) and to the Formorians (the ancient race that lived in Ireland before the Tuatha de Danaan) he is Balor. The Gaelic root syllable of Beli, Bile and Balor is Bel, which means "to die".

Beli is the husband of Don, Don is the ancient goddess of fertility of Britain. Their offspring are called the Children of Don and are also known as the children of light. Metaphorically, it is from the darkness of death, i.e. emptiness, nothingness, that "light" can spring. The Children of Don as a pantheon of deities are symbolic of different enlightenment's and knowledge. Celtic mythology is full of heroic characters who venture into the underworld or who come back from the realms of death, with learnt or gained treasures that would then benefit mankind or the world about them. That illusive divine spark, that bright idea, that initiator of motivation, that guiding light ij the darkness of despair, and that big bang of universal creation all come from the darkness that Beli is.

The light of the children of Don and their descendants was their creed for living. Druidically it was expressed (as in all things Celtic, in a tinity) as the Three Pillars of Light, a three fingered symbol of enlightenment; that which was, is and will be as one. In later centuries this light and the creed that it followed would be symbolised by the motif of the Three Crowns of the Wise men, a possible ironic return to the oriental source of Beli Mawr.

The myth-smiths of early medieval heraldry , forming noble blood lines of descent with stories of picture symbols paint a scene of enigmatic lineage. The Three Crowns as an emblem shine back (and forward, outside of time) through history. Connecting the likes of St Helena of Colchester and the tragic but devoted King Arthur back to the source.

12th century heraldic artists give Beli Mawr, the god-king of Britain, the coat of arms of the Three Golden Crowns upon a dark blue background. Orion's belt of heraldic expression. In a time before television, in an ancient time even before writing. When fingers drew symbols in the sand, the night sky was an open story book and the characters within it were known to all. The great expanse of dark nothingness was the all encompassing father of the underworld/otherworld - Beli Mawr.

As Balor the Formorian the bright burning ball of fire - the Sun, was his all consuming eye, the beautiful shining moon that governed the seasons of farming his beloved wife and the Queen of Heaven, Goddess of fertility - Don. The bright shining myriad of stars and constellations of the heavens were their children of light. Known in the east as Angels and to the Vikings (of the great Odin with his one eye) as Elves. To the Celts they were known as the Faerie, beings of light from beyond the veil.

Yuri Leitch Original Drawing Found!

2008-10-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

The beautiful pencil drawing below was found today buried deep within my publishing archive. It was originally submitted to be included in The Lighthouse Vol. 2 No. 2 - the lost issue!

I am very happy to have found it, and it is reproduced it here as part of the ongoing archive project. Please visit the official website of artist Yuri Leitch here, where you can view all the latest art from Yuri.

The Michael Line the Qabalah and the Tarot

2008-07-22T03:06:00.000-07:00

It is with great pleasure that I can now republish this article by Glastonbury based writer and mystic Paul Weston. It first appeared in ASH magazine No. 11 Winter 1991. The drawing of Adam Albion Kadmon is by Kerry Horrigan, and was published with the original article in ASH. The pencil drawing by Yuri Leitch, was inspired by his attendance on the 1991 Rally, and it was featured on the front cover of ASH No. 11 (left). I have reproduced a high resolution copy at the end of Paul's article, from the original, for your enjoyment. The slightly revised article which is republished here was featured in the Glastonbury based Avalon magazine in 1999.

The Michael Line, the Qabalah and the Tarot

by Paul Weston

In July 1990, during a visit to Glastonbury with my friend and psychic questing colleague of the time, Alex Langstone, I had a wild idea. Why not try and traverse the entire length of the famous St Michael leyline during the Mayday Bank holiday weekend (a time when the sites along it are alleged to align with sunrise)? The pace we would set led to the event being named the Michael Line Rally. It was conceived of as a holiday, a pilgrimage, and an experiment. Some sort of activity other than simple site-seeing was intended for each place we visited. Perhaps a meditation or ritual of some kind. The sites represented a tremendous diversity of aspect. A theme was needed to link them together, to provide some conceptual continuity. I was looking for something that could incorporate the idea of pilgrimage through the multi-faceted sites, within the continuum of earth energy currents of the St Michael force and its counter-balance, the newly formulated St Mary Line, which weave their way around the basic line of sites. (For a full explanation of the Michael/Mary interaction, see The Sun and the Serpent by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst.) I put my mind to work.

In the extraordinary Green Stone of Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman there is an episode known as the “Lights of Knowledge” Quest. From my association with Andrew Collins I knew details of this not mentioned in the published version. The main point is that in traversing most of the Michael Line, heading down towards Cornwall, Graham Phillips came to believe that various sites along it resonated with the energies of the Qabalah in an orderly sequence, so that a coherent Tree of life could be drawn with them mapped out upon it.

For what follows I have to assume some prior knowledge of the Qabalah in the reader. Here’s a listing of various sites assigned to the Tree of Life. See if they feel right to you or not.

Kether. The Merry Maidens stone circle.

Chokmah. St. Michael’s Mount.

Binah. Dozmary Pool, Roche Rock, Hurlers stone circle area.

Chesed. Brentor.

Geburah. Crediton.

Tiphereth. Glastonbury.

Netzah. Avebury, Silbury Hill.

Hod. White Horse of Uffington, Wayland’s Smithy area.

Yesod Dorchester on Thames.

The Merry Maidens stone circle is not normally considered to be a part of the alignment. In recent years Miller and Broadhurst’s dowsing work has suggested it does connect to the main current. A Malkuth site was never designated. I opted for Bury St Edmunds as a workable possibility.

The Michael Line has sometimes been thought of as a possible spinal column of a Blakean Albion figure. This is not conceived of in the sense of physical earthworks in the manner that the Glastonbury Zodiac landscape supposedly models giant effigies. It somehow lives in an inner realm of the nation’s consciousness. A Suffolk village named Eye has influenced views on which end of the line the head would be. Central to Qabalistic lore is a giant cosmic being named Adam Kadmon on whom the Tree of Life can be drawn. His feet are in the earthly realms, his head at the Crown of Creation. The path of High Magic lies in realising that cosmic figure is latent within us all and can be activated, thus raising us to our highest, fullest, most total capacities. In the specific physical locations on this figure of the different spheres of the Qabalah, a similarity can be seen with the Yogic concept of the chakra centres of energy along the spinal column. The middle pillar of the Qabalah correspond s to the spinal column of Adam Kadmon and ourselves. There are specific practices arising out of the Golden Dawn tradition for working with and energising the centres of this middle pillar. Knowing that Blake was aware of the Qabalah, I didn’t find it hard to broadly equate Albion with Adam Kadmon. I wondered how far, working with Graham Phillips’ material, the analogy could be profitably extended? Maybe the giant’s head was in Cornwall?

Adam Albion Kadmon

As manifested through the St Michael Leyline

I began to toy with the idea of taking it as read that, in some archetypal realm, an Albion figure exists along the Michael line and that treating it as a kind of Adam Kadmon and playing Qabalistic games with it would be doing it a favour. My attitude was to treat it as an experiment with reality. Believe it and see what happens as a result of believing it. I also felt that Adam Albion was generally conceived of as being distinctly male. I didn’t think it was taking too many liberties with Qabalistic thought to think of the figure as androgynous in some way. It was in keeping with the theory of the Qabalah, if not always the practice. This idea could be taken further with the concept of the dual Michael/Mary energies that wind, like a caduceus, around the spinal column, in the manner of the Ida Pingala currents of Kundalini yoga.

As pilgrims of the path of light, we would start at the source, the crown, trying to fill ourselves up with light and take it down through ourselves, through Albion following the downward eastern path of its manifestation in the sunrise orientation. By the end, hopefully, we would have helped to in some way activate the centres of this figure and their corresponding areas in ourselves. This was the plan to get the line humming.

The middle pillar would be our centre of gravity and the caduceus of Michael/Mary a continual balancing process throughout the journey. I felt that the Middle Pillar sites needed the Qabalistic cosmic figure emphasised, but how to do it? I also knew that Graham Phillips had done some unpublished work using the Tarot in the landscape. He believed that sometimes certain sites embodied the aspects of particular cards. Once this was understood the card could be used as a gateway into the inner realms of the place. In the Golden Dawn/Crowley tradition the Tarot cards are assigned to different places on the Tree of Life. The 22 Trumps correspond to the paths between the Sephiroth. Regarding the middle pillar, the path from Kether down to Tiphereth is Atu II, the High Priestess. Tiphereth to Yesod is XIV Temperance. Yesod to Malkuth, XXI the World.

