Hartsfell

I. Prelude

There are two ancient initiatory sites in Great Britain, Stonehenge and Hartsfell—both date back to Hyperborean times; unfortunately, thanks to the hippies and New Age travellers, nobody can get into Stonehenge anymore; it has been completely fenced in—otherwise, I would have long ago slept in the centre of the circle. However, Hartsfell happens to have strong synchronicity with my name, and so it was more appropriate for me to go there—it is where Merlin hid for many years, in a little cave; at the time, it was heavily wooded and so made a perfect hideout; as a Celtic shaman, Merlin would have resembled the hart—the red stag—and would have worn two large horns on ceremonial occasions. So it was to Hartsfell I went to spend a night—a location that is utterly remote, up in Dumfriesshire near the border land between England and Scotland. To cut to the chase, I spent the night with four UFOs; but before we get to the main attraction we should deal with a few preliminaries—since these are also very significant.

For me, the journey to Hartsfell was a long one, from the English West Midlands to Scotland —a good five and a half hours by train, and then two hours walk from the small holiday town of Moffat to reach Hartsfell itself. The morning I departed, I composed my customary daily article on the train: the topic was Israel—how Zionism is not compatible with Judaism. After I posted this article, I had to change trains—the second of four changes—and I found myself in a carriage with a large Orthodox Jewish family (almost a pleonasm, all Orthodox families are large) complete with the old 19th-century black Homburg hats and shawls for the women. I sat one seat over from them—a synchronicity; it is true that not all Orthodox Jews disdain Israel, most have made a settlement with her—however, the Orthodox would be more sceptical as regards Zionism than secular Jews; and an orthodox Zionist would certainly be wary as regards the Orthodox. So a synchronicity.

As I sat on this train, I looked out at the Pennines and thought about Satan. As I did so, absorbed in concentration, a voice said, very clearly, “Crime and Punishment”. I looked round and saw an English father, sat with his wife and two daughters opposite me, and he looked directly at me. It seemed to be an assessment as to my state, the duality contained in one—crime and punishment, yin and yang. It was not the first such observation on the journey; earlier, a woman in a vestibule had said to me, “You look like you know,” supposedly with reference to which side to leave the train at the next station. “I don’t know,” I said—and yet I think she really intimated some Gnostic knowledge about the world.

I sank back into thought as the train cut through the hills; the light had changed, the light in northern England and Scotland is very much different to the south—it is flinty, just like the people. I suddenly heard a voice say, independent from my own internal monologue, “You have done this before, you will do it again.” I turned from the window and saw that one of the Orthodox Jewish women was staring at me intently.

At Carlisle, my train was delayed for an hour; and after that hour had elapsed I jumped on a small two-carriage cross-country service to Glasgow, with my destination being Dumfries. On this train, I found the same Orthodox Jewish family, this time split up so as just to be the women and children. I was sat quite some distance from them. As the train moved through the Scottish countryside, I stared out the window and, as the flat fields were offset by a distant peak, I saw an image of the crucifixion, with a dark red globe above Christ’s head—then he was served by several medieval knights in chainmail, then he was crucified again; it had great power, so that I almost cried. As this took place, I found that the Jewish children had surrounded me: the girls, who looked very intellectual in identical glasses, chatted with arms folded or hands steepled—or almost as in the savage and grotesque “happy merchant” meme; the boys sat in the seat behind me and kicked my chair and tried to get my attention, though I looked out the window. In both cases, the children had characteristically translucent skin—all that studying indoors and no time in nature, you see. It struck me that the pinafores the girls wore had the same design as that used at Auschwitz, the same line effect. Anyway, I basically had my own little schul—and perhaps it was due to my Christ vision that the Jews, their children, wanted to hear what Jesus had to teach them.

I left my Jews in Dumfries and found I had properly entered Scotland, though I always think Carlisle is really Scottish for some reason. Dumfries is like all Scotch towns, black and dark even in mid-summer sunshine—the blackness inheres to the very stones, the atmosphere is funereal; the light is anaemic here—that is why it is so tart, and the Scots so brusque. I found myself at what the Scottish call “a stance”—a bus stand, yet “stance” is so Scottish; “stance”, “manse”—it is active in the strange way Scots can make static words mobile. I always forget Scotland is very much another country, even at Carlisle the people looked different. I could see the difference in their bone structure, they looked like they had just finished defending a Pictish fort—and had just washed the blue woad dye from their faces.

