Pilgrimage

Nowadays most people in the Western world expect to have at least one holiday a year but wouldn't it be a good thing if we thought about making a pilgrimage sometimes too? After all, if the mind and body need to be refreshed perhaps the spirit does as well. This needn't be a dramatic affair but it should require a little effort and sacrifice on our part, and it ought to be made with the right attitude which is reverence mixed with aspiration.

In the past people went on pilgrimages to renew a connection to God which, even when it exists, is often weakened during the rough and tumble of everyday existence in the material world. They went to absorb holy influences from a recognised sacred site, sacred either by association with a saint or just in itself because of the spiritual power to be sensed there, and they also went as an act of penance or contrition. They went too to give thanks to their Maker. All these motives help to revive the sagging spiritual impulse. A pilgrimage can also be thought of as an externalisation of the inner spiritual journey and so aid and strengthen one for that task since, by being something anyone can do physically, it is rather easier to accomplish. It should not be taken as a substitute for the need to make that inner journey but it can be used as a support and inspiration for it.

The effort involved in reaching a place is an important part of any pilgrimage. If you simply turn up at a holy site having driven there in comfort you are not going to reap the same spiritual benefit as you might if your journey had been more arduous and required real effort, even a degree of hardship. This is why some people made all or part of their journey barefoot or even on their knees. When I lived in India I noticed that many people would shave their heads when going on a pilgrimage. Some would fast as well or take a temporary vow of celibacy. Of course, this can be taken to excess and the actual pain or deprivation involved be seen as a virtue in itself which is a mistake. But if it is seen symbolically and as a gesture of penitence and humility then there is a point to it, and it can be spiritually constructive. We recognise that we must approach God emptied of self and without any preconditions on our part, and although the ideal is to do this on a mental level, that is hard and to do it physically is a good step in the right direction. It's a reasonable substitute that sets the mind on the right course. Physical privation or hardship is not, on its own, going to make you a more spiritual person, any more than poverty can, but the acceptance of it can assist in turning around the worldly self and helping it submit to true spiritual values.

It is well known that Christianity didn't just set up its own brand new holy places but adapted them from former pagan sites, effectively baptising an already holy place. Now this could have been for two reasons. One, the people accepted that site as holy so it was easier just to put it under new management. The already existing sacred aura of the place could simply be converted to Christian usage. It merely required rededicating to Christ or the Virgin Mary or a saint and cleansed of any lingering potential defilement by the appropriate rites. But I think there is another reason too. Some places really are more sacred than others. If we think of the Earth as a body with lines of what, for want of a better phrase, we can call psychic energy running all over it we can understand that there are certain nexus points where that energy is concentrated and where it may take on a particular quality. These are also places where, given the right conditions and receptivity on the part of the visitor, the veil between this world and the next can be thinner than elsewhere. Such localities are well suited to adaptation for worship and pilgrimage.

Britain has several pilgrimage sites, some very well known. Canterbury, Glastonbury and Walsingham come to mind as sacred places where a strong Christian influence has persisted for centuries. Lindisfarne and Iona are holy islands which are probably nexus points as described above but have also benefitted from the presence of saints, Cuthbert and Columba respectively, and from the veneration afforded these saints by their followers. This is actually an interesting point. The presence of true spiritual aspirants can add to the sanctity of a place or at least enable it to come out. If people come in a spirit of devotion and reverence they can both receive and give. They can receive the spiritual virtue of the site but they can also contribute to building that up by the quality of the feelings and motives they bring with them. If their hearts are pure and properly directed to goodness and truth they can, as it were, feed the atmosphere. But the reverse is also true and present day Glastonbury is an unfortunate example of this. If people come to take and with unworthy motives then they can suck all the good atmosphere out of a place, driving its virtue underground.