I looked at the Michael Line sites that corresponded to the middle pillar of the Qabalah and the Tarot cards that joined them to see if there might be any possibilities for visualisation pathworkings. What I found was so apt and fertile for creative exploitation I could hardly believe it possible. I shall give a detailed description of these examples, and how they were used, as it possibly gives the essence of the feel of our journey.

Glastonbury Abbey’s ruined Mary chapel was the place I chose to enter the realm of Atu II, the High Priestess, linking Kether with Tiphareth. Its floor no longer exists and the crypt Chapel of St Joseph of Arimathea beneath it has now effectively merged with it, creating one vibrant space. We sat in front of the altar focusing, in our imaginations, on a cross that used to sit atop it in those days. A point of blue light emanated outwards from it filling the whole place, until seeming to have become a transparent veil with the pillars of the Temple and Qabalah, at either side of it. Behind the blue light, the cross faded, leaving the outline and sense of presence of a female form. With this the veil parted, revealing the Virgin Mary in a Queen of Heaven Isis aspect, seated on a throne. Behind her, steps led up to a door opening onto the landscape we had travelled from Cornwall, in particular the Kether Merry Maidens site.

The Qabalistic sphere of Yesod is concerned with the astral realms. It incorporates lunar and water symbolism. Graham Phillip’s Yesod site was at Dorchester in Oxfordshire. This is the place where the Michael Line and the River Thames cross. To bring the energy from Tiphareth to Glastonbury, we would pathwork with the Temperance card. The particular one that had inspired me was in the Mythic Tarot, in which the figure represented (often the Archangel Raphael), was Iris, the Rainbow Goddess, and which featured a rainbow as a prominent part of its imagery.

Now think of all the many versions of this card you may have seen and try to picture our scene. It is dusk by the banks of the Thames in early May. The evening star hangs in the heavens and reflects rippling in the river’s waters. Around a lantern at the water’s edge we sit now, closing our eyes. In our imaginations the light of the lamp expands outwards, through and around us, until an egg of glowing energy encompasses us. Just beyond we begin to see, as if in daylight on the bank, a shimmering wavelet of light that condenses into an ever clearer form. The Rainbow Angel of Temperance stands tall and serene before us. One foot is in the waters of the river and one is on the bank. In each hand is a chalice. One is gold and is filled with the solar aspects of the Michael Line. The other is silver and of the Thames and Mary. Endlessly, gracefully, the Angel pours the contents of the chalices between them. Eternal equipoise in the harmony of the two currents at this site. In the mid-distance the Dorchester landscape blurs as a giant rainbow arches across the sky. As it reaches the ground on the left we see Hod with the White Horse of Uffington and Wayland’s Smithy. On the right we see Netzah, Avebury and Silbury Hill. In the centre, just beneath the rainbow, in the far distance, we see Glastonbury Tor. We try to feel a sense of energies moving through the landscape to find their harmonisation at Dorchester.

Bury St Edmunds proved to be a good Malkuth. Its ruined Abbey provided the setting for the Qabalistic climax to our epic journey. Two ruined pillars, once joined as an arch, formed the frame for an imagined recapitulation of our complete travels to that point. We saw ourselves dressed as monks and pilgrims travelling from site to site and finally emerging through the gateway between the pillars to rejoin our physical bodies sitting nearby. We then saw, using Atu XXI, the World card as a jumping off point, the figure of Albion flanked on either side by St Michael and the Virgin Mary. Behind Albion, on the horizon, the sun appeared, ascending, and as it moved just above him, Michael and Mary both reached a hand out into it, and on doing so, it became a crown which they placed upon his head. Mission accomplished. A rendition of Blake’s Jerusalem was in order regardless of what any passing tourists may have thought.

The Michael Line Rally was carried out in full in 1991 and 92. In 1997, now living in Glastonbury, I felt the need to try the journey again when the General Election was announced for Mayday. It seemed likely that the archetypes and energies of the sacred landscape would be massively switched on. Sure enough, in the week leading up, I had a major brainstorm in which a flood of further Qabalistic Tarot imagery enabled me to make good use of the complete Major Arcana linking all of the spheres. As we travelled the line I did wonder if this cerebral Qabalah was imposing a structure onto the landscape that was not appropriate, however much it seemed apt to me.

On returning I discovered that, during the course of our journey, at a place near the course of the Mary current, a crop formation had appeared in the form of a complete Qabalistic Tree of life with all 10 sephiroth and the 22 paths between them. Regardless of how it arrived there, the concept of “hoax” would have to be re-defined in order to accommodate its synchronistic levels of meaning. Crop circles have been appearing for a long time now. A Tree of Life could have manifested on numerous occasions. As it is, it waited until a group of people were travelling the landscape carrying out detailed Qabalistic pathworkings at sacred sites (and not that many people are doing such things anyway). This was all the affirmation I needed. My work with the Michael Line continues to develop and represents one of the great joys of my life.

St Michael Line Rally 1991 drawing (with personalised inscription)
by Yuri Leitch. Click on image to view larger version.

The White Lady

2008-07-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

This meditational piece first appeared in The Lighthouse No.1 Vernal Equinox 1993, and was partially re-written in readiness for inclusion in The Lighthouse Volume 2, No. 2 Winter 2000 - the lost issue! It is the re-written article reproduced here. The drawing of the White Lady by David Taylor, appeared with the original article in TL No. 1, and is reproduced here. The photographs are from my own collection and have been added, as always, for your viewing pleasure. So without further ado, let us enter into the secret pantheistic realms of Nature...

The White Lady
A Meditation of Communion with the Spirit of Nature
by Alex Langstone

One of the most beautiful places that I have had the pleasure of visiting has to be the White Lady waterfall at Lydford Gorge on the western flank of Dartmoor. There is a legend at this place of a white lady who appears on moonlit nights; standing within the white lance of the falls. Her hair becomes the tumbling luminous white liquid and her voice the rushing cacophony of cascading water that infinitely caresses the rock-face upon which is glides.

There is another legend also of a lady called Kitty, and it is thought that she fell into the river, where she drowned. Her ghostly presence can be seen each spring at dusk on the night of the new moon.

The gorge is an enchanted place of mystery and magic: it is indeed a haunted glade, where one can expect to see elves and sprites flitting between tree and river. Tall slender birch trees sway each side of the river, and a footpath leads away from the falls in both directions. There is a small bridge that leads to a path which leads to the Devil's cauldron, a huge cavernous cleft deep within the gorge, where the River Lyd boils and bubbles away in honour of the old ones. Truly a place of power! But I hear a feminine voice on the breeze, gently calling from the waterfall. It is the Soul of Nature...

The Pathworking.
Make whatever usual arrangements required for relaxation in readiness for meditation. Close your eyes. See yourself standing at the base of a mighty waterfall. You can hear the roar of the water as it cascades down a sheer drop of a 100 feet or more. Although it is only a narrow fall, its power is felt. Feel the clean clear water gently splashing all around. There is a dampness in the air, although not unpleasant, rather invigorating and fresh as a spring morning. Breathe in the cool clean air, feel your body being cleansed both inside and out. Hear the trees of the protective woodland that surround this place rustling in the gentle breeze, and breathe in the cool damp, clean air.

Gradually, as you become accustomed to the sheer beauty of the surroundings, you see in your minds eye a tiny droplet of water resting on your brow. Concentrate on this image for a few seconds. Then see it transform into a tiny white light, and as it does this it starts to move away from your head towards the waterfall. As it moves it grows in size until you see a round white disc, like the full moon, floating in front of the waterfall. As you watch, the round disc disappears into the waterfall. Look at the point that the disc entered the fall, you can see a portal opening, a rippling of reality, then a spark of light manifests, and from this light emerges a glowing spirit, an ethereal shining lady. She is dressed in white billowing gowns. She stands before you, and although she seems solid, you realise that she is part of the waterfall. Look at her face, she is smiling. She wears a silver crown decked with flowers upon her head, and her hair is long and flowing, shimmering and shining in the reflected sunlight.She stands tall and proud, for we have woken the spirit of the waterfall; the White Lady, the ancient holy spirit of the waters and of the earth, look into her eyes. They show beauty and compassion, strength and wisdom. She holds in her hands three flowers, a yellow daffodil, a red rose and a purple Iris. The daffodil symbolised creativity, and the life giving powers of the sun, the rose for compassion and our life-blood, and the Iris for wisdom and understanding. She throws the three flowers into the water and as she does so we see creativity, compassion and wisdom flowing as one in the waters of life. For the rivers of this land are the very veins and arteries of the Earth Goddess.

