Those Sneaky Psychic Attacks

This is a core story that is not in my Free Report “Psychic Self Defense”  offer on the box to the right — Sign up and get it while I still have it available as this blog is going through changes –

It took me eight years to figure this out.

In the Free Report I discuss my first experience with psychic attack — this story can be found  on the front page at Occult View.com. My second experience was very different and is related in the report.  I had moved into a haunted house in London. This can be kinda hard to avoid really…

Was the attack in the London house caused by spirit activity attached to the house, or was is the result of an attack from another quarter altogether? I am still not sure of that, but I have since received some answers.

Life in London…at First…

In March 1998, I was compelled to move to London. I don’t really know the real reason, but I could not prevent myself selling everything I owned and going. In 1997 I had taken my King Arthur Holy Grail tour to research art  for my channeled Tarot deck: Grail Keepers Tarot, and fell in love with the U.K. It seems 1998 was a big  year for major life changes. The Hale Bop comet had flown over — I saw it in Tintagel, Cornwall just floating above the sea. Perhaps that was the cause.

I needed to make money and stay below the radar, so I got a pitch in Camden Lock Market and began reading Tarot cards there two days a week. I made just enough to keep the roof of the haunted house over my head and travel and eat.

Shortly after I had set myself up on the traditional Tarot pitch that I shared with the resident psychic, Patricia,  I was visited by an  old Irish woman who announced to me that she was Queen of all the psychics in London and it was her job to oversee them all. I think we swapped readings or discussed it — I honestly cannot remember how we dealt with our relationship. All I ever found out about her was that she worked at the top of the Stables Market behind Camden Lock and charged very little for her work. We didn’t speak when we saw each other — I felt as if I couldn’t, and I didn’t make anything of it.

Over the time I was there, I was told the history of the area. The stables had been  built for horses used in the city for fire brigades and taxis and  things like that. The lock was part of a canal that ran through Saint Johns Wood and  through Little Venice, its picturesque aspects and gypsy house boats marred by the tendency of dead bodies to surface at least once a year — victims of some of the most horrific murders in town. Camden had also been the location for mass graves during the 1667 plague epidemic that swept London after the Great Fire in 1666. Breugel’s Triumpth of Death is like a portrait of Camden Town during the Plague. Camden Tube Station had also been built on the spot where the cottage of  the infamous witch, Mother Damnable, once stood. It was alleged that the cottage was full of demons that floated through the air in all sorts of weird shapes.
Camden Town was also to home to young Charles Dickens before his father went to debtors prison.

Another thing about that place was that the whole length, from Camden Stables down to the Lock was said to be on a ley line. Knowing about this ley line obscured many things from me because the Tarot pitch was right on it and it was thought to be a very active and polluted current.

When I worked In Camden Lock for two days  a week everything was fine and I soon had lots of clients. Two days was just enough.Suddenly, Patricia had to cut back, so the market manager offered me an extra day on the stall. This was fine too — until she wanted to return. I had customers who expected me to be there by this time and I had come to rely on the extra money. To cut a long story short, certain people may not have been too pleased with these complications, but they didn’t say anything to me about it.

Around Samhain, I began to experience the horrific attacks in the night that I describe in the Free Report and have mentioned in earlier blog posts. I thought they were caused by someone else…

I began having a terrible time in the market. For one thing the energy coming down under the Tarot pitch was so violent sometimes that with my super-sensitivity I was thrown off balance and stressed out something fierce. My mind would get fixated on people and things and I couldn’t shift out of it. I started having conflicts with other traders out of the blue — misunderstandings cropping up — all kinds of volatility.

I moved at one point to a shop under the stables  that is no longer there — just to try to get out of the bad energy. But business wasn’t as good because it didn’t have the visibility. It was a bit more peaceful though.

Then that situation deteriorated because business was too slow and the owner got stressed out. I went back up to Camden Lock Market. It was good for a while and then got really horrible again. I never had so much stress and conflict and bad luck in my life before. I couldn’t leave though because of my situation and business was really good and the money was good. I was really stuck.

My cards would come up all black!

Ever since the night attacks between Samhain and  Christmas, I had been seeing a Carribean Priestess/ Healer, Mother Bridget. She helped me all the time — mostly clearing my energy field. I became known for never being able to keep bad energy off. I was always suffering from over-stress and  entity invasion. I had ideas about what was behind this stuff — partly the rat-race of London — partly these people who would turn on me and start making trouble in the market. I am also the type that needs lots of seclusion to balance myself and I was living in group housing. Never being alone could have contributed to stress and unhappiness for me. I never thought it was an occult attack!

“There are two women crossing you. A blond one and darker one. These are clairvoyant mediums.”
“But who? I have no idea who these people are. Why?”
“Jealousy.”
“But why?”
I could not for the life of me figure out who they were because nobody I knew fit the description.
“There’s a coven working against you. Clairvoyant mediums. They are trying to bury you.”
“Who?”
“They set it up like clockwork with the moon. They brought in another medium.”
I was lost for trying to figure it out so I decided she must be wrong.
After my first horrible year being back in the States and moving to Seattle, I finally got a studio apartment in which I could be 100% alone. This was  the only condition in which I could begin to heal from the mountains of stress  and wounds form all of that conflict. I had never thought of myself who has enemies — so I always in shock about these things. About six months after this absolute solitude it hit me who those Clairvoyant Mediums were.  The other tarot readers in the market. Since I had never had words with them, very little to no contact – I could not even think of them. But I am sure it was them now — very clever, very subtle, very evil.

