ANDREW

COLLINS
Andrew Collins was born in 1957, and lives in Essex, England. He is a science
and history writer, as well as the author of several bestselling books including
From the Ashes of Angels (1996), which explores the human origins of angels
and Watchers, and their role in the origins of civilisation; Gods of Eden (1998),
which examines the greater antiquity of Egyptian civilisation; Gateway to
Atlantis (2000), which locates Plato’s Atlantis in the Bahamas and Caribbean,
Cuba in particular; The Cygnus Mystery (2006), which demonstrates that the
Cygnus constellation was once seen as the origin point of the human soul and the
gateway to the afterlife; Beneath the Pyramids, which details the author’s
rediscovery of Giza’s lost cave world, and Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods
(2014), which traces the origins of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey and its impact on
myth, religion and the rise of civilization.

Visit www.andrewcollins.com for more information on Andrew’s books, news

and activities. Follow him also on Facebook and Twitter.
The Black Alchemist
By the Same Author
THE SWORD AND THE STONE
THE RUNNING WELL MYSTERY
LONDON WALKABOUT
THE KNIGHTS OF DANBURY
THE BRENTFORD GRIFFIN
THE SEVENTH SWORD
THE CIRCLEMAKERS
THE SECOND COMING
ALIEN ENERGY
FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS
GODS OF EDEN
GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS
TUTANKHAMUN: THE EXODUS CONSPIRACY TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY GRAIL
THE CYGNUS MYSTERY
THE NEW CIRCLEMAKERS
BENEATH THE PYRAMIDS
GÖBEKLI TEPE: GENESIS OF THE GODS
The Black Alchemist
Andrew Collins

ABC BOOKS
Leigh-on-Sea, UK
The Black Alchemist
© Andrew Collins
First published 1988, ABC Books Revised Edition 2015, ABC Books
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.

Andrew Collins’s right to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.

Cover Art and Design: Rory Kee/Andrew Collins/Russell M. Hossain

Interior Layout: Storm Constantine (www.immanion-press.com)
Set in Georgia and Caslon Antique

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-9558386-0-6

ABC Books, Leigh-on-Sea Essex

UK

www.andrewcollins.com
Contents
Prelude 11
Part One—Black

Portent 17
1 The Stave of Nizar 19
2Wilmington 27
3 Ogmor the Guardian 33
4 The Unintentional Quest 41
5 The Stag’s Head 47
6FirstMatter 53
7TheHouse 59
8 The Dome of Kent 67
9IdeHill 77
10 Shenfield Common 85
11 The Green Dragon 93
12 St Anne’s Castle 101

Part Two—White

13 The Ring of Darkness 107

14TheBlueLady 117
15 The Downham Arms 127
16TheBlackenedWell 137
17 Nine Nights to Live 145
18 Back to School 153
19 Return to the Well 159
20Danbury 173
21 The Bloody Stave 179
22 The Mystic’s Gift 183
23 William’s Warning 189

Part Three—Red

24 Night of the She-wolf 199

25 The Dark Goddess 209
26 The Body of Christ 219
27 The Foul Virgin 223
28 The Chaotic Gateway 231
29 The Sister of Zosimos 237
30 Trouble at the Tree 241
31 The Flint Calling Card 245
32 Maria’s Calling 255
33TheGriffin 261
34 The Heart of the Quest 267
35 The Perfect Master 279
36UnholyBirth 285
37 The Ape Dagger 289
38 The Sword of Dardanus 297
39 The Net Closes 303
40 The Summoning 309
41Contact 319

Part Four—Birth

42 Crossed Daggers 333

438.8.8 337
44ChildofFire 347
45 A New Human Creature 353
46 Paradise Drive 357
47Resurgence 369

NotesandReferences 375
Acknowledgments
Thanks go out to Greg and Lora Little, as well as Storm Constantine and Jim
Hibbert of Immanion Press, for their help in the publication of this book; Rodney
and Joan Hale, for their continued help and support; Richard Ward, for his
valued intuition and editorial suggestions; Caroline Wise, for her memories and
contributions; Mick Staley, for his help on book publication; Gordon Service, for
extensive text suggestions; Paul Weston, for his recollections and advice;
Danielle Lainton and Russell M. Hossain, for the cover changes; Peter Bently,
for his professional editing and comments; Rory Kee, for the original cover
artwork; Grover Schrayer, for the use of the picture of an ammonium dichromate
crystal, and Cliff Martinez, for the original soundtrack of the film ‘Solaris’,
which became my own soundtrack to this remastered edition of The Black
Alchemist.

Additional thanks go out to Debbie and Yvan Cartwright, Matt Kyd and Renny
Djunaedi, Buster and Abbie Todd, Jay Druce, Catherine Hale, Graham Phillips,
Carole Young, everyone at The Leigh Times, and Bernard G.’s widow and
family. Over the years not only did Bernard produce some of the most incredible
and innovative psychic material I have ever seen, but he was also a close and
very important friend. May his soul finally rest in peace.

Andrew Collins, 21st March, 2015.

Picture credits: 31, G. Schrayer; 37 & 38, Brian Fenning/The Leigh Times; 43 &
44, Bob Ogley/Froglets Publications/The Sevenoaks Chronicle; 58, Eddie &
Anne Clark. All other pictures copyright the author. The illustration of Ogmor,
guardian of Burlough Castle, was drawn by an unknown artist. I therefore
apologise for not crediting him, and will happily rectify this in future editions of
this publication.
Groups of mourners watched solemnly as the cortege entered the crematorium
grounds. Two black stallions with feathered head plumes pulled a beautiful glass
fronted carriage, ahead of which walked an undertaker in dark suit and top hat.
Inside the carriage was a wreath-adorned coffin containing the body of one of
the most extraordinary men I had ever had the privilege to know. Bernard, a long
time friend, had died following a long, protracted illness, and today was his
funeral.
The deceased’s wife, daughter, and extended family stood together as the
pallbearers removed the coffin and carried it into the chapel appointed for the
cremation service. This was indeed a sad moment in my life. The world had lost
not just a husband, a father, a grandfather and a loyal friend to many, but
someone also with a unique gift. Bernard had the ability to glimpse what others
could not see. In modern terms he was a psychic, a clairvoyant, or a remote
viewer, but his abilities went far beyond any obvious label. He could stare into
the past, witness future things, or glimpse distant scenes, all as if they were
happening right before his eyes. It was something I had been able to witness on
countless occasions.

We had first met in 1984 after corresponding on various matters relating to Essex
landscape mysteries. Whilst attempting to unravel the identities of three wooden
knight effigies inside the church of St John the Baptist in the village of Danbury,
Bernard had written to me outlining a vivid dream he had experienced
concerning the funeral of one of these medieval knights, whose name was
William de St Clere. So detailed was the dream it not only allowed us to identity
the knight effigies in question, but it also told me Bernard was a quite
remarkable psychic.

Thereafter we worked together exploring various mysteries of the past, not just
in Essex, but also in the landscape around Glastonbury in Somerset, where his
psychic intuition suggested the St Clere family held a special interest in the quest
for the Holy Grail. It was an adventure that we were to embark upon in the
autumn of 1984, and at an ancient burial mound named Wimble Toot we were
led by the vision of a shining woman to retrieve a silver and ebony crucifix,
found concealed within the roots of an old gnarled tree.

I was elated by the results of our quest. Yet afterwards, when next we met at our
favourite haunt, The Griffin pub in Danbury, Bernard revealed that the stress of
producing so much psychic information was making him ill. His doctor had
diagnosed high blood pressure, and recommended that he take it easy. This
meant that he would not be able to continue our Grail quest (which I later went
on to complete myself).

Bernard did try and give it a rest for a while, but still his mind was filled with
images of the past. During the spring of 1985 he began experiencing vivid
dreams about ancient Egypt, in particular a subterranean world he felt existed
somewhere in the vicinity of the Great Pyramid and Sphinx monument. What he
had to say on this fascinating subject led me to begin a life-long search to find
Giza’s lost cave world, something I achieved in 2008 with the aid of
Egyptological researcher Nigel SkinnerSimpson. It was a discovery that brought
me international acclaim. Yet the original inspiration behind this quest was
Bernard’s quite profound dreams and visions, which had occurred over two
decades earlier.

There were many psychic quests instigated by Bernard’s extraordinary psychic

information, the most disturbing of which was the Black Alchemist affair.
Around the same time he had begun dreaming about the mysteries of Egypt,
Bernard glimpsed a golden treasure—a veritable Rod of Moses—manufactured
in pharaonic times and brought to England at the time of the Crusades.

Despite his doctor’s advice, this was a quest Bernard could not ignore. It brought
us into contact with the activities of an occultist we dubbed the Black Alchemist,
whose twisted brand of alchemy poisoned the very earth on which he trod. What
followed was a series of unsettling confrontations that drew us ever more into
the strange fatalistic world of this warped psychopath.

