NEMETON

An Experimental Poem

by Norman Shaw

And I was like that: A humming2 and murmuring3 on the hillside. Tremulous4 on the dwammy5 summer heather; on megalithic hillock dreaming6 . . . Buzzing not of bees7 but better. Fleur-de-Lis8 overhead. Tiny bells9 are ringing; ringèd in to the mystery.10

Some kind of web11 forms unfolding blue and from a rose-like12 centre diaphanous.13 Divine opalescence golden; unfurling, unfolding, infolding to the centre point a severe descending luminescent. Holy songs hanging [high frequencies gliding o’er low frequencies thundering] close so close; transcendent sonic.14

Harps15 are heard. Strange light strings oscillating. Ossian;16 harper of the hart.17 White strand of the waterfall.18

Bridhe19 is coming. Through irridescent shimmer herald the singing hosts. O’er shining orbs hanging like heavenly dust, or wheeling spectacular in formations arabesque. The host20 sing ecstatic. Halotropic21 movement, radiant air piping delirious arcing lights. Gentle stars descend to mossy beds.22 Elven lights down and hov’ring above in the singing layers downwards. Irridescent shimmer. Beauty all around me. Dove-like23 o’er the deeps gently.

Whorling veil opalescent enfolding palpitant space.

Then the pin-pricks of light flee,24 as from some unholy terror. Gathering her billowing skirts and off like a startled cuttlefish.

Shy deer; White Hart of Heaven.

Deep droning malignant.25 Anti-sunwise26 now. Archaic horror.27 Sky’s heart reaches; many-armed and hungry.28 Segmented landscape infernal; filled with palpable wicked- ness: scalèd, crow-stepped, interlacing, thornèd, gothick filigree writhing underneath sharp-edged crystalline razor-sharp dragon skinnèd. Slant-eyed throngs wall the whisper- ing dusk; evil elves elbowing sharply in. Forsook desart;29 a heathen rug writ sliding with witchcraft black. Polygonick signs angled acutely hell-ward. Baleful patterns shudder in sharply etchèd skin. This reptilian singularity has edged in from afar to veinèd gneiss to segment the quartz in baffling galactic horrors. Arcane serpent squirm in patterns of desolation; without disguise.

Dragged doon through bloody soil intae the hill in a diabolick sleep;30 hellish aeons bidme from elf-turrets remote. This is straight fae True Thomas’ book o’lies.31 Spine o’ the dragon32 tunnels intae my flickering bones; gesturing in mantick maps infernal.

Briefly Baphomet turns roond and looks straight at me. Jitters all o’er the place.33 Archaic eyes dark red remote viewing. Stuck in the Shining Land of Death34 this one.

Then down further and deep through dells of elves further deeper into the Mystery of Mysteries; the dark silence ov thee holy chamber. Ssshhh . . . Fluttering Seraphim . . . Crackling lightsss . . . Hear with angelic ear the Cherubim near; placing a crown35 of golden light on the head. A ring luminous dazzling bright. Shekinah glory holy of ho- lies. Haloed on the flaming dew.

There is a route in the sky; extra-temporal. From shining bowl36 to shining [Dog]Starre37 of evening umbilical. Gravitational38 essence in lunar beams fixèd, for Westering biased pilgrim orHebrew-Druid39 flight40; pandemoniack highway.

Amethyst avenue41 ’twixt twa warlds42 under the full moon’s ladder43 . . . Gulf o’ glamour gey grim . . . Infinities of despair. Unholy mountain climb; necks craning ag- hast at the tower that stretches to the far-away, bringing it close so close.44

The above and the below45 forever partèd;46 only now fusèd together on borrowed time. Out on the ebbing borders47 of lim’nal lands forlorn. No difference48 ’twixt mind and matter. Dualities49 dissolve. Enter: Lords of Chaosmos(is).50 White Dot H(e)art of the Black Hearted heavily guarded.51 Dreams within nightmares within dreams within nightmares.52

Books within books; words like birds flapping gone.53 In silent texts the patterns thronging: wavering; sonorous; opalescent.

‘(In the Heart of the Wood Oh there have I understood)’54

1 From the Gaelic neimheadh: ‘the name anciently given to a Druidical grove in which there was a stone shrine, a magic tree or well, or a fairy mound.’ (F. Marian McNeill, The Silver Bough, 1956. Canongate, 1989, p. 57.)

