It’s All About Joseph Soggyrag.
Edward Crude, Lady Raven And The Troll Artifus Singlethought.
Chapter 1
SARA SPARROW BREATH
AND THE MOTHER OF HEATHEN PARLIAMENTS
Samhain 2014
Destroying Pagan Albion As Revenge For An Unfortunate Childhood.
Sara’s scintillating copy burst onto the page:
People were running, screaming or writhing in pain, those people, that is, who were still lucky enough to be alive. Ceridwen could smell the brimstone in the air and choked on the rubble dust she could taste at the back of her throat, there was the stench of death in the city, the stench of the primal misery of its inhabitants.
“This copy’s riveting,” said Ernest Gravelstone, “I sure hope we can prove this, I’d hate to be on the end of the backlash if that woman has created a work of fiction!”
“It must be obvious to you by now, we’ve verified the story by tracing back the silver lines of magic” Grabiden Narcissist retorted, ”the real question is how the hell does Sara know where to look for these stories? I ask her and she just gives me some gobbledygook about spirits and spirit animals or some bloody nonsense.”
When you look into the future I’m sure you’re mesmerized as you picture how you’d create the world anew, Ceridwen, as you can imagine in this situation, stood spellbound as the crack of lightning bolts, crashing down from the skies, seemed to be flattening Bowerstone around her, read Grabiden Narcissist
What was it about Sara Sparrow Breath, he thought, that can report on a magic that totally changes the planet’s reality, yet could see both before and after the magic, surely that’s a contradiction in magical terminology and practice?
As I’m sure you’ve gathered, Sara was no ordinary independent journalist, she just had this knack of finding life-changing stories that no-one else would know, and as editor of The Polytheist Herald, Grabiden Narcissist was happy to pay her for such exhilarating copy.
Ernest Gravelstone, the somewhat perplexed and long-suffering sub-editor of the Polytheist rag, prepared the headline, with a sentence he thought he’d never write!
LADY CERIDWEN BLASTS REALITY TO OBLITERATE CRUDE’S ANGEL LIGHTNING BOLTS
Ernest read aloud the next paragraph:
As you can imagine, today, however, was different, for today she’d adopt the Crone, today she knew she’d be the ‘Bringer of Death’ as I’m sure you already know, it was the natural order of things.
“Bloody Hell” he gasped, this was the most exciting story to land on his desk since time began and he should know, it seemed like it were only yesterday when the Universe had been born! If you were in Ernest’s shoes. for a moment you may entertain the same thought Gravelstone himself did in that very minute, was it possible that the Universe had only been born yesterday, these witches and their Goddess seemed to alter reality with alarming frequency, didn’t they?
”Do you think we need to add all that copy about Edward Crude’s Christian Mafia Angels flattening Charing Cross Station, or do you think the headline rather implies it?” Gravelstone asked.
Grabiden Narcissist accepted the editing request, this really was the most mind-altering story to grace The Polytheist Herald in a generation, this, he thought, was a Big Bang moment when the Universe literally recreated itself, would you agree?
Hours earlier Sara Sparrow Breath had been crouched down in the long grass under the shade of some juniper trees, so much was happening it never occurred to her that it was extremely odd that there were a group of juniper trees just west of Charing Cross Station, what was even stranger was that the juniper trees had remained completely unharmed amongst this carnage, but who had time to worry about that, everyone was so busy, weren’t they?
You might want to take advice from your own spirit helpers before you try this for yourself, Sara thought, but according to the spirit animals of her eight-year-old daughter, the precocious Bella, if you were to crouch down in long grass under juniper trees, it would be possible to be completely protected from the effects of time, space and distortion when the Goddess of Death decided to replace one reality with another… But really don’t take their word for it, do your own research, these days we can’t be too careful, can we?
As precarious as her situation was, there were still other considerations to ponder, although ponder as she might, there really was no way an independent journalist, conspiracy theorist, spirit talker and demon hunter (mother of two and retro DJ) could envisage whether she’d still have a contract with The Polytheist Herald newspaper after Ceridwen had wiped reality and replaced it with another. As it must be as plain as the nose on your face by now, unpredictability would be the Achilles heel, anything could happen when you mess with timelines.
Friends and contemporaries alike poo pooed Sara’s theories about how Edward Crude the Dark Mage wanted to wipe out all elemental spirits from the planet and replace good old-fashioned pagan democracy with a Christian dictatorship of Easter eggs, Christmas presents and theological idiots proclaiming God wants them to be President of the World or some such nonsense.