Bernard found he could link in mind with the Black Alchemist, just as the Black
Alchemist was similarly able to link with Bernard. Although this might seem
like the stuff of fantasy, today we can look for answers to this paranormal ability
in the subject of quantum entanglement. This suggests that the minds of
individuals can remain locked as one across time and space.

What happened when Bernard and I synchronised with the complex, though
somewhat macabre and quite disturbing, landscape alchemy of the Black
Alchemist affected us greatly. Whereas I strove to purge myself of this personal
intrusion by writing down everything that happened in an almost journalistic
manner, Bernard became more and more troubled by what was going on. It led
him on various occasions to say he was withdrawing from any involvement in
this sinister affair. He did eventually do just this, and thereafter we only ever met
within the safe confines of The Griffin pub, something we did through until the
mid 1990s.

The book I wrote and published on the subject, The Black Alchemist (1988),
contained a true account of what happened between 1985 and 1988. Its impact
on the world was incredible. Not only was the book a runaway success, selling
out its entire print run of 15,000 copies in just two years, but it also brought me
into contact with many people who were afterwards to play a major role in my
life. Friends, celebrities, rock stars, media contacts and future partners, had all
made initial contact after reading The Black Alchemist.

More incredibly, the Black Alchemist, as a character, took on a life of his own
outside the pages of my book. In 1991 he became a DC Comics’ super-villain
fighting the Green Arrow in a special anniversary edition of the comic of the
same name. Then in 2003 he featured as Lara Croft’s arch villain in a Tomb
Raider game, which also included an informer named Bernard, hardly a
coincidence by any stretch of the imagination.

Yet strangely, as I watched the real Bernard’s body disappearing into the chapel
that day, I was pretty sure his family had no real knowledge of the Black
Alchemist, and what kind of impact this man had had on our lives. There was a
good reason for that. Bernard had made a conscious decision not to say anything
to them about these disturbing events, knowing they would only have troubled
them immensely.

There were no links between Bernard’s death and the events described in The
Black Alchemist. He had retired from psychic questing duties many years earlier,
and we had not met for almost a decade. Despite this, I would occasionally speak
to him on the phone, keeping him abreast of new books and discoveries. I
remember ringing him one day in 2008 to tell him about our rediscovery of
Giza’s lost cave world. This must have given him great personal satisfaction in
the knowledge that he had predicted its existence as far back as the spring of
1985.

As we talked on the telephone, he had interjected to say he could ‘see’ a bird, a

hawk or falcon perhaps, guarding the entrance to the caves. His words made
sense since the cave system had been the focus during Late Dynastic times of a
local bird cult—the reason why its entrance is known today as the Tomb of the
Birds. What Bernard imparted that day turned out to be the final piece of psychic
information he was ever to give to me.

We rarely spoke about the Black Alchemist towards the end of Bernard’s life. As
far back as the early 1990s, he had flatly refused to pick up any more
information about the man or his activities, since he remained convinced that so
long as he kept linking in mind with him the affair would never be over.
Even though some psychics believe the Black Alchemist is now dead, he
remains a force to be reckoned with on a psychic level. His presence can be felt
not just at the sites on the Sussex Downs where he perfected his landscape
alchemy, but also in our dreams and nightmares. More disconcerting is the
strong conviction that family members, or close friends, are today perpetuating
the man’s warped vision of alchemy and magic.

During the preparation of this remastered edition of The Black Alchemist there
were clear indications that all is not over yet, for as you will see a fresh journey
to the Sussex Downs triggered a new episode in the saga, the fruits of which are
still to be written. What I can say is that they explain many of the unanswered
questions left behind by the original story.

Bernard is now dead, taken from this world by illness. Yet his memory lives on,
and will never be forgotten as long as the world can read the book you hold in
your hands. But be warned, this is a true story, for which reason the author
strongly advises that the reader does not attempt to replicate or recreate in any
way the events described in its pages.

To the memory of Bernard G. (1939-2010) R. I. P.

Part One Black
Portent
Spring Equinox 1985. The thud of a car door closing broke the silence of the
cold, pre-dawn air. Moments later a silhouetted human form emerged from the
vehicle’s shadow and began the slow ascent along a narrow, brick-lined path
towards the darkened churchyard.

The tall figure was worried, even a little scared. He knew only too well that the
owner of the small cottage to the left of the track possessed an accursed dog that
barked whenever visitors came by. If he awoke this wretched creature then his
clandestine presence would be discovered, and he would fail. The churchyard
had to be reached before sunrise, or the ritual could not be accomplished and he
would not come. A lifetime of dedication to the Great Work would all have been
in vain.

The thought agitated him. But the dog was nowhere to be seen, so he moved
swiftly on towards his destination.
With his discomposure mounting, the hooded man passed through the gate into
the tree-lined churchyard and walked among the few remaining gravestones
scattered about here and there. His bitter scrutiny of the sentinel-like church
betrayed his hatred and revulsion of this house of God—their god. Yet its
stillness reassured him—Christianity slept at this strange hour of the day.
The first light of the approaching dawn picked out a low rectangular block of
stone and mortar, all that remained of the church’s old nave pulled down long
ago. This would be his altar.
In readiness, he set out his occult instruments of ritual upon the uneven surface.
Untying a yellow cord from around his waist allowed his black cowled robe to
hang loosely. To one end of the cord he attached a short dagger, and to the other
he tied a crude wooden stake, which he then thrust into the soft, matted grass a
few feet in front of the stone altar.
Using the long cord as the radius of a wide circle, the cowled figure cut a ring
into the ground with the dagger’s sharp point, before shortening its length and
carving a second circle several inches inside the first. This would represent his
magic ring of protection against any unwanted psychic interference.
Slow, chilling minutes passed as the figure waited for the sun’s diffuse red orb to
show its face above the eastern horizon, and touch the ageing gravestones with
its first, finger-like rays of light.
The black-robed individual stared into the sun’s eye and watched for the precise
moment before hesitantly raising his arms above his head.
Now was the time.
Sounds in a strange guttural tone, like the hissing of a snake, issued from his
mouth, and then silence. More words followed— slow, decisive and this time in
English:

‘The First Matter has been achieved. The work is complete. By the power of
Zosimos, teacher and guide, release the divine essence. Free the spirit. Cut loose
the head from its body, sacrifice the soul and carry it through space to the centre
of centres. Then let him return to raise the head.’

At this, he reached down to the stone foundations and picked up a slim length of
slate-grey stone bearing the appearance of a spearhead and inscribed with
magical characters. As if to show some kind of allegiance with this apparently
lifeless artefact, he stared at it with an unsure smile before gripping it hard and
plunging it into the ground.

‘I seal the purpose. Now let him come. ’

The ritual was over.
The Black Alchemist had set his stage.1
1 The Stave of Nizar
Tuesday, 7th May, 1985. It was late afternoon when Bernard’s car pulled into
the car park adjoining Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire’s finest surviving
example of Norman architecture. As he locked the vehicle and made his way
through the grounds towards the entrance doorway, a sudden chill ran through
his body. Perhaps it was the cold air, he told himself, or maybe there was
another, more curious explanation.

He had been called to the area that day on business, strange in itself, since his
line of work did not usually take him beyond his home county of Essex.
However, the coincidence lay, not in this, but in the very fact that he had wanted
to visit the abbey for some months to inspect the tomb of its founder, Robert
Fitzhamon (1045-1107). A cousin of William the Conquerer, Fitzhamon had
been one of the most powerful Norman barons in Fitzhamon had been one of the
most powerful Norman barons in 1100). Fitzhamon had also been a member of
the notorious St Clere family, whose very name was synonymous with mystical
intrigue and religious heresy both in France and Britain. Bernard was tracing the
genealogy and history of Robert Fitzhamon and felt the need to inspect his tomb
at close quarters.

Yet with thoughts of Fitzhamon’s tomb put aside for one moment, Bernard
stopped to gaze up at the radiant splendour of the twelfth-century building’s
perfect state of preservation. Apparently, when King Henry VIII dissolved the
monasteries of England around the time of the Reformation, the people of
Tewkesbury came together to purchase the abbey building so that it could be
used as their parish church. In this way they guaranteed its future against the
destructive might of the king’s men, and the local stonemasons. And so, to this
day, it remains the most outstanding and complete example of a Norman abbey
church in England.

Inside, Bernard walked slowly down the central aisle towards the high altar at
the eastern end. Snippets of the abbey’s long history of monastic and parochial
devotion were caught by his psychic ears in the form of audible voices—
clairaudience, as it is known to paranormal researchers.