The stance was next to a pub called The World’s End—and this was no joke, it was a literal designator; outside, degenerate Scotchmen drank in the weekday afternoon and shouted impertinent conversation across the road to a single mother and her two children who had been with them a moment before. “Tommy Walker, Tommy Walker,” they shouted out to her as she waited in front of me to get on the bus to Moffat; and that is another synchronicity, for my name is not “Johnny Walker” and I was indeed on a walk—a tommy walker. As the coach pulled out, I heard an older Scotsman says, “Oh ae, there were two wee lasses murdered at The World’s End in the 1970s.” I could well believe it, and it looked like about the most dismal place you could die in—worn down claret-coloured carpets and faux wooden surfaces all sticky with spilt sweet alcoholic drinks. Yet Hell is never far from Heaven, for as the bus left Dumfries we whipped past a sign that said, “Eden 2022”.

II. Event

After the bus disgorged me at Moffat, I headed straight for Hartsfell—the track to Hartsfell began four miles distant. On the way, I picked up some food in a garage—Moffat is primitive, without even a Costa Coffee, and so retains a genuine localness (an ugly localness). The girl who served me at the garage swapped the packet of crisps I had selected for another marginally larger one and explained how it was better value for money. “Ah, Scottish thrift,” I said, for surely no one else would insist that they must swap out someone’s crisps to get better value. The reception was icy, but she was ugly so it was no loss.

When I finally arrived at the entrance to the walk, after I second-guessed myself and lost time, it was already about 7:30; the shadows were long on the high mountains all about. The instructions I had to reach Hartsfell were rudimentary, simply taken from the trail guide board. Soon I was in a deep valley that led to Hartsfell, led to Merlin’s cave and spring—the valley’s steep slopes dominated both sides, and a sharp drop opened up to my right down to the burn below. There was not another person in sight, not for ten miles in any direction; and no birdsong either—since there are hardly any trees—the exception being an occasional screech from a Golden Eagle.

As the dusk turned to Turkish delight haze, I felt a little more concerned. There was a steep drop to my right and no fence—and yet nowhere had opened up for me to pitch my tent. Soon I would be unable to see one foot in front of the other; still, I pressed on. At this time, I heard a voice, a voice that I knew was my mother’s although not as she speaks in real life, that said, “I am with you.” I carried on for a little longer until the trail widened out; here, I found a gentle slope where I could take out my roll mat and sleep in my sleeping bag under the stars—a tent was out of the question. It was a relief to sit down after about ten hours on the go and six or seven miles walked. I was deep in the valley and it was utterly quiet and still except for the noise of the burn below. Directly before me, the other valley slope rose up and towered over me. It was only 9:00 and salmon pink dark. I pulled the inside cover of my tent over me to keep out the midges—the Scottish midge is aggressive in the evening, a cloud enveloped my head and buzzed angrily.

As soon as I closed my eyes, a strong image came to me; it was not that I imagined it or dreamt it—or consciously sought it. The image simply arrived. It was the head of a hart—a great red male stag—and between his antlers was a red sun. The image fluctuated so that only the hart’s skull remained, though for the most part it was fully clothed in its skin—the image vivid. I heard a patter on the ferns above me and poked my head outside my bag. There, in the dusk, perhaps fifteen paces away, was a large hart with full antlers. He moved past swiftly with only the occasional deep bellow. The place is called Hartsfell for a reason, yet I had seen no life other than sheep when I entered the valley and now, right after this vivid image, there was a hart—and a lordly hart at that. I think that image was his message to me that he had arrived.

I closed my eyes again, slightly awed and sure this was a powerful synchronicity that augured well—for remember, this animal is also connected to my name. I went back to sleep. New images: a black and a white hart who fought each other; a horrific face, decayed and malevolent, more terrible than any I have ever seen and with a wicked hobgoblin smile that was all teeth; a group of men in silhouette, dressed as if out of Carpenter’s The Thing, with light pouring from the circle in their face; a horde of vampires who worked out in the world, ran the world—a fact that seemed tangible (this would prove prophetic later); and, still, the image of the hart.