A nemeton is a liminal place.

2 The ninth century Irish hermit poet Marban describes the atmosphere round his hut shortly before Samhain: ‘Bees, chafers (restricted humming, tenuous buzz); barnacle geese, brent geese, shortly before Samhain (music of a wild dark one) . . . ’ (Marban, quoted in Karen Ralls-Macleod Music and the Celtic Otherworld, Edinburgh, 2000, p. 152.)

3 Beelzebub: ‘My Lord Who Hums or Murmurs . . . ’

See the following Fiona Macleod quote for murmuring forests (a.k.a. William Sharp, whom Yeats described as ‘one through whom the fluidic world seemed to flow, disturbing all.’ (W. B. Yeats, Memoirs, 1973. Macmillan, 1988, p.128.)

4 ‘A low, tremulous, intermitting sound . . . is productive of the sublime.’ (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical En- quiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757. Oxford, 1988, pp. 75–6.)

5 dwam (Scot.): a dreamlike or trance state.

6 ‘I saw the Weaver of Dreams, an immortal shape of star-eyed Silence; and the Weaver of Death, a lovely Dusk with a heart of hidden flame: and each wove with the shuttles of Beauty and Wonder and Mystery.

‘I knew not which was the more fair: for Death seemed to me as Love, and in the eyes of Dream I saw Joy. Oh, come, come to me, Weaver of Dreams! Come, come unto me, O lovely Dusk, thou that hast the heart of hidden flame!’ (Fiona Macleod, ‘The Immortals’ in The Silence of Amor/Where the Forest Murmurs, Heinemann, 1919, p. 23.)

7 ‘The nine Muses occasionally assumed the form of bees.’
(Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928. Penguin, 2003, p. 269.)
Tochmarc Etaine—‘The Wooing of Etaine’: Etain is turned into a fly by the sorceress Fuamnach. Her lover

Midir, a man from the sidhe mounds, is comforted by her music: ‘Sweeter than pipes and harps and horns was the sound of her voice and the hum of her wings.’ (Ralls-Macleod, op. cit., p. 89.)

8 The Fleur-de-Lis has long been a mystical emblem believed to be signifying a bee and flower; the bee is a magical herald to mystical vision in many religions including Druidism.

9 ‘I had been listening to music in the air, and to what seemed to be the sound of bells, and was trying to under- stand these aerial clashings in which wind seemed to break upon wind in an ever-changing musical silvery sound. Then the space before me grew luminous, and I began to see one beautiful being after another. The first of these I saw I remember very clearly, and the manner of its appearance: there was at first a dazzle of light, and then I saw that this came from the heart of a tall figure with a body apparently shaped out of half-transparent or opalescent air, and throughout the body ran a radiant, electrical fire, to which the heart seemed the centre. Around the head of this being and through its waving luminous hair, which was blown all about the body like living strands of gold, there appeared flaming wing-like auras. From the being itself light seemed to stream outwards in every direction; and the effect left on me after the vision was one of extraordinary lightness, joyousness, or ecstasy.’ (W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ‘An Irish Mytic’s Testimony’ [this ‘mystic’ is ‘A.E.’/George W. Russell, contemporary of Yeats and Sharp] in The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 1911. Colin Smythe, 1977, p. 61.)

10 ‘Throughout the ages, the Mysteries have stood at the threshold of Reality—that hypothetical spot between noumenon and phenomenon, the Substance and the Shadow. The gates of the Mysteries stand ever ajar and those who will may pass through into the spacious domicile of spirit.’ (Hall, op. cit., p. 671.)

11 ‘Among the American Indians is the legend of a “Spider Man,” whose web connected the heaven worlds with the earth. The secret schools of India symbolize certain of the gods who labored with the universe during its making as connecting the realms of light with those of darkness by means of webs.’ (Hall, op. cit., p. 271.)

In a bookshop in Edinburgh. The first book I pick up is about Rosslyn Chapel (see note below). When I open it, a large spider drops out and scurries for cover across the floor. Weaving a web in the Rose . . .

12 ‘Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise

In Druid vapour and make the torches dim; Till vain frenzy awoke and he died . . . ’ (Yeats, The Secret Rose, 1897.)