‘ They come at the sun’s height,’ someone proclaimed from behind him. Yet,
upon turning around, he saw that he was alone.
‘It is the sign of the Lord,’ another voice shouted from somewhere out of the
stillness of a side aisle. He looked, just in case, but, once again, no one was
there.
He was on guard, but still quite settled in mind. The atmosphere was one of
anticipation and expectancy, causing a shiver to run down his spine. This would
be no ordinary visit. Something was going to happen. Something of importance.
Robert Fitzhamon’s Gothic-styled box tomb, Bernard found, was situated in a
small chantry on the left-hand side of the high altar. However, access to it was
barred by a locked wrought iron gate and low altar rail, separating the chancel
from the nave. He stood, frustrated, staring helplessly in the tomb’s direction.
Had it been a wasted journey after all?
‘Is this your first visit to the abbey?’ an attentive voice asked from somewhere
behind him.
Bernard turned around to see a tall, bespectacled gentleman in a red robe, a
verger he decided, waiting for a reply.
He said it was, and then voiced his wish to examine the tomb of Robert
Fitzhamon. Could this be done?
The verger lowered his head with regret. ‘I’m sorry, no one is allowed beyond
the altar rail or into the chantry chapel unless prior arrangements have been
made.’
Undeterred, Bernard said he had travelled a long way to see this tomb and had
been studying Robert Fitzhamon’s family for some time. Couldn’t he just ‘nip
in’, just for a minute or two?
The robed man shook his head, but then relented. ‘Okay, I will see what the
rector has to say on the matter,’ he said, turning to walk away.
Minutes later the verger returned and, with a reserved smile, said: ‘Yes, the
rector says you can view the tomb, but only for a few minutes. Come on, you’ll
have to follow me.’
Without further word, Bernard was taken into the chancel, where the wrought
iron gate into the chantry was unlocked, leaving him alone to do as he wished.
Inside the tiny stone room, Bernard studied the badly worn tomb. It was a
disappointment, he decided. Robert Fitzhamon’s brass effigy and inscription had
long since vanished, leaving only the outline of the body carved into the top of
the huge stone matrix slab. Still, it did not matter. He had now seen it if nothing
else.
1. Tewkesbury Abbey where Bernard made contact with the spirit of St Clere
baron Robert Fitzhamon.

So what could the tomb tell him about the life and times of this powerful
Norman baron? To answer this, Bernard decided to psychometrise—that is
psychically attune—to the memorial by reaching out with his right hand until it
made contact with the cold stone.

Closing his eyes, he let his mind relax and waited patiently for some sort of
response. Moments later a stern and authoritative male voice entered his mind
and addressed him.

‘ Who are you, with knowledge of me, that stands so quiet at my resting?’ it
indignantly enquired, as if the modern-day visitor was intruding on his eternal
slumber.
It was the discarnate voice of Robert Fitzhamon. It had to be.

‘I know of your family,’ Bernard responded, hoping to gain the baron’s

confidence.
‘Do you know of the finding of the Stave of Nizar?’ Robert Fitzhamon asked. ‘It
was mine.’
‘No, what is it?’ Bernard enquired, in complete puzzlement.
‘Handed to me by a companion in France—from a Crusade, and belonged to
Nizar. Before my friend died on the battlefield he requested that I have it. My
request was that it be laid with me (upon my death). But it was taken.’
Intrigued, Bernard asked who took it, and to where.
‘The bastard sons of the half-wit Robert of Montaigne,’ came the seething reply.
‘Where, I know not.’
With his curiosity now well and truly aroused, Bernard began to ask Fitzhamon
further questions about the ‘Stave of Nizar’.
Yet none were answered. No more came from the Norman baron who had been
dead for almost 880 years. Yet the psychic communication was by no means
over as images and impressions now filled his mind.
Bernard could psychically, that is clairvoyantly, see a magnificent sight—a rod
of gold, some three to four feet tall, fashioned to look like the branch of a tree.
Spiralling its way around the shaft was a golden snake, its open-mouthed head
resting on top of the rod, and two red rubies for eyes. This, it seemed, was the
Stave of Nizar.
Accompanying the vision were a series of rapid impressions concerning the
rod’s long history. It was fashioned in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago and
had passed through many hands since that age. What’s more, Bernard now felt
its past had involved the spilling of blood, almost as if, in times of desperation, it
had been used as a bludgeon to ward off would-be attackers and thieves.
No more came to him inside the small chantry. So, with thoughts of this
desirable artefact now firmly fixed in his mind, Bernard moved back into the
nave and stood before the high altar. Did such a thing really exist? If so, where
was it today? Was it hidden? More importantly, was he meant to locate it?
The mere idea of a quest to find the Stave of Nizar appealed to his normally
restrained sense of adventure. Bernard now asked where the ‘sons of Robert of
Montaigne’, whoever they were, could have taken this rod. Contemplating an
answer, his eyes glanced up and became transfixed by the majestic beauty of the
stained glass that made up the east window.
‘Wilmington,’ a voice bellowed into his ears from over his shoulder.
Startled, Bernard twisted around quite expecting to find someone, the verger
most probably, standing behind him. But no one was there. It had been a
clairaudient voice.
Wilmington. He repeated the name over and over as he moved to a convenient
pew and sat down. What did it mean? More names began to pass through his
mind in quick succession: ‘Samson … John … William de Jumieges.’
‘Who?’ he asked himself. Only further words came in response: ‘Priors …
Wilmington … Honfleur … Gristaine … mother … France … Contaville.’
‘Explain,’ he requested. For a moment, there was no reply, but then additional
words flowed through his mind: ‘William … Paganus … church … woods …
mound.’
‘Explain,’ he insisted once more. ‘Who is speaking?’
He waited, but no answers came. Yet then, as he was about to get up and walk
away, another clairvoyant image stabbed at his mind. It was of a dark, damp
stone room, without any feeling or presence of modern-day life. This place, he
sensed, was a crypt, associated with a medieval priory. It was inside this room
that an important clue concerning the eventual destiny of the Stave of Nizar
would be found. But where was this crypt?
‘Wilmington,’ came the answer.

When he sat down in the comfort of his dining room that evening, Bernard had
been given enough time to fully digest the incredible events that had befallen
him inside Tewkesbury Abbey. Along with a few further explanatory images and
impressions he had received on the long journey back from Gloucestershire, he
now felt able to put the whole story into some kind of perspective. So, picking
up a pen, he began to scribble down his feelings on a notepad.

It was a tale initiated in ancient Egypt during the age of the pharaohs, when a
gold serpent rod of great magnificence was fashioned as a symbol of recognition
to the gods themselves. It was passed down from one high priest to the next until
the eventual collapse of this great kingdom. After this time, the ceremonial stave
was lost, before being rediscovered and viewed only as an object of curiosity and
greed, to be stolen or sold from one person to the next, and even used as a
murder weapon on occasions. Eventually, it became known as the Stave of
Nizar, after a person of this name, before falling into the hands of a French
nobleman taking part in a religious crusade somewhere in the Holy Land.

This crusader had, it seemed, brought the precious artefact back to his homeland
where it had remained in his possession until he lay mortally wounded on a
French battlefield. At this point he had entrusted the stave to his companion, the
powerful Norman baron Robert Fitzhamon, whose home was in England. He
carried it into this country where it was held as a financial asset, without
Fitzhamon ever realising its immense religious value. Upon his death, he had
requested that the rod be placed with him in his tomb. However, his last wish
was never fulfilled, as this great treasure was stolen by the ‘bastard’ sons of a
man named Robert of Montaigne and quickly entrusted into the safe keeping of
monks at a place called Wilmington Priory, which Bernard sensed was in the
southern county of Sussex.

Why the Stave of Nizar should have been given to this particular priory he could
only but guess. However, Bernard felt that the monks at the priory were French.
What is more, they had practised a somewhat unorthodox form of monastic
discipline. They attached great religious significance to the Stave of Nizar, yet
kept its presence completely secret. On ceremonial occasions it would be
brought out and paraded as a ritual object, and at such times the relatively small
community would be joined by special visitors from France. However, despite
the secrecy surrounding the monk’s guardianship of the stave, certain individuals
in very high places had become aware of its existence—a situation that had
afforded this French ‘alien house’ special immunity from outside interference by
both ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

In addition to this, Bernard’s psychic information implied that the monks’

influence had extended beyond the boundaries of the priory’s own lands to other
sacred sites around Wilmington. These, he felt sure, included a grass-covered
‘castle mound’, known as ‘Burghlee’, as well as a tiny church or chapel on a hill
enclosed by a small wood or copse. This chapel may or may not have been
synonymous with another location he had been shown where, it appeared, a man
named ‘Paganus’ had been instructed to build a small chapel by the monks of
the priory. At each of these sites the monks had conducted ceremonies using the
stave.

This, it seemed, was the web of intrigue surrounding the Stave of Nizar’s
colourful history. But what did it all mean? Why had he been given this
information?

Something inside was telling him there was more to this stave business than met
the eye. There was some sort of far reaching implication that would only become
apparent as time went on. What though, he could only but imagine. The next
step was to tell his friend, Andy Collins. See what he might make of it all.
2 Wilmington
Thursday, 9th May, 1985. Leaving my duties as a sales representative and
features writer on the Leigh Times newspaper, I decided to telephone Bernard.
Not having spoken to him for a while, I needed to confirm our meeting arranged
for the following week at our usual haunt, The Griffin pub, located in the
midEssex village of Danbury.