Glastonbury is certainly a holy place which means it has a powerful energy. Regrettably this attracts all sorts of types including those who just wish to feed off that energy, and these people corrupt the atmosphere through their desire to appropriate the energy without being worthy of it or able to live up to its quality. That is why, ideally, all holy places should be guarded or protected from the profane by a dedicated priesthood or something of that nature. If you wish to enter a sacred place or space you must make yourself worthy of that. Everybody, both pagan and Christian, understood that very well until recently.

In a sense, then, pilgrimage might be considered as a symbol of the return to God. That is a long journey, though, and, as one of the outer supports to treading the inner path, a physical pilgrimage can be of great value for it not only brings that inner journey into focus but it can also inspire and revitalise us for the road ahead.

Metaphysical awakening - but how?

Metaphysics is the name for our most fundamental assumptions concerning reality - and the particular horror of modern metaphysics is the pretence that there isn't one.

If there is to be any awakening of The West in general and Albion in particular - the first step is for people to become aware that they have metaphysical assumptions; and like all such assumptions they are assumed - and not, therefore, the consequence of any kind of evidence or proof.

There is no name for the set of assumptions of the modern West - and that is no accident; because the pretence is that we have seen-through metaphysics, and confront 'reality' directly.

We (supposedly) live without illusions, we face the facts, we live according to the bottom-line - we seize the day.

We assume (among other things) that God never was, the soul is a myth, death is utter annihilation, science is the only truth, that Human Life is entirely about maximising pleasure and minimising suffering... and yet we deny that these are assumptions.

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In my experience there is nothing harder to achieve, than to get somebody-else to acknowledge their assumptions - and that other assumptions are possible!

(This metaphysical awareness is not mainly a matter of high intelligence; it is mostly a matter of attention-span and serious engagement - both of which are even rarer than high intelligence.)

Yet metaphysics is not just another 'relativism' - the fact that we make some assumptions does not mean that any one set of assumptions is just as good (or bad) as any other set of assumptions; because metaphysics is not the deepest we can go.

Beyond metaphysics there is what could be called intuition; by which I mean the ultimate reflective evaluation of our ultimate selves: that which convinces us, that we believe, what strikes us as most valid and true. 

(This depends on many possible factors - coherence is one. Simplicity is another; comprehensibility is very important - we need to understand our own metaphysics; appeal is another - what strikes us as good, beautiful and true. But in practice the reasons for evaluation may be unclear and unarticulated: we just know.)

So, if we can excavate, isolate and acknowledge the nature of our metaphysics, then we can validly change it for something better.

We can - we really can! - awaken from the deadly hypnotic trance of modernity; and awaken to a better world - a world of breadth, depth, meaning and purpose.

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This is important - I would say vital - because it is our metaphysics which is literally killing us in The West.

And the great weakness of Western metaphysics is that it is incoherent - indeed it is self-refuting; because when pushed to the line it claims that incoherence is reality; and the incoherence of metaphysics mirrors the incoherence of Real Life.

(It is this incoherent assertion of incoherence which leads to the claim to have refuted metaphysics; to the claim somehow to have confronted reality directly and unmediated and thereby discovered its incoherence.) 

Yet from this insistence of incoherence, The West derives its tyrannical iron cage of mandatory bureaucratic surveillance and control; and its moralising and immoral mass media - that vast effort at ideological saturation bombing which IS the modern world.

People will not escape this suffocating System merely by discovering its lies, nor even by discovering its incoherence - they will escape by recognising a metaphysics of expanded acknowledgment and perception of realities; of meaning and purpose - and by recognising its validity in the very depth of their intuitive self.

This is the work of an instant! Albeit it may take weeks, months, years of decades to build up to that moment.

But the possibility is always there, and never can be closed-off altogether - or, if it is, we have no-one to blame but our-selves.

Speculations on the post-Brexit English awakening - high risk of failure, but (for the same reason) transformative positive change a possibility

My interpretation of divine destiny is that we - in England, Britain, The West - are supposed to move forward to a new kind of Christian society different from both the present secular Leftist modernity and the preceding traditionalist religious societies.