What is also really strange is that I went to the British Isles initially to research my Grail Keepers Tarot. In the Celtic Faery tradition I had been working in that is woven into the tarot deck I painted, I was very connected to the goddess Brighid: triple moon goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. I had been working with the bright Brighid when I went to London. When the attacks happened, the lady who saved me was a black Bridget — Mother Bridget. But there  was a third Bridget in the mix — the Queen of the tarot readers — that Irish crone in the Stables Market. She was using the ley-line to send her curses straight at me.

I am still unsure of the motive for wanting to use such low-down, evil means  to get rid of me. I do know, as an American, I was never taught to kiss anybody’s butt and suppose I must have offended her.

The take-away here is that attacks of this nature can be very hard to understand and pin down. Best install good defense mechanisms so you bounce them off immediately.

For an excerpt from my Free Report Psychic Self Defense go to:

http://www.occultview.com

For The Grail Keepers’ Tarot:

http://www.whiteswan-tarot.com

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This is Part 15 to a series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful…

Directed by occultist, Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 16, 2005, at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives: Babalon. I played Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I am called Angela Murrow because I had to hide my identity.

I have been slowly approaching these scary parts of the Babalon Diaries.

4 December, 2005

It was  our director, Alison’s, birthday. Since she was having the blues, I decided to give her the present of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The Brits love all this Americana stuff  that is so easily forgotten about when you are back in the States.

By this time the rehearsal process had become extremely intense — at least for me. I was having trouble doing research because I was so unfamiliar with computers and I didn’t know these characters at all. I didn’t even know about google images at the time.

I do now…..

The set designer was woman I will call S. Since I was going to be the only actor onstage, Alison decided to project images, sigils, photos, etc on the back stage wall so the audience would have something to look at. S. had a great fund of them and was creating a slide show with a musical score to be played before the show. She had also provided a book about Jack Parsons called Strange Angel, by George Pendle that had some photos of the Babalon crew.  Slowly I began to learn about these fascinating characters, and was drawn more and more into that world of Thelema, Magick, and the Bohemian culture of California just before WWII.
I was also bringing Babalon through — sometimes feeling entirely changed as I practiced my lines and monologues at home, repeating over and over the words of Aleister Crowley and entering the consciousness of the Scarlet Woman.

Black hooded robes were being made for the the actors, and I was looking for red and black vintage to transform myself into 1940‘s Marjorie Cameron and Babalon. We now had sound effects and voice overs. Our sound effects man, G. frequently had trouble coming to rehearsal because he worked graveyard shift, and the process of trying to get him to sacrifice sleep to rehearse was often difficult. The responsibility seemed to fall on me for some reason. This wasn’t  good with what the Babalon current was doing. Pharaon was often late as well, and since he played Jack Parsons, this held us up considerably. On Alison’s birthday, he was very late having gotten lost in Sainsburys in Covent Garden, waylaid by the wine shop on his way to rehearsal.

Hail to the Red Phonebox

After rehearsal, I brought out the Jack Daniel’s for Alison. We passed it around in Treadwells and then had to leave. I remember G. had to go and that he looked like Russian Prince out of a fairy tale.We finished celebrating Alison’s birthday on the sidewalk outside. Pharoan showed up with a bottle of red wine and we passed that around too.

Now it takes very little alcohol for me to get drunk. One glass of wine and I am smashed. On and empty stomach — even worse. Mixing whiskey and wine? Unthinkable, but in the moment it seemed OK.

I don’t know how we got to Charing Cross tube station. I am sure I meant to take the train to Camden Town and then go on up to Highgate where I was living at the time. But somehow, I was sitting on my rear end on the sidewalk in front McDonalds! A homeless guy was sitting beside me pointing a row of lighted Christmas trees in a shop window across the street and asking which one I was.

“I’m the blue one. Which one are you?”

“The red one,” I said.

“You can stay here with me tonight if you want to. Curl up in my blanket.”

I remember at one point throwing up in a corner — I am naturally very tidy — aware that I had entered a sphere I would never have imagined entering before.

Next thing I recall was the Wiz talking to me, trying to pull me up off the sidewalk. A cab was waiting. I don’t know why I was being so difficult, but was alert enough to remember the Wiz saying, “Three cabs refused to pick us up and I couldn’t get you up off the side walk. I’m not letting this one go.”

“Really?” I said. I couldn’t imagine such a thing. “What time is it?”

“3 AM. S. told me to stay with you and make sure you got home all right. You were saying Hail to the Red Phonebox and took off down the street.”

“I did?”

Long story short, the cab took us to my house. I luckily had enough money on me to pay it. The Wiz came in and I settled him on the floor of the lounge. I fell into bed with my boots on.

5 December, 2005

In the morning I woke up fully dressed and upset that my top was wrinkled and would have to be dry cleaned. The Wiz had been so kind as to remove my boots. He had to leave early, and the Goths were stirring. I usually got in the shower before they did to give them time to get ready.

The Goths and I worked at Camden Lock Market. December was time for what the management called The Christmas Package which meant we had to work extra hours to keep our pitches over the holidays. As a Tarot Reader, I never made much money at Christmas, but could never afford to take three weeks off, so I eeeked out what I could in the freezing cold, barely moving from my table  and the heat of the electric fire I had going underneath it.