Driving through the streets of Leigh-on-Sea that afternoon, I glanced out across
the Thames Estuary. On a fine day you could see the North Downs of Kent, but
not today. The weather was far too misty, and it looked as if it was going to rain.

From a call box outside the main post office, I rang the psychic, who was also an
amateur historian and genealogist. We had met just over a year earlier, after our
paths had crossed whilst investigating Danbury’s medieval mysteries, which
featured the notorious St Clere family, the builders of Rosslyn Chapel in
Scotland.

I was eager to learn what weirdness Bernard had experienced in recent weeks, so
asked him what had been happening.
He revealed details of some new material he had picked up a few days earlier in
Tewkesbury Abbey, and it sounded interesting.
‘Do you know of a Sussex village called Wilmington?’ he asked, concluding his
story. ‘There’s a priory there, with a cold, damp crypt.’
At first I failed to place the name. Wilmington? Wilmington Priory? Yet then I
remembered. Of course, it was that Wilmington—the one that gave its name to
the Long Man of Wilmington. This is a famous chalk-cut hill figure of a man
approximately 230 feet in height, holding in each hand a long staff or spear,
marked in outline upon the western slopes of Windover Hill in East Sussex. No
one rightly knew its true age or significance, although some scholars believed it
to be contemporary with the Bronze Age burial mounds that line the summit of
the hill.
I had visited the Long Man of Wilmington on a couple of occasions and knew
there was a priory close to the base of the hill, which I seemed to recall
possessed a small museum. I had no idea whether it contained a crypt, but that
could easily be checked the following day in Southend Central Library.

Friday, 10th May. By the time the caretaker came around to throw everyone out
of the library, just before seven o’clock, I had been able to piece together much
of the story Bernard had been given concerning the so-called Stave of Nizar and
its eventual translation to Wilmington Priory.

The ‘Nizar’, who had seemingly given his name to the gold ceremonial staff,
turned out to be Abu Mansur al-Nizar, surnamed al-Mustapha al-Dinillah
(meaning ‘the one chosen by
2. Sketch of the Stave of Nizar from the author’s 1985 diary.

God’). He was the eldest son of a Muslim leader, or caliph (from khalifa,
meaning ‘successor’ of Muhammad) named Ma’ad al-Mustansir Billah, who
ruled as head of the Egyptian Fatimid Dynasty in the years prior to 1095.

Upon al-Mustansir’s death, a civil war had erupted between the supporters of
Nizar and those of his younger brother Ahmad, who had been proclaimed caliph
by the appointed regent Malik alAfdal. Nizar was finally caught and imprisoned
in Cairo, where he died in 1097. This left Ahmad to rule under the royal name
al-Musta’li. It was a reign that lasted just six years, from 1095 through until
1101, his demise coming shortly after the Fatimid Muslims lost Jerusalem to the
European crusading armies at the climax of the First Crusade in 1099.

It seemed reasonable to conceive of Nizar coming across an ancient Egyptian

rod of power, fashioned in the very same country in which he lived. Then, upon
his death at the hands of his brother’s supporters in 1097, the rod had been stolen
and kept by a Fatimid Muslim until the fall of Jerusalem just two years later.

Records show that Muslims held captive by the crusaders often bargained for
their lives by handing over Arab and Jewish treasures, which then found their
way back to Europe, especially France. Perhaps the Stave of Nizar had been
among them.

Turning my attentions to the next piece of the jigsaw— Robert Fitzhamon—I

found that in 1100, just one year after the completion of the First Crusade, he
was in France participating in battles to quell the baronial uprisings which had
been plaguing England’s Norman monarchs. It was during one of these
skirmishes, in support of King Henry I, that Fitzhamon had received a head
wound, leaving him with mental disorientation, a factor contributing to his
eventual death in 1107.

Once again, it was possible that one of Fitzhamon’s French companions may
have brought back the Stave of Nizar to Europe after the First Crusade. Then, as
this knight lay mortally wounded on a battlefield in France just one year later in
1100, he had bequeathed this precious item to a fighting companion.

Next, I attempted to find reference to the ‘half-wit Robert of Montaigne’ and his
apparent involvement with Wilmington Priory which, I easily confirmed, had
indeed been a French ‘alien’ house. Its mother foundation was the Benedictine
abbey of Grestain—Bernard’s ‘Gristaigne’—founded in 1050 by Herluin de
Contaville, near a place named Honfleur, on the banks of the Seine.

Following the Norman Conquest, the manor of Wilmington had been given,
along with lands in nearby Pevensey, to Herluin de Contaville’s ‘dim-witted’
son, Robert of Mortain—as the name is more popularly spelt—the half-brother
of William the Conqueror. Robert, I found, had fathered two sons—William, his
heir, who eventually became the Count of Mortain, and another son named
Nigel.

It was Robert of Mortain, the Earl of Cornwall, who had given Wilmington to
Grestain Abbey. Once in their hands, the abbey had begun to use this Sussex
coastal manor as a stop-over point for its representatives in England. Yet by the
end of the twelfth century, some sort of priory had been established here.
Nothing is known of its history until the first records of priors at Wilmington
begin appearing in ancient charters during the thirteenth century. The first
mentioned is a Master Samson, circa 1200. A Prior John appears in records for
1243, and among those that follow is a Prior William de Gymeges in 1268. All
names picked up by Bernard.

Despite the fact that the priory supported only a very small community of
monks, its influence extended to controlling cultivated lands over a fairly wide
area. As a French alien house, Wilmington Priory should have come under a
very rigid control from both ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Yet just as
Bernard had predicted, Wilmington appears to have possessed an unprecedented
diplomatic immunity. This became most noticeable at times of military unrest
between France and England. When other alien houses were generally seized by
the Crown, Wilmington seems to have been repeatedly left untouched.2

This special immunity only lasted until 1360, however, for in that year the priory
was seized by the Crown like any other French monastic house. It was again
seized in 1370, and in 1414 it was taken out of Grestain’s control all together.
After this time it passed into the hands of the Dean and Chapter of Chichester
who, for a century and a half, ran the priory as a farm and vicarage. It eventually
fell into private hands in 1565, some 30 years after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of
the Monasteries.3

The ‘castle mound’ Bernard referred to as ‘Burghlee’, which was apparently

close to Wilmington, was in fact a large grassy mound named Burlough Castle,
situated on the apex of a hill about half a mile west of Wilmington. Very little is
known about this strange mound. Some scholars believe it to be the remains of a
Norman motte and bailey. A stronger tradition suggests it was once the haunt of
the fairy folk, possibly indicating its great age and pagan usage in pre-Christian
times.

The little church, mentioned by Bernard as being set on a hill within a wooded
grove, was also located. This turned out to be the tiny parish church of
Lullington, situated on a small hillock, lost in trees, about a mile and a quarter
southwest of the priory. It measures a mere 16 feet square and has seating for
just 20 people. Some historians say it is the smallest church in England, although
this is not quite true, as what remains today is simply the chancel of a much
larger edifice that fell into decay long ago.

I could not, however, find any reference to a man named ‘Paganus’ who, Bernard
believed, was instructed by the monks of Wilmington to build a chapel in the
area. That would have to wait until we visited the area.

Bernard was certainly onto something. Despite having not found reference to a
golden rod known as the Stave of Nizar, enough circumstantial evidence existed
to suggest that the rest of his psychic information might turn out to be correct.

He seemed convinced that the Stave of Nizar existed and, for some reason, it
was up to us to locate it. He did not know where it could be found, but did know
how we might go about finding out. The key seemed to be the still unconfirmed
crypt at Wilmington Priory, where our quest now seemed destined to begin.
3 Ogmor the Guardian
Thursday, 30th May, 1985. It was a fine day in East Sussex. The sun was
shining and a coat was not needed. Inside the car park next to Wilmington
Priory, Bernard and I paused for a few minutes to enjoy some sandwiches and a
much needed cup of coffee.

A clear view of the Long Man hill figure, reclining into a hollow upon the slopes
of nearby Windover Hill, dominated our gaze whenever we glanced across the
fields to the southeast.

Nobody rightly knew what the figure represented. Some scholars believe it was
carved by the monks of the priory as a representation of Samson, the biblical
strongman who brought down the house of the Philistines by dislodging its
support pillars with his bare hands. Others see it as a representation of a pagan
horned god, or of Adam, the first man.

‘Looks like someone trying to keep open a doorway to me,’ Bernard quipped, as
he stared at the chalk-lined image through sunglasses.