If traditional society was, in essence, the immersion of individuals in a public realm of religious practices (with little self-awareness in distinction from society); the aim is, I believe, a society which takes the increased self-consciousness and individual agency (i.e. personal freedom) of modernity and joins-us-together into a voluntary network of loving relationships.

So, if the traditional past had us as something like young children in an ideal family - dependent, and primarily obedient; in the future we are supposed to be something more like the grown-up (fully agent) adult children in an ideal family.

Therefore, I judge current events by their potential for this next (and final) step in the evolution of consciousness and Christian love.

From this perspective Brexit (understood as a popular aspiration, rather than the specific vote which revealed it) potentially represents something altogether new. Post-Brexit, England is in a high risk but high reward situation - which may well lead to nothing at all but might be the start of something very good.

The weakness of Brexit is therefore also its strength. The weakness is that there is no leader, and indeed no leadership class (what little, mostly simulated, leadership there was during the Brexit campaign has either melted away or been swiftly neutralised by the Establishment: corrupted or crushed).

Hence Brexit seems likely to fail in the short term - but if it does not fail then we have something very positive and hope-full for the long term.

Brexit is almost purely a consequence of invisible, politically-powerless people - it is a leaderless movement, unarticulated - unpredicted and unpredictable, undetected and unmeasurable; and apparently utterly uncomprehended and uncontrolled by the major social institutions.  

The nature of Brexit is a consequence of the extremity of corruption in Britain; where the Establishment is so totally-dominant among the leadership of all major institutions (which are now thoroughly assimilated and inverted) that they monopolise all leadership and public discourse.

Therefore in Britain change will have to come (if it comes at all) by some wholly-novel 'mechanism' - based upon a mass of individual 'awakenings' - each of which is very private, very autonomous, against-the-odds - and very difficult, therefore, either to control or to extinguish.

If the underlying social change represented by Brexit gathers strength, then it would have its effect (at least initially) either invisibly or negatively - since it lacks explicit and recognised representation.

Of course there may be, I hope there is, a small and organised core of honest and competent leadership for the Brexit movement - but this would be secondary; it would have to be secondary, or else Brexit would quickly and easily be snuffed-out.

How is positive change even possible under a Brexit scenario? Well, modern society requires, and gets, a truly massive degree of self-policing, self-control, self-punishment - whereby the mass of people have been ideologically inverted into active support of evil (of nonsense and lies enforced as truth; ugliness as beauty; and wickedness as virtue - and vice versa).

This is done by the people, to the people - because it is expedient when Life is regarded relativistically, materialistically, and as terminated by death.

But if people have, as individuals, awoken to a new metaphysical awareness - that is, a new system of assumptions which they know from-themselves - then individuals become agent; and immune to the divide-and-rule system of control.

A system of true and self-aware agents would be new; and impossible to control - except by enrolling agency to positive goals - presumably by Love.

At present, modernity denies genuine agency, and indeed real-reality. If this changes - then everything changes. Inexorably, unstoppably, bottom-up.

And Christian agency (assuming that is what eventually emerges) just keeps bouncing back - no matter how many errors and failures it suffers, it cannot be demoralised because of the infinite power of repentance.

When Christian agency is sustained even in the absence of a strong, honest and true church and institutional leadership - then it indomitable; and indeed is all-but indestructible (in the eternal perspective).

Coming Home to the Grail - Catherine Fisher's 'Corbenic'

'There are two sorts of life, aren't there? The one that seems ordinary, like this, and then the reflection from it. Curved, shiny. All mixed up.'

Corbenic, p.195.

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Catherine Fisher (b. 1957) is a Welsh novelist and poet whose work is deeply imbued with the myths and legends native to both Wales and England. Widely viewed as a Young Adult writer, her stories have an energy, fluidity and intensity of vision which makes most contemporary 'grown-up' fiction look pale and one-dimensional. 