I had been suspended the week before (another first for me!)  for arguing with a cut-throat  jewelry trader who was manipulating and  trying to steal a chunk out of my pitch for himself. People with terrible attitudes, and  some downright sociopaths have been known to grace the Market with their presence, and I was often a target — probably because I was a woman and because what I did for a living wasn’t perceived as valuable by them — even though I had hundreds of clients who only came to the Market to see me.  I was pretty fed up with these a_____s  at that point and full of the ferocity of the Whore of Babalon: Goddess of Love and War!

But that morning, I was so ill, I could barley stand. You know the feeling, like your stomach had fallen out and gotten left behind somewhere. I had taken my shower and was cringing on the couch.

Me: Yup! I have to go to work. I’ll feel better after my coffee…

Goth #1: You’re not going to work.

Me: I have to! If I don’t show up  for the start of the Christmas package, I’ll lose my pitch for three weeks.

Goth #2: Nope. You’re not going to work. You’re too sick.

Goth #1: You’re not going to work like that.

Me: Well what will I do?

Goth #1: We’ll tell them you’re sick and you can’t come in. Look at you. You can barely stand up.

Me: Well, OK.

I did feel so horrible. I really didn’t want to go work.

Thank God I stayed home!

And of course, if you want to listen to podcasts of our December 16, 2005 performance of Babalon, the links are just below.

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

Please leave comments. For updates of the Babalon Diaries, subscribe to my RSS Feed or my email list. There is more to come…

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I am not usually so newsy, but my friend Michel Parry sent me this in an email from London.

Of course, I love fairy tales and they have provided many great subjects for operas through history.  But the one about John Dee seems like one of those wonderful artistic breakthroughs into the magical consciousness that intrigues me totally.

If any of you are in London, I envy you as I would give my eye teeth to see these!

Woodcutter's Daughter by Sarah Blank

Thurs 3rd September
STUDIO 1 @ 8pm
The Woodcutter’s Daughter
Produced by: Eclectic Opera
Librettist: Buffy Sharpe
Cast: Kirsten Morrison, Peter Shipman
Combine a maiden who needs rescuing, a prince out hunting, a chorus of children, three professional singers, an imaginative set, an old Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale and new music and you will have a production that will delight your senses and tickle your fancy. Previewing Act Two of this new opera – catch it here first!

Dr. Dee

Songs Of Alchemy
Produced by: Eclectic Opera
Composer: Kirsten Morrison
Director: Jan-Willem van den Bosch
Cast: Oliver Gibbs, Peter Shipman, Peter O’Shea, Kirsten Morrison
A fascinating song-cycle set around the angel conversations of alchemist John Dee (1527-1608); astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist and consultant to Elizabeth I. Original texts, poetry, incantations and diary entries provide an authentic glimpse into a time just before modern science when angels held the keys to the world.

Will there be real Enochian chants in the Dee opera? looks like it!

See my articles on Bluebeard’s Castle by Bartok

The Dark Side of Faery Tales: Bluebeard’s Castle

Bela Bartok: Powers in the Land

Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

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This is an appendix to my series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful…(as if one has choice…)

Directed by occultist, Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 5, 2005, at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives: Babalon. I played Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I am called Angela Murrow because I had to hide my identity.

Babalon Diaries:Appendix # 2

The Qliphoth

Paul A. Green, Author of Babalon

Tomorrow, I am interviewing Paul Green, author of Babalon to have him share with us the story behind the story of his wonderful radio play about the Babalon Working of Jack Parsons, Babalon.

In order to understand what is behind the play, I spoke with Paul Green about his related novel called The Qliphoth. In it he explores the themes of Qabbalistic Magick and the way the unseen dimensions,  that run parallel to our own, bleed through, or make contact  with us.  In the case of the characters in this novel, the effects of those contacts result in chaos and madness. Such is the dark side of life in the Sub Lunar, or Yesodic realm.

It is daunting to write a straight review of a book as complex as The Qliphoth. It is a great read, full of hip, jazzy, language, and some very strange post 1960’s apocalyptic characters. The young protagonist, Lucas, sets out on a quest to find  his father, Nicholas Oscar Beardsley, who has been confined to Oakhill Lunatic Asylum. Beardsley is obsessed with researching the Lore of the Brazen Head. (I believe the Brazen Head comes from a vision of Elizabethan magician John Dee.) The result is chaos, disaster, kidnapping, murder, and the weirdest magickal ritual I ever read.

Beardsley:

“I have to get it all down, For the record, the Akashic Record of the Aeons, naturally. Wherin all our phantasms are inscribed, squiggles of amoebic neon eternity like an old broadcast of Journey into Space on its way to the Pleiades.’

And I have to set the angelic record quite straight….”

And off he goes! Wheeee!

Mountain of Initiation

Correspondence About the Qliphoth with Paul A. Green via Email:

I wrote to Paul after I read his book and asked a few questions. His answer is so amazing that I told him it would make a great blog post all on its own. I hope you like this. He is a great writer, so his response is so much fun to read. And if you like Thelema, Parsons, or just the craft of writing, it is very informative too.

In the middle of this post, you will find a link to Paul’s podcast of Lud Heat which I highly recommend for lovers of hauntings. There is also a link for the script of The Ritual of the Stifling Air that he mentions in the text at the end. Very strange and amazing stuff!