I hoped I would get more sense out of him within the priory. The museum was
not all that interesting—probably because our minds were on other things—so
we moved swiftly on and soon confirmed that the priory did indeed possess a
medieval crypt. Stone steps led down into it, and it was dark, damp and lifeless,
just as Bernard said it would be.
For a while, we paced about inside, examining every dark corner of the
underground room. Bernard, however, was getting nothing. A quick decision was
needed to enable him to more easily access the site’s residual memories,
impregnated into the fabric of the walls by over 400 years of monastic devotion.
So I decided to see if he could attune better on his own.
Bernard did not argue so, handing him a notepad and pen, I stepped out into the
sunshine, sat down on the lawn and contemplated the thought of actually
discovering something as precious as the Stave of Nizar. Could we really find it,
or was it too much to expect of a psychic? Twenty minutes later my
daydreaming was interrupted by the sight of Bernard emerging out of the
darkness, a smile on his face. Lighting up a cigarette, he handed me the notepad,
which now contained a page of scribbled notes.
3. Bernard poses with the Long Man of Wilmington in the background. I read it
out aloud before even beginning to contemplate its possible significance:

Mortagne’s son. Nigel. Stave here for long time. Prior, Will’ de Gymieges. 1266?
We used [the stave] in ritual, also in countryside. Prior Will. Milton Court. Lord
of. Paganus. Small chapel in woods. We told him to build.

At this point in the text, Bernard had written: ‘What for?’ in response to the
statement about the monks making Paganus build a small chapel in the woods, at
which his hand had scribbled:

We knew of the Rod’s yesterdays. It gave us the feelings of God. We did not say of
its existence. Guilliamus de Pykard. I priori here.

The references to the Stave of Nizar needed no explanation. However, the text
indicated that it had been Robert of Mortain’s son Nigel who had gifted the stave
to the priory, and not his other son William, the heir to Robert’s estate. Again,
there was mention of a man named ‘Paganus’, apparently the lord of ‘Milton
Court’ which, I assumed, had to be somewhere near the hamlet of Milton Street,
located around half a mile from Wilmington. With this had come the name
‘Prior Will’ de Gymieges’ and a date of 1266. Records confirmed the existence
of this particular prior and yet associated him with the date 1268, which was
close enough.

After this had come the name of another prior, ‘ Guilliamus de Pykard’ or, in
English, William of Pikard. It was from this long-dead prior that the psychic
communication appeared to have come.

What this bout of useful automatic writing, one of Bernard’s many psychic
talents, had to do with our quest to find the Stave of Nizar was not made clear. A
little despondent, we decided to visit the two outlying sites where Bernard
believed the stave had been used in religious ceremonies. Perhaps one of these
might hold some clue regarding the ritual object’s final fate.

As we drove south along a narrow country lane, I kept one eye out for a signpost
that would direct us to Lullington church. I had worked out that it was situated
somewhere in the woods off to the right, so slowed down the car in anticipation.

Then a signpost appeared, but quickly vanished before I had a chance to react. It
said something about ‘To the church’, and pointed up a narrow, tree-lined path.
With cars close behind, there was no way I could stop and turn around.

‘Shall we go on to Burlough?’ Bernard offered, as I vehemently cursed our

predicament. ‘We can go back to Lullington afterwards.’

I was not happy. What if we had been meant to go to Lullington first? It could
foul up the whole quest. Anyway, it was too late to go back, so I turned right at
the next junction and headed towards Alfriston, the nearest village to Burlough
Castle.

With a little help from a countryman on a bicycle, we finally located Burlough

Castle. Leaving the car at the bottom of a farm track, the two of us strolled past
the growling dogs behind the restraints of a nearby farmhouse’s garden gate and
eventually entered a field adjacent to the ancient site.

Once in view, we could see that the mound was in fact a large wedge-shaped
plateau on the top of a ridge, about 100 yards or so in length and some 30 yards
in width. Although the plateau had been cultivated into a long strip for
agricultural purposes, tall grass and weeds still covered its banks.

Bernard and I climbed to the top of the mound, but the strong southerly winds
were so distracting we decided to move into the relative shelter of the trees and
undergrowth by a stream, which meandered its way past the base of the mound.

The psychic began to stare intently back towards the grassy bank, yet for a
moment remained silent. I noticed this but said nothing, although it was obvious
he could see something quite out of the ordinary. But what?

‘You are not going to believe this,’ he began, glancing back at me. ‘Sitting cross-
legged on the edge of that plateau is a curiouslooking dwarf. A guardian figure
or elemental of some sort. He’s looking at us and laughing.’

Questing lore speaks of the existence of ethereal thought forms, created in the
past either inadvertently by simple devotion or on purpose by priest magicians in
order to guard sacred places and hidden treasure. They may take any form—
human, animal or mythical—and a good psychic will be able to see and
communicate with them both clairaudiently (through voices) and clairvoyantly
(through visions). So what did this one look like?
4. Bernard approaches the mysterious site of Burlough Castle.

‘I would say he’s about four feet tall, with thick bushy hair and a long beard,’
Bernard said, rather hesitantly. ‘He’s wearing a leather tunic of sorts, with leather
thongs around his feet and ankles. In his hand is a wooden staff, raised upright,
and he appears to be associated with a very early period of the site’s history,
possibly Iron Age or earlier.’

He sounded like something straight out the pages of a Tolkien novel. Did he
have a name?
‘He says his name is “Ogmor”,4 and he’s laughing because we have “come up
the wrong way.” I get the impression that this plateau was once covered with a
huge turf maze, which during religious ceremonies would have to be entered
from a particular direction. It seems we inadvertently approached the site the
wrong way. So he deliberately made us leave and come down here.’
What was he doing at Burlough Castle?
‘He’s here to keep people off the mound,’ Bernard revealed, ‘and says that many
have visited the site before us.’
I felt it was time to tell the guardian figure about our quest to locate the Stave of
Nizar. Was he aware of its existence?
‘He’s now erected a great wall around himself and the entire plateau,’ Bernard
stated, still gazing into thin air. ‘When you mentioned the stave he seemed
angered, so erected a wall.’
It was obvious that he knew of this artefact, but why the sudden hostile reaction?
‘He says the monks came here and interfered with the mound for many
centuries, and he now wants me to write something down.’ Sitting with a
notepad on his lap, Bernard concentrated his mind upon the dwarf-like figure
and soon his hand began to scribble a message, which read:

They came and pierced my heart with the rod. They make signs in sky and earth.
They cause me much pain. They heed not my warnings to depart. I sorry at my
loss of strength.

By this it seemed that the monks of Wilmington had visited Burlough Castle and
carried out some kind of religious ceremony, which had involved them piercing
the ground with the stave.

‘And I feel this ritual involved the use of Hebrew words,’ Bernard added to my
summary of the situation. ‘And some kind of reverence to the sun, I think. I’m
not sure in what way.’

Yet the presence of the stave had apparently drained the site of its inherent
energies, leaving it weak and unable to function as a place of great spiritual
power. The statements ‘They came and pierced my heart’ and ‘I sorry at my loss
of strength’ implied that the guardian figure of Ogmor and Burlough Castle were
one and the same. We were, in effect, speaking to the collective personification
of the site itself!
5. Artist’s impression of Ogmor, the guardian of Burlough Castle.

Bernard decided he would walk back up the grassy bank and confront the little
man’s psychic wall.

Following the psychic, I tried to convince Ogmor we meant him no harm and if
he could help us in our quest we might be able to help him regain some of his
lost strength.

‘The wall has now been removed,’ Bernard observed, as he still stared intently at
the little figure. ‘He seems to know of our quest and says he might be able to tell
us certain things about the stave.’

Once again, I tried, via Bernard, to engage the invisible form in conversation by
asking him how long he had guarded the mound.

‘“ Since time began”, he says.’ There was a pause before Bernard spoke again.
‘Now he’s saying this place has always

been sacred to nature and surrounded by water.’

Having heard enough, I decided to try and help Ogmor regain his ‘lost strength’
by conducting a simple visualisation exercise. To achieve this I would see and
feel energies passing from my own aura into those already present at the site. In
questing lore it is understood that the human mind can create a very subtle effect
upon natural energy fields simply by visualising your intentions.

So, raising my arms, I closed my eyes and mentally pictured streams of golden
light pouring out of my body and forming into a huge spiral encircling the
mound in an ever-decreasing circle.

Bernard stood by and watched in utter amazement. With his eyes wide open, he
began to see a mass of golden light—the visual form of vibrant subtle energies—
spiralling up and encompassing the site, like a luminous tornado focused upon
Burlough Castle.

Bernard now saw the little man run into the centre of his home—its ‘heart’—and
stand with his arms and staff raised aloft, seemingly quite enamoured by what
was taking place around him.

Opening my eyes at the completion of the visualisation, I saw Bernard writing. It

was another psychic message. So, was Ogmor pleased with my actions?

Bernard handed me the scribbled message, which I read out aloud:

Do you know of the legend of Peredur? This is the Castle of the Chessboard. He
plays, loses, is told to hunt white stag in small wood. Remove head.

It was apparently our reward for having helped the guardian figure regain his
lost strength. Had we not done this, then we would probably not have been given
the message. But what did it mean?

