Something for Halloween and a reminder that the whole world of spirit was well understood or at least perceived in most of human history through traditional narratives. We live now in an age of complete denial and scant communication. From this folk tale we discover the possibility of a ointment able to empower an eye to see in the spectrum of the spiritual world. It is something that needs to be rediscovered.
Recall Swedenborg went from one day to the next abruptly seeing the spiritual world around him and that this lead to direct mind to mind communication that continued for decades. Because the spirit is in fact physical and vastly richer in terms of information content, it is naturally described as as light body. The physical is in the form of recently admitted dark matter that is held together with photonic energy. This naturally radiates but at a level far removed from our spectrum.
Yet they are among us and their heaven is our own physical world through which they can move at will including upwards. We are simply blind. From this physical reality, all the legends arise including those of fairy. As a side note the apparent physical density will be three orders of magnitude less than our physical reality.
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Stories of the Fall: Two folk tales and the secret lore of the Fall
By Jonathan Black
In this article Mark Booth (aka Jonathan Black), author of the bestselling The Secret History of the World and The Sacred History, explores the significance of autumn to the spiritual world and recounts two unsettling and thought-provoking folk lore tales.
http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/BlackJ4.php
The
arrival of autumn affects the human spirit. As the nights draw in we
are driven indoors and also driven in upon ourselves. Our place in
the world feels different.
But
does spirit really change? Do spiritual realms have their own
season? Do spirits behave differently in autumn?
All
the world’s great religions have roots in astronomy. In the
great monotheistic religions these roots have of course been covered
over and the influence of the gods or spirits of the stars and
planets is played down.
In
public Christianity denounces astrology, but many ancient churches
from Canterbury to Chartres are full of astrological symbols, and
most are built according to an astronomical orientation which is as
exact as that of an Egyptian temple. Christian archangels are
routinely represented as the great spirits of the heavenly bodies –
St Michael being the Archangel of the Sun, for instance, and Gabriel
the Archangel of the Moon. In The Secret History of the World
I show how at the time the Fourth Gospel was written ‘the Word’
was a traditional title of the Sun god who, it was said, would come
to lighten the darkness. I show, too, how in the Bible Lucifer is
identified with ‘the morning star’, which is to say
Venus.
There
is much more going on in Christianity than meets the eye – and
these hidden elements are described in secret or ‘esoteric’
teachings. In these teachings the stars and planets have not only had
the role in helping to form human life that modern science allows,
they also have had a role in the forming of human consciousness and
continue to do so. The revolutions of the planet Venus affect the
tides of our sexual desire, for example, and we are enabled to
reflect or think because the Moon reflects the light of the Sun.
In
the astrological account life on earth moves according to a series of
cycles determined by the movements of the heavenly bodies – a
daily cycle, a seasonal cycle, a yearly cycle, the cycle formed by
the precession of the equinoxes and so on.
As
the Sun withdraws and the natural world begins to die, the spiritual
world comes alive, becoming more active. Autumn may be thought of as
a great door in the cosmos – and spirits come pouring through.
As
the mid-point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice,
Halloween traditionally marks the beginning of winter. The spirits
that flow first and more easily through the opening of the great
cosmic door at this time are the spirits of the dead. Goblins, ghosts
and the spirits of the dead are the lowest denizens of the spirit
worlds.
It
was traditionally thought that the beginning of winter was a
propitious time to interact positively and helpfully with the spirits
of the dead. The feasting traditionally associated with the harvest
and Halloween is intended to draw the dead to us, to make them
salivate and encourage them to be nostalgic for the pleasures of the
material world. It’s a way of attracting the dead and working
with them that is described by both Homer and Virgil, and it is still
kept alive in cultures – for example Thailand – where
offerings of food are sometimes placed in cemeteries.
None
of this is necessarily done in a doleful way. Think of the Day of the
Dead in Mexico and the fun in all that imagery. Likewise in English
tradition ‘mumming’ – from which we get ‘mummers’
as in actors – began when people dressed up like the dead to
make them feel at home, to greet them in a playful sort of way. The
word ‘mummer’ comes from the mum-mum sound these mummers
used to make imitating the walking dead’s attempts to speak.
Halloween
has always been a time when you might commune with your ancestors,
when you might ask their advice on your future dealings, a time when
the spirit of prophecy was particularly strong. Halloween parties
today still sometimes include the old game of apple-bobbing, for
example. Girls used to bob for apples in search of love.
Traditionally the apple is the fruit of Venus; the 5 point pattern
pips make in a slice of apple mimics the patterns that Venus makes in
the sky over a 40 year period. If you bobbed successfully, you’d
put the apple you pulled out of the bucket under your pillow that
night and hope to dream of the man you’d marry.