Arlene to Paul, or Ground Control to Major Paul:

I finished the Qlippoth and am now digesting it. Its really profound about the influence of the sub-lunar realm, Yesodic energies, etc. And quite a good read.
I take it you have had first hand experience at some of this stuff?
This could be really relevant to the Babalon Diaries in that, when I was England, I found the lunar energies extremely strong. As a natural clairvoyant I was bombarded with thought forms and  images that were quite different to my own  innate mindset. (Yesod, the Moon, is called, in Qabbalah, The Treasure House of Images.) I was aware that the group mind in London was so strong that I sometimes had trouble keeping my own thoughts and feelings free of it.

I think it would be best to talk about the themes in the Qliphoth in an interview. I have a lot of questions and if you can relate them to Babalon, the Moonchild, the Anti-Christ gang, (Parsons, Hubbard, Cameron, etc.) whatever… Perhaps we can discuss a focus so we don’t go all over the place?
The subject is very rich.

Its important not to dive in without a contact line….

Paul to Arlene:

Thanks for your generous comments on the book.  First hand experience?  Hmm, all depends on how you define experience…  On the blog, you kindly referred to me as an “occultist,” which is kind of flattering, as if I was some kind of Eliphas Levi or John Dee sage, but that could be misleading.  I haven’t been a formal member of, say, a Golden Dawn or Thelemic type group.  I haven’t participated in the kind of elaborate rites  Quilthorpe tries to conduct towards the end of the book. The “Babalon Working Group” mentioned in the blurb really existed  but it was a group of writers drawn together via the www through a common interest in Parsons.  (The most overtly pagan was the convener Adrian Lord  who used to run a big wiccan festival in  Pendle.)

Nevertheless, certain kinds of writing, in certain situations are in themselves  like magickal procedures and seem to trigger odd events.  One of my earlier radio pieces Ritual of the Stifling Air  ( written in a very dark period of my life) allegedly induced weird electronic phenomena in the studio equipment ( although I wasn’t there to hear them)  while  a piece by my friend Iain Sinclair ( from “Lud Heat”)  recorded  in the crypt of St Annes Limehouse, one of London’s strangest churches, nearly defeated the efforts of the BBC sound man to capture it properly.  You can hear the whole programme  as one of my podcast episodes.

For the wonderful, ghostly “Lud Heat” click here: Radio QBSaul: Lud Heat. This sort of poetic ghost hunt is really fabulous, especially if you know London.

St. Anne's Limehouse

Where the Qliphoth was concerned, I was immersed  in studying Crowley, Golden Dawn, Chaos Magic and the Qabalah. I was also trying to get a grasp on the multiverse idea and relate that to the Sephiroth.  As the work evolved – a  journey into the Yesodic realms, personal as well as  external -  I  began using magical techniques and mind-maps.  Locations, characters, sequences of action, visual detail were  sometimes determined with reference to Crowley’s system of correspondences, or a Qabalistic Tarot pack,  or a series of cards devised by Brian Eno which gave enigmatic Taoist-type directions ( e.g “Stop work”  or “Reverse the order”).  Dreams at certain phases were often extremely intense, and images from some crept into the book. I sometimes  used automatic writing as a way of finding the voice of a character. e.g Nick near he beginning. But progress was often slow.

A climax in the writing of the book co-incided with the suicide of a close friend, on whom certain aspects of a key character were based.  This wasn’t his first attempt, as he had a very long history of manic depression, so I’m not asserting  there was any direct connection but  it was a horrible shock when it finally happened, especially as our relationship had broken down. It was as if  writing about him was dangerous, as if I’d written him out of existence.  My own sanity was precarious at times like this. I was certainly became  very obsessive.

I think what kept me balanced was having a firm root in my relationship with my wife  and  a job (inner city supply= substitute teacher) which although exhausting and distracting  and pretty dismal much of the time kept me earthed in what I  guess is Malkuth. The Pauline story-strand  and many of the characters grew out of that.   You could say that  it was a coming-of-age novel, given that Yesod is the sphere of adolescence. And there’s a tension between Pauline’s dialectical materialism and the magickal omniverse  that breaks through at  the end. She’s forced to acknowledge  it  and even participate in it. Yet it’s her earthbound strength and resilience that saves Lucas. She could also be read as Binah, the  stern mother.

Babalon

Click here for : The Ritual of the Stifling Air

Watch for my podcast interview with Paul A. Green coming soon!

And of course, if you want to listen to podcasts of our December 16, 2005 performance of Babalon, the links are just below.

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

Please leave comments. For updates of the Babalon Diaries, subscribe to my RSS Feed or my email list. There is more to come…

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Elizabeth Tudor: the Faerie Queene

Of Faerie lond yet if he more inquire,
By certaine signes here set in sundry place
He may it find; ne let him then admire,
But yield his sence to be too blunt and bace,
That no’te without an hound fine footing trace.
And thou, O fairest Princesse vnder sky,
In this faire mirrhour maist behold thy face,
And thine owne realmes in lond of Faery,
And in this antique Image thy great auncestry.
— Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queene

I was drawn to London because of Shakespeare. In the 1980’s I was heavily involved in Shakespeare productions, not only as an actress, but as a choreographer as well. I was also known to lend a hand with costumes for they are one of my passions, and brought up in small town Massachusetts, I was a trained needlewoman since early childhood.
In 1998, an authentic replica of the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre had been completed on the south bank of the Thames. Portraits of Queen Elizabeth and the Tudors were on free exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. It is quite a thing to be able to stand in front of a painting that one’s favorite monarch actually sat for and to feel the centuries pass below you, carried on the River Thames.
The reign of Elizabeth was remarkable for its glories in art, music, dance, magic, and culture, as well for its horrors.  One only has to walk along Tower Bridge to recall that in her day the severed heads of traitors would have been displayed above you,  visited by crows and reduced to bones on a regular basis. Of course, across the bridge one can see the Tower of London, where Elizabeth herself was imprisoned as a girl.
Bright light, deep shadow, London was a microcosm of the forces of dark and light, god and evil, and everything in between.

