About six years ago, every lunchtime, I left my job at an engineering magazine and went to William Blake’s grave. His grave has, in fact, been moved—so that the gravestone does not mark the precise location, but it is close enough; if you are by the gravestone, you are in the body’s vicinity. The graveyard is now in a very developed London sector, actually known for its media links; it is right by Hoxton and Shoreditch, for about two decades home to London’s hipster-media class—and yet they have probably decanted to Brixton and Peckham by now (always be gentrifying). So the grave is surrounded by tall glass skyscrapers and the graveyard itself has a footprint not much larger than a few English gardens—in which Blake would doubtless have sat naked, as was his wont (with his wife, in child-like innocence). There are a few old trees to sit under too—and opposite there is Wesley’s chapel (I would stand at the back by a large ’60s office block and watch the rain fall down the concrete Roman-style columns that held up brown smoked windows).
I have always liked Blake, probably because I am a simple man—Blake and Yeats are my favourite poets. I suppose I dislike too much moralisation and think everything is innocent really—when correctly viewed; and everything is beautiful too; so these poets fit me very well. Just now, I had a Blake synchronicity, I flicked through a book, Serrano’s Last Avatar, and alighted on this Blake quote: “I gave you the end of the golden string; only wind it into a ball, it will lead you in at Heaven's gate, built in Jerusalem's wall.” You may recall that on Hartsfell I encountered glowing orbs that, on close inspection, turned out to be vibrating neon strings. Well, it seems that these orbs fit Blake’s quote perfectly. They were the golden string wound into a ball—and, in my view, they were the gods; they were the angels that lead you in at Heaven’s gate.
Blake confirms it. And, after all, he was a Gnostic visionary himself—and saw a great many glowing things (and not just his willy when he left it out in the garden for too long). Today, I also realised that the resurrection of Jesus literally happened (and the same goes for Lazarus). I reached this conclusion because I have decided that magic is real. Unfortunately, the Christians (so called) are rather against magic—yet I am not so sure. Rather than saying that magic is the work of the Devil, I prefer the Buddhist approach: the Buddhists say that you can use magic if you want to, but if you are fully enlightened you will just have no need to do so—you will be so pure that your will can act without sigils and the like; hence magic is not so much “evil” as unnecessary. Since I have seen that magic works, I can well believe that Jesus (just like Buddha) was a purified man who needed no magic and could simply enact his will as his pleased (to cure people, or to return to life).
The odd thing is that I would never have concluded that the resurrection (the most important element in the Christian story) is a fact if I had not investigated magic—for then it became plausible that a man could rise from the dead. So I think this idea that magic is “evil” constitutes a big error for Christians—for it removes a central means to demonstrate to people the resurrection took place (you will never convince people with material science, and a metaphor is not the same thing at all). This is not to say magic cannot be misused—yet so can anything, from a garden hoe to a revolver.
This brings me on to another point, I rather suspect that the Christian churches as constituted at the moment—those organisations that purport to be Christian churches—are, in fact, Satanic. I say this because it suddenly struck me that the only genuinely evil man I have ever met in my life was a regular church-goer, member of a choir, and a storied naval officer. “But he needed the church because he was evil!” I’m not convinced, I think it was more like it was the right place for a Devil—and just look at all the child buggery in the Roman Catholic Church (not to mention that Argentine goon who currently sits in St. Peter’s throne). Also, I have always had a bad feeling when I go in a church—and I find the Bible to be very depressing. I think the real Bible has been edited by nefarious forces—just look at all those Gnostic gospels that cropped up that one time.
I also think that Jesus mainly came to save the Jews—of course, anyone can follow him; and I think he was resurrected and was a holy man, but I think he was mostly for the Jews—so sometimes he doesn’t quite fit right with other people. I just don’t see how Jesus Christ could lead to sects that are quite so fanatical and burn libraries and make people hate each other and are so depressing and so death-orientated—if I ran a church there would be no cross, just an empty tomb (that was the Good News, surely only a torturer and a murderer would put a cross up everywhere—though admittedly the cross does have some other ancient esoteric significance).
Perhaps I am just too soft and nice and should be more intolerant, but I’m not so sure. I think there is something very rotten in all the so-called Christian churches as constituted. In fact, as I thought about that last night in the garden after dark, it being very hot, I had one of my periodic quasi-epileptic fits (they just come over me these days when I have a vision, and I have to bite my lip). I saw myself shouting at a priest, a Roman Catholic priest, “Why do you rape children? Why do you rape children? This isn’t what Jesus wanted. You’re nothing to do with Jesus. This isn’t what Jesus wanted—nor all the fancy buildings.” I am not against fancy buildings and I think the Vatican is very beautiful, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been built by a Christian organisation.
After my convulsion stopped, a red light appeared in the sky to my right. At first, I thought it was just an aeroplane, since I live near an airport, but it was actually a steady red light that moved in a jagged way—then it vanished into thin air; perhaps it was some supernatural support for my vision—although in this case I cannot fully rule out an aeroplane, since I had no binoculars with me.
I also had another vision, earlier in the day, in the bathroom: I stared at my eyes in the mirror until they went black, rather like a grey alien, and then I let these electrical red wheels form in the black centres—a phenomenon that has occurred since Hartsfell. It was not very strong this time but I closed my eyes and I found myself transported into this great blue-green crystalline structure with an electric hue all about it; it was like an iceberg, an electrical iceberg that moved. I let myself move through it and I came to see it was the roots of a tree—at its centre it resolved into a Renaissance-style painting, quite flat and simple, of Adam and Eve in Eden. I had the impression it was actual Eden.
My conclusion is as follows: Jesus was not a magician (Christians gets very upset about this point) but he was at the top of the magical hierarchy so that he could freestyle and transcend formal magic, act without spells. He literally died and was resurrected: this is just a fact and how it happened.