Albion Awakening going dormant

William Wildblood and I have decided that the time has come to let this blog lie dormant, until such time as we detect some sign of our nation of Albion indeed awakening. In the meantime, we will continue to work for the awakening of individuals. 

Extremism

Unless you are what the modern world would now call an extremist, you are an accomplice of this world with its programme of spiritual evil. Either actively so, meaning you are fully on board with the programme, or passively, and you just go along with it or don't regard it as something that one should stand against. This is how things have become.

No one wants to be thought an extremist unless they are driven by pride. It implies a mental imbalance and the predisposition to hate, and we must be careful that we do not, in reaction to the insanities of today's world, fall into real extremism as defined by those characteristics. That we do not just oppose false ideologies but hate the people who maintain and support them. This is the great temptation to sin for those who would uphold and fight for truth. It's the trap the devil lays for them, or us, as I should say. On the other hand, if we are forced into a perceived extremism that is only because of the extremist nature of modernity. For in reality, it is the modern world that is extreme in its rejection of God and spiritual truth. When the spirit of the times has turned to extremism, those who hold the centre ground, which is to say, the point of reason and balance, are perceived as extreme.

I have used the words 'spiritual evil'. To describe today's world in those terms is clearly the act of a madman - by the criteria of what is perceived as good now. But what other words can you use about a culture that not only denies its Maker and its purpose, as human souls, but also itself in that its acts will lead to its own destruction? How else can you represent a world in which the creature usurps the prerogatives of the Creator, and pursues fulfilment in the material world with no thought for the soul or spirit? Evil is the denial of God, either his reality or his true nature. It is the exaltation of the temporal self at the expense of the divine. This is precisely what our world does now.

I must repeat my warning, though. Great evil can push those who oppose it into evil themselves. I know this because I can sense it in myself. When truth is trampled on and rejected and one must fight to preserve it, there is a tendency to hate the enemy and that hatred will, of course, corrupt the heart. The devil is quite happy for us to oppose his works if we succumb to this tendency in so doing. It's a win-win situation for him. This is why Jesus told us to love our enemies. Principally, it's for our own benefit.

Jesus also said, "Blessed are you when men hate you and say all manner of evil against you for my name's sake". He was speaking in general terms but I believe he was also pointing towards our own time. Soon, if it hasn't already happened, those who maintain the reality of Christ, and not some watered-down, secularised version of it, will be regarded as extremists and thought criminals. It is important not to react to this with anger or pride but also not to waver in any way. You may well find that you cannot even explain yourself properly because you will be required to do so in the language of your opponents and in terms of false metaphysical assumptions. In that case the best thing to do is simply to affirm the truth and not be drawn into argument. Arguing for truth is reducing it to the level of opinion. 

Extremism merely means taking a strong position against the conventions of the day, and if they are rotten that it just what any sane person should do. Jesus was an extremist. He even died because of that. But he died forgiving his enemies and if ever we find ourselves facing opprobrium because of our stance against the lies of the world we must remember his example. The world can't hurt us. We can only hurt ourselves if we react in the wrong way to the world.

March 29th

My new book Remember the Creator is published today (April 1st in America). The subject of the book is summed up in the title. This is the most important thing for modern day humanity; to remember God. But on its own, it is not enough. For what sort of God are we remembering and how are we remembering him? It is a cliché to say that God invented Man in his own image and ever since Man has been returning the compliment, but such is the case. Look at modern religion of practically any type you care to mention. People pray to God, they talk of God but I venture to suggest that the God they address is often one of their own imagining, conjured up from the limited resources of their own minds and a projection of their own thoughts and desires. 

Of course, none of us really knows God. As the absolute and eternal, he is beyond us all. But there really is a difference between those who intuit something of his reality because they have begun to open themselves up to what is beyond themselves, the truth of the transcendent, and those who may believe in something but do so from within the context of their own minds. It's like an enclosed circle and one in which there is a little break or opening so that the light outside begins to seep in. We in the West can see the mental conception of God quite clearly in Islam but it appears just as much in many contemporary Christian churches where God has been reduced to something like the head of a social services bureau, a non-judgemental figure preoccupied with egalitarianism and universal friendliness rather than the Maker of Heaven and Earth who hates sin but whose love touches like a blazing fire that burns without hurt. Make sure that the God you remember is the fullest expression you can conceive of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, and try to understand him in spiritual not worldly terms. Accept no lesser substitutes.

This is also the day that the UK was supposed to have left the European Union and regained its economic and political independence, turning back towards its true mission in the world. For, cutting through all the obfuscation and waffle, that is what this is all actually about. However, the bullying potentates of the EU and the craven incompetents of the British Government have put an at least temporary stop to that. Not to mention the behind the scenes manipulations of civil servants and bureaucrats whose arrogance is only matched by their complacency. 

Hard words, I know, and I'm not saying these are all bad people. Doubtless many mean well according to their conception of things. But they see everything in terms of this world (even the religious among them - apparently most of the clergy and all the bishops in the Church of England want Britain to remain in the EU), and they have no spiritual insight or vision, substituting for that a belief in progress on the worldly level. One must hope that their actions will make an increasing number of people realise how completely untrustworthy the political class and technocratic elites are. May they consequently turn to deeper ways of engaging with the problems of life. As the outer world descends further into illusion, remembering the Creator becomes more vital by the day.

It's Time to Build Your Ark

You've probably heard this before. These are the end times when humanity has turned so far away from God, and actually perceives the source of goodness and truth as, if not evil, then a product of ignorance, that judgement of some sort cannot be far away. The situation gets worse almost by the week. The hatred of those who set the agenda in politics and culture for spiritual truth is ever more apparent. The inversion of values as the transcendent is denied proceeds apace with fewer people able to perceive what is happening and more getting on board with the lie as is hard not to do since it is everywhere, in all things. And as people allow themselves to believe this lie their minds are poisoned and their hearts corrupted. The fact that this was foretold does not make it less of a tragedy. We may know, because we have been told, that good will eventually triumph but it's sometimes hard living in the middle of this time of spiritual darkness to hold on to that, though hold on we must. For those who have not abandoned God, it really is time to build an ark.

But what form can this ark take? Bear in mind that its chief purpose is of spiritual protection not physical safety as before. Therefore it has to be a mental ark this time, an ark of consciousness, you might say. It has to be constructed of faith and understanding which are the only things that can provide a bulwark against the oppression that is the modern orthodoxy of secular humanism based on materialistic atheism.

At the end of an age the world slides into chaos. The work of the age is to build up order out of chaos but when that order has reached its apogee (in the context of the intrinsic quality of the age) then there is nothing left but to run down and disintegrate back into chaos. That is what is now happening. Spiritual order is crumbling and chaos reasserting itself.