Yet here were Edward Crude’s Angels blasting pagan Bowerstone with lightning and flattening Charing Cross Station, butchering the innocent followers of the Feral Lord and the Goddesses of Avalon alike. As Sara watched she wrote:
Picture if you will, the central point of what had been Charing Cross Station, Ceridwen standing there as still as the Pillar of Gaia itself. She appeared half human, half waif, a spirit of the earth and the spirit of the Planet.
‘Lady, Lady,’yes she could hear their voices, yes it was time for her priesthood.
She drew Divine life and light into her heart and directed it as a channel to the fire at the core of Gaia.
‘Lady with the sow and the hawk that hovers still in the eye of the storm.’
As you’ll imagine, she could feel the energy beginning to build, vibrating throughout her body, as her priests and priestesses focused their magic. Sliding her consciousness down the beam of light as if it were a portal to the very core of creativity.
Sara somehow became aware of the hundreds of people drifting around her, as she hid in the long grass under the juniper trees, moving through the space that had once been Charing Cross Station, traumatized, frightened, lost, unable to see La Diosa, through the smoke, rubble, and misery.
Through all the chaos, misery and rubble, the magic and the spellbinding Universe changing, reality shifting, the presence of Ceridwen and her priesthood, Sara managed to wonder: ‘what it would have been like to have been born a Hobbit and have time for a second breakfast. Ooh, an egg and bacon crepe sprinkled with grated cheese and salsa.’
Fortunately, you’ll be pleased to know, she forced her mind back to the task at hand:
I could hear the clergy of Ceridwen like a choir of creation in my mind” she wrote.”Come, Ceridwen, bringer of death, stirrer of the cauldron of the perfect being.”
Damn this was a life-changing experience she (Sara) thought, her demon busting business would brook no competition if she learned this magic, and imagine the books she could write, yet still you’d only have to pay once for her services there’d be no monthly fee.
See her website here:
http://www.sarasparrowbreathdemonbustingmarvel.com
Sara focused again on her pen and notebook and wrote:
Ceridwen could feel the magic awakening in her, the magic of the air and the sea, of the sun, the moon and the sacred land. The beauty and cacophony of the voices of the priesthood rose again in my mind, voices both harmonious and terrible concurrently as much pagan magic is, isn’t it?
‘Come, Lady of the nightshade, Walker between the worlds, Callieach of death, regeneration, healing and rebirth, Great Goddess of sexual magic.’ As Ceridwen’s consciousness mirrored her shape in the fires at the core of Mother Earth, she felt the flames engulf her, transform her, purify her and she pulled the power of the primal creative fires back up the shaft of life and light until it swirled like the essence of power in the center of her heart.
Corpeous Underglow, the proprietor of The Samhain Telegraph, looked perplexed thought Damon Underhill, his balding witless editor. As I’m sure you’re aware, Corpeous Underglow was a prominent witch in the most elite of covens and an influential member of the Notting Hill Conservative Party. Damon Underhill couldn’t read his boss, he’d no idea how he was going to react to this story in The Polytheist Herald this morning, which already looked as if it were going to outsell all other papers by ten to one.
“So what did we headline with today?” Corpeous Underglow demanded.
“That radical elf Martolas declaring his leadership credentials for the Elven Party” replied his already alarmed editor.
Corpeous sat thinking silently for the moment, although he was concerned about the financial implications that a competitor paper could pull with such a scoop, what worried Corpeous more was how this troublesome reporter had even found the story, the priesthood had been so careful to cover their tracks.
“Continue reading!” he demanded.
Damon Underhill’s voice, however monotone, couldn’t destroy the edginess of the writing, although it seemed like he did his best:
Ceridwen’s witches, the guardians of the spirits of the land built their evocations to a frenzied pitch, adding their momentum, adding their focus, weaving their energies with the power of kundalini and intention, blessing this powerful fire ceremony.
Ceridwen sent her mind out across the ether connecting with her sisters in each direction and in the cross-quarters. As each of them pulled the fire from the core of Gaia into their hearts, beams of light connected the sisters across the globe, heart to heart, mind to mind, magic to magic, in perfect love and perfect trust. As the energy leaped from Ceridwen’s heart, shafts of light were sent hurling through the space-time continuum to collide with the highest stars they could possibly imagine. It was precisely the level of magic necessary to obliterate reality and replace it with a balanced, harmonized and matricentric matrix of experience.
