Taliesin - Bard of Britain

'Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.' So wrote the poet, T.S. Eliot, and I was by his side as he crafted his words. I guided the hands of Shakespeare, Blake and Milton too. I shouldered arms beside the great defenders of this realm -  from Churchill and Nelson to Alfred and Arthur. I was a hod carrier when the Cathedrals soared heavenwards and a Master Druid when the stone circles were made. I lit candles with the saints - Cuthbert and Bede, Boniface and Hilda, Alban and Kentigern - exemplars of this holy isle. I was a guide, my lantern carving a path through the mist as Joseph of Arimathea - on his second visit to Albion - brought the sacred chalice to Glastonbury. For I had stood on St. Michael's Mount thirty years before, a wild Prince of the West, welcoming him as a trader (along with his nephew, the boy Jesus) to these rocky shores.

So much for the past. I shape the present and future as well. It is all one, as Eliot knew - a seamless robe, a unified field. I see, hear, feel and experience it all. Nothing under Albion's moon and sun is strange to my eye or foreign to my heart. It is a burden both crushing and exhilarating - a  mixed chalice, a weight of glory.

It wasn't always like this though. My boyhood was simplicity itself. I was brought up in Deganwy on the Clwyd coast, midway between the Great Orme and Conwy Castle. Gwion was my name. My Mum and Dad (I miss them so much) were poor but loving. I wish those times would come back, I really do - throwing stones into the sea with my Mum at Llandudno, while my Dad carried me halfway up the Orme on his back. 

I ran errands in those days, in exchange for stickers and sweets, for a lady named Ceridwen who lived in a big house behind the bay. I was friends with her son, Afagddu, who was my age and blind. I honestly don't think his blindness bothered him at all. He was able to play ball (the ball had a bell in it), build dens and run on the sand without any hardship. But Miss Ceridwen (I never caught sight nor sound of any husband) fretted and fussed continually. I heard her tell Mrs. Griffiths next door that Afagddu's blindness would hold him back in life and that she wanted to compensate somehow. He was a quiet boy too, you see. His words, though well chosen, were few. His mother thought he was withdrawn - walling himself off from the world. She would sit with him for ages - looking at him, hugging him, talking to him - trying to prise open the secrets of his mind. 

As I say, I didn't think there was anything wrong, but Afagddu was my friend and I respected Ceridwen greatly. I was keen to help, so when she asked me to stay at the house for a year and a day and watch over a potion she was brewing for him I asked no questions but accepted gladly. She showed me a cauldron on the front room carpet - sapphire blue with a rim of pearls - then gave me a ladle and strict orders not to taste a drop.

That was an easy instruction, and I had no problem whatsoever until the last couple of days. The cauldron started to bubble and hiss, and no matter how much I stirred I couldn't calm it down. I was worried about the carpet getting wet, but what eventually happened knocked that into a cocked hat. It was the second last night, mid-summer's eve. I peered over the pearly rim to see if the ladle was needed when the water spat and leapt up, like it had a mind of its own, stinging my hand and splashing my thumb. 'Ow,' I exclaimed, 'that's hot.' I put my thumb to my mouth to cool it down and in that instant, there and then, saw and knew everything that ever was, is now and ever shall be - individually and collectively - my soul's journey through time and space and the whole history of this land, from the song of creation to the consummation of the age. Then Ceridwen appeared in the doorway, took one look and knew ...

Her scream rent the air as hands stretched out to tear my face to shreds. I saw the blow coming, jinked past and darted out the door onto the lamplit bay. I meant to turn left towards Holyhead and Ireland, but in my confusion turned right instead towards England. I ran by the light of the moon, Ceridwen gaining all the time, across the sand and shingle, until my legs turned to jelly and my knees began to buckle. 'If only I could change into a hare,' I thought, and as soon as I'd imagined it, there I was, a boy no more but a milk-white hare, bounding along the beach three times faster than before. But my spirits sank when I looked behind. Ceridwen had vanished but now there was a greyhound on my trail, sleek and slavering and four times as fast.