Autumn
then is a time to explore the great mysteries of life, death and
destiny, to get to grips with what it means to die, even to taste
death. In the bleak midwinter, on the 25th December, the
sun-god will be born and the death forces will be driven back, but in
the meantime the world grows darker and colder. The Fall is then the
fall into matter.
The
great spirits of death weave in and out of our daily lives and may
brush past us though we are unaware of them. In esoteric philosophy
as in depth psychology the death forces and love forces –
thanatos and eros – are tightly interwoven and we
are never closer to death than when we fall in love. This spiritual
reality is revealed in a beautiful Scottish folk tale. The notion of
the corn dolly may well seem charming, even comforting, but that is
perhaps because we have lost touch with spiritual realities that may
have been more alive to us when we worked in harmony with the
changing of the season. (And it’s perhaps worth bearing in mind
that, as I show in The Secret History of the World, the
original corn dollies were effigies of Osiris and totems of death. In
spring new sprouts pushed through the dolly’s silver mask to
give us the image we know today as the Green Man).
Two
sisters lived in a little cottage on the Isle of Mull. Margaret was a
great beauty with black hair and flashing eyes, but she was also a
dreamer. She preferred her own company. Her sister Ailsa was more
outgoing, and at an early age she made sure she found herself a
boyfriend in the village. He was a sturdy farmer’s son, a good,
reliable marriage prospect from a respectable family. Ailsa began to
spend more and more time in the village.
Meanwhile
Margaret was happy to be left alone, daydreaming that someday her
prince would come. One hot summer’s morning when she was
working in the garden, she looked up to see a dark, handsome stranger
coming in through the gate. He had black hair like her own, and
intense, gleaming eyes, and she could tell from his clothes that he
was not local – a traveller, maybe a gypsy. He asked for a mug
of water, and as it was nearing lunchtime she also invited him in for
something eat. And he stayed with her all afternoon, disappearing
before evening when Ailsa was due to return. He said he would come
back, but he made her promise never to tell a living soul about his
visit.
Shortly
after this Ailsa married and moved out of the old cottage to set up
home in the village. Margaret continued to live in the cottage, where
she lived for her secret lover’s visits.
Sometimes
Ailsa would visit her and try to encourage her to come to the village
more often in order to find a suitable husband. Margaret said she
wasn’t interested. She would only marry for love.
“You
have no idea what you’re talking about!” Ailsa said,
exasperated. “What do you know about love?”
Margaret’s
eyes flashed. “More
than you do…”
she said, but she knew the moment the words were out of her lips that
she’d made a fatal mistake. She made Ailsa swear on the Bible
not to tell anyone. But Ailsa couldn’t keep her sister’s
secret to herself, and the next day everyone in the village was
gossiping.
The
gossip didn’t reach Margaret herself, but her lover didn’t
come to her that day, nor the next, nor the next. Then she went out
into a storm, weeping and wailing and crying out and cursing her
sister.
Weeks
went by and no-one saw or heard of Margaret, so eventually Ailsa went
to the cottage to find her. The door was wide open, the kitchen full
of leaves and it was cold and damp. It looked deserted.
In
the months that followed shepherds would occasionally report that
they’d seen or heard Margaret in the hills. She lived out in
the open, they said, still weeping and wailing for her lover. It
seemed she had gone mad.
But
life goes on, and joy came to Ailsa and her husband in the form of
their son. Called Torquill, he grew to be big and strong, a bit like
his aunt Margaret in his style of looks. He was a great help to his
parents, and when still only a boy he was recognized as the best
reaper in the village. As such, it was his privilege at the end of
the harvest to take his sickle and cut the barley to make the corn
dolly.
A
few years passed and rumours began to circulate of a beautiful young
girl in the country surrounding the village who was herself an
astonishingly good reaper. Torquill was eaten up by curiosity.
One
autumn evening with the harvest moon rising in the sky he was just
about to finish work, when he looked up and saw the girl, and he knew
who she was, because she was working the field too and she was ahead
of him, wielding her sickle with exceptional skill. It flashed in the
moonlight and she called to him “Over take me! Overtake me!”
Torquill
laughed as he took up the challenge, and began wielding his sickle
with as much force and speed as he could muster.
“Over
take me! Overtake me!” she cried again.
But
he couldn’t seem to gain on her. He was drenched with sweat and
his back was aching like hell, but he drove himself harder.
“Over
take me! Overtake me!”
His
eyes were blurred with sweat as he saw her standing still at last.
She had completed the last furrow. She was smiling at him, radiant in
the moonlight. She had plaited the last handful of barley to make the
corn dolly and was holding it out for him to sever with his scythe.
He staggered towards her exhausted, and as he cut the dolly, her eyes
flashed and he fell dead on the ground.