Peredur was a character from Welsh Arthurian literature, yet other than this it
meant very little to either of us. The mention of a ‘small wood’ was, I felt sure, a
reference to the wooded grove surrounding Lullington churchyard. So I asked
whether this was correct?
Bernard nodded as he received an affirmative from Ogmor. The message implied
we were to go to Lullington and there remove a ‘head’ of some sort. Perhaps the
church’s architecture included a carved stag’s head, behind which the golden
stave lay secreted. I knew it was a wild idea, but in psychic questing you are
taught to expect the unexpected, so it might be correct.
As Ogmor appeared to have no more to say, we thanked him for his assistance
and began to retrace our steps back across the ploughed field towards the car.
Strolling across the hard, uneven earth in the bright sunlight I had a curious
thought. What if we had visited Lullington before going to Burlough Castle, as
we had originally intended to do? We would not have encountered Ogmor and
been given the clue about removing the stag’s head. Had fate, for better or
worse, intervened to make us skip Lullington and go straight to Burlough
Castle? Whatever the answer, it was a decision that almost certainly changed our
lives forever.
4 The Unintentional Quest
Ten minutes later we pulled up behind another car coming to a halt beneath the
signpost pointing the way to Lullington Church. The party left their vehicle and
acknowledged our presence before beginning the slow ascent along the narrow
path, which led through a wooded area to the small churchyard crowning the top
of the secluded hillock.

We followed close behind and, as the tiny church came into view, with its white
slatted bellcote jutting above the tree line, another party of visitors was about to
leave.

Despite their presence, I strolled casually around the church exterior looking for
any carvings of a stag’s head. None could be found, so I made my way back
across the sun-drenched churchyard.

Bernard wandered thoughtfully among the few remaining gravestones, a

concerned expression on his face. ‘I get the feeling that black magic has been
going on here,’ he revealed, grimacing.

As there was no explanation, I simply accepted his word, and felt it unconnected
with our quest to find the Stave of Nizar.
Moving away, I searched the wooded area surrounding the entire churchyard. It
revealed no clues—neither did the tiny church interior. Something was wrong.
There was definitely no stag’s head either on, or around, Lullington church, I
concluded, signing the visitors’ book and rejoining Bernard out in the open.
I found him sitting on a wooden bench close to the western edge of the
churchyard, waiting for an opportunity to better attune to the site.
Visitors came and went as Bernard sat in the shade, complaining of a growing
headache. A couple of times he got up to study a clump of stone and mortar
foundations in the centre of the encloseds churchyard. It seemed to be the last
remnants of the old church nave, pulled down and removed long ago.
Inquisitive, I asked him what he was doing.
‘I keep getting the feeling there’s something down there, by those foundations,’
he said, getting up again to look at the block of stone and mortar, about five feet
square and around three feet in height. ‘It’s nothing definite. Only vague stuff,
really,’ he offered, sitting back down and rubbing his head once more.
6.
Bernard closing
the door of
Lullington church.

Eventually, the final group of visitors left, giving us the site to ourselves for the
first time.
Taking advantage of the situation, I walked briskly into the church and knelt
down in front of the altar, leaving the door open so that Bernard could see what I
was doing. Perhaps he might be able to work better on his own.
Closing my eyes, I tried mentally to open up to the site and ask for help with our
quest. Could anyone tell us why we had been led here?
For five minutes I contemplated the situation, hoping Bernard would now be
given some sort of message. Suddenly, there were footsteps behind me.
‘Come on. Let’s go,’ Bernard said, his voice echoing as he stood in the doorway.
‘There’s another group of visitors coming up the path, but I think I know now
what’s going on. You’d better take this.’
Turning around, I took hold of a muddy length of polished stone about eight
inches long, blue-grey in colour, and clearly shaped to look like a spearhead.
Along two of its three faces were lines of what appeared to be magical symbols.
Where did this come from?
‘By the stone foundations, over there,’ he said, nodding his head towards the
clump of stone and mortar, some fifteen or so yards away.
‘After you knelt down and started attuning I appeared to receive a boost of
energy. It allowed me to pinpoint exactly where it was hidden. I found it just
below the earth on one side.’
He stopped to touch and rub his forehead. ‘Come on, let’s go. I don’t feel very
well.’
7. Bernard at the foundations holding the spearhead.

Was the person, or persons, responsible for burying the stone spearhead also
responsible for the ‘black magic’ he felt was going on here?

‘Yes, but I’ll tell you what else I picked up when we get away from here.’

Hold on. There was no way I was going to leave this place until he had shown
me exactly where the spearhead was found.
Bernard reluctantly agreed, and so, only after he had posed at the spot for several
photos did we finally leave, having been in the churchyard for something like an
hour.
‘I really don’t feel very well,’ Bernard complained, as we began the short drive
back to Wilmington Priory.
I suggested he let me know if he wanted to be sick.
Five minutes down the road he asked me to stop the car. As I jammed on the
brakes, he opened the door, leapt out quickly and vomited repeatedly on the
roadside.
I felt somewhat guilty. It was my fault he was in this state. We should have left
straight away, as he had requested, and not remained there to take unnecessary
photographs. I also realised we should have carried out some kind of protection
ritual. This would have strengthened his aura and provided the psychic with
adequate protection against any external influences of an undesirable nature.
As Bernard walked back to the car, and the journey continued, I realised
something of significance. The stone spearhead Bernard had discovered was
quite obviously the ‘head’ that Ogmor had told us to find and remove. It was not
a stag’s head, but a spearhead. So we were meant to have found it. Yet for what
reason?
The answer seemed to lie in the fact that the spearhead had been placed in the
ground as some kind of fixing marker to, in some way, seal the intentions of an
occult ritual—the ‘black magic’ Bernard had picked up on as soon as we had
arrived. Yet its presence had left a rather nasty aftertaste at Lullington, the reason
why Ogmor wanted us to remove this ritually charged artefact.
Yet how did all this relate to the legend of Peredur, the Castle of the Chessboard
and the removal of the stag’s head? And what about our quest to find the Stave
of Nizar? That morning we had journeyed to the Sussex Downs in an attempt to
locate an ancient Egyptian ceremonial staff possessed by the monks of
Wilmington Priory. Instead, we had ended up getting involved in a psychic quest
to remove a stone object from a secluded churchyard.
None of this made sense. Not yet, at least.

Back at the priory Bernard strolled off to clean himself up. When he returned I
made him go through an aura-building visualisation in an attempt to help him
regain some of his lost vital energy. It seemed to do the trick, and so, sitting on
the grass in the late afternoon sun, he finally revealed what had happened as his
hand had made contact with the inscribed stone spearhead.

‘It was placed there,’ he started, ‘by just one man, working alone. And done as
part of a ritual of some sort, when the sun was low. I could see shadows being
cast across the churchyard.

‘The person who put it there, he was quite tall, and wore a black cowled robe. Its
floppy hood concealing his face.’
8. The Lullington stone spearhead at Wilmington Priory.

What else did he see?

‘He used the stone foundations as some kind of makeshift altar, I would say. And
built a magic circle using a dagger and a yellow cord that he took from around
his waste.
‘It was at this point that the spearhead was left. Sealing and intensifying the
ritual’s purpose.’
But why do this at Lullington?
Bernard shook his head. ‘No idea. All I know is that it left a nasty taste at the
place.’ He paused before adding: ‘I get the feeling this person’s into some pretty
dark practices.’
When did all this occur? Was it recent?
‘Some time ago, I should think,’ was all he could say.
‘Can we go now?’ he asked, clearly wanting to leave the area. ‘I think we’ve had
enough fun for one day, don’t you?’ He stood up and began to make his way
back to the car. I followed behind.
Reluctantly, I had to accept that our questing activities really were over for the
day. There was always the chance we could return at some point to continue the
search for the Stave of Nizar.
That was if he could face coming back.
‘Maybe,’ was the only word he could muster.
5 The Stag’s Head
Saturday, 1st June, 1985. A howling wind tore violently through a copse of tall,
spindly trees on top of the mound-like hillock on which Bernard now found
himself in a state of confusion and fear. The pitch black helped conceal the
location. There was a clearing and it looked like Lullington again, although he
could not be sure.

Glancing towards the ground, his eyes beheld a disturbing sight—hundreds of

black scavenger birds, rooks it seemed, desperately flapping their wings in a
state of chaotic frenzy, unable to fly. Then an even more obscene sight greeted
him— three silhouetted figures in black cowled robes stood silent and motionless
in the centre of the clearing. In the hands of the middle figure was a huge, black
Calvary cross, some six feet in height, held before him as if to mock and mimic
the very symbol of the Christian faith.

The whole scene reeked of evil and Bernard was not going to stay. He had to
return to the security and protection of his home before he was drawn too deeply
into this macabre ritual. His mind’s eye lifted from the mound before darkness
enveloped him.