The chase continued for a night and a day, through wind and warmth and summer showers, under moon and sun and stars. Beyond Flint Castle, I grew weary. The dog snapped and snarled at my heels.

There was no way I could race her all the way to England. The Wirral peninsula loomed into view on my left. So I changed tack, turned into a salmon and sprang into the sea, only to be followed, swiftly and inevitably, by a gleaming, rapacious otter. 

I reached Liverpool at dawn, hoping to shimmy between the ships, become a boy again and lose my pursuer in the harbour buildings or down in the crypt of the Catholic Cathedral. I glanced up, saw a seagull circling the Radio City Tower and switched plans on the spot, turning into a pigeon and soaring into the sky like the kites I used to see over Colwyn Bay. It wasn't long, however, before I heard the thrum of wings behind me. Blast! There was a hawk on my tail now, poised and regal, sizing me up and waiting for the first sign of fatigue. 

The land drifted by below, a patchwork mosaic of rivers, motorways, medium-sized towns and parkland with more rugby posts - pointing up like white, accusatory fingers - than I'd ever seen before. By the time I got to Manchester I was flagging badly. I aimed for the city centre, thinking I could dive down into the throng, disguise myself as an ant and shake off my shadow in the urban mêlée. But the wind blew me off course, somewhere to the north and east. My strength failed. I could barely flap my wings. So I pinned them back and crash-landed into a haystack, changing at the last second into a grain of corn. I congratulated myself on my ingenuity. But not for long. A red and gold hen clattered through the hay, tossing yellow stalks aside with her scimitar-esque beak. I lay at the bottom, prostrate and forlorn. The hen saw me, stood over me, squawked in triumph, and swallowed me whole.

Darkness covered me. Warmth and wetness too. I no longer discerned the great themes so clearly - Albion's history, my own destiny and so forth - but I knew where I was - Ceridwen's womb - where we were - the Pennines - and what we were doing - wandering meditatively through the mountains, pausing often, sometimes for days on end, at wayside chapels and hidden wells, buried like treasure amidst the rocks and scree.

It was a quiet time - a time of rest, reflection and growth. I was an embryo, then a foetus, then an unborn babe, growing in awareness, strength and size, conscious of Ceridwen's sorrow and ongoing anxiety over her son. My intuition told me, however, that Afaggdu was doing just fine in her absence. Father Dafyd, the parish priest, would have taken him under his wing and he'd have Mrs. Griffiths' two sons, Pwyll and Arawn, to play catch with. But I felt bad on his account. as well. The potion was meant for Affagdu, after all, not me. But there was nothing I could do about it now, just wait to be born and trust that Ceridwen wouldn't kill me.

I didn't think she would, if I'm honest. I didn't expect any favours but the nine months in the mountains had clearly done her good, softening her heart, taking the edge off her anger and easing, if only a little, her maternal fears. And so I was born, tied up in a brown cloth bag and left to float down a winding, mountain stream.

I let the waters take me, ceasing to worry and even to think. Many was the waterfall I tumbled down and many the bumpy landing, until the hour came when I felt strong hands pulling me out, untying the bag and holding me up to the light of day for the first time in a year.

Sunlight smashed through leaf and branch, the river danced and glinted. The mighty tower of Durham Cathedral rose steep and sheer above, while before me I saw the face a of a man - careworn but strong and lit from within with surprise and delight. 'Behold,' he cried. 'What do I see? A miraculous catch indeed. I will call the Taliesin - Shining Brow - for that is what thou art.'

I was baptised in the Cathedral's great font a week and a day later, next to the tomb of St. Cuthbert.  My new Dad, whose name was Elffin, carried me up the spiral staircase to the top of the tower straight after. His wife, Rhonnwyn, was there too. He held me aloft and I looked upon the land, rolling out before me like a magic carpet, all the way to Newcastle and the Silver Sea beyond. A light drizzle, like a second dose of holy water, splashed my bald baby head and my prophetic powers were instantly restored. 