At 1:00 in the morning, my semi-dream dialogue, for I was not deeply asleep, contained words along the lines, “…where there are the UFOs.” At this, my eyes, my head being tilted slightly to the left, opened and, as if by direction, looked at the ridge line on the valley wall opposite. At that moment a light snapped on at about a man’s height on the ridge line. It was such a definite circular light I thought that it must be a torch. “Oh, so someone’s out here after all then,” I thought; and then the light began to move—began to glide across the ridge line top; and it was then I realised it was higher than a man would be, moved too fast, and too smoothly. I snapped up and watched. It was if a star had fallen from the heavens and decided to move across the ridge line. I whipped out my monocular and focused on the object—on closer inspection it was not a torchlight at all; it could best be described as white neon string that vibrated and rearranged itself in frantic motion. I had heard about such entities before, these being found in graveyards—and magicians, such as Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons, have reported that elementals appear as glowing orbs.

I watched the ball of light, as it appeared without magnification, as it moved smoothly above the ridge line. There were no animal sounds, no sounds at all—the stars were brilliant in the sky. I talked to the object for a while, from a distance—it rather resembled my avatar for Twitter, as it happens (a white ball; though my autocorrect just turned my words “ball of light” to “Lilith”—so perhaps it was that demon lady who was first made for Adam, yet failed him more severely than Eve). The object patrolled the ridge line for a time. Then, as before, my eyes were directed southwards back down the valley; on the ridge line on my side, though in the distance, was a red object that sparkled like a ruby—it had a malevolent mien and, unlike the white ball, it began to descend the slope, although it was still about just under two miles from me.

Then, in a second, I saw it move quickly and vanish—and it had reappeared, again on my side, but this time to my north; it was now at a station opposite the white ball of light. My monocular revealed it also to be “neon wire” except all red and much smaller than the white ball. The white ball, for its part, became very excited; it began to describe an “O” shape—without my monocular, it looked like an angel or an ankh from a distance (complete with little wings).

I continued to speak to the objects, to state my name and intentions (to seek the Grail) and to describe my basic outlook—at this point I was quite shaken and my voice quavered a little. I was now aware that I was alone, deep in a valley miles from anywhere, with two completely unknown objects; and not every story about UFOs or the paranormal has a happy ending. All around me was darkness, ferns, and little spruce trees. On the side that faced the valley, there was a sheer drop to the craggy burn below. I had no choice but to wait out the night, and besides how could I run away when I had taken myself to an initiatory site? How could I not go on now that the mystery had presented itself so fully? Yet, of course, the images of vampires and the diseased face I had seen earlier came back to mind—if the hart I saw had announced himself with a vision, did these entities do the same? Would some thing emerge from the darkness at any moment? Would the two fallen stars advance down their slopes towards me—in a way, I would be happy if they did. I wanted to get closer, to establish the reality and the truth of the situation; and yet I also wondered what it would mean if they advanced on me.

At this time, two further stars joined the other two—both smaller and bluer and with a more rapid twinkle. Observations with the monocular revealed the same pattern. So, here we were—or, to be precise, here I was—with four light orbs (four neon strings). Naturally, I enquired if they were Merlin—if Merlin was there. I enquired after the Grail. I chanted OM SHANTI OM SHANTI OM SHANTI and meditated—there was no effect, but a good chant raises morale when you are completely on your own. I already felt braver and warmer. However, I never felt terror or fear or the least bit threatened by the orbs—it was a perhaps.

After a while, I relaxed and settled down to watch them. It was then that I realised the ground had changed. I had selected a relatively flat piece of slope to sleep on—suddenly the ground tilted to the right so far that I slid off my roll mat. I picked out my torch, a tiny ultra-bright LCD job that fitted my mouth, and shined it at where I had been sitting. I could swear the ground had risen—additionally, there was now a tree root beneath my roll mat, though none had been there before and I was a few feet from the nearest tree. It was shaped like a ring pull—and I tugged on it, though nothing happened. I did not fall down the rabbit hole to Wonderland.

Let’s be clear: the ground had been changed—and the orbs changed it. This was typical fairy-folk tricky; they love nothing better than playing a trick on a poor old mortal like me. I rebuked them, particularly the red one, for this chicanery, “I see your game,” I said, “playing tricks with the mortals again, typical fairy-folk behaviour.” However, I also realised that they wanted me to re-position my bed, so I was forced to turn it about so that they were behind me—the moment I did this a shooting star flashed across the sky as if in acknowledgement. “Thanks. That was what we wanted.” The four were now more or less behind me, although I could still see the white one from the corner of my left eye—and I would turn around to keep a wary eye on the red one (I suspected there was mild malevolence there—he burned like sparks from a welding torch under my monocular’s gaze).