But there is a difference between the chaos at the beginning of an age and that at the end. At the beginning, chaos is unformed potential, akin to primal matter or the state of the world before it is touched by the Word. It is fruitful, capable of being organised. But at the end it has become sterile, its creative potential exhausted and its capacity to manifest and hold form of a higher nature so weakened that any attempt to impose this comes to naught. This is why nothing true or real 'sticks' now. The world has solidified around us so much that mass consciousness cannot respond to higher, spiritual states of being. It cannot hear the Word from above and so must react to lower voices but the structures these build are false and insubstantial and do not last for long. But then when they fail they are replaced by others just as unreal. 

However this only applies to mass consciousness. We all have the image of God within us, stamped on our heart, and individuals can always step away from the spirit of the times and respond to that divine image. But to do this, you have to be true to the reality of what is inside yourself and not be led astray by the noise of the world which will certainly drown out the inner voice unless you learn to step aside from the world and love the real Good.

In the coming years our hearts will be tested and the choices will be clearly defined but, at the same time, the right choice will not be easy precisely because it will be made difficult. You will have to make a positive effort and go against the flow, against the wisdom of the world and its best and brightest to make that right choice. However that does mean it will be real. Your choice will be yours, coming from within yourself, based on your own intuitive response to spiritual truth.  As time passes now lines will be drawn and there will be no room for the agnostic. As Christ said, "He who is not with me is against me." This might seem unreasonable but what is meant is that the heart must incline itself to the spirit of truth in a positive way and if it doesn't do that completely then it hasn't done it at all.

When you have made your choice, you must build your ark. An ark of faith and devotion to truth that will carry you through the downpour of worldly lies and deceit until that deluge stops and the spiritual sun arises once more which it will do. Until it does, though, make sure your ark is watertight.

Brexit and Religion

Apparently the farce or tragedy (take your pick) that is Brexit has seen a great increase in sales of self-help books. Is this to people so shaken by the event that they require psychological assistance? Or is it to those who think the future will be disastrous and they need to prepare themselves as best they can? Either way, what a pity that people turn to such feeble nostrums for sustenance rather than to the genuine medicine of real religion.

But then where can the ordinary person find real religion now? If you have been brought up with no particular spiritual education, and therefore have a very poor and biased idea of what religion is, you may reject it without serious investigation. Alternatively, those who are exposed to what passes for Christianity today will not find much to inspire them there if they are searching for something that really speaks to the imagination and the soul. For modern Christianity is often little more than secular humanism dressed up in religious clothing. Its supernatural element, without which it is meaningless, has been reduced as much as it possibly can be without being jettisoned altogether. Partly this is because Christianity has not responded well to the changes in consciousness that have come about over the last few hundred years as humanity begins to awaken intellectually and become more individual (as was meant to happen albeit not in the way it has happened), but partly it is because of the generally low quality of Christian leaders who for the most part, certain honourable exceptions excluded, have lacked any real vision.

Why do most of the intelligentsia wish this country to remain in the EU? Is it because they are believers in the ideology that unity is always good and separatism always bad? Consequently, they see those who wish to separate from a body that seeks to unite as ignorant and selfish. You may think I am reducing something complicated to a simple basic idea but this is more or less how things are. Intellectuals tend to think in terms of abstractions rather than concrete realities and this means they may reject ties of blood and earth which is why they can be perceived as disliking their own country and culture, even to the extent of trying to undermine them. They are, or want to be, men and women of the world which is regarded as being far more sophisticated than those simpletons attached to their native soil. But they are victims of the leftist dogma that humanity is one and the more united it is, the better it is. I call this a dogma because although it may sound very worthy, it is only half the story since ideas of unity should never be used as an excuse to deny or diminish individuality. We may be all one in God in a higher sense but God created us as individuals and it is as individuals that we realise our destiny. You are not required to sink your individuality into a group identity but to enrich the group with your individuality. This is why a Europe of strong individual nation states is a better thing than one in which these nation states have reduced autonomy. Anyone who knows the history and underlying ambition of the EU knows that it has always been determined to follow the latter course, the one that leads to ever closer union with its component parts increasingly weakened and power concentrated more and more in the centre.

The spiritual fact of the sanctity of the individual is the reason that those who have a deeper understanding of what religion actually means are in favour of Britain leaving the EU.  A superficial religious understanding, such as most of our church leaders seem to possess, will think that love your neighbour means there is no difference between you and your neighbour. But then he wouldn't be a neighbour, would he? He would be you. The truth is we need love and we need wisdom, and we need both together to make sure we actually do have real love and real wisdom and not simply an emotional or intellectual copy of them. For love and wisdom are spiritual qualities but human beings who lack these qualities as spiritual things interpret them on the lower level of feelings and thought and as a result they misconceive them. What they call love is not love but a reflection of it in their emotional nature or even something they just have as an idea or ideal. But if they don't truly feel it as living spiritual reality then they don't know it.

Most people who want Britain to leave the EU are not religious but they have natural instincts which the intelligentsia, including many of those considering themselves to be the spiritual intelligentsia, have lost. They do not have minds clouded by ideology, always the weakness of those who have intellect but lack intuition. But religion is actually all about intuition. You might even say that the development of intuition is the primary religious task. Intuition tells us that the EU is a corrupt body that ultimately seeks its own good not the good of the countries that comprise it. For that reason not only should Great Britain leave it but so should every other member state.

If you are one of those people who have turned to a self-help book in this time of crisis let me point out that self-help can only address the earthly human being not the soul. Indeed, it often strengthens the earthly human being against the soul by focusing attention on it so that it becomes even more the centre of consciousness than it already is. Forget self-help, however it is packaged, and seek the transcendent truth in God.

Understanding the remarkable events of Brexit

In the midst of the phony, long-planned, 'last-minute' crisis of Brexit; it is easy to forget what an astonishing thing it has been.

The whole essence of the referendum to leave the European Union was that the British people wanted to leave, but Parliament (all parties) wanted to Remain - and that is exactly why a referendum was needed.

If Parliament had wanted to Leave, there would have been no referendum and no need for one. If matters had been left to the members Parliament, then we would never have tried to leave the EU; and only because there was a supposedly-binding referendum in favour did Brexit ever get off the ground.

But how did it ever get off the ground? Although everyone who is remotely honest and informed knows that the British people want to leave the EU and have wanted to leave the EU for more than two decades - Britain remained because the ruling class (Parliament and the leaders of the major social institutions) wanted to Remain.

How, then, did we get so close to leaving; when essentially everybody with power wants to Remain? This is truly remarkable! It ought to have been impossible!

In the first place, why was the referendum result allowed to be Brexit - given the massive level of voting fraud (mostly via the postal vote system)? Perhaps the real level of Leave was simply too great for the fake votes and false counts to overcome? Perhaps this hidden but massive Leave vote is why the Establishment are so scared; too scared to go against Brexit?

In the second place why was the official referendum result not ignored - in the way that previous referenda have often been ignored? Prime Minister Cameron broke his promise to commence the leave process immediately, but instead it was delayed by nine months - But why was the promise not broken altogether? Somehow, there seems to have been a powerful sense that this one could not be ignored.    