‘The fundamental symbols of the Rosicrucians were the rose and the cross; the rose female and the cross male, both universal phallic emblems . . . the creative mystery in the material world is merely a shadow of the divine cre-

ative mystery in the spiritual world . . . The mount upon which stands the House of the Rosy Cross is still concealed by clouds.’ (Hall, op. cit., p. 465.)

‘The Rosicrucians trace their origins to Akhenaten, who is said to have created a great brotherhood, a mystery school whose beliefs have since spread across much of the earth. Templar philosophy is known to have marked simi- larities to Rosicrucianism.’

‘[Scotland] was the physical and spiritual home of the Scoti, the descendants of Akhenaten’s* daughter [who] had carried with her the throne of her father the pharaoh, the ‘marble chayre’ that became known as the Stone of Destiny . . . ’ (Keith Laidler, The Head of God, Orion, 1998, p. 8, 322.)

*Akhenaten (a.k.a. Moses), poor heretic . . .

‘The layout of Rosslyn Chapel has been shown very convincingly to incorporate, in cross-section, the Templar cross pattée, the foliated rose and the double-triangle within the circle, the so-called Seal of Solomon, all symbols used by the Order of the Temple.’ (Laidler, op. cit., p. 347.)

It has been suggested by various researchers that it may even hold the Baphomet, Sacred Head of the Mysteries . . .

First time I went to Rosslyn as a teenager I had to flee; for an inexplicable terror overcame me. I knew nothing of its significance at that point, having happened upon the place by chance.

13 ‘Hat-hor was the “Queen of Heaven” . . . Man is born, so it was said, not only of a human mother, but of the lunar envelope or surrounding moist sphere of the Earth—thought of as an albuminous but immaterial fluidity, a spiritual-astral world through which the Spirit of man descended into the womb of the physical mother. This sphere was the “womb” of Hat-hor . . . the “milk” of the World, the “Soma” of Oriental mysticism . . . Its most secret func- tioning is in the cerebro-spinal fluid . . . connected with the “single eye” of seership.’ (Merry, op. cit., p. 106.)

14 ‘With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and the sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean—in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written—with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth the notes of my soul, redoubling my own voice by their power . . . Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. Here this mo- ment, by this tumulus, on earth, now; I exist in it.’ (Richard Jefferies from The Story of my Heart, 1887, in F. C. Happold [ed.] Mysticism—A Study and an Anthology, Penuin, 1963, p. 358–9.)

15 ‘In ancient Egypt the audial sense—that is the direct response to the proportional laws of sound and form— was considered as the epistemological basis for philosophy and science. This is evoked by the blind harpist, whose proverbial wisdom comes not from the visual world of appearance but from an inner vision of metaphysical law.’ (Robert Lawlor Sacred Geometry—Philosophy and Practice, Thames & Hudson, 1982, p. 89.)

16 Ossian the ancient Celtic bard was a blind harpist by the waterfall on the rock under the bended hazel tree. Bard of the inner vision.

17 ‘Ossian; little deer: Ossian: Irish Oisín, i.e. little deer or os, is a diminutive from Gadhelic os, deer . . . ’ (Kaledon Naddair, Keltic Animal Lore and Shamanism, 1987, Vol. 2, p. 113.)

18 ‘ . . . [The people of Faery] sing chiefly, it seems, a song called ‘The Distant Waterfall’ . . . ’ (Yeats, ‘Happy and Unhappy Theologians’ in The Secret Rose and Other Stories, 1959. Macmillan, 1982, p. 43.)

19 ‘The name Ossian, ‘the White Hind (Eillid Chas Fhion) sacred to the Goddess of Poetry (Brighid/Bridhe/ Awen).’ (Kaledon Naddair Keltic Animal Lore and Shamanism, 1987, Vol. 1, p. 28.)

Bridhe (Brigit, St Bride) is The Triple Goddess Brigit; Three-fold Muse; The High One. Goddess of Earth, Air, Fire, Music and Poetry. She is the supreme goddess; White Goddess:

‘Bride, who is the soul of the ancient Mysteries—wanders in loveliness for ever under the canopy of Heaven, wrapped in her mantle of bluest æther, and the vision of her calls every human heart away from the dark compan- ionship of his shadow-soul, and saves every one from that sinister dominion.’ (Eleanor C. Merry, The Flaming Door, Rider & Co., 1936, p. 202.)