Sara Sparrow Breath
Samhain 2014
The Polytheist Herald.
“Underhill,” said Underglow “I want a thorough and far-reaching project of investigative journalism into this woman, but I want it outsourced. It mustn’t be traced back to The Samhain Telegraph until we’re ready to print. Sara Sparrow Breath knows far too much both in terms of our magic and our rites and maybe even about national security. Get the Troll investigators on it.”
So funny enough, as I’m sure had already crossed your mind, both Artifus Singlethought, the head of Investigative Trolls Ltd, and Sara Sparrow Breath most extraordinary human being were having the same thought at exactly the same time:
‘Why did Ceridwen allow Edward Crude to live?’
Beltane 2015 — The Mother Of Heathen Parliaments.
Horace Theodore Wimpole had been a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for thirty-seven years and the High Priest of Ceridwen’s Cauldron, a national coven of melissas whose primary function was to serve the Queen Bee. The modern Conservative Party was made up of numerous covens as was the guiding philosophy of a decentralized organization of witchcraft throughout the centuries.
Horace was a traditionalist, yet Wiccan through and through, tolerant by nature but only to a point…the more liberal members of his party had been pushing for the watering down of the balance between immanence and transcendence, the 1922 committee now had too many transcendentalists in its membership, backbenchers that pushed their own Government dangerously close to Jesuit or evangelical ideology. In Horace’s opinion, these modern reformers flirted with the devastation of monotheism, a concept that the Conservative Party should never embrace!
Horace Theodore Wimpole was enjoying this term of parliament much more than the last, a majority (albeit a slim majority) Conservative Government led by the Wiccan Lady Anna Elizabeth Cartwright was far preferable to that dreadful coalition they’d been in with the Druid Party. Still, even Horace had to admit, Lady Cartwright had been awfully clever casting Elias Mogg-Jones, the Welsh Druid Party Leader as the buffoon who’d made all the mistakes in the Coalition Government, and herself as the elder, the wise-woman who had saved Albion from the economic ruin left by the Elven Party.
Acting party leader Jennifer James sat near the dispatch box, waiting for the noise in the chamber to diminish. The Elven Party (now Ceridwen’s loyal opposition) were split along ideological lines about how to respond to the Black Magician’s threat coming out of Alabama again. Some of her troublesome radical backbenchers supported a dangerous policy of not resisting the Tea Party Nazareens and just vanishing into the forests and through the mists of time, a policy she just couldn’t allow. Yet she was troubled, none of the acting party leadership were elves, all were human witches from the fairy tradition and it was the elves that supported the policy of actively mythologizing themselves so when the Christians took over, soon no-one would believe they had ever existed.
Martolas the elf stood in the silent way that only elves can, the whole House hushed as he waited to speak, he knew the eyes of the nation and a hostile Wiccan press were on him, it was up to him to annunciate a totally new vision of Albion, the leadership election was only six weeks away.
“Madam Speaker of this House of sentient beings of Albion” Martolas began.”The radical factions of the Black Magician and his imperial sects have periodically and existentially threatened our very existence, I think we need to accept that their religious philosophy will never awaken to the grand reality that ‘All Gods are One God…’ “
“Stuff Nonsense, druidic philosophy of the dinosaurs,” witch voices from all sides of the House were shouting.
Madam Speaker, Virginia Boothroyd intervened:
“Order, order, sisters and brothers, if the honorable elf wishes to espouse henotheism it’s his right, order, order I say!”
Martolas stood silent until the commotion died down.
“There are some members of the witches’ dictatorship in this House…”
More shouting and more admonitions from Speaker Virginia Boothroyd.
“…who have moved too far away from the nature of Divinity and the divinity of Nature. Each time radical Christianity has stained this land the priesthood of Cerridwen the Crone, Bambha, Bridie and her sisters, have used their magic to reverse the polarity, to alter reality and pretend it just didn’t happen. sisters and brothers, I propose a radically different interpretation of the deeper magic…”
The House was silent in anticipation as if the words of Martolas were weaving a vision so fundamentally original that many present couldn’t completely grasp it.