One would have supposed that if the British and European elites had worked-together to prepare a fake Brexit package, then that is what would have happened. For the UK really to leave the EU, with 'no deal' - as appears to be scheduled for March 29th - should have been impossible. It should - from the Establishment perspective - never even have been on the table.

It is the failure to reach a Fake 'deal' with the EU that is so remarkable. Surely it was in all the elites interest that it should happen. And yet it has not...

My belief is that there are unseen, spiritual forces at work - I can't explain it in any other plausible way. My belief is that the spirit of the British people is at work, and it has its eye on the events in Parliament - and there is an immensely powerful sense of fear among the Establishment about what would happen if Brexit does not happen, if they actually blocked it. This fear must apparently be even greater than their fear of a successful Brexit...

I don't think anybody knows - no human being, at any rate - what is coming; or what would happen if Brexit is, in fact, intercepted and delayed or prevented on March 29th.

Nobody knows what will follow if the UK does succeed in getting the real break from the EU that the mass of its people so very much want. If 'we' succeed in achieving such an astonishing thing, what will happen next?

Whatever happens, or does not happen, March 29th 2019 seems to be the Beginning of something, not the end.

What that something will be - well, we will need to wait to find-out. But find-out we certainly shall. Nothing is more sure.

Boardman on Brexit

From last summer, a characteristically broad, deep and thorough analysis of Brexit and what (assuming we do actually get-out from the EU) might come next.

I personally don't see any kind of group-mind at work in UK public life - so I am not sure what we can actually 'do' to promote good outcomes, except at our individual and personal level.

Nonetheless, I still continue to see (in the Brexit process) what might be the consequences of some kind of Good, Godly spiritual strategy; imperceptibly from behind the scenes; using higher mechanisms that we cannot observe but which are more efficient and more powerful than materialism.

This is what medics sometimes call a 'diagnosis of exclusion', in the sense that I regard the fact of Brexit as good, and I am amazed that it has happened even so far as it has; because I cannot see any adequate forces in favour of Brexit that are adequate to account for the implementation of the plan to exit the EU.

I really can't see where Brexit gets its strength in a material sense; therefore I infer that it is operating mostly in a spiritual sense.

If I am right, and I may not be! - this is good news in many ways; in that it may not be possible for the Establishment to thwart Brexit, since they are up against superior forces. If I am correct; then angelic spiritual forces are doing, and will continue to do, the 'heavy lifting' to extract Britain from the EU.

But on the other side, although spiritual powers could create a situation or set-up; it is the multitude of individual people of Britain who make the choices; and unless they are actively in favour of a better (more spiritual, Christian) future for Britain, then the future will not be better - but will continue to get worse in much the same way as-if we had remained in the EU.

So, we British may be gifted with a better situation, however, it is up to us to make something Good of it.

Cyril Scott and Music

The English composer Cyril Scott (1879-1970) wrote a book called Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages in which he set out his belief that, rather than contemporary consciousness determining the kind of music that was produced, it was the kind of music certain composers produced that largely influenced human consciousness. He took examples from the great composers such as Handel, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner and Debussy, and tried to show that the new kinds of music they wrote were responsible for reorientating our thoughts and emotions in new directions. For example, Handel's Biblical oratorios helped create the Victorian Age with its formality, reverence and love of ceremony. Bach's music encouraged the intellectual approach, especially in Germany where it became popular after Mendelssohn's rediscovery of it. Beethoven's passionate outpourings inspired sympathy and allowed the human heart to express emotion far more extensively than hitherto, even leading, so Scott says, to the advent of psychoanalysis. As for Chopin, he helped create a more developed sense of refinement and promoted (not intentionally but by virtue of his music's poetic sensibility) the idea of female emancipation, while Wagner, Debussy and Richard Strauss (among others) all contributed to the evolution of consciousness in various ways.

These were just the major composers but others who ploughed a similar course to the greats all aided in the work of the development of human ways of thinking and feeling. This theory is in line with ancient Greek thought, particularly Plato who wrote in the Republic that "the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state". While Aristotle wrote that "music has the power to form character, and the various kinds of music based on the various modes may be distinguished by their effects on character."

Scott had several strings to his bow. He was at one time a highly regarded composer, but he also wrote books on various subjects and even a bit of poetry*. He was a Theosophist and his book on music is written from that angle. Indeed, he makes no bones about the fact that the information in it came from esoteric sources, namely one of the Theosophical Masters with whom he communicated through a medium.  When I first read this book many years ago I took him at his word but it's since become clear that he was not entirely truthful in certain matters, and that the books for which he is now best known, the Initiate trilogy, though presented as factual, are largely fictitious though probably based on facts of some kind. There is also a book called 'The Boy Who Saw True' which purports to be the diary of a clairvoyant Victorian boy in touch with a Master that mysteriously fell into Scott's hands, but which is obviously a concoction based on Scott's own childhood experiences filled out with Theosophical references and accounts of psychic happenings. I don't think Scott was trying to deceive in any way but he was a creative artist and perhaps used fiction to get across fact thinking that this approach would reach a wider audience. I disagree with him, especially concerning spiritual matters with regard to which I think one must be entirely truthful. The end does not justify the means. But I do believe that Scott had encounters with spiritual beings and tried to represent these in a way that would convince others of their existence; such, he would have thought, being the need of the hour.

Anyway, back to the book about music. I think that Scott's thesis, that music affects and to some extent even determines character and morals, is a sound one though I might extend it to include all the arts, notwithstanding the fact that music is by some distance the most powerful of all art forms and the one that can affect us most profoundly on a subliminal level. To those who would query how classical music which, before the advent of recording techniques, would not have been heard by a majority of the population, can affect a whole society, Scott points out that it would have been heard by those who set the tone of society and that's all that is required. 

Scott states that one of the aims of those who attempt to guide human evolution into higher forms of awareness is to bring us to an understanding of the deva world. Roughly speaking, devas, a Sanskrit word (cf. the Latin deus) borrowed by Theosophists, correspond to our idea of angels. In the Theosophical scheme, these are a separate order of creation that range from nature spirits right up to Cherubim and Seraphim. You might say that they run the universe on God's behalf. Musicians such as Grieg, Debussy, Delius and Scriabin (according to Scott) attempted to express, albeit unconsciously, something of the nature of these beings from the Nordic nature spirit music of Grieg through Debussy and culminating in Scriabin whom Scott (writing in 1958) called the greatest exponent of deva music born so far whose music in Prometheus "reaches a climax expressive of unutterable grandeur but... it is the grandeur of mighty Beings, flashing forth Their unimaginable colours, and filling the vast expanses with Their song." I hadn't heard of Scriabin when I first read the book and naturally after that I rushed off to buy a recording of Prometheus. I have to confess that I preferred the Chopinesque first piano concerto on side 1 of the LP (this was the end of the '70s) to the cosmic eruption of the main work but I've got more used to it since though I still can't feel it lives up to Scott's description. Perhaps it's a case of Scriabin's reach exceeding his grasp, for me anyway.

