Flags, Flax, and Fodder

Flags, Flax, and Fodder

The Secrets of 1734 Revealed.

Wm Gray letter #3

Many thanks for your most interesting letter.

Do I think that Jesus was a 'born witch'? Basically the teachings of Jesus are very near to my own perception about 'morality'. The crucifixion is a much older story of hundreds, if not thousands of divine kings who died upon the tau cross of the kerm oak, and the supernatural is commonplace legend surrounding such events. It was well known to the ancients that if man draws out power, he must sooner or later replace it with something that is better if the social continuity is to survive. Sacrifice is the key note of survival, and the ancients thought to sacrifice their very best in order to replace the energy loss. Jesus, if I read the legends rightly, literally did die to 'save us all' since he as a developed man, created with his own solitary sacrifice a 'field' that many have drawn upon and added to since. The fault with Christianity lies in the churches and the apostles, not in the founder. The basic law behind the techniques of magic and fate is that nature abhors a vaccuum, and it is with this in mind that mystics and magicians alike attempt to lift the world fate. They replace that which is empty or negative with that which is positive. The trouble lies in the interpretation many casual 'mystics' or divines put upon the word 'love'. Love is the most divine force, but it is only gained through pain and insight.

The Virgin Mary... whee, what a subject you have given me. Where do I start? The twelfth century also saw the beginnings of the papacy's absorption of the Mother Goddess, since the Marian cult ( a Christianisation of the Mother Goddess) gained tremendous power at that time. At first the church decided that the worship of Mary was a rank heresy, but in order to save their own crumbling structure, soon climbed on the band wagon. As for the vision of the Virgin, people see God in basic images that belong to the racial consciousness, not in images that an exterior power has foisted upon them. The racial memory is far more conscious and stronger than people realise. The Kelts for instance are still basically orientated to a Goddess (Queen worship). Concepts of a Father God is Anglo Saxon, hence one of the most noticable differences between Saxon and Kelt. These differences begin with the origin of thought itself, which was probably evolved through the practice of simple magic. (Don't ask me to explain that one, at least three volumes). Again the Keltic mind is strongly addicted to nature worship, although basically God is apparent anywhere at any time. What is not so forthcoming is the alteration in personal perception so that we may see God.

The Christian faith prefers that we see goodness and charity in the Image of Jesus, but in actual fact, the first three aspects of the Mother Goddess are basically more sound psychologically. The aspects of the Virgin, Mother and Compassionate/Wise woman are factors that exist apart from the personal unconscious. Where I find many people fall down, is in their belief that no other aspect of the Goddess exists. This accounts for much of the hoo ha of modern pagans. Nothing is purely good or evil, these are relative terms that man has hung upon unaccountable mysteries. To my particular belief, the Goddess, white with works of good, is also black with works of darkness, yet both of them are compassionate, albeit the compassion is a cover for the ruthlessness of total TRUTH. Truth is another name for the Godhead. Male or female doesn't really matter, what does matter is the recognition of neither good or evil, black or white, but the acceptance of the 'will of the Gods', the acceptance of truth as opposed to illusion. Once we deviate from the search for truth, then our works are nothing, our lives as the winter winds. Whatever we do we cannot escape from Truth, it will follow us and speak, no matter what ramparts we build against it, no matter what stories we tell ourselves. Truth speaks for itself, outside systems, religious beliefs, beyond and before the grave. The visionaries whether they be Bernadette, Joan of Arc, some of the early revolutonaries or Appolnorius (have I spelt his name right) are all human beings that somehow have triggered off a perception of some small part of Truth, and who have created something from it. Whatever interpretations others may try and give to these 'visions', the explaination is only to be found in the person who saw or felt the presence of 'Truth'. We all have some small particle of these truths in us, man rolls forward, cresting the waves of 'God's will' upon these minute particles. He reached out from the mud and slime of evolution to the stars, and the stars turned back in their courses to help him, and those same stars still gleam brightly for twentieth century man. Become in one with Truth and you must certainly die. Take up works that are based upon truth, and you are a condemned man, for the human race as a whole does not want truth, but the comfort of illusion. We are still babies suckling at a breast whose milk is poisonous, yet we think that we flourish upon poison. Truth, no matter how we interpret it, feeds demons as well as saints.