I have read six Catherine Fisher novels since discovering Corbenic in late 2015. All are excellent (for   further details please visit www.catherine-fisher.com) but Corbenic remains the pick so far for me. What comes over particularly strongly, having recently reread it, is the author's profound immersion in the Grail mythos. She has absorbed the legends, thoroughly and deeply, and let them form her imagination. Corbenic, therefore, is far more than a yarn based on anthropological research or detached, 'folkloric' study. What gives it its magic and inner force is the captivation Fisher displays for its central symbol - the Grail - in every word she writes. Anyone who describes the Grail procession like this, for instance, clearly reveres and loves her subject, understanding it intimately, approaching it intuitively, not from 'out there' but 'in here':

There was another room. There had been no door before but there was now, and the boys with the spear and the candlesticks walked in there, and the girl did too, and as she passed she raised her face from the glory of the Grail and gave Cal one look, quick and rapt. And he was seared with the sudden joy of it, the nameless, unbelievable joy, but the door swung shut and the light was gone and the music was back, as if it had never stopped. (p.27)

Corbenic, in essence, is a modern-day recasting of the Percival story - the gauche youth who leaves his mother's home in the woods to become a knight at King Arthur's court. Cal, a spiky and emotionally wounded teenager (his actual age isn't mentioned in the book, but he seems about seventeen) leaves his alcoholic mother and his home in Bangor to begin a career at his uncle's business in Chepstow. As he passes Ludlow on the train he falls into a doze, wakes up in a fluster and gets off at the wrong stop, a place called Corbenic which, Cal later discovers, is not to be found on any map. His encounter with the Grail King and his attempts to return to Corbenic propel the novel towards its conclusion. There are a wealth of mythic themes and motifs bubbling up under the surface of the plot, however. Most prominent, perhaps, is the presence of King Arthur and his retinue, disguised as a battle re-enactment group known as the Company:

They were Arthur's Company, and they had each taken on one of the characters from the legends, and they lived it, as if they really were those people, as if they'd been alive for centuries, not in some cave asleep, but here, still living, still guarding the Island of Britain from its enemies. Sometimes Cal thought they really believed they were Arthur's men. Sometimes he almost believed it too. (p.91)

This is a highly enticing idea and, for myself at least, a comforting one too - that Arthur and his band are still at large, that they have always been here in one guise or another and that they always will be until the day arrives when they reveal themselves in their true shape and form. There are echoes here with the line of 'Pendragons' in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength - the secret kings of Logres; the hidden, mystical side of Britain - 'some of whom are known to history and some of whom are not.'

The same can be said for the Grail itself - that unpredictable and dangerous, yet healing and rejuvenating sacred vessel. The Russian mystic Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973) writes in his final book Lazarus Come Forth on the relationship between what he calls the 'day side' of history and its 'night side'. He regards figures such as Lazarus and Nicodemus, for instance, as belonging to the night side of the Christian story: 

They belong to the hidden core of being of Christianity, which is the mystery of 'becoming', i.e. the essence itself of all miracles. (p.120)

The Grail too, in my view, should be seen in this light - an image of high holiness erupting into our 'daytime' consciousness - like the men of Elidor bursting into suburban Manchester in Alan Garner's book - from the secret, 'night-time' realm of Imagination - the creative, archetypal furnace - the place of encounter between the human and the Divine.

There are no barriers between worlds in Corbenic, no line in the sand between the magical and the workaday. The Grail quest is as much about healing hearts, minds and memories as it is about tasting the wine of Heaven. It is all of a piece; all one cloth of gold. The book is about family, community, reconciliation and, most of all perhaps, vocation - about shedding the skin of the false self and coming home to who you truly are, not the person you think you are or the person you suspect society wants you to be. Only when you have become who you are, only when you have hit rock bottom and cried out for help from the depths of your heart, divested of the ego's illusions and pretences, only then can the Grail perform its redemptive role, heal the wounds you thought were beyond healing, and set you on the path of your sacred mission.