Scott makes no bones about his dislike of jazz which he says "was definitely 'put through' by the Dark Forces", and led to "a very marked decline in sexual morals." I don't see how one can dispute this and the only question is whether there was an attempt to make the best of a bad job and inspire some musicians to create good music in the context of a decadent form. The same applies to rock 'n' roll which Scott calls "the latest cumulative effect of jazz", going on to write that these have had "such vulgarizing effects, that we now have the misfortune to live in a vulgar and blatant age." I remind you that he was writing in 1958. What would he think now! He is probably right in his basic analysis of these forms of modern music but I can't write them all off. Speaking as someone who grew up in the '60s and '70s, I still enjoy a lot of the music of that era while recognising that some of it (and much more since as popular music has become increasingly corrupt and is often now actively evil in its effects) does correspond to Scott's description. But the music of someone like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has surely done nothing but good. Scott's criticisms, by the way, do not apply to folk music and its derivatives. He can't just be dismissed as a musical snob.

One can argue about the detail's of Scott's thesis but I think he is right in its general thrust. The great composers have been sent by heavenly powers to provide beauty and healing succour to humanity, yes, but also to instigate changes in consciousness. But as we have just seen, what good can do, evil can as well and the era of great composers, or geniuses as one must call them, seems to have come to an end, at least temporarily. But it's still worth bearing in mind the powerful effects of music and try to use it in our own environment in the best way we can. Taken right back to the bone, music is sound and it is commonly thought in spiritual teachings that sound created the universe. It still does in many ways, great and small.

* I didn't realise that he painted too. There are a selection of his watercolours on the website devoted to him (run by his granddaughter) and I think they are rather good. A very talented man.

The Long Man of Wilmington

When I was about 10 years old I went on a school trip which remained in my memory long afterwards as a very enjoyable time even though I couldn't remember much specific about it. I knew it was somewhere on the south coast of England but had forgotten exactly where though I did remember the highlight of the trip being an excursion in which we had walked across grassy downs on a bright sunny day, blue sky above, birds singing in an English morning, suddenly to discover at our feet a massive chalk figure carved into the hillside. The teacher had wanted to surprise us and he did. I knew the figure was of a man holding what appeared to be sticks in each hand, but it was one of those indistinct childhood memories that have receded so far into the past that they have become almost dreamlike. Nonetheless, the impression of having encountered something otherworldly stuck with me and the sight of this enigmatic figure awoke my imagination to the deep, ancient past of this island.

Fast forward thirty odd years and I was living in the Sussex town of Eastbourne. One day I was talking to someone who asked me if I'd seen the nearby Long Man of Wilmington yet. I'd heard of it but not realised it was in the vicinity. It turned out to be about 6 miles away so off I went to have a look. There was the figure of my childhood.

This is how he appears when seen more or less from the road. He is standing facing forwards though his feet are set sideways. He is depicted in outline with no features which makes him appear more archetypal than individual. It also gives him the air of mystery I noted when I first saw him as a child, an air that his companion in Dorset, the Cerne Abbas giant, does not have though that is for other reasons too. He conveys an impression of watchfulness and seems almost like a guardian so it is no wonder some people have speculated that he stands at the door of the underworld (not hell but a spiritual realm beyond this earthly one), guarding the threshold from unworthy intruders. The fact that he is positioned on the side of a hill emphasises this even though that was undoubtedly more for reasons of display since, as far as I am aware, all English chalk figures are on hillsides, making them visible to more than the birds. But still, this gives the impression of a gateway into somewhere beyond this mortal world.

What are those things in his hands? Are they sticks or staves, symbols of his office perhaps or the remains of what were once agricultural tools, or are they the sides of a doorway, the gate he guards as he blocks the entrance to the next world with power and authority for he does indeed embody those qualities, his muscular frame and bold stance telling us that, if we are not entitled to pass, we shall not pass.

The Long Man is 235 feet tall which makes him the largest representation of the human figure in Europe. It was once assumed that he came from the Neolithic or Iron Age (there is a long barrow nearby), probably representing a pagan deity, but it turns out that there is no documentary evidence for him from before the 18th century, and the general consensus now is that he goes back no further than the 16th or 17th centuries. But if he does who or what is he supposed to be? He used to be known as the Green Man because that was how he appeared before a 19th century restoration embedded chalk into his outline, for though he is carved into a chalk hill, the soil on top of the chalk is relatively deep. This name, of course, also links him with the old pagan religion.

Maybe he is no more than a few hundred years old, but he surely reaches back to something much earlier. For me, the idea of him as some kind of guardian of the land makes the most intuitive sense since, even if this was not his original role, it is what he has become. I am tempted to speculate that he might even be a representation of Albion himself, a giant carved in the white earth on the southern shores of England protecting the land from invaders, but also welcoming people as he stands at the entrance to England. My feeling when I first saw him as a child was he did have something sacred about him, something that is linked to the land of which he is a part. Could it be that he was always there on the ground but sleeping until the 16th or 17th century when he was not created so much as woken up? This time period does, after all, coincide with the rise of British power, albeit material not spiritual power. Perhaps this means he is still only half awake (the lack of facial features supporting this idea) and we await his true rising.

If you are looking for a depiction of Albion, here is one as good as any.

Maumbury Rings

Between 1985 and 1988 I lived in Bridport in the county of Dorset, during which time I worked 15 miles down the road in Dorchester at the Dorset County Museum. Dorchester and the area around it are interesting in that this is a region which has been continuously populated since at least Neolithic times, and by cultures that have left their mark. There are not many parts of the country you could say that about.

My job at the museum was to sort through the enormous amount of material that existed in the museum's archives, mostly the result of archaeological digs over the previous decades. This included Stone Age axes, pounders and arrowheads, Bronze Age jars and pottery, Roman glass and ceramics (usually broken which is why it was stored and not actually exhibited), mosaic tesserae and medieval monastery tiles, often beautifully decorated. There were even around thirty large boxes of oyster shells going back to Roman times, all lovingly catalogued and kept on shelves in the deconsecrated All Saints Church on the High Street just down the road from the main museum. Experts could tell weather patterns of the time by examining the shells, of which there were so many because oysters had been a staple food back then. I learnt on the job and it was fascinating to handle all these artifacts and find out their history, together with the ancient history of the area in which they had originated.

There are several earthworks in the area, of which Maiden Castle is the most famous. This is an Iron Age Hill fort though archaeological digs have shown that the site has seen human activity going back almost 6,000 years when there was a Neolithic causewayed enclosure there consisting of an oval area surrounded by two ditches. We will come back to that in a minute.