Saturday. I phoned you this morning as you know. We will be working upon your trouble tomorrow night. My left hand tells me something about it, and one thing that comes up is the diagnosis. I feel that the doctors are wrong, you have a glandular infection that is almost gone, possibly the prostate, since I get it very heavily upon my thumb. You will have some further trouble from the same source, but it will not be serious, possible trouble connected with urination. The gall bladder, if it is functioning badly, is a by product of this, not the cause. According to my hand, the trouble has been with you some time (which fits to your description), but it will be healed. I cannot see a knife in it, so surgical work may be Out. Your life will end when you are in your late seventies, 76 possibly. You feel defeated about physical things, but there is a feeling of wealth coming to you before two years have passed, but with this wealth will come the necessity to work in a different field from the one you are in now. Surprisingly I get that this money comes in some way through your practice of magic, the Art of Hermes. You will also suffer violence over this, there will be opposition coming from the quarter of fire, but you will overcome it. To some extent this has to do with writing, but getting the thing to come first of all will be a painful process, don't be taken in by a new thing that is coming your way, I feel that someone will try and make a fool of you, possibly something over medicine (sounds like me, won't be, though). Damn, don't read that last sentence, the power shifted before I cottoned on to it... It has to do with your health, repeating the same facts again. You will be ill for a short while, but it will not be serious, then your health will improve immensely. That's all...

At last I managed to write that article. Basil Wilby has it by now, but you should have heard the fuss, the boys were up in arms. The ritual described is largely fictional, upside down and wrong way up, but the intention behind the article was to describe the feelings that an operation of this kind engenders. 'Impressions of a Missionary Tour in the Darkest Underworld' by the Very Rev. Rapist, Ernest. Vice President of the Society for the Propogation of Original Sin. I hope it gets accepted, I keep on getting the word 'original' but that is too much to hope for. By all means give my very best regards to Doreen Valiente, but I would be pleased if you did not tell her too much about anything I have sent you. I don't know very much about Doreen as a person, (although I get a pleasant enough feeling) but her book rather put my teeth on edge when she described a ritual in which an old man bawled 'Evoh, Evoh ha! ' . It sounds so much like the late Dr. Gardner, that I am terribly suspicious. However, I suppose Doreen has just as much right to bend the truth as I have when it comes to describing ritual, so I may be wrong. However Brighton is also Mrs. Leek's stamping ground, whether the two are together, I do not know. It is not that I object to them as people, or for that matter, to their religious beliefs, but I do object very strongly to the habit that some of them form of going into press and making the most ridiculous statements imaginable. Doreen seems to be the exception, but even so I reamin suspicious until I meet her personally.

What can I say about your invokations except that they are good blank verse. As you know our methods are different, and to me they are meditational aids, builders of atmosphere, not commands to the superconsciousness. We hardly have any speaking at all, since after a certain point it gets in the way. We have chants, series of words and all that, but they are rarely used once things get moving. In fact I would find anyone who insisted upon voicing words of power a nuisance, and probably kick him out of the compass to act as a corner man. Obviously your methods work, you have the feeling of a genuine occultist, but East and West and all that. Where you would use words to build up an atmosphere conducive to working, we use physical actions to produce the same effect. Where you would use words as a key to the transformation of basic power, we again use actions, (No, not orgies). There is in effect a dual tradition of thought that witches have always used, one part has been discovered by the west and is called science, the other part will never be discovered since it concerns understanding the essential nature of illusion, and thinking at a tangent. Nothing ever is as it appears. As a matter of fact the Zohar (I have never studied it) appears to have the same basis. Where ceremonial magicians have described the Zohar as being hidden and deliberately confused in certain patterns in order to avoid persecution, and to hide its secrets, a witch of my particular school would regard the verses as an actual method of thought designed to gain illumination. The whole point is that it is symbolic thinking of quite high degree. Unfortunately the real twist lies with individual interpretation of that particular symbology. I know that symbols are supposed to contain the seeds of their own revelation, and that they are appearances of 'force' but man fashions his own interpretations according to his time. Perhaps you would like to consider all the different meanings of a pentacle, that you have heard of during your lifetime. The odd thing is that each of these meanings is basically correct for the group using it. Where the image of virtue really comes into its own, is when a group has formulated an old symbol, then developed it into a 'new' symbol, i.e. Eliphas Levi's 'Goat of the Sabbath'. This is not the original Bran by any means, But Levi in fact made up an illustration that incorporated all the powers that are of the Hermes of the Witches. It is no simple animal God by any means, but a god who is literally Pan. There again the order and type of symbol used alters with the age. We use a 'tree' system, like, yet unlike, yours. You would possibly find the symbology of our system alien, just as I find the three tree system alien to myself. We work upon an anthropormorphic pattern to shift virtue from one transcending state to another. Graves, quite knowingly gave one ancient interpretation of it in his 'White Goddess', and also, incidentally, left out a chunk of it;

I am a wind of the sea
I am a wave of the sea
I am a sound of the sea
I am an ox of seven fights
I am a stag of seven tines
I am a hawk upon a cliff
I am a tear of the sun
I am fair amongst flowers

I am a boar
I am a salmon in a pool
I am a lake upon the plain
I am a hill of poetry
I am a God who forms fire with his head.

