Flags, Flax, and Fodder

Flags, Flax, and Fodder

The Secrets of 1734 Revealed.

Wm Gray letter #2

We did not realise that we might inconvenience you at this particular time of the year; so we will postpone the visit until you are more able to receive us. However, we would be delighted to meet you if you have any spare time during your forthcoming visit to London. I dig Jaqueline Murray also, she is quite a cat, man. I have never met her though, although I seem to remember something about the Atlantean Society, and a book published under the title of 'Daughter of Atlantis'. My only conclusion at the time was amazement at the number of books written by women who are interested in magic that either have the words 'daughter' or 'priestess' in the title. The trouble with women occultists as a whole, seems to be that they either have to be a blood relative of the Gods or at least the direct channel. Come to think of it, it seems to work out in mythology also. Still, I would rather have a sybil for a girl friend than a subtopian housewife any day. About this daughter thing though, I wonder what Freud would have made of that one.

I cannot forsee any future catastrophe for humanity as yet. The bomb, earth tilts, major mutations of the 'flu virus, anything like that is very unlikely to knock Adam off. My only fear for the future is based upon an insidious revolution that is now taking place, the march of the machines and machine man. I had an horrifying experience some time ago, when I had an opportunity to observe the technocratic mind of someone who had very nearly stopped functioning as a human being. He was literally turning into a biological computer, bunged tight with anagramic problems. Every human relationship had to be based upon strict logical control, and emotion was obviously unnecessary, if not positively unscientific. Jove, and he was thirty years old, had not entered his life. For that matter I doubt if he ever felt sex... This is what worries me. All the bright boys and girls specialising, becoming good careerists, experts upon technology of any sort yet remaining like a rather ponderous child underneath it all. I don't mind admitting that it frightens me, and I have vague fears for the world. I don't think this type will ever destroy the world, but I do think that they will organise it out of existence. I personally can only say to the Julain Huxley's, the Congress of Mathematicians and the thousands like them, 'A pox on 'ee, I'll spite thee yet,' First there was man, then man and machine, then machine and man, then only machine. It doesn't bear thinking about.

I found the Akashics difficult to contact at first, then once I found what I was seeking, the information trickled through, then grew steadily into a flood. The whole point about contacting anything I suppose, is to keep on at the one subject, or at least find a link between one thing and another before changing. Fortunately for me, my subject is one that covers the history of Western humanity, therefore I can afford to change from one century to another without too much loss. (Conceited as it sounds, it is all a matter of opening a channel, and being single minded about what you want. Typical Aquarian doctrine).

My apologies for the remark about 'image fixed minds', my intention was to remark upon the conceptual state of the old lady brigade who smother any spiritualist meeting. They appear to think that the next world is absolutely like this one, complete with stocks and shares and servants. Obviously the planes are just the same as this one. We all interpret them as forms and images, since that is necessary to the way we think, but in actual fact, reality is the better word for the other planes, they are all force, irrespective of what interprets them and how. We cannot conceive of force as being just that, our sense of reality will not let us, so we put them into forms and images that appeal to us personally. Nothing is so unreal than the reality that surrounds us. In certain states of hypersuggestion, the human mind can and does create anything that it sees fit as its own personal reality. The only difference between the visionary and the schizophrenic is in the emotional state. Even that, if we are to believe the Catholic church's claims for some of its saints, is a negligible difference. St. Augustine was a case in point, capable of speaking of the love of God one moment, and destroying the work of God the next. St. Ignatius (also the founder of the Jesuits) who was the father of the Inquisition, was also another visionary... When I am dead, I shall go to another place that myself and my ancestors created. Without their work it would not exist, since in my opinion, for many eons of time the human spirit had no abode, then finally be desire to survive created the pathway into the other worlds. Nothing is got by doing nothing, and whatever we do now creates the world in which we exist tomorrow. The same applies to death, what we have created in thought, we create in that other reality. Desire, as you know probably better than I, was the very first of all created things.