During this period it is probable that the site would have been of religious significance since for human beings at this time life was essentially religious. They lived in much deeper communion with nature and their gods than we can imagine. I believe that faith would not have been a major part of their spiritual life. It did not need to be since their consciousness was open to spiritual reality, though largely in a passive sense. They experienced a kind of primeval identification with their environment, both physical and psychic.

Later on in Iron Age times, this form of interaction with the landscape and the spirit world had begun to fade away. The site, perfectly positioned for defensive purposes, became a hill fort, one of over 100 built at that time in the West Country. But this one was expanded over the years until it became the biggest in Britain and one of the biggest in Europe. Walking on the springy turf up there still has the power to take one back in imagination to a distant past when human beings lived lives tied to the land and the cycles of nature, and had not fully separated themselves from their environment. At least, it does if you can respond to that sort of thing and have not, like so many people have, spiritually "dumbed yourself down".

There is another earthwork actually in the town and I would occasionally go there during my lunch break just to sit and absorb the peaceful atmosphere. This is Maumbury Rings, a Neolithic henge. Here's an aerial photograph.

We have returned to the oval area enclosed by a ditch. That is to say, there would originally have been a ditch, formed by the construction of the outer banks, but that has long since been filled in. But still the basic layout of an oval demarcated by a border remains. Now, forgive me, but what does this remind you of? All I can say is that I have to assume it was constructed as a sacred space dedicated to the Mother Goddess. In its time it's been a Roman amphitheatre, a fort in the Civil War and even an execution ground in the 18th century during the Monmouth Rebellion, not to mention farmland and a place of assembly. But it is over 4,000 years old and its original purpose would have been religious. Archaeologists frequently say of ancient things when they are not sure what they are for, "used for ritual purposes" and I expect they are often right in that, but this clearly was a sacred space used by the local tribe for their most profound encounters with the numinous. When I used to go there 30 odd years ago it still had a feeling of peace and stillness, and there was also a sense of being safe and secure. Is it too fanciful to think of it as a kind of spiritual womb? Rites of death and rebirth are among the oldest and most widespread forms of human spiritual activity, and I think that is what Maumbury Rings would originally have been associated with.

England has one of the highest proportion of prehistoric sites in the world, and many of them retain an atmosphere that links to their past. If you approach them with an open imagination, you can, to an extent, 'tune in' to the consciousness of our ancestors, and if you manage to do that you will find that our modern view of the world is really very limited. Obviously, no one is suggesting that we should, even if we could which we can't, return to that mode of being, but we can certainly learn from it and seek to incorporate it in our own modern consciousness insofar as that is possible. What we have lost in the sense of identification with the natural and spiritual environments can be recovered but in a higher form in which we are no longer simply passive experiencers but can become creative participators in a spiritual world that extends beyond this one yet is fully enmeshed with it. But the world is a creation and we can only really achieve the kind of spiritually conscious interaction with it I am talking about when we acknowledge that, which means acknowledge the Creator. For creation, and that includes ourselves, is only properly understood when we see it in the light of God of whom it is the expression.

The imaginative archaeology of Francis Pryor

Looking like an avuncular viking...

I came across Francis Pryor - the archaeologist of 'prehistory' (stone, bronze and iron age Britain) via the wonderful TV series Time Team - and have since watched his Britain BC TV series, and read in the book of similar name, and (currently) another called 'Home' which is about prehistorical family life.

Although (as befits an Emeritus Cambridge Professor) he describes himself as an agnostic-atheist, and he is not (yet?) 'red pilled'; Pryor has a genuinely dissenting nature, and the deepest spiritual discernment of any modern archaeologist that I have encountered.

Pryor seems empathically to understand the spiritual consciousness of our remote ancestors; and is able to paint vivid word pictures of their lives.

In particular - and this is derived from the mass of direct achaeological evidence, as well as from contextual knowledge of biology, geography and anthropology - Pryor appreciates that our ancestors led primarily spiritual lives: the 'unseen' world loomed-larger for them than the mundane.

He is a prolific of material aimed-at the interested layman - and I would recommend his work to the Albion Awakening readership.

 

A rare and remarkable photograph of a Bronze Age craftsman making a log canoe at Flag Fen - Francis Pryor's famous East Anglian excavations. Coincidental background details suggest a much higher level of technological sophistication during this era than is generally recognised. 

A Call to Arms

Western civilization is clearly in decline. The signs are everywhere and range from the loss of the sense of transcendence and resultant materialism, to deterioration of the arts and sciences, to mass immigration which erodes identity (and is intended to), to greater involvement of women in the workforce and political process which (whatever you think of its rights or wrongs) has practically always marked a culture in its terminal phase*, to familial breakdown and sexual licence and so on. I am not making a judgment here. I am simply describing what is taking place and pointing out that it is what always takes place whenever a civilisation has passed its zenith and started its decline. Members of that civilisation all want to share in its bounty, bounty that has been produced by exceptional people fired by exceptional energy and creativity. But the rich and relatively stable society such people produce leads to a situation in which everyone wants a piece of the pie and demands a say in its running.  Democracy is the result of that and the result of democracy is cultural relativism which substitutes quantity for quality. This is where we are now.

There is a saying that hard times make strong people who make good times which make weak people who make hard times. We are weak people. Weak people prize the gentle virtues, in particular compassion and empathy. Obviously I am not arguing against compassion, but I am saying that it is a virtue that will lead to downfall if it is not balanced by wisdom and discrimination. For if unbalanced compassion has its way, everything is reduced to the same level and that level will increasingly be determined by the lowest common denominator. 

In a collapsing culture people are unable to distinguish between what bestows spiritual benefit and what material, particularly when the two conflict as they often do. This means that the increase of pleasant feelings and reduction of unpleasant ones is all that is deemed to matter. Reality is defined in terms of personal happiness and suffering, pleasure and pain, and subjective feelings become more important than objective truth. This leads to a vicious circle or downward spiral in which mistaken attitudes breed further errors which, in turn, lead to deeper illusion.

The true spiritual way demands repentance and inner transformation. One must literally turn one's life around and redirect one's mind to new paths. Compassion without wisdom says we are all good as we are now. No sacrifice, no renunciation, no repentance is necessary. Just love everyone for who they are. This is a damnable lie for no man is good in and of himself. We are all, as traditional Christian teaching correctly affirms, sinners. That means we are all out of proper harmony with spiritual reality. What the modern world has forgotten is that the way to heaven is always through the crucifixion. Any form of spirituality that ignores this is just self-help and that is basically disguised egotism^.

Given this diagnosis of the modern world as one in decline, how can one say that human consciousness is evolving? But I do say it. After all, this is why the Christianity of the past is no longer adequate for many modern people who have the distinction, due to a more developed intellect and sense of self, to need to know things for themselves. But there is no reason why both assessments of the present time cannot be true. They are not necessarily contradictory. On the one hand, the old civilisation is dying for reasons of exhaustion and because of a decadence that is the result of a loss of spiritual energy and capitulation to material forces. On the other, there is a development of consciousness which sees a much greater and more widespread mental awareness of reality and positive engagement with it. 