None of this is a given, of course. Everything depends (and all the legends, Corbenic included, are as one on this) on the seeker having the wherewithal, courage and good fortune to ask the Grail King the right question at the right time. This is the Kairos - the supreme moment - and the healing of the outer world - the Waste Land - relies on it. Nothing happens in isolation; personal transformation is echoed and reflected in the corporate sphere. The regeneration of the Waste Land will be a day of collective restoration where, as Tomberg puts it, 'all the forgotten truth and love, all the sleeping truth and love of the past, will be remembered and reawakened; and where all bearers, proclaimers, and participators in all truth and love, who have passed through the gate of death, will come again to speak, act, and be influential.' (p.130)

It might seem a grand claim to make for a relatively slender book like this, but it's my belief that Corbenic, in its fluent yet unobtrusive, unpretentious manner, at least points the way towards the possibility of such an individual and communal rejuvenation. It asks the Grail question, in short. That is all any of us are required to do.

Owen Barfield on the spiritual future of Albion - 1940

If you are convinced that it is well for a man, or it may be a nation, to make something, there are two possible ways of imparting the conviction to him.

You may convince him by argument that such a thing, if made, would be a good and useful thing. That is one way.

On the other hand you may say: “This thing already exists, potentially, and is merely waiting to be brought into visible being. Moreover it is your true nature to make it, because its archetype already exists in you. If you fail to make it you will be acting in a way that is fundamentally false: you will be a sort of hypocrite.”

Now I believe that this second method is the only one which has any chance of success to-day. I also believe that it is inherently a better method, because for one thing it is in harmony with religious faith. Ethics are concerned with what ought to be, where religion is concerned solely with what is.

It is, for instance, not a religious appeal to say “You ought not to be acquisitive,” whether or no we add “because in that way peace will be secured.” It is a religious appeal to say: “It is the will of God that you should not be acquisitive,” whether or no we add “and you will find that it is really your own will also, the will of that true self of yours for whose salvation Christ died.”

The question is, therefore, is there any chance of producing by this second method a widespread conviction in the minds of English people that it is their urgent business to create a new society? In attempting to answer this question one naturally asks first, whether attempt has ever been made before.

A century ago a great man was writing in this country on social change and political questions... Coleridge saw that a new society was needed in Europe and that it could only be brought about by a change in people’s ways of thought and feeling. He virtually foresaw, as the inevitable result of habits of thought which were then comparatively new but were rapidly becoming prevalent, the very disintegration which we are now experiencing. He chose the second method of appeal.

Coleridge tried to familiarise English people with the notion that there is what he called the “idea” of a nation, a constitution, a church – that is, not a theory of these things worked out empirically, but something which they are in fact and in the nature of things striving to be; and that the first problem is to recognise this “idea” in each case.

He failed to “get it across” -- it was beyond his, probably beyond any man’s, powers and he never won more than a small audience. The failure was disastrous because for anyone who will first take the trouble to master Coleridge’s system of thought these writings of his contains a depth of Christian political wisdom which I believe to be unsurpassed by any other English, possibly by any other, thinker.

Is there any better prospect of success to-day? I believe there may be... People have gradually acquired the habit of referring in the most matter of fact, even glib, way to this particular aspect of the “unmanifest.” To this extent we are all accustomed to “moving about in worlds not realised”.

This fact seems to me to create a totally different situation; so that, if Coleridge were here to-day, he would find exactly what he formerly lacked, a point of contact with the minds of his contemporaries from which at least to make a start.

Am I making my suggestion at all clear? What I want to get at is that the true form of the society which Britain ought to create already exists potentially in the nation’s unconscious; and that an appeal which proceeds on that basis stands the best chance of success.