Look up once more. You see the lady is standing in the river. She starts to move towards you and she lifts her hands to her head and plucks a flower from her crown, this she hands to you. Take note of its colour and type, for this is your own special symbol of the Spirit of Nature.

She returns to the waterfall and holds up her hands, palms facing you. Out of her right palm a green ray of light emerges, and from her left palm a white ray emerges. These move towards us and form a circle of green and white light surrounding us. The energy of this circle of light links us to the the White Lady, the waterfall and the land itself. As we watch the energy from the circle spirals upwards towards the sky, and downwards into the earth. As above, so below!

Concentrate on the image of the lady again. She is glowing, radiating her power. She moves towards us and merges with the energies of the circle of light surrounding us and we enter in communion with her. Listen to what she may have to tell us...

The White Lady begins to draw the green and white light from the circle back into her being, and as she does this you become at one with Nature, you hear the land sing! The White Lady is now shining brightly, and you realise that She is Elen, Sovereign Goddess of Albion. She takes the remainder of the green light into her heart and our hearts open up to her sacred song! She turns and slowly merges with the waterfall once more, as she disappears, green and white energy shoots out from the water like lasers into the surrounding landscape, in every direction, to the four winds, into the sacred waters, into the earth and the sky and into the fire within each of us.

She is gone from vision, but remains within our hearts. We know She is everywhere, in every tree, flower, stone. In all rivers, seas and lakes. A part of every swelling bud, leaf and stalk. She is within us and you, for She is the Spirit of Nature and is omnipresent. Stand and listen to the sound of the rushing water, feel your feet firmly upon the ground and when you are ready end the meditation.

The Lighthouse: volume 2 number 2.

2008-07-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

A lost issue of The Lighthouse will be published on the ASH Magazine Archive soon!

A complete mock-up of volume 2, number 2 has recently resurfaced among some paperwork that I was sorting through. The issue was due to be published in the summer of 2000, but personal events escalated, and the magazine project was abandoned.

Watch this space for further details soon...

Is George-Michael a God?

2008-05-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

As always it is fantastic to share some of the best articles which appeared in ASH Magazine over the years. This offering is from well known midlands folklore author and publisher Bob Trubshaw, and is the second of the three articles he wrote for us to appear in the archive. So without further ado, we let Bob ask the question...

Is George-Michael a God?

by Bob Trubshaw

Fear not, this is not hero-worship of the pop star kind. The heroes of this article are those strange saints, George and Michael. Their pervasive enigmatic appeal has been the subject of much previous debate and not a few books. Neither are very Christian by upbringing - Michael is mentioned but once in the Bible (Revelation 12:7-9) and, in the words of Pope Gelasius in 494 ce George was "one of those saints whose names are justly revered by men, but whose actions are known only to God." (Cited in [1]).

Michael came to popularity in a succession of spectacular visions from the 490s to the early 8th century. These were mostly experienced in elevated places and the eminent 18th century antiquarian, John Aubrey, remarked how frequently St Michael's churches stood on high ground, or had a lofty steeple. There are many associations between Michael and the Roman cult of Mercury: but it must also be recognised that Mercury shares the attributes of the Celtic god Lugh [2]. Many have speculated that the interest in St Michael is a thinly disguised continuation of the pagan worship of Lugh.

The development of St George as an eastern saint was pre-dated by the now lost cult of St Mena, who shared similar attributes - including the essential of dragon-slaying. Mena in turn, seems to have been the successor to an even more ancient demon-destroyer - near Alexandria a 4th century church to St Mena was discovered, and underneath was an Egyptian temple with figures of Horus triumphing over Set [3].

George is a late intruder into Britain - not until 1222 did the National Synod of Oxford institute St Georges day as a national holiday. He may not have been recognised as the patron saint of England until 1395. Although in 1415 George's Day was recognised as one of the chief feasts, in 1969 the Vatican reduced his status to a local saint [4]. It is worth noting that the previous patron saint of England was King Edward the Confessor.

Alternatively, it is possible to trace George back to the Babylonian deity Bel, who slayed the sea- beast Tiamat. In the British traditions Belinus was, like George, usually depicted mounted on a horse. Beli slew his brother, Bran, just as George kills the Turkish Knight in innumerable mummer's plays. In folklore George is closely associated with Green George and other Green Men [5]. He appears to signify the return of like after winter, which fits in well with George's Day on April 23rd.

It seems certain therefore that George is not a late intruder into English folk customs, brought in as part of the cultural contacts of the Crusaders, but he is an authentic indigenous pagan god who was "conveniently" absorbed with the Christian career of his eastern namesake - just as , at the same time, the pagan goddess was re-introduced into the church by absorption with the
Mediterranean cult of the BVM.

Somewhat later Henry VIII seems to have deliberately replaced the "popish" St Michael with the "home grown" St George - both by altering the images on coins accordingly and within the Order of the Garter [6]. George's subsequent success is still clearly felt.

A network of inter-linked deities emerges: Horus - Mena - Bel - Belinus - Lugh - Mercury. The overlap between Lugh and Belinus is not, as many will already recognise, simply geographical. They are aspects of the same deity separated partly in time, and more especially, by the different roots of the people who migrated through Britain. It seems that paganism has not survived as a secret cult, but in full view of those who have maintained our traditional customs. And that should be no surprise to us - as Stewart states "There was no hard dividing line between orthodox and pagan worship in England at the time of George's rise to prominence. The bulk of the population was pagan, as it had always been". [7]

But what of the essential counterpart to these notorious serpent-slayers, the dragons? I have suggested previously that such dualism's should not be read, as naive Christian opinion would want us to, as a once and for all conquest of evil by good, but rather as a Tao-like dualism where the strength of the light can only be seen when surrounded by darkness [8]. Indeed many Christians appear to need reminding that the closer to the light the larger the shadow. Killing the dark aspects within oneself simply makes room for a different demon to dwell; the message of the macho monster-marauders in the masonry is that their conflict is permanent, an expression of the two inseparable aspects of the psyche.

At a much more practical level, as Eric Swift has observed, Green Dragon pubs refer to a very different animal to the Red Dragon. Earliest records suggest that the Green Dragon and George/Green Man were commonly linked together. After the Reformation, when all the saints were regarded as popish, many dragons survived their slayer. Similarly , at the accession of the Hanoverian Dynasty many a George and Dragon that had survived thus far tended to become the George and take the head of the reigning monarch as its sign [9]. It is not fortuitous that earth mysterians tend to take a special interest in pubs - there may be much to be gained apart from the essential sustenance they serve.

References.
[1] R. Stewart, Where is St George?, Blandford 1977; [2] R. Morris, Churches in the Landscape, Dent, 1989; [3] Stewart, op. cit.; [4] ibid.; [5] ibid.; [6] ibid.; [7] ibid.; [8] R. N. Trubshaw, Ancient amd Modern Myths of Dragon Slaying Saints in Hidden History, vol. 2, No. 3 & 4.; [9] E. Swift, Inns of Leicestershire, Chamberlain Music and Books, no date (c. 1975).

Illustrations.
The illustrations were not part of the original article, but have been added for visual enhancement of the articles content. Green Man drawing by Paul Atlas-Saunders. Statue of St Michael from St Michael's Mount. Photograph: Paul Atlas-Saunders.

The Winter Wildwood Mystery

2008-01-13T07:32:00.001-08:00

This meditational piece was first published in The Lighthouse Vol. 2 No. 1 Winter 1999 - 2000. It was inspired by a vision of the Green Man in Tehidy Woods, Cornwall during 1999. Winter Wildwood illustration and magazine cover by Paul Atlas-Saunders. Yule King by Yuri Leitch

The Winter Wild Wood Mystery
A Meditation for Alban Arthan

by Alex Langstone

All is in darkness.