I have no doubt that I was ‘guided’ to live in London because of the intensity of this duality, resonant as I was with the city’s history in Elizabeth’s time. Magically, Elizabeth Tudor’s court Astrologer, John Dee, and his Seer, Edward Kelly, were talking to angels. After the Queen’s death, these two  would help to bring the art of Alchemy to fruition in Bohemia. King James’s daughter, Elizabeth, would marry Fredrick of Bohemia. Together they  became the icons of the Alchemical King and  Queen.
Edward Spencer’s epic poem, The Faery Queen, based on Queen Elizabeth, did not come out of a vacuum. I believe he was inspired by a conceit already being played out in the Court.
But I had ‘met’ her in this guise  while living in Seattle, long before I ever went to London.

Have a listen to Spem in Alium, composed for Queen Elizabeth’s birthday by Thomas Tallis, while you read the blog. It is sung by 8 choirs.

The Pelican and Phoenix Portraits

My first formal magical excursions into the Realm of Faery were under the guidance of R.J.Stewart in a workshop he gave on the Dark Goddess.
One of Bob’s exercises is have an audience with the Faery Queen and the Faery King. Each participant has their own version of this, for the Realm of Faery, though ‘real’, dresses itself in the iconography of our individual imaginations. I saw, and have seen since, the Faery King as great Stag/Man and the Faery Queen ‘dressed’ as Queen Elizabeth.

The Influence of Our Personal Imagery on How Faeries Appear

I thought this imagery was due to my inner links with Shakespeare and Elizabethan times. Also, as a child of he 1960’s, I grew up listening to Joan Baez singing the old Child Ballads, many of which came from the 15th and 16th centuries. Many of these songs were collected in Appalachia, brought to the Americas by English, Scots and Irish settlers during those times. As a child in Massachusetts, my imagination was informed by austere Puritan imagery: Women in black clothes with laced  corsets, neck ruffs, and peaked hats were among the  spirits of that land for me. The infamous Man in Black was dressed in 17th century clothes. I drew many pen and ink illustrations of women dressed like this, calling them my “Witches”. I felt they came to me from the flint, birch trees, and the golden rod, that covered the low hills of New England. The folk ballads and the Puritan imagery worked together in my imagination to generate ideas of what Underworld Faeries, the Ancestors, looked like.

This would be true for everyone who enters Faery. They will appear to you in a from that appeals to you or frightens you, or whatever gets the strongest emotional response from you.

Imagination, or Something Else?

While in London, I began writing fiction. I had been writing all my life, mostly poetry. (I am a published poet and have won a few prizes for my work.) But it took living in an historic country like England for my stories to come alive in me. My first endeavor was a novel about a Faery Changeling entitled Dark Night, Lily Bright. The Faery Queen is called Queen Elspeth and her consort is Cernunnos, the Stag/Man. There are also two other related characters in the story, sorceresses, that are similar to her. They all wear Elizabethan fashions.

Writing is a magical act, and the characters were very much alive. This seems to be the reason people become passionate about writing, for the writer watches as the characters act out their story and record it. In my novel about Faeries, I merely clothed the Faery Queen as Elizabeth. I never dreamed it may have actually been Elizabeth as Goddess of the Land entering my inner world.

My ‘real’ work is as a psychic and healer. One day, I was doing a healing session with a client lying on the massage table in a trance. When the session was over, she sat up and said “The whole time we were working, two women were standing at the end of the table dressed in purple. They said they were Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary.”
I was floored! Never had anyone else seen them before. I did know that Queen Mary had arrived. Of course they were sisters.

Masonic Connections

Before I went to England in 1997, I had a dream that I was invited into a gathering of English people seated in an a circle in a formal library as you might find in a stately home. It was a gathering of occultists. I saw the face of the leader of the group very clearly, for he had opened the door to me.
In 2004, I went to a talk on Alchemy that was held at a Masonic center in Cannonbury, Islington. During the tea and cakes reception a man walked toward me, holding out his hands as if he were greeting a long lost friend. I instantly recognized him as the man in my dream! During our conversation, in which I told him of my pre-cognition of our meeting, the subject got on to my feelings about Queen Elizabeth and magic, especially Alchemy. This man, Joseph McDerrmott, had been a Jesuit monk in Ireland. He eventually left the Order to focus on occult practices. The iconography of Queen Elizabeth was a special interest of his, so he kindly invited me to meet him at the Tate gallery to see the Phoenix Portrait of Queen Elizabeth on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. He told me it would be ‘an initiation’.