Martolas continued:
“Our Lady Cerridwen the Crone is the key here, how we as her subjects weave her magic defines our spiritual and national destiny…if we interpret her ‘death, regeneration, healing and rebirth’ as obliterating a reality when the radical Dark Mage Edward Crude has committed an atrocity, and we replace that reality with another reality where everyone that was affected never existed in the first place, we never allow the magic of the sacred seasons to be realized, although it’s the epitome of Goddess worship!”
“Will you yield?” shouted Luna Moonshine an elderly member of the Conservative backbenchers and a leading proponent of nocturnal magic and the ‘drawing down of the moon.’
“I yield to the Honorable Conservative Witch” Martolas replied.
“Does the Right Honorable Elf really expect us to believe” shouted Luna “that the solution for this sacred land of Albion is for the elves to mythologize themselves by vanishing into the ‘Mists of Avalon’ and essentially be as if they never existed? How pray will that resolve the problem of the Magician’s attacks on this land?”
Virginia Boothroyd struggled to contain the commotion in the House and in the gallery, shouts of derision from hostile Wiccans and moderates of the Elf Party who were fervently opposed to the rise of the radical faction of Elfism that was taking over Ceridwen’s loyal opposition.
“Lady Moonshine,” Martolas purred in that harmonic way only elves can purr. ”Humans and elves must go their separate ways, the ideology of Edward Crude, are human ways, and the human onslaught against the sacred nature of Albion will only subside when Jesus the Christ is the Divinity of this land too. The elves must agree to pass through the veils and save this land from total destruction, it is the way of the Wyrd as magic weaves from the feminine to the masculine and eventually settles in a place where we’re welcome again, welcome as elves to walk free as equal partners of immanence and transcendence. To stretch reality further with more existential magic could be catastrophic.”
From behind him on the elven benches, Martolas heard a shout: “Crude was an elf once you know.” Martolas did not respond and no-one else seemed to notice…
The Elven Party of Albion was at war with itself, an existential war for its very identity. The witches had won the last two General Elections, one as a hated coalition with the Druidic Democrats and then with an increased majority which allowed them to dominate parliament and rule without support from other parties.
The Conservative majority was in and of itself a slender volatile coalition of Wiccans and old traditional witches who worshiped the Wild Lord of the Forest. The traditional witches had a growing animosity towards the Wiccan hegemony, and the bureaucracy, the liberal magical democracy of the European experiment. Lady Anna Elizabeth Cartwright had already agreed to an ‘in’ “out” of Europe referendum to appease the traditional witches and strangely enough, some of those witches were the ones already leaning towards monotheism, a metaphorical box of ‘adder snakes’ a referendum so radical anything could happen!
The Elven Party of Albion were in ‘no elf’s land’, after ruling Albion as the New Elf Party for 15 years from the late 1990s until 2010, it had been dominated during that time by a philosophy of elves trying to be more human; good social programs, war abroad and a global economic collapse which Lady Cartwright had managed to pin on the elves ever since. Elven politics, uncontaminated by human concerns, were on the rise again. A leadership election was underway and a radical rebellious elf, Martolas, looked like he was about to sweep the board. Leaders of the old New Elf Party came forward to condemn Martolas calling him unelectable and being simultaneously concerned that he was going to win an overall majority in the party!
The Fairy Unions and the rank and file Elven Party members were solidly behind Martolas, and the conservative Wiccan press were screaming, none so eloquently as the pen of Sara Sparrow Breath, the respected independent journalist, conspiracy theorist and retro DJ in the Summerland’s only nightclub, The Isle of the Dead!
Lady Anna Elizabeth Cartwright rose to the dispatch box, the whole House collectively held its breath.
“Madam Speaker of the House, is this really what the Elven Party propose? For more than two thousand years Albion has held out as a bastion of tradition and the Old Religion. Our sisters and brothers across Europe are concerned at the potential breakup of our sacred union and the coming of religious patriarchy. We in the Conservative Party value this union and our great traditions.”
Laughter and uproar filled the House, and Virginia Boothroyd struggled to regain equilibrium.
“…Laugh as you may” Lady Cartwright shouted “but surely no-one will trust an Elven Party whose primary philosophy is to divide our nation between humans and earth spirits and to lead all non-human races beyond the mists…two thousand years of tradition, magic and our Lady Ceridwen, and the elves are not only content to destroy our economic security, they’re now seeking to undermine our national pagan identity…”
Sara Sparrow Breath remained in the gallery a few moments longer, scribbling her brilliant views of the day’s proceedings and wondering whether Bella would enjoy chicken legs for her evening meal!