Gradually you see stars shining, glowing intensely in the night sky. As you become aware of your surroundings you realise that you are standing in a meadow. A heavy frost shimmers upon the ground, illuminated by the faint starlight and a slender crescent moon.

You notice that you are standing by a wooden gate, and on the other side of the gate is an ancient trackway leading to a vast woodland. You open the gate and begin your journey on the path. Your footfalls crunch upon the frosted landscape and your breath vapourises on the still night air. In the distance movement catches your eye. Your heart quickens and you increase your step. Something stirs in the approaching woodland.

Before you enter the forest you notice that dawn is breaking towards the eastern horizon. The sky is clear and soon the sun will be reborn at this sacred time, and the light of Arthur will shine across the land once again. For this is a time of beginnings and completion, death and rebirth; the sun dies and is reborn as the Child of promise.

The Sun's journey is about to begin once more as it has since the dawn of time, for in the depths of winter's darkness stirs new life, and the Oak king stirs in readiness for the waxing sun.

You now enter the winter wild wood, and again you see movement up ahead. Then at once as the Solstice Sun rises over the distant hills you enter a clearing. A huge stag greets you, his antlers rise up and he looks at you. Look into his eyes, for he is the guardian of the forest and the sacred totem of Cernunnos, of Herne, of Gwyn ap Nudd - He who leads the legendary Wild Hunt at the winter solstice; hunting out the light from the darkness, seeking out our future dreams and aspirations from the hidden depths of our souls.

As you watch him, he turns away and walks deeper into the magic forest. You feel compelled to follow him, for now is the time to use the light of the returning sun to aid us in our continuing quest. Follow the Stag-headed-one, keeper of the mysteries of the winter wild wood.

As you walk onwards you notice that the trees are getting bigger. Mighty oaks are now in abundance, their twisted branches look like ancient hands reaching out to welcome and guide you, for you are about to enter the sacred grove of the Horned God. He awaits you, and should you require his assistance and guidance, then ask for it now. Call out to him and he will answer. Spend some time in communion with the protective power of nature.

Whatever is happening now, look around you, notice that you are still in the forest but the Horned God has gone and shafts of pale winter sunlight pierce through the bare branches of the trees. You now retrace your steps, walking away from the clearing and towards the forest edge. As you leave the clearing you notice the bright red berries of the holly, which add life and colour to the woodland. You follow the path and shortly you see the mighty oaks again and you note the most sacred of all winter plants growing high up in their branches: the Mistletoe, it's gleaming white berries shining and silken, symbolic of the seed of life!

Shortly the woodland changes and you enter a Birch grove. The slender silver graceful trees form a perfect circle. You walk around the edge of the circular clearing. A Wren greets you by flitting from tree to tree. The sylvan trunks glisten in the watery sunlight. A small bubbling brook winds its way along the outer edge of the clearing. You listen to the sound of the water running over the rounded pebbles, which glow like jewels in the morning light. Take a drink from the stream. Feel the cold water refresh and cleanse you in readiness for your continued journey home.

Soon you reach the edge of the wild wood and as you leave by the old wooden gate, a Robin darts across your path from the old Yew by the gate. His sweet song greets you, the sacred song of winter. Remember what you have learned and take inspiration from what you have experienced and as you look around you the landscape fades away.

All is in darkness.

Would the Real Herne the Hunter Please Stand Up

2007-11-27T05:04:00.000-08:00

It is with great pleasure that I can reproduce this excellent article from the archives of ASH Magazine. Taken from issue no. 9, Spring 1991 and submitted by best selling author Andrew Collin s. Since this article first appeared, Andrew has gone on to write many books, including The Seventh Sword, From the Ashes of Angels and Twenty-First Century Grail. His most recent work The Cygnus Mystery, is an international best seller. He also organises the annual QuestCon event which has featured many famous authors working in the alternative history, psychic questing and earth mysteries genres.

Would the Real Herne the Hunter Please Stand Up

by Andrew Collins

For those who, like me, were avid watchers of the HTV television series Robin of Sherwood you will accept that the primary old English lord of the forest was Herne the Hunter. He was the one in the huge stag's head and horns dressed in a shabby, often cowled brown robe. Robin Hood, the viewers were told, had been the earthly incarnation of this woodland deity who was even referred to as Herne's son.

Herne's obvious ancestry is easy to recognise. In Romano-British mythology he was Cernunnos, the Lord of the animals who led a ghostly wild hunt and, as a fertility deity, he symbolised the male impregnation and rejuvenation of the feminine land of the great mother.

Cernunnos' name is Latin for the Horned One, the embodiment of which was to be found presiding over witches' Sabbaths in ancient times. Under this guise he also became the medieval church corbels and capitals, and the source behind many Green Man public houses scattered across the country. Some might even say that he was the prototype for the Robin figure, the hooded man who guards and preserves the spirit of the forest and was the rebel pagan within the English race.

All of this we should already know and agree upon. Yet what about the figure of Herne himself. What was his real origin? Was Herne merely a transition of the word Cerne, meaning horn in Latin? Was it a name adopted to describe the sounds made by red deer at dawn and sunset, as has been claimed? I feel that we need to find out as Herne the Hunter has now gone on to become the most popular name used for the Celtic forest deity, not just in Britain, but across the world. Recently I heard of an 'ancient Celtic church' merrily channeling him through out in sunny California. So who is this Herne the Hunter we have deified?

To my knowledge the one main reference to Herne the Hunter stems from the pages of Shakespeare's work The Merry Wives of Windsor which was first performed on St George's Day, 23rd April 1597, at the Garter feast of Windsor. St George's chapel at Windsor Castle is the home to the monarch headed Order of the Garter which, itself, is riddled with pagan and mystical overtones. Herne is mentioned in lines quoted by the character Mistress Page who says: There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter-time, still at midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns,
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain,
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

The play was inspired by local people, local places and local traditions, so it is safe to assume that such a legend once surrounded this mighty oak which was once situated in the Windsor great forest and formed part of the royal estate. All deers themselves being the property of the crown and linked with the archaic Oak King ceremonies of folkish tradition.

In 1792 a gentleman named Samuel Ireland wrote of Herne's Oak in his Picturesque View on the River Thames. He drew his source from The Merry Wives of Windsor and spoke of Herne as a real keeper in the forest during Elizabethan times who was said to have haunted the tree after his death. In 1790 the original tree had died and six years later its trunk was accidentally pulled down during a general clearance of the Great Park by order of King George III. No wonder he went mad!

By the nineteenth century the oral legend of Herne had taken on dramatic features. The story went that Herne or Horne in some accounts(the English for the Latin 'Cerne') had been the king's huntsman in the great park. He had also been a man skilled in the art of woodcraft. One day he was out haunting with the king when a stag tried to gore the king. Brave Herne stood before his monarch and the stag mortally wounded him and killed itself in the process. From out of a nearby Beech tree came a wizard named Phillip Urwick who prescribed a means of reviving the wounded Herne back to health. He told the king to fix the dead stag's horns upon the huntsman's head, which he did, binding Herne to an Oak for support. He survived and became the favourite huntsman of the king.

Urwick tended Herne back to full strength in his hut. Two other huntsmen became jealous of Herne's role to the king and decided to frame him. Herne ended his life by hanging himself from his oak, yet his spirit was restless. Urwick impelled the two rival huntsmen to ride with Herne forever and thereafter sounds of this wild hunt have been heard throughout the Slough and Windsor areas. These have included sites at Cookham and at Huntercombe Manor which may well have taken it's name from Herne's epithet.

A new Herne's Oak replaced the old one at the beginning of the twentieth century, and on several occasions it is claimed that Herne the Hunter has been seen by observers, usually in association with the birth, death or fall of a Monarch. This once again ties him to the death and rebirth cycle of the Oak King, Green King or Green man traditions. Interesting then to consider that the English dragon-slaying saint St George was dedicated to sites once revered as places of Mayday fertility practices. His actual feast day is, of course, 23rd April which has come to be associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane, Bel in Biblical legend being another traditional slayer of a dragon.