The story of Britain unfolded before my inner eye, unfurling like a tapestry or scroll. It was a magnificent tale, tainted here and there by materialism and greed, but powered in the main by courage and creative flair. I saw as far as the Dark Time and the light that shines beyond it - the spiritual blindness that beset the land, the implosion of the House of Windsor, then the War of Contending Flags - black and multi-coloured - that laid the Island of the Mighty waste. And then that winter dawn when a King of ancient line returned from the East, stepping down from his ship at Thanet as the Romans did of old. A universal shout of joy rang out across the realm and that night Arthur's Beacons were relit, from St. Michael's Mount to Flamborough Head. Next day the rumours began - from Devon and Cornwall - that Jesus Himself was back, walking along the rocky shore, telling stories, healing the sick, and giving bread and wine to rich and poor and good and bad alike.

A veil descends and I see these things no more, just Afaggdu and myself on Llandudno beach, throwing a shining, tinkling ball back and forth in looping, parabolic arcs. Ceridwen watches on contentedly while my old Mum and Dad wave and take pictures from the crowded pier.

I think again of Eliot and of that most pure and noble of English mystics, Mother Julian of Norwich. For I was a cobbler in the city while she dwelt amongst us, and it was after I had come to her window one Friday afternoon to pour out my heart (as we all did) and receive her blessing that she wrote those famous words of sustenance and grace:

'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.'

And I, Taliesin, Bard of Britain, I who see, feel, sense and know it all - the power and the glory, the sorrow and the shame - can vouch and testify that her vision holds the truth. 

Yea, and more than this. The fire and the rose, as the poet wrote, will be one again, and Jerusalem - that city of soldiers, saints and poets - will shine forth once more upon England's clouded hills - a beacon, a fountain, an iridescent jewel - the City of God and capital of the Golden Age to come. 

*

All images in this piece come courtesy of my friend and collaborator Rob Floyd. Rob's art is rich in religious and mythological symbolism. His work, I am sure, will prove a source of stimulation and inspiration for readers of Albion Awakening. His oeuvre can be viewed in full at his website - www.robfloyd.co.uk

Spiritual Destruction or Awakening - The Choice is Ours.

Bruce Charlton has pointed out that Western economies would probably have collapsed some time ago if they weren't being artificially kept going by behind the scenes movers and shakers. He concludes, rightly I think, that this is because present day conditions are well nigh ideal for spiritual destruction. We have a comfortable material existence and a superficially plausible explanation for why life exists, plausible enough to satisfy those who aren't willing to look more deeply anyway, coupled with a technology that gives us an abundance of toys to distract us from our inner emptiness. 

Furthermore the sexual revolution has led to a spiritual desensitivity which would have shocked our ancestors, the wisest of whom knew that releasing the sexual energy from a proper constraint (constraint not repression) is profoundly destructive on many levels, both spiritual and material. The wisest knew and the rest more or less followed, certainly in terms of how society and culture were ordered which is the important thing. Laws will always be broken but without law there is chaos, and that's what we have today if you observe from the vantage point of the spiritual plane.

Now this deferment of collapse can't go on forever but it seems it will go on for as long as possible, the better to entrap as many souls as possible in a downward spiral. Where does this lead? Traditionally one would have said it leads to damnation but I must confess I have a hard time believing that to be the case, given God's love and his mercy. At the same time, I also have a hard time in seeing how souls that consistently reject God and prefer the bad, the ugly and the false to the Good, the Beautiful and the True, which is what the majority do today, can escape the consequences of their actions. You might say that most people simply go along with the status quo, and that is undoubtedly so. But that is to ignore the fact that we all have God within us, and we all have the spiritual teachings of the past to guide us, now more accessible than at any time if we can be bothered to make the effort to look. 