This is Taliesin's riddle, Graves has thoroughly mangled it, and as for the language of trees that he propogates, this suffers from real misinterpretation. It is a high code, and Graves gives a poetic meaning to it.

I was sorry to hear of your adventure with the Essenes. Still they must be fools to play at magicians on one of the most potent sites in the world. Glastonbury is more than an archeological site, it was at one time, the Temple of the High Goddess. If you look at a ground map of the workings, you will see a hand mirror shape, this has to do with two opposing forces that can be called upon there. I would like to know if the Essenes had this Bat' before or after working at Glastonbury. From the sound of it they have attracted one of the 'watchers' that wait for the foolhardy upon such sites, the classical 'fury' which always accompanied the Goddess. These sites are reflectors, doorways by which something enters the world. The old witches used a hand mirror for a similar purpose, but they were well aware that Cain lived in the moon as well as the Muses. Not all the practices of witches are moonshine, some of them had a foundation in truths that are now known to very few, one of those truths was to do with the reflection of virtue or destiny. Incidentally the Essenes sound like a big brother of the 'Communication groups' which abound amongst the pip and peel water brigade up here. The poor dears sit in a circle and unload their neurosis upon each other, then take it in turns to say 'fuck' loudly to release the inhibitions, some of the more wild sort then start a round of pornographic stories in order to arouse their overstimulated sexual passions. Presumably groups of this nature end up with a sexual binge. I can never image them having an orgy. It seems from Gossip that a lot of semi occult groups use much the same methods. One modern 'witch' meeting I went to sat around all evening declaiming 'Eskimo Nell' and kindred nursery rhymes. They would not tell me why they did it, but I presume they had heard somewhere that sex is the raw force that makes magic. It hasn't occurred to the poor boys and girls that this is the best way of untransforming sex. The same group believe that it is a good thing to become purely instinctual whilst working, so much for them. One of their members once confessed to me that he thought Crowley was the only ceremonial magician who bridged the difference between witch and qabalist, and that Crowley had been misunderstood. Phew! It is mainly because of factors like the above that I remain suspicious of all the modern, port wine type witches. I must admit whenever I move in such circles I play the innocent for all I am worth, it is amazing how much you find out.

Agreed about old ladies, and spinster ladies also. They are emotional vampires, who feed upon rumpus, confusion and lost tempers. Incidentally, I ugree whole heartedly with folk wisdom in its attitudes towards the average spinster lady. Maybe one day some religious organization will take compassion upon them and found a new brotherhood, devoted to helping 'our sisters in distress'. Services three times daily, and absolution afterwards. Extra penances given by dispensation. (I am certain those terrible women are basically sadomasochist).

Reincarnation... Spain, same period (Elizabethan), small village, cliff top Moorish architecture, vultures and a tall man with wild hair who had a sword cut down one side of his face. Remember me?

Wesak Day. Do you go the meeting of the White Brotherhood? I find it a story hard to believe, somehow the attraction of the Hymaleyas is not for me. I must admit that I regard stories of the White Brotherhood, Masters who are in the flesh, Alice Bailey's 'wog' (what a cruel word), the Count St. Germain, and Uncle Tom Cobbly, with very deep suspicion, and tend to raise my eyebrows slightlY whenever I hear dear old ladies speak of them. I'll gladly admit the fact of Masters who are not in the flesh, since I have had that one forced upon me, but the annual meeting, well... Tell, is it really true? I must admit that I have always wished it was true.

Jane is most upset because you think her shell like ears have never heard basic English. We have been married fourteen years, that and being professional bargees once, has given us a deep insight into common everyday English.

Bobbie's poems are good material. I don't like her opening lines to Father Image but they keep to the principles of genuine poetry, and that is something in an era where poets display their own entrails for public inspection. I like them.

As you will have noticed, I have written myself out, spelling, English and all that is up the wall.

Regards,
Roy and Jane

P.S. Have you ever come across a real witch cuveen in your area, not the Gardner's. I would be pleased if you could give me some information upon them. I only know of two genuine cuveens in the country. One of those is very near to you, and I have only heard of them through hearsay.