One of Herne's last recorded appearances took place in 1962. A group of youths are said to have found a huge hunting horn in the great park one night and, inevitably, blew upon it. Their call was immediately answered by a similar call, as well as the sounds of hounds baying nearby. Herne himself then appeared riding a jet-black horse and wearing enormous ragged antlers. Terrified, the youths threw down the horn and ran for their lives (that would be a nice artefact to lay your hands on, eh!).

On other occasions his horn has been heard, as have the eerie sound of spectral horses' hooves and dogs baying. All these accounts whether accurate or not, clearly show Herne in his role as leader of thew Wild Hunt, a role often assumed by other folk heroes such as King Arthur, Gwyn up Nudd and the Norse sky-god Woden, or Odin. Indeed the curious figure of Urwick, Herne's saviour, seems to be a form of Woden, in his role as Grim, the disguised old man who walks the forests at night.

All this is straight forward western mystery tradition material, and although we need not believe that Herne was a mere discarnate spirit who got tangled up with some pretty heavy archetypal mythology, his legends and appearances in Windsor Great Park hardly qualify him as a god in his own right.

Nowhere else to my knowledge preserves similar Herne traditions, suggesting quite clearly that Herne is purely a misrendering of Cerne, and is therefore the Romano-British god Cernunnos, pure and simple.

Is it that easy? Or did the figure of Herne, as Lord of the forest, leader of the Wild Hunt and Lord of the Animals have roots elsewhere? There are links to Woden, yes, embodied in his Herne's Oak legend, but is there more?

A quick glance across a detailed map of Kent and Surrey quickly brings to light at least three Herne place names. We can see Herne Bay and Herne on the Thames estuary, and Herne Hill on the outskirts of London. Upon consulting a book on the etymology of place-names we find that the root 'herne' is considered to derive from the word 'heron', as in the large bird of this name. The conclusion on the part of the etymologists is that these locations quite obviously once housed Heronries; a logical conclusion, one might assume.

Realising this made me recall place-names in Essex with the prefix heron, as in Herongate and Herons Hall, near the town of Brentwood. They too, as I soon discovered, were once considered to have contained now vanished heronries. One must therefore sit back for a moment and ponder upon the locations of these water-based heronries, since the nearest expanse of water, the River Thames, is several miles to the south of Brentwood.

On the other hand, there is an alternative to the heron explanation, and one which will catapult us along our path in search of Herne the Hunter.

During 1980 a psychic girl I knew well, named Alison, accompanied me on a walk through some local woods, near to my parents home in Wickford, in Essex. On my suggestion she carried out a spontaneous, inspired invocation which ended with her squatting in a meditational state within a crude circle of sticks and stones. Afterwards she came up to me - for I was not allowed to take part or observe what was happening, due to her shyness towards magic - and told me that a man by the name of Heron had spoken to her. Upon asking her for his description, all she could say was that he was handsome.

Curious as to the identity of this woodland spirit, I took time to find any references too him in texts relating to European folklore. I was rewarded graciously. In the Balkans, particularly in the region of Thrace, a great number of stone monuments have been found on which is carved the bas-relief of a horseman known as the Thracian Rider. They have been discovered in Roman sanctuaries mostly, and the seated figure is generally shown wearing a trailing cape, as if indicating speed of movement. He is seen wielding either a club or a double axe, and some Roman scholars have suggested that he may represent the classical sun god, Phoebus. However, many of the monuments bear the names Heros and Heron. Additionally he is sometimes shown with other riders chasing a boar. Through this imagery and the possible root of the names Heros and Heron, it is considered that the Thracian Rider may well have been a Roman hero god, similar with the Roman Mars and the Greek Hercules, as well as being a hunter god.

Altars to Heron have been found in western Europe as the Roman cavalries adopted him as a patron deity, and therefore transmitting his cult across the continent. Some of the Heron imagery brings us dangerously near to accounts of the wild hunt. Chances are that Heron would have reached this country with the Roman legions and thereafter was absorbed within localised deities such as Cernunnos and, later Woden/Odin. Alison,s encounter with Heron (and I will assume it is the same one), along with the local Heron place names do indicate that this was so. In particular that heron was revered in the south-east counties such as Essex, Kent and Surrey. Herongate is only seven or eight miles from Wickford.

We must also not forget the Herne place names in Kent which were originally recorded as Heron. Did Heron, the original east European Thracian Rider become the Herne in later Old English pagan traditions? The image of Heron as a rider wielding a club, along with the speculation that he was a hero god, such as Hercules, and more importantly, Mars may also be of relevance. For although Mars is accepted to have been a god of war and warriors, he was originally a god of vegetation, forests and fertility. He is often shown as a rider with a club and was sometimes given the epithet 'Olloudius', meaning 'great tree'. Another of his titles was 'Rigismus' meaning, 'greatest king' and he is sometimes depicted wearing horns as the symbol of virility and manliness, yet he wields a club which suggests fertilisation with the feminine land under forced will. The place name Cerne is almost certainly a rendition of the Latin word for horn and may be a direct allusion to Cernunnos as well.

Back now to Mars. By far his most important epithet in association with his links to Heron is 'Rigonemetis' - which means of the Sacred Grove. Is this a reference to his forgotten role as Lord of the Forest? Lastly there is Mars Toutatis, a god that combines Mars with a Gallish god Toutatis, who is also equated with the Roman Mercury, and who has been seen psychically as an archer holding a bow and arrow. The arrow is another male symbol of strength and potency, like the lance or spear, which is used to pierce by flight the white hart, a representation of Elen, the goddess of the land, who in some traditions leads the wild hunt into her sacred grove. The archer may therefore be associated with the leader of the wild hunt and must surely be linked to the Robin Hood archetype as the spirit of the forest.

In consequence there might well be a direct link between Robin Hood and Herne through Toutatis, which will please Richard Carpenter, the writer of the Robin of Sherwood television series. At the end of the day it would appear that the Herne the Hunter who haunts Windsor Great Park is a fusion between the old Romano-Celtic god Cernunnos, the Norse god Woden/Odin and Heron, the forgotten hero god of the hunt, known as the Tracian Rider.

As a little postscript to this article I will now come to the events which drew my interest to Herne in the first place. Back in June 1990 an unexpected psychic message to a friend of mine named Debbie indicated that we should visit a place being referred to as 'the gate of Heron, the Forest King.' She was unaware of Heron's identity and, what was more, the information came as we stood beneath the tower of All Saints' church, Rettendon, in Essex, only a few miles from the location where, exactly ten years before, Alison had first introduced me to the name Heron.

I promptly recognised the location concerned as Herongate, which added weight to my personal belief that the area derived its name from Heron the deity, not the bird. An immediate visit to the locale produced some promising confirmations. Within the tiny village we located at least two ancient Herne place-names, one as a lane name and the other as a housing estate. To our amazement we also saw that the village is centred around a public house called The Green Man, which is the most obvious face of the King of the Forest!

So why was Herongate the place refered to as the Gate of Heron? Well, it just so happens that the other side of Herongate is the village of Horndon-on-the-Hill. Etymologically speaking, Horndon translates as 'the hill of the horn.' In the past this area was deep withion the desne forests that stretched from Epping Forest right across to the edge of south-east Essex, so it is possible that both Herongate and Horndon were once ancient cult centres to the worship of the Horned One.

So the next time that someone mentions Herne the Hunter as if they are on first name terms with him, be sure to correct them. It should be Heron, not Herne!

Bibliography.
Strange Berkshire. Edited by Amanda Cowley, Chris Cowley and Alan Cleaver. Strange Publications, 1986. ISBN 095105810

Illustrations.
Herne from the HTV series Robin of Sherwood.
Herne's Oak .
Heron by Yuri Leitch, taken from the cover of ASH Magazine, no. 12.

The Medieval Church our Pagan Heritage

2007-10-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here is another superb article from the ASH Magazine archive. Published in ASH Magazine no. 6 Winter 1989. Written by leading writer and researcher on ancient mysteries and folklore Bob Trubshaw. Bob's Heart of Albion Press has published many excellent books on alternative thought over the years. Check out their website for details. www.hoap.co.uk. The illustration of the winter Celtic cross by Jim Kirkwood was originally printed with this article in ASH, and is reproduced here for completion. The sketches of the Thorpe Arnold carvings were drawn by Dave Hunt. The photographed green man is from Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire. The last two illustrations were not part of the original article, but have been added for reference.