Bridhe; ‘whom the bards and singers revered as mistress of their craft, she whose breath was a flame, and that flame song: she whose secret name was fire and whose inmost soul was radiant air . . . ’ (Macleod, ‘St Briget of the Shores,’ op. cit., p. 139.)

‘Brigit as a goddess has been a Triad: the Brigit of Poetry, the Brigit of Healing and the Brigit of Smithcraft. In Gaelic Scotland her symbol was the White Swan, and she was known as Bride of the Golden Hair, Bride of the

White Hills, mother of the King of Glory . . . in parts of Britain Saint Brigit retained her character of Muse until the Puritan Revolution, her healing powers being exercised largely through poetic incantation at sacred wells. (Robert Graves, The White Goddess, Faber & Faber, 1967, p. 394.)

As the Scottish artist John Duncan’s painting St Bride (1913) demonstrates, she also personifies the mingling of pagan Celtic ideas with Christian belief (based on the idea that Bride was Christ’s foster mother, being flown from Iona to Bethlehem by angels on Christmas Eve). His later painting, The Coming of Bride (c. 1918), however, shows her purely as pagan Goddess of the Earth.

Robert Graves refers to James Frazer, who called St Bridgit ‘an old heathen goddess of fertility, disguised in a threadbare Christian cloak’, and to her biography, which ‘ “revealed” that she was born at a Druid’s house and was brought up by a wizard. She turned water into beer and was the foster mother of Christ.* And even her birth was deeply symbolic, for she was born on the doorstep of the house just as her mother was entering it . . . In the days be- fore the rising of the sea, legend has it that the Hebrides were one long island called Eileann Bride—the Isle of Bridgit or Bride. In the Hebrides, Bridget was also known as the more Scandinavian Brüd.’ (Graves, op. cit., p. 36–

38.)* That Bride was believed to be foster mother of Christ could support beliefs that Jesus came to Britain as an in- itiate to the Mysteries.

20 The Sidhe (pron. ‘Shee’): The Lordly Ones who dwell in the Hollow Hills; the Highland Faery race; The Old Ones.

21 deiseil(Gael.):sunwise.
22 ‘The hillside opens and out of it in green froth come the fairies. The breast of the earth for the fairies.’ (Neil

M. Gunn, Hill Fever in The White Hour, 1950. Richard Drew, 1990, p. 34.)

23 ‘Far off, far off, I know dim hills of dream, and there my heart suspends as a white bird longing for home: and there, oh there, is a heart of flame, and the breath of it is as the tide of noon upon these hills of dream.’

(Fiona Macleod, ‘The Hills of Dream’ in The Silence of Amor /Where the Forest Murmurs, op. cit., p. 36.)
24 ‘But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.’ (William Blake, Jerusalem: To the Jews

in Devid Erdman [ed.] The Complete Poetry & Prose William Blake, Doubleday, 1988, p. 171.)

25 ‘ . . . recall the primal myths about Great Old Ones who filtered down from the stars and concocted earth life as a joke or mistake; and the wild tales of cosmic hill things from outside told by a folklorist colleague in Miskatonic’s English department . . . Even the wind’s burden held a peculiar strain of conscious malignity; and for a second it seemed that the composite sound included a bizarre musical whistling or piping over a wide range as the blast swept in and out of the omnipresent and resonant cave mouths. There was a cloudy note of reminiscent repulsion in this sound, as complex and unplaceable as any of the other dark impressions.’ (H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, 1939. HarperCollins, 2002, p. 61.)

26 tuaithiuil:widdershins.

27 ‘A blast came from the mountain, and bore, on its wings, the spirit of Loda. He came to his place in his terrors . . . His eyes appear like flames in his dark face; and his voice is like distant thunder.’ (James Macpherson, Carric- thura: A Poem, in Howard Gaskill [ed.] The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 161.)

28 ‘So spoke the Spectre to Albion . . . he is the Great Selfhood Satan: Worshipd as God by the Mighty ones of the Earth

Having a white Dot calld a Center from which branches out A Circle in continual gyrations. this became a Heart
From which sprang numerous branches varying their motions Producing many Heads three or seven or ten, & hands & feet Innumerable at will of the unfortunate contemplator

Who becomes his food(:) such is the way of the Devouring Power.’ (Blake, Jerusalem, Ch. 2, in Erdman, op. cit., p. 175.)