The Symbols of Sacred Queenship

Pelican of Sacrifice

The iconography of the rubescent Pelican Portrait displays emblems of the Queen’s willingness to sacrifice  herself for her subjects, for as the mythical Pelican pierces her own breast to feed her young with her heart’s blood, so the Queen bleeds for the benefit of her country and its people. Red is the color of martial strength,as well as sexual energy. She has a branch of cherries behind her ear that seems like a ‘come and get it if you can gesture’, though one could not possibly suggest that the Queen would play such games…The roses and other  flower-like jewels and embroideries on her gown suggest fertility and abundant life. The Tudor rose and the fleur-de-lis floating in the space behind her are the symbols of England and France.
In restored versions, there is a fringe over her head suggesting  that she stands beneath a canopy. As her shadow is cast on the wall behind her, we can assume she must have been facing the sun, the source of light. This solar spotlight suggests that the Queen chose to be highly visible before her people. She had nothing to hide, rather she displays her role as their protector and guide.
These are the outward shows for the sake of reassurance for the realm that she give her all for their sake.
Yet there was one important thing Elizabeth would never give them — an heir. I think her compensation for this is revealed in the companion portrait, where she looks to the left, the ’sinister’ direction of the moon. Her black veil suggests that she stands in the shadows, in the darkness, hidden.

Phoenix of Death and Rebirth

The Phoenix Portrait is the companion piece to the Pelican Portrait. Joe described one as being  ‘with the red rose’, while the other is ‘under the black rose’. The black rose signifies secret knowledge kept ‘under the rose’ or ’sub rosa’.

In the Phoenix portrait, Elizabeth stands under a black veil against a black background suggesting that she is on the threshold of the Unseen. The phoenix is an emblem of death and rebirth, but not pro-creative duplication. This is important in Elizabeth’s case, for she remained ‘virgin’, or unmarried, all her life. This created serious political problems, for she was dooming the kingdom to go on, after her death, without an heir.

The phoenix as a symbol for Elizabeth’s uniqueness, oneness and chastity, has a hidden meaning. The bird that dies  in fire to rise again from its own ashes, is a powerful icon for dynastic mysticism. Its ability to transcend death asserts the continuation of hereditary kingship through the immortality of the monarch, in this case the Virgin Queen. There could be no more potent symbol of power on Earth than this reminder that  even death cannot defeat this Queen.

The jewels in the Queen’s hair ray out like moonlight, she is covered in pearls and garnets, suggesting moonlit dew drops and blood. The strawberry leaves embroidered over the fabric of her gown symbolize love, luck and pregnancy(?). (It is interesting to note that strawberries, when crushed, could be said to bleed.)

Most significantly for the occultist, the Queen holds a white stone in her  hand. Could it be the Philosopher’s Stone that grants immortality, eternal youth and life?

This portrait explains the secrets behind and esoteric justification for the Queen’s chastity. Her possession of the Philosopher’s Stone means that she will never die.  Did Dr. John Dee conjure this for her? As we saw previously, it was he that brought Alchemy to Bohemia, catalyzing the Magical Court of Emperor Rudolf, a center for esotericists from all over the world.

When one  considers that the Tudors were also Celts, with their ancient tradition of Lady Sovereignty, representative of the Land, it may not be too far fetched to suggest that Queen Elizabeth reveals her magical beliefs and alchemical aspirations to be the Sovereign Lady reigning over the land of England forever. All future Kings who marry the Land will marry Elizabeth, for she is one with the land, part and parcel of it. She is the Faery Queen.

photo credit: Ivana Warde   Hampstead Heath

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The Faery Queen and the Horned God

In March 1998, I went to live in London, England. I had thought I would stay there for 18 months while I researched my  Grail Bearers’ Tarot, but the Spirits of the Land had other plans for me. I have since come to believe they called me to the British Isles because of certain Magical links I had made, and because of my contacts with the Celtic Faery who are the true Grail Bearers.

As a Celtic Faery Initiate, I received powerful visionary visitations by the Tuatha de Danaan, or the Irish Faery. This began just after Samhain in 1996 a few weeks after a workshop I took with R.J.Stewart. The Tuatha de Danaan not only came to my house and opned portals into the Otherworld for me to pass through, they taught me many secrets of the Underworld Faery and their connection to the Holy Grail and the Arthurian Mythos. I was compelled to go the U.K. to wander through the lands of Arthur and Merlin to ground the visions into my soul and body — for when we embark on the Initiate’s,  journey our blood changes, our ancestors wake up in our blood.
My King Arthur Tour to the U.K. took place in a beautiful March of 1997. During the month I was there,  I roamed through England, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland. The last thing I did before I came home, was an eight hour overnight coach trip to Edinburgh to see Rosslyn Chapel, reputed to be the final sanctuary of the Holy Grail.

I had many powerful experiences on this Quest of mine that will be shared in future posts.

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Mystical Encounters with the Spirits of the Land

Having grown up in the woods in Massachusetts and maintaining my bond with wild nature throughout my life, I have always had a strong sense of how different places have their own spirit, and spirits who are particular to that place. The liminal twilight atmosphere of the Massachusetts woods, the low rolling hillls, swamps, and  changing light, the striking cycles of seasonal transformation, suit beings very akin to traditional fairies, the types you find in Grimm, and in the Romantic descriptions of Yeats or Fiona Macleod; seasonal spirits of snow, ice and  flaming and then falling leaves, silence, and subtlety. There are also witchy spirits, for  the Black Man of the Forest, ruler of the witches lives there. There is the Salem Witch current, ghosts, and Iroquoise False Faces and Manitous.