The Medieval Church, our Pagan Heritage
by Bob Trubshaw.

Written history is always from the pen of the victors and never more so than when the conflict is over faith and dogma. But the evidence of historical objects can sometimes clash badly with what history books try to tell us. Many churches have traces of Saxon or Norman carving. The relevant church guide books will proudly boast that the Christian faith has been followed on that site for eight hundred, nine hundred or even a thousand years. But there are also a greater number of churches with carvings of the medieval period which display motifs which have nothing to do with Christian teachings and everything to do with the old nature gods.

Many of these can be tentatively dated to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although similar carvings are clearly the efforts of Victorian restorers to 'restore' or copy these features. Although the older carvings are often among the best features of the church, the guide books rarely draw attention to them. This is so consistent one begins to suspect a 'conspiracy of silence' among church recorders and historians. Whether deliberate or not, any historian working only from written sources would entirely miss these impressive and widespread features.

What sort of carvings are so neglected by the churches' historians? Not the splendid Norman tympana and fonts which depict a soldier-cum-saint figure dispatching one or more dragonian beasts. These fit in neatly with the idea of St Michael, or another of the host of canonised dragon-slayers, putting paid to the forces of evil. It is beyond the scope of this article to argue why the carvers of such scenes would know by heart the Norse tale of Odin slaying the Midgard serpent, or those tales of Celtic heroes such as Beowulf and Llud dispatching local dragons, as have come down to us in the Welsh Mabinogian and Irish Celtic lore.

It is the term 'grotesque' which obliquely alludes to the figures which history disfavours. Grimacing gargoyles around the roof of the tower are, according to more than one parish guide, an illustration of how the forces of evil have been banished to the outside of the church. But why do so many naves and even chancel arches display corbel heads with similar features?

The most easily recognised pagan influence is where a man's head is not only surrounded by foliage but has branches sprouting from the mouth or nose. These are invariably recognised for what they are - Green Men, the Old God of fertility and rebirth.

Another for of these old gods was the Horned One, often known as Herne the Hunter. So far I have not discovered any stag-antlered heads but there are several with short cow-like horns. Many more look similar at first glance, but turn out to be faces with long ears. It may be that the ears are the result of later modifications to an over-provocative figure. Among the most hideous faces are those which are, literally pulling faces - with both hands, or occasionally only one, stretching the mouth. In the north of England until comparatively recently, face-pulling or 'girning' competitions were held. 'Girning' gargoyles - human and bestial - frequently repose around the roofs of our churches. There are also several excellent examples on the corbels within the naves of other churches. One church guide describes such a figure as 'a man with toothache'. But a less fanciful interpretation is that these faces appear to be a polite version of the Shiela-na-gig carvings, otherwise known as female exhibitionists, who evoke images of their fecundity by using their hands in a similar way to prominently display other parts of their anatomy.

It would be too much to expect the survival in a church of any carving whose masculinity was too obvious. But, just as the girning faces may be a polite version of female exhibitionists, so tongue-poking faces can be seen as the counterpart for the male. One of the four faces on the Norman font at Greetham in Leicestershire has a descending tongue whose length is as great as the face. The many medieval examples of tongue-pokers have less extreme anatomical distortions.

My superficial interest in such carvings was brought into focus a year or two ago when I read Guy Raglan Phillip's The Unpolluted God. Pert of this deals with a survey of ninety-nine churches throughout Britain and discusses the importance of carvings such as Green Men, face-pullers, ram's horns and about the pre-Christian origins of stone altar slabs, north doors and much else.

Phillips was most surprised that, not only were such carvings mad at least as late as the fourteenth century, but so many have survived various restorations and deliberate and literal ecclesiastical iconoclasm. It raises the question - when did England become Christian? Many of these pagan-inspired carvings appear to date from the 13th to 14th centuries, which is well after the time the royal court, and therefore the higher nobility, had accepted Christianity. But how deep did this acceptance go? As late as the fifteenth century the Divine Right of Kings, a distinctly pre-Christian concept, was still being invoked. If the nobility of the land still believed in a combination of old and new faiths, we can be sure that the common folk held onto beliefs and lore which had, at best, a superficially Christian appearance.

There is evidence to suggest that from the seventh century there was an attempt to forbid worship at sites other than churches. This was a simple law to circumvent the followers of the Old Faiths simply built images of their gods into the churches. The pre-reformation churches abound with images of gods - old and new together, and probably more of the former until the cult of the crucifixion slowly emerged in later Medieval times to dominate all the old rood screens, built to divide the chancel from the nave.

It was only in the sixteenth century that the church began to attack the beliefs of the common people. Witch trials have been a subject of fascination to many people. The trial records cited by Murray make it clear that quite often the leader of the witches' celebrations was the local priest, which suggests that the clergy of the sixteenth century were willing to support the spiritual requirements of their parishioners in a more enlightened manner than the dogma of the One True Way should allow. This indication of the rift between the senior, witch hunting clergy, and the 'grassroots' priests more than allows an explanation for at least the survival, if not the creation, of images of the old gods in churches.

Slim though the evidence is it seems that veneration for these old gods had remained more or less close to the surface of Church worship. Consciously or otherwise the incumbent allowed the old beliefs of his congregation to e more or less explicitly sustained.

In spite of all the efforts during and after the Reformation to rid the church of its all-too-visible pre-Christin roots, the current Anglican liturgy is still a rich source of survivals of the old faiths. Perhaps the clearest instance is the rite of baptism - petitionary prayers that but for a word or three would be spells supported by the sacred names of the old gods, with the timeless use of water and a candle that owes nothing to Biblical precedent and everything to what the self same Vicar might slander as 'Devil worship'.

History as the Church would want us to know it, is that the missionaries came and entirely novel religion took root and rapidly flourished with the prompt demise of any old faiths. History, as read between the lines, and by what physically survives, is that the missionaries came and adapted the sites, the festivals and the rite of the old faiths as little as possible. the new god's annual resurrection was a familiar concept. That He died to redeem everyone from sin and evil were a bit too intellectual compared to the more direct and tangible roles of Saxon deities.

The recent pagan revivalists may feel, with some justification, to be cast in a them versus us battle with the Church, but that should not blind us to what the Church's buildings tell about their history. Throughout Britain there are many reminders that followers of the old faiths were deliberately made to feel welcome. To what extent the medieval clergy practised a tangled web of old and new religions is now impossible to unravel, but I at least suspect that the reality owes little to what most history books try to sell us.

The illustrations to this article (right) are of the carvings in St Mary's church at Thorpe Arnold, Leicestershire (OS sheet 129: 770201). This hill-top church, surrounded on two sides by earth works of unknown age looks out over Melton Mowbray and the Wreak valley which has one of the highest concentrations of Viking place-names in Britain.

There is a Norman font depicting a sword-wielding man fighting five dragons (or are there two multi-cephalic beasts?). Nearby is a capital with a sun-burst face and a tongue poking face (not illustrated). Most interestingly there are eight superb corbels supporting the nave roof. These were probably carved in the thirteenth century. These include two girning faces (one human, one bestial), a green man, a horned cow and an intriguing figure with his upside down face appearing between his legs; an ambiguous feature on this carving could allow him to be interpreted as a well-endowed male exhibitionist.

Most of these motifs can be seen elsewhere in Leicestershire but Thorpe Arnold provides for the pagan church carving enthusiast the best example in the county for 'one stop shopping'.

References.
C.E. Lart 'Paganism in the churches' in the Hibbert Journal, vol. XXVI, No. 3 1928.
M.A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Oxford, 1921; revised edition 1962.
G.R. Phillips, The Unpolluted God, 1987 Northern Lights.
R. Sheridan and A. Ross, Grotesques and gargoyles, David and Charles, 1975
R.N. Trubshaw, 'Ancient and modern myths of dragon-slaying saints' in Hidden History vol. 2 numbers 3 and 4. 1989.

Lady Olivia Robertson interview, 1993

2007-10-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

As part of our ongoing project to re-publish some of the back catalogue of articles from ASH Magazine and The Lighthouse, it is my pleasure to reproduce an interview I did for The Lighthouse magazine, issue number 2, autumn equinox 1993, where I had the great honour of exclusively interviewing Lady Olivia Robertson. It is with great pleasure that I can now report that this interview has now been officially archived for the Fellowship of Isis by The Circle of Isis Advisory Board. Click here to view this interview on the Circle of Isis website.