Whoa back, Billy boy. Who said anything about contacting the forces of nature? That sort of witchcraft belongs to the Shaman, not to us. Natural forces are means to us, not ends, and that sort of stuff died out with the primitives, Scotch hill farmers and all that. The sort of stuff we practice has little or nothing in common with pantheism at that level. To the best of my knowledge it has been out since the twelfth century at least, along with the group release of the primitive in tribal ecstasies, we have about as much in common with it as we have with Catholicism, for that matter, more in common with Catholicism. That was primarily the reason for me being a little bit uppity about the explanation of the origin of the circle. I suppose I had better tell you a little bit about the history of the craft as I know it. This may not be necessarily correct, but it has a lot of historical backing. (Assumes heavy and pedantic attitude, clears throat, ruffles through notes and begins...) In the twelfth century, the Roman Catholics and the paganism of the country side were well and truly mingled, and each tolerated the other. But just before and during the first Crusade, emissaries or wandering pilgrims from Persia landed in both Britain and Ireland, and what they had to teach was a development upon the craft at that time. They had been forced to flee from the east by the triumph of Mohammedism and they knew the real mystery tradition of the Greeks, since the Pythagoreans and others went to them after the triumph of the Christians. The druidic and bardic orders of Britain and Ireland were converted to the new order, and it is with this that the Horned God comes into the ascendancy. Unfortunately, the Christians saw this new wave of thought as a threat to the established church, and with the reformation staring at Cluny, began the great persecution that delayed the rise of western Europe for another three hundred years. The highest pagan ethic of the twelfth century was better and more defined than the best of the Christians, unfortunately Christianity and ignorance won. It is probably from the same source as the Persians that the Qabala was derived, since quite a few years ago Waite traced it very nicely to Spain at that period. Hence the real witches and yourself have more in common than is generally realised. We have a tree system that is actually based upon trees, but meditational devices and all that are quite similar in many respects. If you would like to take a really good look at the Tarot, you will see my points about (a) knowledge traveling, and (b) the complexity of paganism at its best. All this stuff about the Great God Pan, nature worship, Gods of Fire, fertility dances and all that died in the official circles after the twelfth century. Pantheism still exists, but it is the lesser force for a witch of my tradition, not the greater. We are not people who want to join in the worship of Dionysus, losing ourselves in a welter of untrained emotion, shouting 'Evoh, evoh ha' from hilltops. We have our own disciplines and our own symbology and as much as we can believe it, we think we might be the last to possess the real mysteries of the past. Where everybody goes wrong is in believing that because sex was and still is used as part of an ancient ritual, we must therefore belong to the God Pan and all that codswallop about his ewes. I would advise anybody before following this particular idea to have a very good look at Osiris, and ask why the Pythian priestess sat on a tripod over a snake in the earth. You see, basically a second tradition of thought has been lost, a dual tradition in which nothing was as it appeared. This was the real secret behind the mysteries, and dancing peasants have very little in common with that philosophy. Witches did not die because they believed that their death would fertilise the soil, but to buy time by sacrifice, they did not dance around a circle to imitate the passage of the seasons, but to loosen their astro-physical bodies, and they did not die upon the stake in a belief that their magic alone made the sun come up, but because they would rather die than confess the truth of what they knew. The emotional cathartic atmosphere of a modern witch meeting would make them laugh, then feel slightly annoyed, since to a witch silence, intent and will are everything. Nature worship is a thing that belongs to genuine peasants or to twee old ladies at borderline medicine associations, nature worhip to me is a part, not a whole.

I was vastly interested in your account of nature possession. For my money I would say that the hand of the Gods is upon you. They have chosen you for something and they will not let you go lightly. Through poetry the Great Ones speak, through poetic inference they teach. The invokation of fire interests me although experts tend to believe that the God of Fire was one of the witch gods, this is not strictly true. Like yourself we have the four elements that we evoke, and fire and your Michael are one and the same thing. We use him for purification at the simple level, and for higher symbolic work at the others. I have been in the prescence of fire at an elemental level, and have seen things burst into flame, he is not a faithful servant at that level. I only wish I could tell you how to continue your ritual (but my word forbids me) because I have a feeling that you and I will be on the same side before it is all finished. However from my point of view, the blank verse is a mantram, not a ritual. Work in silence, treading the mill, will does it all, is the way we work, and we get results. I have crossed the moat and into the spiral castle, and seen and heard some strange things. Last samhuin, all of us had that sense of terror that denotes 'virtue' and strangely enough I could not hear anything except the crying of a baby. It was months before the answer came to that one and when it did come it was quite breath taking. When you do get your full suit of invokations, remember that the Queen of Spades is the trump.

There is also a release of electro-magnetic energy from scourging. That and the decayed adrenaline probably produce about anything they want to produce. The peculiar thing about the 'Aradia' though, is the fact that it is a fertility rite, and for human fertility! The sacrament of bread and salt however, seems to be capable of working up into something like a true rite. Leland knew a lot about witchcraft, in fact he spent many years studying it in Italy, the fraud laid in the claim he made for sequence, not in the actual subject matter. It was not so much his writing that told me this, but his illustrations to another book 'Roman and Etruscan Remains' I have come across one of the elementals who disapproved of us everything went wrong and we had some horrible things happen for a while, but on the other hand we have sat quietly and seen physically, small lights appear and move around the room, and Jane once even 'lit up' with a flickering blue flame. Who said that fairies, not no how, don't exist?

Thanks for the map reading, my birth date was correct to the best of my knowledge, but, and this is a big but for the Astrologer, I was born for at least three days before the final parting, owing to a mishap during parturition. I was a bit in and a bit out, so this might make some difference to the reading. Basically the reading is accurate, although fire and I are not in opposition since I was once even a blacksmith in a foundry. However the diseases of fire do affect me. The reason why you keep on sensing this feeling of the bridge, is because it is an essential part of the magical system we practice. Without a bridge, witches of our sort are nothing. The dangers from Pluto are appreciated, this again is something to do with our system. Both Jane and I are supposed to be psychic, been examined and approved for training by a very august spiritualist body, didn't like our religion, though, so we parted. We can do nearly everything that the sensitives are supposed to do except speak in little girls voices or xenoglossy. I was even supposed to be a good materialising medium, and have a little evidence to prove it. Still enough of myself. My weak point is that I adore talking about me, egocentric nit that I am. I will do a reading for you, ala my own method.

We eat anything, cat and all if you don't put him out of the way in time, but tell Bobby not to worry, we will not be coming for tea, neither will we be more than four.

Thanks a lot for the address, we will use it when the article is finished, that is, if it ever gets written. The group is agin it, says it will have to tell too much in order to prove various points and that they don't like, secretive lot that they are. As far as I am concerned I could shout the truth from the roof trees, and only those who would understand would know it was the truth, and those I would call brother, but the group say NO! , and although in some ways I have power over them, they also have power over me, and this is one of their decisions.

Thanks alot though, very kind of you.

We must try and meet, since I feel that there is something we will have to do together sooner or later, very vague though.

Regards,
Roy

(NOTE:)*** The English peasantry shouted "E.O.I.A.U., EOIAIU - poor neddies work is done, EOIAU". My mother can remember them doing this whilst pulling a plough with a garland round it. Join that tradition to Set and Osiris, read the "Golden Ass" and you will get a clear idea of what we believe in. ***