Fellowship of Isis Liturgy
By
Olivia Robertson
Athena - Arcadian Awakening
Alchemical Rite
9. Glastonbury: Drawing Aside the Veil
Part I. The Narration: To Discover the Grael
“Weep! The Gods Weep with you!”
Hostess in Glastonbury, Gwenyth Vivienne.
Scene in a Ruined Chapel by the River Cam.
Visitants:
Path Guide: Elaine
Helper: Aiden
Oracle: Deirdre of the Visions
All are of the Priesthood of Alchemy
Temple of Arts and Alchemy
Elaine: “Gwenyth Vivienne, you have a prestigious career in the London Diplomatic Service. You have just bought this Chapel, relic of the Reformation and this piece of land where you have planted apple trees. Why have you sent the Druid Clan of Dana an urgent plea for help?
Gwenyth Vivienne: “Because in Eire you have managed privately to keep your connection with the Nature Deities, The Sidhe. In Scotland and Wales the moralistic reformation has thrown out magic, sacraments, icons and any connection at all with Faeries, spirits, Deities and spirits of ancestors. I was brought up as a non-conformist in North Wales to believe that when you died you either went to heaven or hell, with no intermediate state or hope.”
Aiden: “I was taught much the same thing in my liberal upbringing. Only we had no heaven or hell – just extinction when dead. Not a Deity or faery existed – they were hallucinations brought on by madness or drugs. The first sign was to hear voices. The last sign was vision, and then you really were classified as clinically insane if you took these seriously.”
Elaine: “I had the same sort of training. I found to safeguard my natural psychism I had to keep quiet about it. I only opened up when I met Aiden and others like us.”
Aiden: “We used the safety camouflage “Bohemian”. Artists were allowed to be eccentric. We could write and speak of Divinity – because this was “Art” – therefore fiction.
Elaine: “It really seems we are giving the narration for Gwenyth!
Gwenyth Vivienne: “My experience has been far more than yours. I was brought up by my parents who were both ardent atheists. To them religion was a cast off remnant of evolution. Science showed us the correct modern way. They really did give me and my brother a good life. We had the best schools – my brother went to prep and public school and university, and I was sent to a co-educational establishment that insisted on the absolute equality of the sexes. They carried it to such extremes that we all wore trouser suits of the same shape and colour.
There was one fact that disturbed me. Yes, we were all of one sex – but it was masculine! We all had one religion – none. We all had the same moral code – none. We just obeyed the law of the land which our elders kept altering to suit themselves – we were Establishment. We could change things and we did.
We aimed for a unified population that was intelligent, with the same cultural way of life. Yes… And I found it profoundly dull.
There was a curious dichotomy in my life. For during the day I worked in caring for abused women and children – but in the evening I took off my worn working clothes and changed into smart clothes with appropriate jewellery. ‘Breaking Boundaries’ in my social world referred to cricket. ‘Appropriate’ had a sinister meaning in my work and ‘Boundaries’ in Care Work did not apply to cricket. Disraeli once said that in England there were two nations – the rich and the poor. Now there were two different types of humans: Those who could control computers and the millions who were ruled by them. Through computers they were fed or let starve, be taken into care or left to be abused. As long as I filled in forms I needed no conscience. Everything was filed.”
Elaine: “We read of such happenings every day. Humans are evolving into machines and live virtual lives.”
Gwenyth Vivienne: “But people cannot live on virtual food and drink. This I found out in a terrible way. It was a bright day in October and I planned to meet some well-thought of scientists at a dinner-party in Knightsbridge. I would wear a sophisticated black dress and do my hair up to show my new opal earrings. That morning I was visiting a Care Home for elderly women and felt pretty exhausted. I work long hours. As I left the final ward I heard someone call me in a weak voice. Impatiently I turned round. At the end bed was an old woman. I don’t remember having noticed her before. Now she was leaning out of her bed, her right arm stretched frantically towards a cup on her locker. Her mauve dried lips were moving but she could not reach the cup. I decided to give it to her, but it only contained an old used teabag.
The woman was dehydrated. I felt icy cold. She had fallen back on her pillow and lay motionless, still gazing at the cup. I sent for a Doctor as an emergency. Meanwhile I sat on her bed, my legs shaking. I feared she was dying of thirst.
I found that I was copying the woman by also staring at the cup. It began to change. It looked smaller and made of some organic material, like a segment of a cow’s horn. It had over it a small lid and I found myself thinking: “That’s to keep off flies!” I was in shock as I was violently struck by a glowing fire in my heart. I knew what the cup was. It was the Holy Grael!
I was overcome by weeping shaking my whole body. I wept aloud like an Irish widow keening. I wept for the old woman and for my own dead mother and for all I knew who suffered from cancer and abuse and fear of pain and death. I was unable to stop. People were beginning to stare at me.
As I wept I rose above the earth and gazed at the pale face of the moon shining like a silver orb through the cup. I saw a Faery Thorn which was warmed by a dragon’s fiery breath in the centre of the earth. The Tree was nourished by the watery atmosphere. Its white flowers were the stars. I entered ecstasy.
Suddenly a doctor was touching me on the shoulder. He said “I am told you are the patient’s Care Worker. You need a rest. I too have drawn water from the Well of Tears at the World’s End. Go to Glastonbury. There you will find your true Vocation as I did.” When I rose to my feet and looked around, the Doctor was nowhere to be seen. In his place a brisk younger Doctor with his I-pad came up and said: “I will take charge now.”
And so now I seek for the Bliss I found when I saw the Holy Grael in the hospital. Here I am in Glastonbury where the Doctor said I should visit. Yet I have found nothing spiritual in the famous tourist sites. I must discover the True Grael again. Can you help me?”
Deirdre: “To accomplish this I am told from Spirit that we need to invoke the Cailleach, She Who Weeps.”
Elaine: “At dawn we shall assemble in this Chapel, which is not as ruined as it appears.”
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