Founder of the internationally renowned Fellowship of Isis, and long standing elder of the world wide Goddess community, Lady Olivia was born on Friday April 13^th 1917, in London. Of Irish descent Olivia studied at the Grovesnor School of Modern Art in London before embarking on a very creative career as a novelist and artist before deciding to found the Fellowship of Isis in 1976. Now in her 90th year, she still tours all over the world and attends the Glastonbury Goddess conference each year. Lady Olivia Robertson has inspired countless millions of people to get in touch with their own personal goddess-centred spirituality.

Please bear in mind that the interview was held 15 years ago in 1992, so some questions and answers may seem a little out of context now. Enjoy!

Lady Olivia Robertson

On April 29^th 1993 I found myself sitting in the offices of Psychic News in central London. I was there to interview Olivia Robertson, co founder of the Fellowship of Isis. She had flown into London for the re-launch of her book The Call of Isis, which had been re-published by Neptune Press. I took the opportunity to speak with her before the party began.

Alex: Your book The Call of Isis has been described as a psychic autobiography. When did you first hear this call?

Olivia: I would say ever since I was born. You might say that going to the pantomime to see Cinderella, and seeing the fairy godmother throw off her black cloak and revealing herself was my first call, but it is always a secret call, you don't realise it is there. I really didn't think I would be doing all of this. I was a perfectly respectable Anglo-Irish writer. People used to ask if I was writing any more books, and I used to reply, yes I'm doing the Fellowship of Isis, and they used to reply, no, your books! They wouldn't accept it. When I first saw the goddess, or rather, when I use the word Goddess I mean there is a whole hierarchy of beings more evolved than we are, She was made of pure white light. I think in some ways they are connected to ancient chariots that go across the sky. People don't seem to like this idea, but why not? Then I saw the gold lady. She is the one you see when you go to sleep. She had long gold hair and a turquoise blue robe. I believe in the god as well, and i have seen male beings. I just feel that humanity at the moment needs the female aspect.

Alex: The FOI states that anyone can join no matter what ones other religion, creed or background, and more importantly, that they can retain their other allegiances and be a full and active member of the fellowship. How compatible is, lets say mainstream Christianity to the FOI?

Olivia: Well we do have a lot of mainstream Christians as members. We have Tony Grist, the clergyman who writes for the guardian and we have two Roman Catholic monks, one who works in the Vatican, he's a Jesuit, and a Benedictine monk, who actually got us into the Parliament of World Religions. We are the first goddess based religion that has been acknowledged. They have been all men up to now, nothing but long beards, bald heads and dog collars could be seen. We are going to give them a bit of a surprise I think!

Alex: (Laughing) What made you decide to initially set up th FOI?

Olivia: Looking back I am the most unorganized person. I am an author and a painter. I love solitary meditation. I love parties too, but I do like being on my own. I was guided by the goddess to do it, along with my (late) brother Lawrence who is an ordained clergy man and his late wife Pamela.

Alex: The FOI manifesto states that you have no rules. There are no vows of secrecy or regulations. In fact the FOI is probably the worlds only open occult society. Why did you decide to have this policy?

Olivia: Well we were and still are living in Ireland where Catholics and Protestants are still shooting at each other. This made us feel that we should have an organisation where people could find their own spirituality, there own path. You see people who join seem to have all there own ideas and backgrounds; a Jesuit is going to have all his own ideas, rules and regulations just as a member of an occult order has theirs. Therefore we couldn't have any rules because everyone else has there own! For instance the Nigerian members each have many wives. I got a bit puzzled when I got a letter saying Mr. this and Mrs. that and then a whole lot more Mrs!

(At this point the Tea arrives, and we take a welcome slurp or two...)

Alex: So why do you think the FOI has so many members in Nigeria?

Olivia: Well I think that perhaps Nigeria is more untouched than some other African countries, for instance there are less white settlers, therefore less missionaries to stamp out native traditions. I have no idea where they heard about us, word of mouth I suppose.

Alex: Why did you set up a priesthood in an organisation which appears to be non-hierarchical?

Olivia: We were asked by a lady who wanted to be a priestess. Nearly everything we do is because someone asks us to do it. The FOI is non-hierarchical because we are modern. I mean all this prostrating and bowing and occult orders bossing people around. We just don't like that.

Alex: The Druid Clan of Dana is one of the more recent formations of the fellowship. Why another Druid order when there are so many already?

Olivia: Because the poor Irish druids who are among the oldest seemed to be totally ignored. So we thought we could do something about this. We felt that although there are druids in Ireland anyway, we could enable something to manifest. My brother and I were initiated by an aged hermit called Mr. Fox. He actually saw the ancient race of Ireland in vision. He introduced me to the Sidhe. I was given an initiation by this holy man who lived by the river Slaney at an ancient site. It was totally overgrown and people wouldn't go there because they were afraid.

Alex: When was this?

Olivia: When I was a child of about 10, during the 1930s. Later on I began to see a white lady who told me that her name was Dana. At the time I didn't want to give her a name but she told me three times, so I had to accept it! She is queen of the whole earth. I am very against the racism of the Celts. I have a theory that the white race is going downhill rapidly, and feels it's being submerged. People actually pay Americans to adopt Irish children because they are not black. They actually try to bribe Irish mothers because there children are regarded as white Celts. Neo-Nazis no longer call themselves Arian or Nordic, instead they decide to be Celtic! Therefore Celtic racism can be a sort of gentile way, (rather like talking about the bog, instead you refer to the loo or the comfort station). The only sort of people who can be used as a subterfuge for racism is the Celt! Therefore we particularly want to say that Dana is queen of the whole earth, and we have no racism in the FOI. Anyone can join and use the holy spirits of their own lands. Do you know I have had people say to me that you cannot practice Druidry unless you are Celtic, and you cannot enter the Isles of the Blessed unless you are born of our sacred race. This is serious, just look at Bosnia.

Alex: Yes exactly! Racism has no place at all, ever in any religion or indeed anywhere! People need to become more tolerant and inclusive. On a lighter note my last question is this: what would you say a typical day at Clonegal Castle would be?

Clonegal Castle, foundation centre for the Fellowship of Isis

Olivia: Well I get up at 5.30 am every day and at 6.30 I go into the Temple of Isis and anoint my brow. Here I meditate until 8.30. Then in the evenings, again from 6.30 until 8.30 we have mediation in the temple. I feel these attunement times are important. Many people attune with us from all over the world at these times.

Alex: Thank you Olivia, it has been a joy to meet you.

Special thanks to Ronnie Hudson, Priestess of Isis, for encouraging me to re-publish this long out of print interview.

Photographs taken from authors private collection, donated by Rt. Rev. Olivia Robertson in 1994.

For further information on the FOI click here: Fellowship of Isis

Chesca Potter interview, 1992

2007-10-23T05:53:00.001-07:00

It is with great pleasure that I can now re-publish an interview that ASH Magazine co-editor Dave Hunt produced for the Summer 1992 edition of the magazine. The interview is now 15 years old, so please bear this in mind when reading it! Chesca's Green Wood Tarot is now unfortunately out of print but an online guide is available here: Green Wood tarot

This, the second in our occasional series of interviews with personalities within the esoteric scene takes us to meet one of the countries foremost "Magical Artists". Dave Hunt is the man with the questions.

Dave: When and how did you become involved in the esoteric?

Chesca: I was always mystically minded, but a deeper interest started about 10 years ago. Three specific occasions come to mind.

1. When I moved to Kings Cross and started having visions of a huge green and gold Goddess called Elen, standing over St Pancras old church. I spent years trying to understand what or who I had seen, whilst researching the lost mythology of London, some of which is written up in the book I edited "Legendary London" and in my booklet "Mysterious Kings Cross".

2. Whilst I was still living in Lancaster, I took a book out of the Library called "The Silbury Treasure" by Michael Dames. I can honestly say that book changed my life, not only did I rush down to Avebury and Silbury but it changed my way of looking at nature. I seemed to be able to tap into a sort of memory at some ancient places and interact with them, now in the present. Sometimes I see places with a sort of x-ray history, seeing who or what had been "worshipped" there in prehistoric times and how succeeding cultures changes and adapted their "worship" depending on their cultural belief system.