At about this time, stars began to flash in the sky in a pattern that was, frankly, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind—it may have been the Perseid meteor shower, and perhaps they turned me round to watch it; yet the flashes were not like the regular shooting stars I saw all night—to me it felt like these were not the natural stars but rather like the living entities that were with me.

I was unable to sleep, although I closed my eyes from time to time—and always expected to hear some thing approach me. It never happened, though I nervously scanned the area around me with my torch and once heard footsteps near me and later some strange growling—the latter also being a common supernatural theme. Yet what could I do? There was nowhere to run, so I would have to face whatever was there in the open. Besides, I had loudly affirmative that I followed the doctrine of awakening, that I sought the Grail despite my faults, and that I held Jesus and the Buddha and Mohammad to be divine men. I thought the best defence against such entities, if they be hostile, is to be firm in your position—and since I have a position to be firm about, I could be. I do not really think these entities are UFOs; they are the gods (the angels and demons, if you are Christian)—they have different appearances for different races and times, today they appear as UFOs because people can only believe scientific things. Yet since these neon strings appear in graveyards they are not aliens—more like ghosts.

So I talked to them in that quiet valley, yet they gave no real sign. Close examination as regards my white orb, the first orb, the one with which I most identified, revealed that it had a tiny satellite beside it—and dozens of such tiny satellites flew past, it must be very busy up there in the cosmic telephone exchange. At a certain point, I noticed that aside from the constant Shhhhwwwwsshhh from the burn there was also a sound almost like a whistle or a choral harp; sometimes I thought I could almost make out singing and voices—such sounds are often reported with UFO experiences, and are also associated with angels. So I think these low sounds, quite subtle, emanated from the orbs.

I hardly slept at all—I was on my guard, but I also wanted to drink it in. At times I thought the objects were normal stars, but then they would begin to jump around and swirl; or make a stately procession through the air. Indeed, I had final confirmation as regards my companions when the sun rose: all the stars disappeared except my four stars—they never dimmed in the slightest. In the end, it was full early morning light and my stars were there the same as ever. Four stars looked down on me from the ridge line above. At about this time, I glanced at the underside of my roll mat and found it had been clawed in the soft foam—bits had been gouged out and it was covered in a purple substance, as was my right hand.

The substance was difficult to wash off—for a moment I considered some supernatural trickery with ectoplasm, as with the hill. Then I realised what the vampires in my vision were (in part)—ticks; aside from midges Scotland is famous for ticks, especially where there are deer about (my lordly hart). My sleeping bag, my roll mat, my jacket, and my tent slip were all covered in my own blood—all those exploded ticks, gorged on my haemoglobin until they popped. It seemed like an appropriate initiatory experience. As I beat down my clothes to remove the ticks, I turned my back on the orbs—there was a flash in my left eye, and when I turned round they were gone.

And so I walked back down the valley, down to Moffat and breakfast at an overpriced caf that served a meal simply called “breakfast”—and a tight-fisted Scoth breakfast it was too, absolutely awful and no value for money at all; the old skinflint caf owner knew he had a totally captive market.

What conclusions can we draw? Given that Hartsfell is an initiatory site on par with Stonehenge we can say that Hyperborea, of which Britain, Avalon, is a part, is real—as was Atlantis, as are the angels and demons; and so, in turn, Jesus really lived and did roughly what the Bible said he did—as did Buddha and Mohammad. Merlin and King Arthur were real—it is all real, the kali-yuga and post-mortem survival and Crowley and Cain and Abel and straight-up sorcery courtesy of Jimmy Savile and Margaret Atwood. As for the Jews who gathered round me—Jesus was an Aryan, initiated like Merlin; they, the Orthodox, are willing to listen to the Good News, not being blinded by ideology and being serious scriptural people—the Satanic Zionists are not, and it is they who rule (with the Freemasons).

“Well, that’s good to know.” “Yes, I suppose I’ve always been a doubting Thomas—I have to put my hands in the wounds; then it’s not believing, it’s just real.” In fact, though this sounds like self-aggrandisement, I think I may be a reincarnation of Merlin—probably through my Welsh blood; and I always liked the Merlin-like Professor Xavier—and now I even have the bald head, just like Merlin. Now this is not straightforward transmigration of a soul to a new body—rather, perhaps, I belong to a common fold in the spiritual continuity with Merlin; and when it is unfolded just right I embody his archetype to a substantial degree…“Gandalf, that’s what they used to call me. Gandalf the grey. I am Gandalf the white. And I come back to you now—at the turn of the tide.”