Some of these seem to have been brought from England during Colonial Times. There are records of Scottish Faery Seers coming to these shores in during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I who brought their spiritual contacts with them, or drew them here over the water after seven years of separation.

Mexico has spirits of another sort: desert beings, spirits that rattle in the night, wind ghosts, an earth that vibrates with living currents of serpent power that you can feel as you walk over it. The animals behave in mysterious ways. Coyote appears on the horizon and in the blink of an eye is gone; the sea tortoise comes ashore under a moonless sky, and vanishes under the waves of the sea as if she never been. The sun charges the Earth so that, even in daylight, the spirit world is palpable.

In Ireland, I took a bus  ride over the Burren. As lead singer in a Celtic band, Castlerigg, in the 1990’s, I had heard form Irish players that many tunes had been given  to the bards by the Faery. Maybe it was imagination, but as my contacts with the Underworld Faery, especially of Ireland had taught me, imagination is the key to the Kingdom. But I heard music, the same as that of an Irish tune, coming up from under the Earth. Had I been a proper musician, I could have written it down.

As the Queen slays the King in the Upper World, so he rules in the Underworld.

Tarot of the Grail Bearers

I wasn’t in London long before the God and Goddess of the British Isles made themselves known to me. I was living near to Hampstead Heath, formerly the stag hunting forest of the Royal families of Britain. I had arrived in that neighborhood in late April of 1998, finding a cheap bedsitting room with a large bay window that gave me plenty of light to paint by.

I was working on a Tarot Deck, Tarot of the Grail Bearers. Each image was designed after intense 3-dimensional visions given to me, in an ordered fashion, by the Tuathaa de Danaan. It was clear they wanted this Tarot deck to be painted, and to be painted by me despite my lack of skill. The project took over my life for four and half years during which teaching after teaching was given to me along with the images for the cards.

Perhaps the Tuatha deDannaan chose me because I had been reading and teaching for most of my life. The Tarot lived in me. I have been told that my images have great spiritual intensity. I think this is because, as I painted each card, I was passing back and forth a doorway of its symbols the entire time. This deck is charged with Faery magic.

To see the full Tarot of the Grail Bearers, please visit my website at http://www.whiteswan-tarot.com/ and look through the Gallery. It used to be called Tarot of the Holy Grail until I realized it is not about the Grail. but about those who guard and keep it in the Otherworld.

50 The Drive

I had no idea the house was haunted. Not only haunted — but also on the Spirit Line of the Wild Hunt!

See my post  How to Know if Your House is Haunted for another angle on this tale of woe.

Initiation of the Horned God

This etching looks like Old London, doesn’t it? My bedsitting room was in a house down below there, on the path the Wild Hunt has taken through North London, over the Heath, from antiquity.

It began with nightmares.

Not long after Samhain, 1998, I was woken at 3AM by the presence of a shadowy Stag/Man standing near my bed. He was looking down at me with pale, fiery eyes. I had been visited by such a spirit as a child in Massachusetts, ( See my post: The Horned Ones)  but never had he displayed to me such awesome power, never had he focused his entire being on me. Alarmed, I sat up, but the vision did not go away. I was experiencing the same level of clairvoyance that brought the visions of the Faery and Holy Grail. But, where the Grail Bearers were gentle, lofty, sometimes tricky, this being was dangerous.

The Stag/Man was not endowed with a human conscience, he did not let feelings or emotions concern him. He embodied raw, untamed, male sexual power. There were nor reasons, no inhibitions, no consideration for me. He intended to take me, to possess me as if I was the same as he — a wild animal from the forest. I wasn’t about to let him.
Since I was well versed in magical protection, and because I thought this was an illusion brought by some kind of psychic attack, I got to work. On the first night, I performed a  Rite of Banishing, sealed my space and, finally, at 6AM, went back to sleep.
I thought I had succeed. It was peaceful for two nights. Then, the third night, at 3AM, the Horned One was back again, and much more insistent and violent. This  time, the Stag/Man was also accompanied by a wolf. The wolf prowled around the edges of my protective circle. I was so grateful my Rite had been strong enough that he couldn’t get in! The wolf was beautiful, with a shimmering silver coat of thick fur. He howled and stared while the Stag/Man commenced to try to attack me.

I chanted all the spells of protection I knew, and refused to go to sleep and surrender control of my being.

To cut a very long ordeal short, over the course of six weeks, I was stampeded by Wild Riders that raged through the bed room from the windows through the wall. Vines grew up from under my bed, crawled up from the foot of the bed, wound around me, bound me in tendrils and stems as thick as your arm so that I could not move. Under the blankets, great phallic stems rushed  towards me like special effects in a horror film. Spirits of darkness circled around the room, uttering strange piercing cries like night birds hunting, wolves prowled, and owls fluttered across my dreaming eyes. A strange man entered my dream/ visions,  playing crazy clown,  Ringmaster, or walking on stilts, trying to get into my brain.

There was no place to go! For me the invasion of my very inner space, always my last ditch sanctuary,  was just not acceptable. The Stag/Man came every night at 3AM to get into bed with me, holding me down while I fought. I refused to go to sleep until 6AM when the visions stopped with the dawn.