Yes, people, especially the young, live and are growing up during a period of terrible corruption. I was told in the 1990s that we were living at a time of the greatest vulgarity in the history of the planet. Vulgarity was the word used but, in the manner used, it implied a lot more than just simple coarseness. It meant decadence, corruption and spiritual ignorance. It meant declining taste, lack of dignity and ugliness. Now, of course, things are significantly worse. So people, in particular young people with a debased culture, both popular and intellectual, are subject to appalling influences and temptations. But still the way out exists for those who will pay attention to the voice of truth within them. Outer institutions are useless so the way out is actually the way in but ultimately that's what it's always been, even when institutions helped rather than hindered the spiritual quest as used to be the case.

So we may be living in a time of spiritual darkness and deprivation but that is the test. Will we allow ourselves to fall into line with that because of a willful (and the will is always involved) lack of response to truth or will we listen to God's voice within? Will we follow the herd and the line of least resistance or will we acknowledge conscience and hearken to the intuition? We have the choice and if the choice is hard that is only because it must be to be a true test of our mettle, our spiritual quality and our good will. I believe that now we have, as probably never before, not on the same scale anyway, a sorting out of the sheep from the goats or, if you like, of the good seed from the bad. Today there is a real sifting of souls.

The good seed will go on as intended to the spiritual worlds there to blossom and flower, doubtless after more tests and purification even if the main test is here, but the bad seed will not. As I said earlier, I can't bring myself to believe in a permanent damnation, not in most cases. Most people who don't turn to God are not that bad and they do have good within them, sometimes a lot of good. (You might say many have more good within them than many who do turn to God but then I would reply that these people have not really turned to God, not in the heart). So some of this bad or, shall we say, unsprouted, seed could be burnt and the life within it/them recycled, but I think that is relatively rare. Most might be replanted elsewhere to learn the lessons they have refused to learn here, probably under stricter conditions. They are given another chance to become what they should be but they will still have to experience the results of their wrong choices in this world. I don't think it will be easy for them, given their rejection of truth in this life.

The dark powers, of course, want to keep as many souls from God as possible and that is why they are working so hard now. Whether lost souls benefit them directly, as some sort of accumulation of spiritual energy which they can tap, or whether they simply derive pleasure in corruption, destruction and attempting to spite God, I don't know. Perhaps both so they find a perverse satisfaction in diverting souls from their proper spiritual path, which, let's face it, is most these days, but their main goal is spiritual destruction, to separate souls as far as possible from God.

The question is why has the devil chosen now to strike in this manner? And why has God allowed it? It is clear that this time in history has been known about for ages. It has been predicted in most religions, this falling away from God into spiritual desolation. As regards the second question, it seems to me that God has allowed it because it constitutes a good test for the seeds as spoken of above. Out of evil can come good. But it is also a perfect time for the devil to make his strongest move yet because it is a time when his words will be most heeded, and that for two reasons. One, we are at the end of an age, the time of the so called Kali Yuga when the distance matter has travelled from initiating spirit is at its greatest. That means the barriers between the spiritual and the material worlds are denser than they have ever been so it is much easier to deny the existence of the spiritual and believe the material is all there is. It is easier to think that mind and consciousness derive from matter rather than the other way round which is the correct view. You do have to make a positive choice.

The second reason has to do with the spiritual adolescence of humanity. We have left behind our childhood and moved into the rebellious teenage phase, a perfect time for the devil. We are now sufficiently free to make consciously wrong decisions and to pursue egotistic short-sighted ends. In the past not enough of us would have been conscious enough to do this. Now humanity as a whole is conscious enough to rebel and to defy but not sufficiently conscious to realize what it is doing - even though it should, that is not meant as an excuse. We can take a big step forward into a freer, more conscious existence in which we start to become participators with God in a more active sense than heretofore. We can be consciously, positively spiritual and not just passive taggers along with the energies of creation. Or we can refuse to do that and follow our own wills. So there's a risk, greater consciousness and freedom, or, if we don't follow the God within and listen only to our lower mind and ego, potential spiritual disaster.

