Flags, Flax, and Fodder

Flags, Flax, and Fodder

The Secrets of 1734 Revealed.

Wm Gray letter #6

Thanks ever so for the missive. We enjoyed meeting you, and as you say, it was like renewing an old friendship. It definitely was Germany, the moment I saw you I started to remember something but then it vanished. I wonder, did we leave a kettle on the boil in our last round? It was a bit like that feeling...

I will try and get to the lecture given by Sandra. I am not certain but I think that I will be required to drop down dead as a demonstration of her magical powers. Easily enough done for a joke, but the old lady brigade will certainly faint if we tried it. Incidentally, J. Murray appears from my gentle probing to be a case of potential hysteria. I wonder if we can straighten her out a bit, before it gets too big a hold? I honestly felt the approach of a mental disturbance, not actually mental but emotional to be more specific. It worries me a bit, I will have to run around in circles to find out more. Anyway I will be there for the lecture.

I think we have been brought together again for a purpose also... The way I see it is that you are children of the sun, we are children of the moon... you are light... we are dark... you are open... we are secretive... your brand of magic deals in intellectual truth, our brand (sounds like a bloody detergent advertisement) deals with the essential nature of illusion. Yet above all this we seek the same final truths, the same finality of expression and experience. It is really amazing the way our rituals come together at so many points, (been reading 'Mystical Qabala') and then wind off again into our respective worlds. There must be a middle pillar that we can both ascend, a place where the moon and the sun can both shine together in the midday/midnight sky... sounds as if I might have unconsciously discovered it, a very good description of the real Inner Planes.

You know then why we are reluctant to do anything about disintegrating the image of your mother. If it was me, (and I have walked the lonely path of near insanity at one time), I would use the same process now as I did then, look outwards, love everything and everybody, get as near to the earth as you can, and achieve equilibrium with your past. Ignore what is going on, and force yourself to get out and meet people, accepting them for what they are. The power that possessed me vanished with this treatment, and a terrible power it was... violence, death and destruction possessed me, and I was a walking threat to anything or anybody. If it hadn't been for my beloved Jane, I would have eventually really tangled with the Law and gone down fighting rather than be taken prisoner. The broken nose and the scars upon my face are constant reminders of the time when it was easier for me to kick out and fight about anything in order to avenge my outraged sensitivity. There seemed to be nothing but horror and destruction in the world and it was pure anger at war and the bestiality of war that made me a wild animal myself. There is always a path back, my love for Jane was my path back. I think that your love for your chosen field will bring you back, and Bobbie will hold the torch that will guide you. We will try and give you all the power we can in your lonely fight.

Surprisingly enough, someone from the St. Alban's mob phoned me just after I had received your letter and news about Charlie Cardell. They apparently have cursed him formally and with intent, but for my money he will go from strength to strength on that alone. They haven't got any power worth speaking of. I have heard from various sources that Charlie is quite a naughty boy in many things and is well on his way to becoming the Tarot Fool at its lowest representation. I think he will destroy himself eventually, but before he goes down he will try and drag everybody that is around him down with him. Still the Watchers and the Hounds will be after him soon, and they when the Horn is sounded are truly terrifying. I honestly feel sorry for Doreen Valiente though, she is getting the blame for events that took place a few years before she appeared upon the scene. Gardner was, in my estimation, and in the estimation of other people who are in the possession of the apostolic 'breath' an out and out fake, who through various degenerate habits first came into this field. He was in various occult movements around London before the war and is reported as asking around as to the whereabouts of the 'witches'. Nobody could help him, and then after the war he published a crude novel 'High Magicks Aid' which was absolute nonsense with a strong flavor of sexual deviation. From this novel he went on the game of writing books about witchcraft, and became an 'authority' who in turn started his original group somewhere in Southern England, then came the St. Albans people, then various other groups. No real authority except maybe one, ever accepted Gardner as being the genuine article. However according to my information dating some years ago, Cardell was initiated himself by Gardner, then quarreled over something or the other (presumably inflated ego) and they parted. They have all made the one fatal mistake of believing that witchcraft was the relic of a fertility religion, and misunderstanding the phallic rite that the puritans were so horrified by. I am not supposed to explain this to anyone except a female witch, but for this purpose I will consider you as a witch and as a female, either that or Bobbie will have to read this explanation. Here goes the, the real explanation behind the apparent phallicism of the witch cult.

To begin any work, like yourself, we go to Kether, Tiphareth, Yesod and Malkuth. It is with the Malkuth however that we walk the bridge and open the Gate. Hermes is the Guide at this point. Now in spite of 'historical' evidence, Hermes was NOT a God that was phallic, but essentially the Guide through the Underworld, Kay of Castle Arianrhod. Phallicism does come into it, but historians, antiquarians and foolish would-be witches have misinterpreted it. Remember I have always said that in witchcraft nothing is as it appears. The rituals in which the male and female generative organs were used were rituals of (a) Magick, (b) Death, (c) Resurrection, in the sense that virtue, our word for power, can be passed from one person to another (now you know why witches must pass from male to female). This virtue originally was given to 'Hecate' by union with Saturn. They between them produced a Son 'Hermes', now he by combining his function with that of the Guide, generates in the female witch virtue by the same process, she in turn passes it to the male witch. Now remember that each piece of witch philosophy has many different interpretations, and is never quite what it seems to be, and I will leave you to work it out from there.

They in spite of their many names, are all aspects of the Two Pillars, or as we call it, the knife and the cord. This ritual can be actually carried out with certain reservations, or else it can be transmuted into another form , which is the process we use. Obviously the near savage villagers of the past used the most obvious form, we are of the twentieth century and we do not. But from this piece of esoteric knowledge, you will find many beliefs about witches and their attributes. I for instance, cannot die until I have passed my virtue on, I carry within my physical body the totality of all the witches that have been in my family and their virtue for many centuries. If I call upon my ancestors, I call upon forces that are within myself and exterior, now you know what I mean when I speak of the burden of time. This is why witches lose their power when blooded by an outsider, why they float when others sink (virtue is supposed to be the force that lets us fly), why iron is a good defense against it, since it earths it, why this and why that. However, now to bring you back to male form again... Before we return from our excursion from the underworld, I would like to say that Hermes, Hecate, Saturn are only approximations of what we really mean. Enough said.

I am seriously considering leaving my group and working alone. I may sound dreadfully un-humble, but Jane and I have reached a stage when we can go faster by ourselves. The group is beginning to pull us backwards, and I for one would like to establish a new leader and move on myself. We had a brilliant 'flash of light' recently that may lead to the end of an old era and the beginning of a new for us. The Gods seem to favor us leaving also since they are doing their hardest to stop new blood from coming in. We shall see whether it is meant that way or whether the Gods are just saying 'This is what it is like. See! you bumbling little worm'.

That article I have written for New Dimensions has been accepted, and I received the magnificent sum of three nikker. . . well, well... I suppose now that I am considering moving on, hundreds of very suitable people will want to come crowding in. We have had trouble in the past with various unsuitable types, I once was in charge of a full and balanced cuveen, but they wanted to play silly beggars, so I let them (we moved on). Net results: broken hearts and broken heads, but they still don't seem to have learned. The last I heard from them was that they had gone over to the Aradia 'since it is so exciting' and have taken a vote to share the women out. Sex and Witchcraft, whee! The messes some people get into over that little bit of flesh. I suppose one cannot make silk purses out of sows ear'oles.

My cat, when waiting to be fed, dances around Jane widdershins with tail up and meowing. Jane suggested that she was chanting 'Eko, Eko Azarack...Eko...Eko...Kiti-Kat!'

Blessings,
Roy and Jane