Perhaps the fact that this is widespread gives us a clue. In the past, there was a relatively small spiritual and intellectual elite who drove the cultural agenda, and they worked from within a spiritual framework, or one that was heavily influenced by such.  The vast majority of humanity was purely passive. Now, however, there are far more people both determining and responding to intellectual life but they do so in a philosophically materialist society. From a situation in which very few people really thought, we have moved into one in which more and more men and women are becoming intellectually active, but the quantitative increase is not reflected qualitatively. It's a classic example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing but probably inevitable at the earlier phase of a new cycle.

The question is, can humanity progress from this current state of awakening intelligence to a deeper awareness before it destroys itself spiritually? To put it at its simplest, can we move on from a state in which knowledge is our chief aspiration and focus to one of wisdom? In a state of ignorance, the majority of the populace could be guided by traditional religion. In essence, they did as they were told. Now, as we leave our spiritual childhood we are learning to think for ourselves, but knowledge without wisdom has led to our corruption because, although we have begun to think for ourselves, we are not yet capable of thinking very deeply.

These are the two problems that confront us and to which we must find a solution. Our civilisation has reached the end of the line and is in the process of dismantling itself in various ways but which can often be reduced to preferring equality to quality. And then our newly developed mental powers have given us the ability to engage with reality to a greater extent than before, and even force it to our will to a degree, but we are restricted in this to the material plane. We must start to sow the seeds of a new spiritual civilisation or we face destruction.

* See The Fate of Empires by Sir John Glubb 

^ I'm not saying that the attempt to improve oneself is egotism, just the attempt to do so without reference to a real (i.e. not abstract) transcendent source beyond the self.

More Brexit

EU remainers like to point to a common European culture, one represented by Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and the like, and claim that leavers are rejecting this noble heritage for an insular little Britain attitude. Maybe some people are like that, maybe even a lot are since it can't be denied that the attitude exists and leave voters are a mixed bunch which is probably both their strength (in that they won) and their weakness (in that they may not have that much common ground). But the point is the EU is not Europe. Its long term purpose is and always has been to create a Federal Republic of Europe with all power centralised in a heavily bureaucratic transnational body while national parliaments exist merely as administrative branch offices, little better than local government.

The EU is fundamentally materialistic which is shown by two things, one obvious and one symbolic. The real unifying force of Europe was Christianity, a shared spiritual identity and transcendental belief. A religion.That is not part of modern EU ideology at all since it is based on Enlightenment values which, it could be reasonably said, actually trashed many real traditional European beliefs. I am not rejecting the Enlightenment which was a valuable, indeed essential, step forward, but it should have been built on religion not used to push the latter aside which is what happened, and is the attitude behind EU ideology. After all, most of the great men of European history were not only believers in God but that belief inspired their work.

To my mind, the EU flag reveals something fundamental about the project. It has no centre. And that means it has no heart. This is precisely because the EU is an atheist project. It likes to pretend it stands for intelligence and culture but what sort of intelligence and what sort of culture? I would say that it is actually a technocrat's dream and what is the important thing for technocrats? It is efficiency. A technocratic society must be one that is highly ordered and tightly controlled to bring about maximum efficiency. It has no place for anything that cannot be measured. Outwardly humanitarian, it actually rejects much of what it really means to be human because its concept of humanity is a shrivelled little thing without a soul.

Now, I know that most people who voted to leave the EU were unlikely to have framed their reasons in this way. They were concerned about mass immigration and its effects on their jobs, schools, housing etc. Or they didn't like being told what to do by foreigners. Or sundry other reasons. But perhaps in many cases behind these tangible outer reasons there was a sense that this country was slipping away from them, and they were deeply uncomfortable with that. Their identity was being stripped away. The EU offers nothing in this regard because it has no identity of its own. It is a hollow thing whose purpose is only functional. But man cannot live by bread alone.

England's national dress (for men)

These are pictures from the parts of England where I have lived and which I know best: the North East coalfield, Northumberland, Somerset and Devon - and the common feature is the Flat Cap.

The flat cap has always been standard dress for the adult male in the indigenous populations of these parts; and I have been wearing a flat cap, or had one folded/ rolled in my pocket, since I turned eighteen and inherited a couple from my recently deceased Grandfather.

There isn't much to be said about this unpretentious garment except that, without much fuss; English men have been wearing them for a long time - at least six generations, probably more.

Unlike most national dress, which has been invented by revivalists or contrived mainly for tourists, this is just what men actually use day by day; to keep a bit warmer and a bit dryer and to shade the eyes; from agricultural rustics and toffs everywhere, to Northern townees and all manner of workers in heavy industry.

Albion merch @ Senlak

I have recently bought a couple of small lapel badges of the flags of England (St George) and Northumberland - and I came across a supplier of patriotic English merchandise that may be of interest - especially for those who regard the Anglo-Saxon invasion of AD449 as the key event.

The Anglo-Saxo-maniac (and which of us isn't one of these - to some extent?) is catered-for by clothing etc. with logo's of that date, the White Dragon, and the word Englisc...

The organisation seems broadly secular; but on their list of eminent English the Venerable Bede comes first! 

Brexit

I thought I might give a personal response to the post Bruce recently put up here on Andy Thomas and his Brexit talk because I don't believe I've written about this subject before which might seem strange given the nature of this blog and the fact that no one seems to talk about anything else nowadays.

I didn't vote in the referendum. That was partly because I don't vote at all, regarding the whole process as flawed, particularly in the modern world when all parties are corrupt and all political ideologies completely separated from any kind of spiritual truth. People say you should at least participate and vote for the least bad option but I've tried that in the past and always feel as though I've betrayed my principles in some way, pompous and self-regarding as that might sound. But I believe the only honest option for me, as things stand today anyway, is to remove myself from the whole process. I am not recommending this for everyone. We all have to follow our conscience in these matters, and I am not saying that anyone who feels they should participate in the democratic process is wrong. But I know what I personally feel about the matter and that is paramount as far as I am concerned. It's not the same thing as not voting because you can't be bothered to or don't care. I just don't want to join in something I regard as corrupt and probably deceitful. The system is broken but that's because we human beings are broken. I know of no solution to this other than the old-fashioned one of spiritual repentance.

I said I didn't vote partly because I don't vote anyway. So that was not the whole reason. The thing is even if I had been willing to join in the referendum, I would have been torn. Not because I don't believe that Britain should leave the European Union. I do. I think the EU is one of those things, whited sepulchres, that have been designed to look fair on the outside but inside are spiritually rotten. It stands for liberal humanitarianism, social equality and all the sorts of things that sound pleasant to the modern mind, but is really an organisation that is gearing up for a totalitarian control of the whole of Europe, no doubt with the eventual aim of joining a world body dedicated to global control. Typical conspiracy theory nonsense, you might say. Maybe, but I believe that the demonic forces, whose manipulating behind the scene activities should surely be ever more obvious in this world, used it after World War Two, trading on the naive idealism of politicians of the time and their earnest hopes that such a war would never be repeated, and instigated a body that would override national identity, supposedly for progressive reasons but actually for totalitarian ones.