There is no doubt that Macpherson’s Ossian influenced Blake profoundly. For instance; ‘The names Oothon, Theotormon, Bromion, and Leutha have been traced to Ossian’s Oithóna, Tonthormod, Brumo, and Lutha.’ Erdman sees Macpherson’s Oithóna as a plot source for the story of Oothoon in Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion, where, in both cases, the heroine is raped in her lover’s absence. (Erdman, op. cit., p. 233.)

According to Peter Ackroyd, the cadences of Ossian’s ‘wonderfully sonorous’ prose effortlessly entered Blake’s own imaginative repertoire (see Ackroyd’s Blake, Sinclair Stevenson, 1995, p. 56–57). Murdo Macdonald also demonstrates the debt Blake’s work owes to Ossian in The Torrent Shrieks, Edinburgh Review, No. 96, p. 102–103.

29 The Abomination of Desolation.

30 ‘I felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the black clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again . . . I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerors, ‘What would happen if one of your spirits had overpowered me?’ ‘You would go out of this room,’ he answered, ‘with his character added to your own.’ (Yeats, ‘The Sorcerors’ in The Secret Rose and Other Stories, op. cit., p. 39.)

31 True Thomas (a.k.a. Thomas the Rhymer) was enchanted by the Queen o’ the Faeries and taken into Elfland. (‘At last they [Thomas the Rhymer and the Elfin Queen] reached the gates of Elfin Land, where a thousand faery trumpets proclaimed their approach, and they passed into an enchanted country filled with a splendid light’, where he revelled for a day and a night. When he re-emerged from the faery knoll, Thomas found that a hundred years had passed on the earth.)

32 The spine of the Great Dragon, twining [as Blake said] ‘roond Stonehenge then far north to Calanais in the Hebrides.’

33 ‘I knew whose was the head. It came back to me with such a force and certainty I stumbled back, as if the sands beneath my feet might of a sudden open up and plunge me straight to Hell.’ (Alan Moore, Voice of the Fire, Indigo, 1997, p. 183.)

34 The Great Old Ones from the Shining Land of Death fled to the pale Western shores of Ireland and Scot- land, around the time of the building of the Tower of Babel . . . Among them were our Heroes of Celtic lore, and the Hero Gilgamesh (Nimrod) off on his search for The Mountain of the Sunset in the West. The ‘mountain of the sunset’ is an old expression for entering into a different state of consciousness. The Herb of Life; The Secret of the West; The Rose of Love; The Thorn of Suffering; a Hyperborean Odyssey indeed.

35 ‘The enlightenment which flows from the opening of the crown chakra is the supreme and total fulfilment of the Grail search, and was awarded at the seventh site, Rosslyn Chapel, the ancient and revered site of the Saturn oracle itself. The initiation ceremony for this degree took place in the hidden chamber under the chapel which was deliberately created by Earl William St Clair as the focal point for every known path of initiation. Rosslyn Chapel— the Omphalos or spiritual umbilicus of the world.’ (Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, Rosslyn—Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, Element, 1999, p. 137.)

36 Omphalos: A bowl or basket, covered in a web design, placed at centres of geomantic significance (Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian sites).

37 The Sirius star system is the most important magical site in the heavens (Sun and Moon excepted). There are traditions in present-day Africa that the origins of civilization came from Sirius (the Dog Star). These traditions can be traced back to ancient Egypt and Sumer. These ancient cultures possessed knowledge dependent on nuclear physics and astro-physics, which they claim was imparted to them by visitors from Sirius. They have also possessed knowledge of the Sirius star system for millenia, which modern astronomers are only starting to verify now through contemporary technology.

Dogs are guardians, and preserve the secrets of the Dog Star Sirius. The Sumerian Dogon know these things, as did the pre-dynastic Egyptians and their unknown predecessors. (See Robert K. G. Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976.)

38 ‘Connected with Gilgamesh (a.k.a.. Nimrod—remember? Searching for the Mountain of the Sunset in the West?) we find: a) Fifty anonymous companions b) A super-heavy star connected with An (also an Egyptian name of Osiris, husband of Isis who was identified with Sirius). c) A description of the star as being composed of a ‘concen- trated essence’ and of having extreme powers of attraction described in a manner reminiscent of gravitational attrac- tion. These elements comprise almost a complete description of Sirius B: a super-heavy gravitationally powerful star made of concentrated super-dense matter (‘essence’) with the number fifty associated with it (describing its pe- riod?)—and connected with An (Anu), which we know to be linked in Egypt (and Gilgamesh’s ‘Magan-boat’ seems Egyptian) with Sirius.’ (Temple, op. cit., p. 100.)