There's a lot to play for and at the moment the game is not going very well. But then nor did it seem to be at the time of the Crucifixion and God still had a few tricks up his sleeve, if you'll forgive the expression. All we can do is keep the faith, remembering that the devil does not just foster materialism and atheism, he also seeks to pervert and corrupt any nascent spirituality both outwardly as in religions and teachings, and inwardly as in how we respond to truth once we start to awaken, whether pridefully or humbly, superficially or with depth of insight. Awakening is just the beginning. Once awake we can still make any number of bad choices and will do unless we seek always to walk in the light of Christ.

Comments invited - readers speak-out!

After a year; the readership, of this blog as measured by page views, is disproportionately British (compared with my personal blogs, which are all numerically and proportionately dominated by a US readership)  - and there seem to be several hundred views per day, roughly 5,000 per month (86K in total).

So far, so good...

But I have very little idea of who is reading this blog, and why?

Would regular readers of Albion Awakening care to step forward into the comments section below, and let us know? 

Our rulers are waging a spiritual war, they are not trying to provoke civil war or social collapse

There is as much evidence as ever there has been in history that our rulers are actively and strategically evil, plotting the spiritual damnation of their societies by officially imposed inversions of The Good - but therefore they are not plotting the economic/ material destruction of The West (not least because they could have achieved this long ago, but have chosen to prop-up the economy and sustain civil order).

What seems to be desired, aimed-at strategically, is a continual state of paralysing existential fear and resentment; rather than any overpowering emotion, or actual war or collapse - because that sort of thing might lead to repentance and action.

So, our (demonically-controlled) leadership class want an incremental and sustained crumbling of society into a long-term state of fear and resentment, of Christian rejection and the embrace of a hedonic, short-termist ethic; a love of ugliness; a discourse of continual and pervasive dishonesty... that kind of thing.  

This is after all spiritual warfare, with different goals than physical war (physical war has sometimes been, overall, spiritually healthy - or so it seems).

Unfortunately, Albion regards spiritual warfare as non-existent nonsense; hence it is invisible - and the conspiracy theorist accusations of  a hidden elite maximising this-worldly human suffering are clearly untrue.

Therefore nothing can or will be done; unless or until Albion awakens to awareness of the spiritual realm.

Reject the World

To know a true spirituality you must go against the world. That is why all forms of spirituality that fall into line with the world and adopt its ways fail.

The world always tries to coerce and co-opt the spiritual and bend it to its own aims and ambitions, but if you are serious about truth you must reject the world. I don't mean you must abandon the world and become a monk but you must reject the 'wisdom' of the world.  This was never more true than it is today when practically all forms of spirituality and religion have, in one way or another, allowed themselves to be heavily influenced, if not corrupted, by the world. This makes life easier for them but it also means they fail in their function of offering a valid path to spiritual truth. How can they when they have been absorbed by that which is the enemy from which they are trying to escape?

This doesn't mean that everything in the world is wrong but it is the world that should conform to spiritual truth not vice versa as is all too often the case now. Nor does it mean there is nothing good that can come from the world but when it concerns truths about reality, about the meaning of life and the facts of human nature, then the world must always conform to the teachings of religion and to spiritual insight.

It might seem from this that I am recommending a religious fundamentalism but not at all. I see that as the opposite extreme to worldliness and no answer to the question of how to attain a real spiritual sensibility. Fundamentalism is too concerned with the letter of religion and not enough with its heart or essence. It focuses too much on the outer aspects of religion and therefore, in its own way, is worldly even if it is religious. The true rejection of the world goes beyond the world. It does not just react to it.

If Albion is ever to awaken from its spiritual paralysis caused by the E.U. and the U.K. and all the politics and culture and science and art of contemporary civilisation, it must open its eyes, wipe away the grime that has overlaid its vision and shake off the slavery of the worldly mind. Wake up! Ultimately the spiritual and the material, God and the world, are both part of the same oneness but that can only be known when the whole is seen from the top down, when all is seen in the light of the spiritual. Now we have the reverse of that and the spiritual is seen, if it is seen at all, in the light of the material which kills it. And that is why we must reject the world.

Jerusalem in Albion - What would a national awakening look like?

A terrific realisation of the reality of life... A recognition that we live in a world of beings; that we personally are placed here for a purpose.