Many
folk tales of encounters with fairies or journeys into the realm of
the fairies are thinly disguised accounts of journeys into the realm
of the dead. The Cornish story relating the experiences of Mr Noy,
which I included in The
Sacred History,
takes place at the time of the end of harvest and its celebrations.
This journey the story describes might be involuntary, to be
compared, for example, with a modern near-death experience brought
about by a sudden illness or road accident. Or it might be the result
of a religious rite intended to induce an altered state of
consciousness in which communion with the dead would be a practical
possibility. In the following Welsh story, with its intriguing hint
at the Third Eye, the dead and their representatives are shown mixing
freely with us in our everyday world, and at the centre of this story
there is a shaman or magus with a foot both in this world and the
next.
An
old Welsh couple went to Caernarvon to hire a servant at the
Allhallows' Fair. They went to the spot where the young men and women
who wanted work were accustomed to gather, and saw a girl with golden
hair, standing a little apart from all the others. They asked her if
she wanted a place? She replied that she did. Her name, she said, was
Eilian.
In
the long winter months it was customary to spin after supper. On
nights when the moon was shining, Eilian would take her wheel down to
the meadow. On these nights she accomplished a prodigious amount of
spinning, and the old couple were glad to have secured services of
such a skilful maid-servant.
But
it was all too good to last. When spring arrived and the days grew
longer, Eilian disappeared. Everyone wondered if she had gone off to
live with the gypsies – and if she was herself a gypsy.
The
old woman was a nurse and midwife, and sometime after Eilian's
disappearance, on a night when the moon was full and there was a
little rain falling through a thin mist, a gentleman on horseback
came to fetch her. She rode off, sitting behind the stranger on his
horse. They arrived at a great house which was situated at the foot
of a hill and set into it. The two dismounted and entered a great
hall. They went through a door at the far end of it passed into a
bed-chamber, where a lady lay in her bed. It was the finest house the
old woman had ever seen in her life. Wonderful food was laid out
around the lady’s bed, but no servants appeared in the course
of the night.
By
morning the baby’s fever was subsiding. The husband reappeared
and gave the old woman a bottle of ointment to anoint the baby's eyes
with. "Take care," he said, "that you do not touch
your own eyes with it." The old woman promised to be careful,
but somehow or other, after putting the bottle on the bedside table,
her left eye began to itch, and without thinking what she was doing
she rubbed it with the same finger that she had used for the baby's
eyes. And now a strange thing happened: with the right eye she saw
everything as before, gorgeous and luxurious as the heart could wish,
but with the left eye she saw a damp, miserable cave, and lying on
some rushes and withered ferns, with big stones all round her, was
her former servant girl, Eilian.
In
the course of the day she saw a great deal more. There were small men
and women going rapidly in and out of the cave. They took not notice
of her and their movements were quick and light like shadows. They
seemed really fond of Eilian, treating her with kindness and
affection.
In
the evening the old woman said, "You have had a great many
visitors to-day, Eilian."
"Yes,"
was the reply, "but how do you know?"
Then
the old woman explained that she had accidentally rubbed her left eye
with the baby's ointment.
"Take
care that my husband does not find out that you recognise me,"
said Eilian, and she told the old woman her story. It turned out that
she had been such a wonderful spinner of cloth because she was helped
by the fairies – on condition that she married one of them. "I
never meant to carry out the agreement," she explained, "and
I used to draw a knife whenever they pestered me too much about it in
the meadow. That always made them vanish immediately. And for fear
they should carry me off when I was asleep, I placed a long stick of
mountain ash across my bed, for I’d been told as a child that
no fairy dares touch or even cross a branch of the rowan tree. That
kept me safe for a while but after a few months I grew careless, and
the day we sheared the sheep I was so tired that I forgot to protect
my bed. That very night I was whisked off to Fairyland."
The
old woman was very cautious after Eilian's warning, and that evening
she gave the fairy husband no inkling that her left eye had any
different power of vision from the right. The next day, the baby
seemed to have recovered and so her time came to an end without
mishap. She was given a fine sum of money for her services and was
taken home on horseback just as she had come.
Sometime
after the old woman was late in getting to market. When she arrived a
friend said to her, "The fairies must be here to-day; the noise
is swelling and prices are rising." Sure enough the fairies were
there, but they were invisible to all eyes except the old woman's
left eye. She saw Eilian's husband stealing something from a stall
close by her: she went up to him and, forgetting the warning, said,
"Good morning, sir. How is Eilian?"
"She
is quite well," he replied, "but with what eye do you see
me?"
"With
this," said the old woman, pointing to her left. He immediately
struck her with a bulrush and from that day she could no longer see
into the other world.