Temple also suggests links between the Sirius myth and that of Jason and the Argonauts.

39 Blake supported the view that the Hebrew prophets had their origins in the Druids, thus locating the North as the cradle of religion before the lands of the Old Testament:

‘Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem, and Noah, who were Druids: as the Druid Temples (which are the Patriarchal Pillars & Oak Groves) over the whole Earth witness to this day.

You have a tradition, That Man anciently containd in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven & Earth: this you re- ceived from the Druids.

“But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.”’
(Blake, Jerusalem: To the Jews in David Erdman [ed.] The Complete Poetry & Prose William Blake, Doubleday,

1988, p. 171.)

Blake’s ideas are echoed by recent scholars who suggest a northern, Druidic provenance for Pythagorean ideas— hence, for example, Jesus the mason’s possible journey to Britain (see Gordon Strachan, Jesus the Master Builder: Druid Mysteries and the Dawn of Christianity, Floris, 1998.)

40 ‘And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel (ISis RA ELohim) and the horsemen thereof.’ (II Kings 2:11–12.)

41 On a line due north o’ Rosslyn (also on this line; known as the Rose Line are the royal sites of Balmoral and the Castle Mey. Its northern extremity links with a pentagram of known Templar sites; the head of the rose.)

42 ‘I keekit o’er the warld’s rim the warld’s rim

the warld’s rim
I keekit o’er the warld’s rim an’ saw a ferlie there.
A gulf o’ glamour gey grim gey grim
gey grim
a gulf o’ glamour gey grim fu’ o’ unco’ gear.’
(Anon.)

43 ‘And [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and be- hold the angels of God ascending and descending on it . . . And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ (Genesis 28:12, :16–17.)

The ‘Bethel Stone’, Jacob’s pillow and supposed Stone of Destiny, is in Edinburgh castle. The location of the real Stone of Destiny, a fragment from Ahkenahten’s throne, is still a secret.

There are also ‘towers to heaven’ . . . Back to the Sumerians again:

44 ‘The concept of a pillar or holy mountain connecting the centre of the Earth with the sky (Heaven) is a Sumerian concept that has found its way into many belief systems . . . the most famous of them all is known to us as the Tower of Babel . . . a seven-storey ziggurat some three hundred feet in height with a shrine to the god Marduk on its summit . . . ’ (Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key, Arrow Books, 1997, p. 121.)

‘Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven . . . ’ (Genesis 11:4.)

‘It was The Tower of Moab—so tall that no horizon can hide it—the fearful link forged in Man’s defiance of God’s ordaining, that has not only made contact with the higher realms, but given lease to the beasts of the Pit.’ (L. A. Lewis, Tales of the Grotesque, Ghost Story Press, 2003, p. 40.)

45 Realm of the Goddess and Realm of the Dragon.

‘#49. Two realms there are, upper and lower. The upper, derived from hyperuniverse I or Yang, Form I of Par- menides, is sentient and volitional. The lower realm, or Yin, Form II of Parmenides, is mechanical, driven by blind efficient cause, deterministic and without intelligence, since it emanates from a dead source. In ancient times it was termed “astral determinism.” We are trapped, by and large, in the lower realm, but are, through the sacraments, by means of the plasmate, extricated. Until astral determinism is broken, we are not even aware of it, so occluded are we. The Empire never ended.’ (Philip K Dick, Valis, Gollancz, 1981, p. 53.)

46 ‘13. Eusa wuz angre he wuz in rayj & he kep pulin on the Littl Man the Addoms owt strecht arms. The Littl Man the Addom he begun tu cum a part he cryd, I wan tu go I wantu stay. Eusa sed, Tel mor. The Addom sed, I wan tu dark I wan tu lyt I wan tu day I wan tu nyt. Eusa sed, Tel mor. The Addom sed, I wan tu plus I wan tu minus I wan tu big I wan tu littl I wan tu au! I wan tu nuthing.’ (Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker, 1980. Bloomsbury, 2002, p.32.)