(To know our true thoughts; that all such thoughts are true. To realise that such thinking is imagination; to recognise imagination and know it as true thinking. And truth as universal - to live from that knowledge.)

*

When the change came there were signs. The sun was different, the moon also - the airs and winds and waters... because all are sentient and knew (in their way) that the time had come. The very earth, too - in its slow vast movements.

Invisible waves, forces, radiations also changed. Everywhere there were signs - for those who could think, and knew their thinking to be true.

As for the others - well, their dreams knew; whenever their egos were stripped away, their emotions knew.

The children knew - the younger they were, the more they perceived it.

But the change was primarily in Men - because that is reality; that is how creation is organised...

There was change - the choice was recognising this change - and it was a change in thinking. It was not, essentially, out-there - and it did not impose itself on people. It was deniable...

Some Men inverted their thinking, systematically inverted their evaluations, inverted their discernment. Shielded their real selves and thought by inculcated habits - or refused to think for themselves, to know for themselves.

True thinking was consciously prevented.

*

The great awakening we all await (or have been pre-programmed to ignore) is mostly a sudden and convinced awareness of the true nature of life; and a rapid, decisive, appalled turning-away-from the ubiquity of superficial, pointless distractions and lies.

We first must know the way things are, understand the great issues that confront us, the nature of our situation.

Then we will each decide.

Decide which side we will join - or opt-out.

Shakespeare, Blake and Albion's mission

Portrait of Wm. Shakespeare by Wm. Blake

The nations and races, and certain historical individuals born into them, have their special relation to each stage in the evolution of consciousness. Thus Rudolf Steiner often said that the English nation is the nation of the Consciousness Soul.

[Consciousness Soul = the modern, materialist, alienated state]. 

England is the island nation; it is England whose greatest writer creates a marvellous gallery of individual 'characters' - every conceivable type of man except the mystic; it is England out of which the scientific spirit arises; it is England who, alike in sport and economics, sees the world as an aggregate of free competing units; and it is the English speaking peoples who, for good or ill, are taking the lead in the present age; which is the age of the Consciousness Soul.

To say this about the English nation is not to suggest that it is ultimately more important in the scheme of things than any other nation; it is to suggest that in the present age it bears a specially heavy responsibility. 

What signs are there that England may live up to her responsibility and perform her mission? She can only do this by a right development of her consciousness; for out of consciousness all free actions spring. 

If there are any signs at all that England may live up to her responsibility and perform her mission  [written before 1944], these are at present to be found not in the centre but at the periphery; not in the public man but in a few private men; and not so much in the town as in the country. 

Perhaps the growing popularity of Blake's 'Jerusalem' heralds a dim awakening of purpose? The problem of the right action of England must be connected with the right development of the Consciousness Soul; and Blake seems, in a remarkable way, to have felt himself the spokesman of this development. 

Blake is really complementary to Shakespeare; because if Shakespeare represented every kind of man except the mystic, Blake could apparently conceive of no other!

To Blake, logic is something that has to be, not ignored, but conquered: overcome. Imagination and the redeemer are almost synonymous; and Albion is a symbol for universal Man. 

Logic and the experience of Nature as 'matter' and unfree morality based on the law emanate from the Daughters of Memory. But the Daughters of Memory are to be overcome by the Daughters of Inspiration, who are also Jerusalem. 

Nature is to be redeemed by Imagination, is to become Imagination. 

What does it mean to 'build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land'? What can it mean except to rise from the Consciousness Soul to the Imaginative Soul?

[Imaginative Soul = what Barfield later called Final Participation.]

The 'Satanic Mills' which have arisen in England since Blake's time, will never be thrust down from their hideous tyranny until those Mills of which he actually sang (that is, the dead thinking of Newton, Locke and Hobbes) have been burst asunder from within.


Edited from pages 63-66 of Owen Barfield's essay 'Speech, Reason and Imagination' from Romanticism Comes of Age, 1944. My notes are in square brackets.

The assuaging of the waters - by John Martin