So, from that point of view, Britain should clearly leave. However, our economic and cultural lives, particularly the former, have been so closely woven into the fabric of the EU that leaving is probably going to cause hardship. In the short to medium term, people, especially poorer people, are going to suffer. Thus, there are two aspects of the matter to take into account. There is the economic side, together with a certain sort of sophisticated cultural side, liberal, outward looking, progressive in the sense that word is usually understood today. But then there is the matter of principles. What is the right thing to do, regardless of how we will be affected?

Britain is part of Europe. It always has been and it always will be. Leaving the EU does not mean leaving Europe even if that were possible. Our whole life has been bound up with the continent for our entire history. Our culture is a European one, unthinkable without huge influences from mainland Europe which have enriched us enormously. And yet we are an island. Materialists will consider this completely irrelevant. But people who believe in God and think that he has a reason for things being as they are will pause for thought. We have been set apart. Yes, that can lead to an attitude of arrogant self-satisfaction but then beauty can lead to vanity. It doesn't mean that beauty is a bad thing. We have been set apart and many of us sense that we do indeed have a special mission, hinted at in our traditions and legends. What that mission may be, no one is completely sure but it has risen to the surface occasionally. It did so at the time of the Spanish Armada. If Phillip II had succeeded in the invasion of England, Spain would have dominated Europe and I don't think that English notions of freedom and individuality would have spread as they did. Perhaps the scientific revolution would not have taken off as it did. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the British would have colonised America to the extent they did and the whole history of the United States would have been completely different. Speculation, of course, but not without some basis to it.

Then Britain freed Europe from Napoleon. Napoleon was a great man but he had become a tyrant and was imposing his regime throughout the continent. Britain defended freedom. Not alone, of course, but she was the principal agent. Britain's contribution to the defeat of Hitler is clearly another time when her mission manifested itself.

It seems that one of the things Britain can do is save Europe from itself. The British always used to have the particular virtue of mistrusting ideologies and preferring common sense to clever theories. That can lead to the nation of shopkeepers jibe (which is not always an unfair one) but it can also mean that we are not seduced by fancy words and cleverly spun lies. That used to be the case anyway. How much it is now, I'm not so sure but perhaps the Brexit vote shows that the attribute still exists.

If Britain was a nation of shopkeepers, it was also home to some of the greatest poets the world has known, and many of these made a mighty contribution to the expansion of consciousness that became known as the Romantic Movement. This might be another side of its mission. Here on this island are supposed to be some of the most sacred sites in the world.  These act like spiritual power sources that can inspire and regenerate, even today when their power is low. But they are there and the energy can be tapped. They feed into the national psyche and give those in the nation who can respond, which may not be the majority but is a reasonable minority, a connection to deeper realities. The revival of esoteric spirituality in the 20th century, which admittedly often took strange forms, was frequently lead by people from these isles.

Britain has been set apart physically and it has been spiritually too, for better or worse. This is not a cause for an inflated egotism but it means that we in this country have a responsibility. I would say that we have not been true to it for at least 50 years. We have not kept the faith just as Israel, in a different context, did not always keep the faith in Old Testament times. According to Wellesley Tudor Pole, a prominent English mystic of the last century (see here), it was a mistake to join the Common Market, as the EU was known then, and would delay our mission. I would say he has been proved correct. Whether the mission, whatever it might be, has been delayed or thwarted completely remains to be seen.

Most people who voted to remain in the EU did so for solid intellectual reasons, which is not to deny that emotions and fear were involved too. But they regarded themselves as primarily responding rationally. They were convinced that economically and culturally our future lies within a wider body, and regarded the partial sacrifice of national identity and integrity as a trivial thing. On the other hand, it seems clear that many leave voters voted with their hearts, and that is why it is easy to caricature them as ignorant. There will very likely be economic hardship if we do ever succeed in leaving, though, goodness knows, the powers that be seem hell-bent on preventing it. But leave voters may have been reacting at an intuitive level to the knowledge that Great Britain has a destiny that cannot be fulfilled within the EU This is a spiritual reason that can't be justified in a book of accounts or fitted into a globalist, progressive narrative. But if you want to caricature leave voters as ignorant then you can equally well accuse remainers of having no feeling for the mystique of this country, and of being spiritually rootless people who see a country as only somewhere they happen to live, with no deeper involvement, loyalty or connection.

The fact that the establishment is so determined to stop Britain leaving tells us two things. One, they are responding to demonic impulse. That is who they work for whether they know it or not (and the vast majority of them don't know it and would laugh themselves silly if they were presented with such an idea). The second thing is that Britain does have a spiritual mission and it is important. It is worth a lot of effort (apparently) to hinder or even stop it.

The spiritual way is often the apparently less attractive way. That is because it demands sacrifice and strips us of the falsehoods we cover ourselves up with. The fair path often leads to a foul end. This is something we should remember in the coming months.

Michael Green (1927-2018) - a favourite English humourist

I was introduced to the work of Michael Green as a teenager by my best friend - who had a copy of The Art of Coarse Acting; relevant because we had both recently begun performing in school plays. In trying to read bits aloud to each other, we found Coarse Acting so extremely funny that we became unable to speak, cried tears of laughter, and were intermittently unable to remain standing.

I have since gifted or lent this volume to many other amateur, and amateur-ish, actors - and it still commands a small but intense cult following. There are several other 'Art of coarse...' books, but this has always been my favourite. I would rate it as one of the genial classics of English humour - a rank below the likes of Diary of a Nobody, or Three Men in a Boat - but well worthwhile.

It comes from a lost era and an almost obliterated class - the post-war austerity days and the lower middle class of grammar school kids who did not go to university; served as NCOs in the second world war; worked in semi-professions such as Civil Service offices, as journalist, school teachers and the like; and who had a very active and communal social life in hobbies and sports - forming rugby and cricket teams, and putting on plays (even Shakespeare!) with their workmates. 

Michael Green had an easy writing style, a likeable authorial personality, and an accessible kind of exaggerated-anecdotal humour.

Among his other books I best liked Squire Haggard's Journal, which was a a tremendously energetic and fluent pastiche dairy of an (imaginary) lecherous and drunken 18th century country gentlemen (of the kind to be found in Henry Fielding's novels).

And his two volumes of autobiography The boy who shot down an airship (about childhood), and Nobody hurt in small earthquake (about young adulthood - especially as a journalist) - which are  charming, honest and well observed - as well as often amusing.

Andy Thomas on Brexit and legendary Albion

A couple of years ago at the Glastonbury Symposium (of which he is an organiser); here is Andy Thomas giving a wide-ranging and amusing presentation on the 'mythic' historical background to the pro-Brexit vote.