Twisting and turning in his sleep, Bernard regained consciousness and opened
his eyes. The more familiar surroundings of the bedroom calmed him. Yet the
imagery and feelings of the curious dream were too strong to ignore. He would
only be drawn back—back to that place. No, he could not return to sleep. He
would have to get up. It was the only way.

Trying not to wake his wife, he slid out of bed and quietly left the room.
Downstairs, he lit a cigarette and put the kettle on for a cup of coffee. His nerves
needed calming, he told himself.

Where was this mound he had witnessed? He sensed it was situated within a
copse of tall, spindly trees. It felt like Lullington. But he had seen no church. So
was it there?

Something told him that the disturbing sight of the black scavenger birds was a
clue. They were rooks, he was sure of it, and the mound’s name was the
Rookery. Yes, the Rookery. That was it. Perhaps Andy would be able to find it.
Pouring out the boiling water, he thought about the three men in the black
cowled robes. Who were they? Was one of them the cowled figure he had seen
planting the stone spearhead in Lullington churchyard? If so, who were the other
two? He could provide no answers. In fact, he was not even sure if he had
witnessed a real event, or whether the dream was symbolic—a portent perhaps
of things to come.

Baffled, tired and confused, Bernard stubbed out his cigarette and scribbled
down a few notes, before finishing his coffee and tiptoeing back upstairs.
Climbing into bed, he noted the time. It was 4.25 am.

Tuesday, 4th June. It was now five days since Bernard had discovered the
inscribed stone spearhead, which I had easily identified as a piece of grey shale,
naturally polished by the actions of the sea, and picked up most probably on a
beach somewhere in the south of England. Yet the meaning of its unique magical
symbols eluded me. Nowhere had I been able to find any similar characters used
in occult practices. However, somebody would surely recognise them. But who?

I had an idea. If anyone could decipher them, it would be Nigel Pennick, the
Cambridge-based author of a number of books on ancient mysteries and pagan
traditions. Nigel had been studying magical alphabets for many years, so perhaps
he had come across similar symbols on his travels.

From a call box I briefly explained to Nigel what had happened and he agreed to
see me later that day.
Within the hour I was travelling on the M11 motorway towards the university
city of Cambridge with the precious artefact by my side.

The bearded author, who bore the distinct likeness of a Victorian scholar, sat in
his cramped study listening patiently as I related the extraordinary tale of how
the spearhead had come into my possession. Prudence Jones, a flame-haired
woman, whose speciality was Norse and Teutonic pagan mysteries, joined us for
the discussion.

I am not sure whether either of them actually believed the story. However, both
studied the stone spearhead and attempted to associate its strange symbols with
known magical alphabets.

So, were they familiar?

‘I’m not sure,’ was Nigel’s initial response to my pressing question. After
stroking his long beard, he pulled a small booklet, one of his own, towards him.
‘Some of the characters seem to resemble certain letters in a Bardic alphabet
adopted by the pseudo-Druids of the eighteenth century. They probably derive
from a much older written language of British origin.

9. The Lullington spearhead with its carved symbols underneath.

‘Yet not enough of the characters match to allow any kind of translation,’ he
admitted, reaching for some notepaper. ‘However, we shall see what we have.’

I waited expectantly as Nigel jotted down peculiar-looking letters between a few

broken lines, where the character could not be interpreted, almost like a game of
hangman. Yet, in conclusion, none of it made sense. Only a few letters matched,
no real words.
I felt a little disappointed, and Nigel seemed concerned. He kept referring to a
book he possessed. It mentioned many of the sites I had spoken about.
Eventually, his curiosity overtook him and he left the room in search of the book
in question. Minutes later he returned clutching a copy of The Wilmington Giant,
written by historical writer Rodney Castleden and published two years earlier.

‘Here it is,’ he said, beginning to flick through its pages. ‘The book is about the
mysteries surrounding the Long Man of Wilmington, and I’m sure it mentions
Lullington church.’

I looked on patiently as he scanned its index for any references relevant to our
debate.
‘Ah, here we are,’ he announced, handing me the book. ‘Lots of entries for
Lullington and Burlough Castle.’
Most of them were in one particular chapter, appropriately entitled ‘The Quest’.
It began with a brief history of Wilmington Priory, which, I found, included an
account of its rather unorthodox religious history.
Yet it was Rodney Castleden’s reference to an extraordinary article entitled ‘The
Long Man of Wilmington’, published in 1932 within the Sussex County
Magazine, that really took my attention. Written by a historian named S. F.
Annett, it linked the landscape around Wilmington with an episode in the Welsh
medieval Grail romance named Peredur—in particular the hero’s visit to the
Castle of the Chessboard.
According to Annett, Peredur, while on a quest comes upon the Castle of the
Chessboard, also known as the Castle of Wonders, which is devoid of any
inhabitants. Here he is challenged to a game of chess by a board able to play by
itself. Peredur plays, loses, and in a fit of rage throws the chessboard into a
nearby ‘river’. A maiden then appears who tells Peredur to make good his injury
by going to a ‘nearby wood’ and beheading a white stag (Annett specifies a
‘white hart’) that frequents the place.
The Welsh hero then hunts, kills and beheads the stag, following which a
mysterious knight appears who seizes the head and carries it off. As punishment
for his failure, Peredur is dispatched to a mound ‘beneath which is a carved man’
and, once there, recites a spell. This triggers the appearance of a huge ‘black
man’, ready to do battle. The hero defeats this spectral figure, who disappears
back into the mound. Even more remarkable is Annett’s suggestion that the
Castle of the Chessboard is, as Ogmor had implied, Burlough Castle, while the
‘nearby wood’, where Peredur hunts, kills and beheads the white stag, is the
wooded grove surrounding Lullington church!
Why the author of this article should have wished to link a specific area of East
Sussex with an episode in a medieval Grail romance seemed a complete mystery.
Perhaps Annett had been a keen admirer of the Peredur story and so came to see
some kind of mythical association with the area in which he lived (the medieval
city of Winchester in neighbouring Hampshire features in Grail romances).
With all this in mind, had Annett been inspired to write his article based on some
ancient mythical association between Lullington and a white stag? If so, had
Bernard, through his communication with Ogmor, picked up on this same
geomythical theme? Alternatively, had Bernard simply picked up on Annett’s
own thoughts on the matter?
More pressingly, had the sinister, black cowled figure seen by Bernard burying
the spearhead in Lullington churchyard deliberately chosen this site because he
himself had read Annett’s 1932 article (or indeed Rodney Castleden’s book The
Wilmington Giant)? Perhaps he had seen the reference to the beheading of the
white stag and the releasing of a ‘black man’, and decided to use the sites
involved because of their association with the Peredur story. Had he substituted
a spearhead for a stag’s head for this very reason? Curiously, the name ‘Peredur’
is said by some scholars to mean ‘steel spear’,5 something that might well have
been known to the occultist responsible for concealing the spearhead.
All this brought to mind a more worrying implication. In the Peredur story, the
hero beheads a white stag. A mysterious knight then appears who seizes the head
and carries it off. Could the cowled occultist have set up his dark ritual in the full
belief that, by some strange quirk of fate, someone, i.e. us, would come along
and, in similar with the ‘mysterious knight’ of the tale, make off with the ‘head’?
Did this in turn trigger the appearance of the ‘black man’ from the mound, like
some kind of dark apparition rising from the grave? It was an eerie thought, but
for some reason it made sense.
The index to Rodney Castleden’s book showed that on page 45 there was a
reference to a place called the Rookery in the hamlet of Milton Street. Turning to
the page in question, I found it to be the location of Bernard’s disturbing
nightmare. It was described as a ‘strange wooded mound’ just south of Burlough
Castle.
Like Burlough, very little is known about the Rookery’s age and past usage.
Some local historians believe it to be the site of a small chapel built in 1315
under the direction of the prior of Wilmington by a man named Paganus de
Capella, lord of Milton Court, on whose estate the mound was situated.
Formerly, the curious hillock had been a rookery, hence its name, although the
birds had departed when a past owner of Milton Court had decided to chop down
the trees. New ones now grew on the spot, although the rooks have never
returned.
What had seemed like the simple retrieval of a charged ritual artefact, employed
as a fixing marker by some shady occultist, was now taking on a much more
complex role. Just who was this man, and why had our paths crossed? Whatever
the answer, a link had been forged, and this might now prove difficult to break.
6 First Matter
Monday, 10th June. In the busy, but somewhat familiar surroundings of The
Griffin pub in Danbury, where Bernard and I met to discuss our questing
activities, the psychic joined me clasping two pints of beer, bitter for me and
Guinness for him. It was our first get together since the visit to Lullington the
previous month.

After only a short while, our conversation turned to the disturbing events of that
fateful day and, hoping he might psychometrise the stone spearhead, I brought
out and placed the offending object on the table before us. The last time Bernard
had touched it in Lullington churchyard, he had picked up a considerable amount
about the mysterious occultist who had concealed it as part of some dark ritual.
It had also made Bernard physically sick. Even though I had since doused the
spearhead with holy water to dissipate its ritualistic charge, I hoped it still
retained enough residual energy for him to be able to tell me a little more about
the man behind its concealment, that’s if he was up for it, of course.