It is unfortunate that I did not understand what was going on, for in my desperation to ward off the nightmare, I began to throw psychic fireballs, and to attack these beings, devastating my inner world. This was because I was afraid that if I surrendered, I would be possessed. My training in kundalini Yoga had taught me to send spirits away and purify myself so that the serpent could rise without triggering karma. (snark) Well…

I am sure for initiated Wiccans this attitude is incomprehensible, but I was not, and am not, an initiated Wiccan. I was born with the Witchblood, so much of what goes on between myself and the Otherworld is unexplained. My teachers have been lax in this area also. There seems to be a conflict of interest.

If you wonder why I refused to surrender to my mystic, nocturnal visitor, it was also  because of the raw power, strength, and violence of the God. Imagine being chased through the forest by a horney wild elk! How can you surrender to that?

Eventually, near Christmas, I was so exhausted that I just stopped fighting.  As I slept, exhausted and unable to care, I felt the Stag/Man enter me. I was instantly consumed in a fire that burned from head to foot. I was wrapped in flames. This sensation lasted for three days — even in during my daily activities. I burned, and burned, and burned…It was highly charged erotic energy. Soaring fire and burning eyes. As a student of Alchemy, I knew I was in the furnace.
I made a decision to stay away from magic after that. It was the wrong thing to do because the magical people were the very ones who had an explanation of what I went through…

It comes to mind that such a fiery Initiation seems to mirror the fate of witches burned in Elizabethan times, and later under King James. How passing strange it all is…

We hunt him and then he hunts us. The God of Death and Rebirth.

I had spent so many years connecting with the bright side of Faery. Little did I know that I would be forced into the dark, that my pursuit of the White Hart into the Forest of Brociliande would carry meh into the abyss as the God took on his cthonic, or Underworld, form.

For seven years I felt I had been a spiritual victim. Afraid of psychic attack, I  avoided the magical practices that had once been second nature to me. I stayed away from like-minded others: magicians, witches, magical people. It was lonely trying to fit in with mundanes and New Agers, but at least I was safe…I thought.

Unable to bear the isolation any longer, I found my way to Treadwells Bookshop in Covent Garden. There I found a thriving and brilliant community of occultists and pagans. With much trepidation, because I was afraid of being thought mad, I approached the owner, Christina, and asked her if she would explain something to me.
Over tea and cookies, I gave her my horrific story. Despite my trauma, I knew my experience was significant. I wanted to know what it meant, what was it for, and why did I have to go through it? What she told me was actually quite beautiful. She gave me an illustration of a circle patterned after a labyrinth. At the bottom of the circle, a powerful stag stood in a dark forest. At the top of the circle was a little cottage with smoke coming out of the chimney.

The Horned God in the Forest

Christian explained that the bottom, the dark forest where I had been, represented death; that as we hunt the Horned God, so he hunts us, and takes us. At the top  of the circle, where the sunlight shines upon the cottage, is our reward when we pass through our ordeal successfully: safety and coziness.

Of course this idea of the ‘hunt’ is not a literally about killing for food or sport. One chases the white stag into the forest of the deep self, the unconscious, the soul, if you will. The goal is to find a transcendent experience, perhaps to gain healing, or powers, or a gift from the Otherworld. But in entering the uncharted, moonlit labyrinth of the soul, one must encounter the dark forces that dwell there, the repressed things, the caged animals within, the history of old hurts, rages, and hates. To avoid this experience is impossible once one has set foot on the Path, and dark experiences are necessary if one is to gain spiritual maturity, true depth, and wisdom. Without these qualities, one is not fit to take one’s place as a teacher of the Mysteries. I had been a teacher before, and a healer. But now, my work is made richer, and more potent, for my having passed through the Abyss.
Christina also told me that Hampstead Heath, near where I lived, had been a Royal stag hunting forest since Norman times. So it was no surprise that the Horned God might follow an ancient trackway through the haunted house I lived in.
One of the great hunting monarchs of all time was the Faery Queen, Elizabeth Tudor. So it was no wonder that the two came to me hand in hand, symbolizing the inner marriage of the polarities of the Land.

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How to Tell if Your House is Haunted

by Lucifera, Queen of Elfhame

You can find my stuff elsewhere on the web. At EHow.com I write humorous paranormal articles under the name Lucifera, Queen of Elfhame.  This is my first post ever online. It has been very popular. If you like this let me know and I will write some more. Better yet, you can find more in this vein at EHow.com.

Could it be?

When we move into a new house, we have so many concerns, that the atmosphere of the place may be the last thing we consider. The rent is so affordable, the rooms so spacious,and the location so perfect that we ignore the clotted shadows in the corners, the creaking basement stairs plunging into darkness, the dead, evil tree leaning near the front door. But, once we settle in, an unaccustomed weariness overtakes us. We have nightmares, or see strange lights floating in the air, hear cries and moans in the night. We tell ourselves these are merely symptoms of the house settling. Yet, we jump when we glimpse a sudden movement at the corner of our eye! We wake to find the kettle boiling on the stove, or dishes lying broken on the floor. We cannot blame the cat for she has fled…
In time, depression sets in; we have a run of bad luck. Somehow, home becomes the last place we want to be.
The back of our neck prickles. “The house is haunted,” our mind whispers. But we don’t believe in ghosts…

Surely, it is just our own problems assailing us. But how do we know for sure?
Below is one method that has worked for me.

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