Auguries of Innocence

This is one of William Blake's most famous poems. It starts with the lines everybody knows.

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

Yes, these are so well-known they are now almost hackneyed. They do capture the feeling that arises in a typical peak experience or transcendental state of consciousness, but that state can come to almost anyone seemingly at random, and even be stimulated (or perhaps simulated would be a better word) by drugs, and, though it may be called spiritual, it cannot be said to represent the spiritual goal at which we should be aiming. It is perhaps the goal of pantheistic mysticism but it is not the theistic goal.

That is revealed later with the last lines of the poem. Here they are.

God appears, and God is light,

To those poor souls who dwell in night;

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

With these words Blake draws a clear distinction between two different kinds of spiritual approach, and he comes out in favour of the latter. The first approach is that of the philosopher who seeks knowledge or the Eastern mystic who wishes to dissolve his (supposedly) illusionary self into the greater Self for it there to disappear into the unmanifest ocean of light. This is a real state but to see it as our spiritual goal totally ignores the whole purpose of creation. If God is light then he is abstract and impersonal, and creation, ultimately, is unreal. Nothing is real except the state of blissful unmanifest oneness. Now, reality does have an aspect in which there is simply pure light but that is not the whole of what reality is or what God in himself is, and it is not the aspect that we were created to fall back into. For it is rather like returning to the spiritual womb before we experienced this world of creation. But we were born, and we are meant to grow into sons and daughters of God, real individuals with real creative powers who can expand creation through love.

When Blake says that God has a human form he means that God is a person.  He is saying that reality is personal and made up of beings not things, concrete not abstract. This is deeply unfashionable today but it is the truth taught by Jesus who stands for us as the human form of God, and to know it fulfils our spiritual purpose in a way that being reabsorbed by the light can never do.

Note that Blake says God is light to those who dwell in night. To say that God is light might seem to be the highest thing one can meaningfully say about him, but Blake says that this is the case only for those who live in ignorance, whose spiritual darkness tells them that God must be light. Real seekers but not yet awake. However, to those souls who have risen from their spiritual slumbers and "dwell in realms of day", God is not just light. He is a person. Reality is personal, and that means that our individuality is a real thing. A thing given by God, self-evidently, but what God gives he does not take back. God is creative and he wants us to be too since we are his children. To be creative, you must have a self.

William Blake was probably the pre-eminent prophet of Albion. If I may interject a personal note which I may have mentioned before on this blog, when I was 16 I developed a real enthusiasm for him and asked for and received the complete works of his poetry for Christmas. I was also a regular visitor to the Tate Gallery in London which had (and presumably still does have) a large collection of his paintings. To tell the truth, I was rather daunted by his longer poems and never read any of them all the way through. I certainly didn't understand what I did read. But I loved the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and found his pictures fascinating, partly, I think, because they depicted visions of a higher world of endless creative energy produced by someone who actually seemed to have seen what he was painting. Artistically, they are somewhat crude but the inspiration comes through and bursts off the paper or wood or whatever the material might be. Blake was not an orthodox Christian because his natural insight was too great to be confined by any framework of systemised thought. That doesn't mean he was right in everything he said or wrote, but he was undeniably authentic so, even when he might have been in error, I would say that was because the over-flowing abundance of his vision exceeded his mental capacity to express it.

In modern times even those who do turn to a spiritual conception of the world are often more comfortable with abstract explanations of the God is light variety. A personal God just seems too childish. We've evolved beyond that anthropomorphic way of looking at things. We are now much more intellectually aware. But the funny thing about real evolution is that we often return to where we were before, but see it this time in a deeper way. God as person is not childish. It is real in a way that philosophical approaches to God can never be. Blake's vision in the Auguries of Innocence was true.

What is Morris Dancing?

From an introduction to the three-page booklet enclosed with the 1976 LP of Plain Capers: Morris dance tunes from the Cotswolds; written by the squeeze box virtuoso John Kirkpatrick, and Neil Wayne - owner of the Free Reed magazine and record company.

Morris dancing started life as part of an ancient pagan ritual...

The comic characters who often accompany Morris Dancers - the Fool, the Moll (a man dressed as a woman), the Hobby Horse - all have their origins in primitive beliefs and practices although they seem to come straight out of a modern circus or pantomime. 

And the dancers themselves in their elaborate costumes decorated with ribbons and bells are typically English; and yet very foreign and strange, and their ancestors belong to a race that was dancing before national boundaries had any meaning...

Morris dancing is concerned with energy - the energy expended by the individual dancers, and the energy that the dance transmits to its participants. For there is no doubt that after every last step and flourish has been analysed, there is still some force at work which defies analysis...

In the dance, the sense are dulled by some greater power which transcends everyday human limitations. In the dance, men can be at one with the life-force, at one with Mother Earth...

Plain Capers is a logical progression from previous milestones in the Morris music revival; both by re-exploring the the roots of the traditional tunes... and by using traditional instruments as much as possible; played in much the way that the old lads of the Cotswolds would have danced to them; wit 'plenty of brisk', full of energy, with all the magical marvellous excitement of the Morris. 

The above is a typical example of the nineteen seventies spiritual revival to which I have often referred - its context being a relatively small scale but mainstream record release; and John Kirpatrick especially was somewhat nationally famous at the time, joining Steeleye Span the following year.

What I notice is how explicit and unapologetic this note is in its mystical assertions. But also that they are rather vague; and based-on an essentially fictive, idealised, modernised, and incomplete understanding of paganism (typical of the anything-but-Christianity spirituality that developed in England from the late 1800s with neo-paganism, theosophy and many other movements).

I did not see any other so explicit links between Morris dancing and paganism in the music of that time, but it was certainly implied - not least in the art work, and the feel. Perhaps its spirit was most obvious in the precursor of Plain Capers: the electric folk album of Morris On, which is musically more successful than Plain Capers, indeed a classic album of its genre:

Notice the (jokingly modernised) archetypal Morris characters - left to right: Robin Hood, the Moll, Chimney Sweep, a normal Morris Dancer, and a Hobby Horse based on the iconic 'Chopper' bicycle...
 

 

The Brexit balls-up is going well...

Just a topic update on the Brexit process.

I am very happy with the way that things are going - with the defeat of a fake-Brexit bill in parliament; and a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister (as if anybody in the world had 'confidence' in Teresa May!)

Because, to recapitulate, it would not have been helpful if Brexit had simply gone-through swiftly and completely using the normal democratic procedures. That would have created the illusion that the Establishment are capable of learning, and doing what needs to be done.

Whereas the sustained shambles of the Brexit 'negotiations' has been a revelation of the real nature of the British Establishment and the European Union's real intentions.

The Brexit Balls-up has been - in a word - a dose of reality; repeatedly and aggressively shoved in the faces of ordinary British people by the mass media and official communications.

The bigger the balls-up, the longer it goes on - the better!