Edited from Effective Approach to Social Change - Owen Barfield - 1940
http://www.owenbarfield.org/effective-approach-to-social-change

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Note: This seems an inspiring and energising insight into the nature of desirable social change; and how we ought to set about inducing it.

(And also - very helpfully - what not to do!)

A Prophecy on the Conversion of England

Readers of this blog might be interested in a post I came across today on another blog. Here's the link.

http://unveilingtheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/fr-giulio-mancinelli-on-conversion-of.html

The blog is to do with prophecy in Catholic tradition specifically, as its name would indicate, relating to the Apocalypse. The post describes the potential reconversion of England to Catholicism and I don't imagine all readers here would share that aspiration. But if we look at this conversion as a rediscovery of real Christianity then I think we could share common ground. I apologise to the writer of the post, Emmett O'Regan, if it seems to him that his message is being misrepresented by appearing on a blog that is not a Catholic one, but I hope he doesn't mind it being spread to a different audience than the one he might have initially intended.

Anyhow, here's an extract from Mr O'Regan's post quoting a Jesuit missionary who was visiting England in the early 17th century.

"While on a mission to England in 1608, Fr. Mancinelli reported that he had been visited by angels, who revealed to him the future destiny of this country in a series of visions:

"He beheld regions laid waste by all kinds of tempests, and so desolated by thunder, lightning, rain, hail, hurricanes and dreadful earthquakes that their wretched inhabitants knew not whither to flee for safety; even the caverns of the earth afforded no refuge. Being thus beyond all human help, the Father saw them at length with one accord prostrate and crying to God for mercy; he next heard this voice from Heaven: "It is not so much your sins as the enormities of your kings and rulers that has brought you to this condition, and subjected you to such severe punishments. But now know ye that I will deal with you in mercy, and raise your Church to a dignity that it has never heretofore attained. You shall win over the Turks and heretics under my protection, and with manifest prodigies from heaven such triumphs and victories that will astonish the rest of Europe. Lastly, the central sanctuary of the world, which I first established in Jerusalem, and which at present hallows the city of Rome, shall be placed in your midst, so that all surrounding nations shall congratulate you on your happiness. These special blessings shall be bestowed upon you for the sake of the eminent merits of the saints of this kingdom, and the hardships and the sufferings they have undergone for My sake."
(Jesuit Annual Letter of 1605. "Copie of a revelation made to Father Julius Mancinelli, S.J., concerning the success of the Kingdome of England")`"

There's a lot more if you follow the link, and I'd like to express my thanks to Mr O'Regan for such an interesting essay.


It occurred to me that this could just be seen as propaganda at a time when it was still thought that England might return to the Catholic fold if only its rulers could be persuaded of the error of their ways, if it were not for the reference to the "central sanctuary of the world" being placed in England which must have seemed extraordinary at the time.

Michell and Watkins

One hot summer afternoon, 20 June 1921, Alfred Watkins was at Blackwardine in Herefordshire. On a high hilltop he stopped and looked at his map before meditating on the view below him. 

 Suddenly, in a flash, he saw something which no one in England had seen for perhaps thousands of years. Watkins saw straight through the surface of the landscape to a layer deposited in some remote prehistoric age. 

The barrier of time melted and, spread across the country, he saw a web of lines linking the holy places and sites of antiquity. Mounds, old stones, crosses and old crossroads, churches placed on pre-Christian sites, legendary trees, moats and holy wells stood in exact alignments that ran over beacon hills to cairns and mountain peaks. 

In one moment of transcendental perception Watkins entered a magic world of prehistoric Britain, a world whose very existence had been forgotten. 

By John Michell - From The View over Atlantis 1969.

The back of the Album cover of the Albion Dance Band 1977 album, The Prospect Before Us depicts, in a parodic style, Watkins's epiphanic vision of occult meaning in the English Landscape - which, as retrospectively interpreted and elaborated by John Michell, led to the New Age spiritual renaissance as it happened in England