‘Eusa’ can be equated with St Eustace, whom Albrecht Dürer depicted kneeling before a stag with a crucifix (‘The Littl Shyning Man’) betwixt his antlers. ‘He cum tu the Hart uv the Wud it wuz the Stag uv the Wud . . . ’

The Littl Shyning Man says, ‘I cant pul my self to gether . . . ’ (Ibid., p. 31, 58.)

47 ‘The Positing of Dualism and the Shifting of the Borders of the Sacred and the Profane: In a world dominated by the military order, moving toward universal empire from the start, consciousness is distinctly determined in the measured reflection of the world of things. And this autonomous determination of consciousness brings about, in dualism, a profound alteration in the representation of the world.’ (Georges Bataille ‘Dualism and Morality’ in Theory of Religion, 1973. Zone, 1989, p. 69.)

‘[The] ability of man to separate himself from his environment and to divide and apportion things ultimately led to a wide range of negative and destructive results . . . Being guided by a fragmentary self-world view, man then acts in such a way as to try to break himself and the world up, so that all seems to correspond to his way of thinking . . . ’ (David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980. Routledge, 1995, p. 2–3.)

‘holy’ = whole . . .

48 ‘Indifference has two aspects: the undifferenciated abyss, the black nothingness, the indeterminate animal in which everything is dissolved—but also the white nothingness, the once calm surface upon which float unconnected determinations like scattered members: a head without a neck, an arm without a shoulder, eyes without brows.’ (Gilles Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, Ch. 1: ‘Difference in Itself’, 1968. Athlone, 1994, p. 28.)

‘1. Had! The manifestation of Nuit.
2.The unveiling of the company of heaven.
3.Every man and every woman is a star.
4.Every number is infinite; there is no difference.’
(Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law, Weiser, 1976, p. 19.)

49 ‘Now, son, note, pray thee, in what house We write these words. For it is a little cottage of red and green, by the western side of a great lake, and it is hidden in the woods. Man, therefore, is at odds with Wood and Water; and being a magician bethinketh Himself to take one of these enemies, Wood, which is both the effect and the cause of that excess of Water, and compel it to fight for Him against the other. What then maketh He? Why, He taketh unto himself Iron of Mars, an Axe and a saw and a Wedge and a Knife, and He divideth Wood therewith against himself, hewing him into many small pieces, so that he hath no longer any strength against His will.’ (The Master Therion, ‘Liber CCC’ in The Equinox III, Weiser, 1990, p. 58.)

50 ‘There is nothing beyond the event horizon of Chaosmosis.’ (Marcus Doel, Poststructuralist Geographies—The Diabolic Art of Spatial Science, Edinburgh University, 1990, p. 11.)

51 ‘And sixty-four thousand Genii, guard the Eastern Gate:

And sixty-four thousand Gnomes, guard the Northern Gate: And sixty-four thousand Nymphs, guard the Western Gate: And sixty-four thousand Fairies, guard the Southern Gate: Around Golgonooza lies the land of death eternal; a Land

Of pain and misery and despair and ever brooding melancholy;
In all the Twenty-seven Heavens, numberd from Adam to Luther;
From the Blue Mundane Shell, reaching to the Vegetative Earth.
The Vegetative Universe, opens like a flower from the Earths center:
In which is Eternity. It expands in Stars to the Mundane Shell
And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without,
And the abstract Voids between the Stars are the Satanic Wheels.’
(Blake Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804) in Erdman, op. cit., p. 157.)

52 ’31. Eusa sed, Is this a dream? The Littl Shynin Man sed, No. Eusa sed, Wuz the uther a dream then? Wen I had a wyf & childer? The Littl Man sed, No Eusa that wuzn no dream nor this ain no dream. Its aul 1 thing nor you cant wayk up owt uv it. Eusa sed, I can dy owt uv it tho cant I. The Littl Man sed, Eusa yu dy owt uv this plays & yul jus fyn me in a nuther plays. Yul fyn me in the wud yul fyn me on the water lyk yu foun me in the stoan. Yu luk enne wayr & Iwl be thayr.’ (Hoban, op. cit., p. 35.)

53 ‘Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; . . . you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,—
Weak masters though ye be,—I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds . . . By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure: and, when I have required
Some heavenly music,—which even now I do,—
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in ther earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.’
(Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Sc. i.)

54 (David Tibet, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ in Current 93: Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre, Durtro, 1994.)

© Norman Shaw. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.