3. The third early influence for me was hearing about the Green Stone saga from Andrew Collins. I learned a lot from him, about the interaction between the physical world and the psychic.

Dave: What are your personal beliefs?

Chesca: I don't really know how to answer this. I am not a fundamentalist, meaning I don't have a rigid belief system. Having explored many aspects of the mysteries, I believe part of my purpose is to rediscover and make public the very ancient "green" mythologies, updating their relevance, so new people can meditate and contact ancient spirits of the land in order to empower woodland and nature.

Dave: From where do you derive inspiration for your art?

Chesca: The inspiration for my artwork comes from sacred places and my psychic or imaginative contact with the spirits of the land.

Dave: Did you have any formal training?

Chesca: I trained at Edinburgh in art history and print making.

Dave: Who are your favourite artists?

Chesca: My favourite artists are the so-called British Mystical landscape tradition, William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Turner. I also like 18th century prints of ancient sites and hand coloured natural history prints.

Dave: What are your artistic aspirations?

Chesca: I can only think of a couple of years at a time. At the moment I am working on the Green Wood Tarot with Mark Ryan. Redesigning and restructuring the tarot system to be based on the wheel of the year. My dream is to be a "site guardian" of a small woodland and spring, and to be caretaker on all levels, of the natural history and ecology, and to make sure the spirits of the place are strong and happy.

Dave: What are your views on the future of the British Pagan movement?

Chesca: I really don't know where the British pagan movement will go in the future. I would like to see less emphasis placed on individual experience, personal development and satisfaction. The land is in crisis and I feel that Pagans should take far more magical responsibility for the effects of their rites on the land. I think that some pagans are destroying ancient sites because they presume that any pagan rituals are good for them, but actually if the beings they call on do not belong to the place, or know the place, it can unbalance the energies. I think people are draining sacred places of their power by not feeding that power back to them!

Artwork by Chesca Potter, as submitted for the original interview. Questions by Dave Hunt.

Legends of Canewdon

2007-10-23T05:50:00.000-07:00

It is with great pleasure, to mark the Autumnal Equinox 2007, that I hereby re-publish this interesting article from the archives of ASH Magazine. Mike Howard sent us this article for inclusion in issue number 4, Summer 1989 edition of the magazine. Although lots of subsequent research about the Witches of Canewdon has been published, often debunking the Pickingill lineage as fiction, I really think that this article holds merit; and is worthy of a wider readership - having been written by one of the countries leading experts in folk magic and witchcraft. Mike is still editor of the long standing and respected occult magazine The Cauldron. As always comments most welcome. Enjoy!

Legends of Canewdon by Mike Howard

Few villages in England posses such a long standing reputation for witchcraft as Canewdon, near Southend on sea. In old historical records the name of the place is variously spelt as Canevdun, Canudon and Canevdon. Legend has it that the name is associated with the Danish King Canute or Cnut, and means "Canute's Hill".

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when Canewdon became associated with the Craft. In 1847, according to local historian Phillip Benton, the remains of a huge statue described as "a heathen deity" were unearthed near the village. Buried with it were a number of bones which crumbled to dust when exposed to the air. This stone idol, which may have dated from pre-Christrian times judging from the condition of the bones, was smashed up and used to repair the local road.

The first recorded instance of witchcraft in Canewdon dates from the 16th century when a local spinster, Rose Pye, was accused of bewitching a child to death. At the assizes in July 1580 she was acquitted of the charge. By the early 19th century the village had acquired a reputation for strange happenings and was firmly established in Essex folklore as the haunt of ghosts demons and witches. It was claimed that there would be six or seven witches living in the village as long as the church tower stood. Every time a stone fell from the tower a witch died and another took her place in the coven. Other legends linked the church, dedicated to St Nicholas, with magic, witchcraft and the devil. Anyone who walked around the tower at midnight was forced to dance with the coven, children danced around the churchyard as a protection against bewitchment and the devil was said to live under one of the tombstones. There were reports, even in recent years, of the ghost of an old witch materialising out of a grey mist by the church gate.

Why this odd connection with a Christian place of worship with the Craft? Firstly, churches were often built on pagan sites. Secondly, the church tower was built to celebrate the English victory at Agincourt. Tradition has it that the Canewdon coven was founded in the 15th century buy a local landowner who fought in France and had been initiated into the French craft. This is the real reason why the church was significant to local witches.

According to popular belief, during the last century the Canewdon witches terrorised the neighbourhood. They allegedly inflicted plagues of lice on their enemies, "owl blinked" or overlooked wagons so their wheels would not turn and inflicted minor illnesses on the local population. Predictably most of these alleged witches were old women who lived alone who kept white mice as pets. These were regarded as imps or familiar spirits in animal form and had to be passed on when the witch made her final journey to the spirit world, although sometimes they were buried with their mistresses.

Whether these local beldames were real witches or just innocent victims of village gossip is difficult to prove. In rural communities isolated from the outside world witches were seldom regarded as benign. Whatever the truth of the matter folk tradition condemned them as servants of the powers of darkness who had soled their souls to the devil in exchange for magical powers. Belief in witches was prevalent in Canewdon for several generations and they were said to be under control of a male wizard (wise man)who was known as the master of the witches. This sounds genuine for a coven of female witches led by a male representative of the devil (the pagan horned god) was a common pattern in the traditional witch cult of the middle ages.

In the late nineteenth century the holder of the title Master of the Witches was a farm labourer George Pickingill or Pickingale (the family name was spelt both ways) who lived in an old cottage near the anchor public house a few hundred yards form the church. Pickingill was known as a cunning man who could charm warts and locate lost property by divining. He was the resident village character and when the first motor car came to Canewdon it was old George who was photographed alongside it. He had a sinister side to his image as the local eccentric for people said said he could stop farm machinery by staring at it with his intense blue eyes and curse those who offended him with his blackthorn walking stick.

St Nicholas church, Canewdon, Essex.

Craft tradition claims Pickingill was descended from a long line of East Anglian witches and that male members of the family had been priests of the Horned God since Saxon times. The first recorded member of the family was Julia Pickingill, the famous witch of Brandon who helped the \Normans hunt down Hereward the Wake and his rebels in the Norfolk fens. She was burned to death when the wooden tower she occupied was set alight by the Saxons.

Pickingill had gypsy blood ans was raised with the travelling people. His Romany kin venerated the black faced Mother Goddess of their ancestors and the young Pickinghill was encouraged to participate in there ceremonies involving ritual nudity and moon worship. This led Pickingill to become a devotee of the goddess and in later life he founded nine covens in southern England practising a heady mixture of East Anglian and French Craft, Romany folk magic and Scandinavian paganism. Each coven was led by a priestess of had to prove she had "witch blood" or had been inducted into an existing hereditary Craft tradition. Pickingill's use of priestesses, his veneration of the goddess and his contact with ceremonial magicians and occultists led many witches to condemn him as a renegade.

Pickingill passed into the spirit world in 1909 and was buried in an old (unconsecrated?) part of the churchyard. His powers, if local folklore can be believed, did not diminish with his death. On the day of his funeral as the hearse drew up at the church gate the horse trotted out of the shafts and cantered off up the lane. It was said that his imps haunted his empty cottage for many years until it was demolished and passers-by reported seeing their red eyes glowing in the darkness. Shortly before his death it is claimed Pickingill disbanded the Canewdon coven. Certainly little is heard of Craft activities in the village after the old magister died and his son, also called George, does not seem to have carried on the family tradition. Persistent rumours however suggest the Pickingill craft is still flourishing underground in the area and that remnants of the Nine Covens are still active elsewhere. Although the village has changed considerably in the last few years, with a modern housing estate replacing many of the old cottages, Canewdon still has an eerie atmosphere especially at dusk on a winter's evening.

After Halloween 1975 a pin studded doll was found next to a black candle in a wood near Canewdon which revived folk tales of the old witches. However this is more likely to have been the work of a practitioner of black magic than any modern witch. Legends persist though, and in 1977 a local resident pointed out to me the house of an old man in the village who was said to posses the power of the evil eye. In 1973 an Essex councillor claimed Canewdon was one of the last placed in England where witchcraft was still being practised. He said a coven meeting in the village was planning to cast a spell to prevent Maplin Sands being used as the site of the third London Airport.

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