A little reluctantly, and with some hesitation, Bernard accepted my request. So

after rolling the stone spearhead around in his fingers for a minute or two, he
looked up and sighed. ‘Well, it still retains a mild negative feel about it. Do you
want any scribbles?’ he asked, pulling a notepad across the table. ‘Scribbles’ was
his term for automatic writing inspired by a mental connection with an object or
chosen subject.

Naturally I did, so handed him a pen and waited for a response. Sitting quietly
amid the hustle and bustle of the comfortable, yet noisy pub surrounds, he
cleared his mind and waited. A few moments later words were scrawled, almost
involuntary, across the notepaper. I read them upside down:

Great magistry not correct. Re-work. Fuse.

The words made no sense, but at least a link had been made. I asked him to see if
he could find out when the ritual had taken place at Lullington.

‘1985’, was the reply.

1985? This was a total surprise to me. I assumed that the spearhead had been
planted sometime in the past. I had not banked on the perpetrator still being
around, out there somewhere right now. My next question was inevitable: who
carried out this ritual?
Bernard’s hand wrote once more:

Magister magnus in igne. White stone not correct. Re-work. Re-fuse. Re-live.
Heat vessel hot. Black substance is right.

Yes, but who put it there?

His hand responded with more words.

It comes. Use. Skulls. Black blood. Dying into flame. Relive. Re-birth. Soul.
Kalsination is good. Black. Relive. Bring to life. Zozzimoz. Place. Re-work. Re-
live. Heat.

It was still not an answer. I wanted to know who buried the spearhead?
His hand scribbled again.
Enclosed power. Worked alone in house. Dark. Heat. Relight flame. Sulphur.

That was it. Bernard got no more from the psychically-retrieved artefact. Putting
it down, he lit a cigarette before swallowing a mouthful of Guinness. ‘Well,
whoever it was who planted this spearhead, they are strong in mind and quite
capable of blocking out anyone who tries to attune to them, or their home.’

He stopped to crystallise his thoughts. ‘As I was writing I could see a man in a
darkened room. Around him were old benches, skulls, things being burnt in glass
bottles and more black birds.’

More black birds? What, in the room?

‘No, I think it was a symbolic image to show me he’s surrounded by very chaotic
energies and emanations, for some reason.’
Large black birds—rooks, crows and ravens—can be seen as omens of death and
misfortune. Often they are not good symbols at all. Yet the rest of the imagery
and automatic writing seemed to indicate that our occultist friend was an
alchemist. This is someone who, through complex and tedious magical
operations and experiments, attempts to achieve an alchemical transmutation—
the changing of base matter into a pure state, usually base metal into gold.
Words and statements such as ‘Dying into the flame’, ‘Bring to life’, ‘Heat’ and
‘sulphur’ all seemed to confirm this fact. The man was into alchemy which
concerned, not only the transmutation of base matter into a pure state, but also
the transformation of the alchemist’s own ‘base’ soul into a higher state of
perfection in order to achieve immortality.
‘That may be so,’ Bernard admitted. ‘Yet whatever this man is into, he is
warping and distorting the process to his own ends, hence the bad taste he left
behind in Lullington churchyard.’
But who was he? Where did he live? And how was he connected with us?
‘I’m not sure,’ Bernard said, hesitantly. ‘But I get the feeling that when he finds
out his spearhead is missing, he’ll plant another one.’
At the same place?
‘Very possibly, yes. I also get the feeling we have not seen the last of him.’

On arrival home I scanned my bookshelves for anything on alchemy. The name

‘Zozzimoz’, picked up by Bernard, was a reference to Zosimos of Panopolis, an
influential alchemist, writer and visionary who lived around the year AD 300 in
Panopolis—the modern city of Akhmim—in Upper Egypt. For him the roots of
alchemy went back to the fall of the angels from heaven, in particular the story
told in a Judaic work known as the book of Enoch, the oldest fragments of which
were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here so-called Watchers, or ‘daimons’
as Zosimos calls them, sleep with the Daughters of Men to produce giant
offspring known as Nephilim, a story told also in the book of Genesis. Yet in the
book of Enoch, the Watchers are punished not just for transgressing the laws of
heaven, which forbade contact with mortal kind, but also for revealing to their
wives the arts and sciences of heaven, including, so Zosimos believed, the
secrets of alchemy.6

Zosimos is remembered for a series of highly symbolic dream visions involving

the ritual sacrifice of the alchemist. These were thought to contain the ultimate
keys to bodily transformation, leading to the release of the soul or ‘divine spark’
through salvation at the point of death. This was in order to become a free spirit
at one with God in heaven.

From the automatic writing Bernard had received that evening, it looked as if our
alchemist friend had been attempting to achieve what is known in alchemy as the
First Matter or Blackening, called also the Negredo, Black Crow, Crow’s Head,
or Black Man. It is a stage in the transmutation reached—if using Zosimos’s
dream visions—by mixing blood, flesh and bones with sulphur and then heating
them in a bowl called the ‘bath of rebirth’ in order to attain a black substance.
This is re-heated, or calcined—Bernard had picked up the word ‘Kalsination’—
until the whole thing becomes a powder. Then, after further liquid is added, the
heating is continued for one whole year before the resulting mess is mixed with
the alchemist’s own moisture. It is then slowly calcined once more until the
divine spark is seen to be released from the mixture as a glowing form.

I was pretty sure that the alchemist had chosen Lullington for his ritual because
of its association with the episode in the Peredur story concerning the beheading
of the white stag. In Zosimos’ dream visions the cutting off of the alchemist’s
head symbolises the extraction of his soul in readiness for rebirth.

Also in alchemy, and directly relevant here, is the fact that a stag represents the
soul of the alchemist. Therefore, in alchemical terms a sacred site with a
tradition associated with the severing of a stag’s head might be seen as an ideal
place to seek rebirth. By substituting the severed head of the Zosimos dream
vision with a spearhead the black cowled alchemist was able to fix the intentions
of his magical ritual.

Once the spearhead at Lullington had been retrieved—an act reflected in the
removal of the stag’s head in the Peredur story—it signaled the achievement of
the First Matter stage in the alchemist’s transmutation. This clever combination
of ancient alchemy and landscape mysteries—what might be called landscape
alchemy—would then have had a knock on effect of triggering into action the
next part of the Peredur story, in which the ‘black man’ rises from a mound,
beneath which, the account tells us, is ‘a carved man’, an allusion most assuredly
to the Long Man of Wilmington, which lies on the slopes of nearby Windover
Hill.

Given all this careful planning, our removal of the spearhead—symbolic of the
knight stealing the stag’s head—was either extremely fortuitous for the
alchemist, or he in some way ‘engineered’ us to play out this fatalistic role.
Either way, we had played right into his hands.

So what were we to do next? Bernard had temporarily lost interest in the quest to
find the Stave of Nizar and wanted only to forget the whole episode. Yet he
retained the feeling that the Black Alchemist, as we had begun to call him,
would plant another spearhead once he realised the original one was missing.
More disconcerting, perhaps, was the likelihood that at some point in the future,
our paths would again cross. For the moment, though, all Bernard hoped was
that he was wrong.
7 The House
Tuesday, 25th June, 1985. In front of them lay their destination—a Victorian,
two-storey, red-brick terraced house with double-bay windows either side of a
recessed green front door. Black-painted, wrought iron railings held back an
unruly privet hedge that divided the kerb from an overgrown garden of sorts.
There was no gate, only an opening onto a path of chequered red and black tiles
leading up to the doorstep, some four to six paces from the road.

Bernard, Andy and their two companions stared with definite apprehension at
the uninspiring building. It hardly seemed like the magical stronghold of a
warped Black Alchemist who, only the previous month, had caused them so
much anguish in Lullington churchyard. And yet, as had been predicted, he had
now gone too far. His own sickening brand of warped magic had rebounded on
him, destroying both his mind and body, and leaving his home an uncontrollable
psychic mess. Only now would they be able to uncover his true identity. That
was, if they could combat the psychic attack that would surely result from their
entry into this empty building.

Hesitantly, the four walked up to the front porch. Glancing around to make sure
no one was watching, Andy turned the door knob. As expected, the door swung
open. Swiftly, they stepped into the hallway.

Everywhere was in a terrible state of disrepair with paint and wallpaper peeling
off the walls to reveal damp and mould. Surely all of this could not have
happened in the past few days. He must have lived in this squalor even before his
death, Bernard told himself, as they moved along the passageway.

‘The whole place is completely saturated in negative energy,’ the psychic

revealed to the rest of the group, as they pushed open each door on the ground
floor.

The party then stopped and stared in absolute amazement at the scene in a room
off to the left of the hallway. Books, shelves, the contents of open cupboards and
broken ornaments lay strewn across the floor.

Yet then a strange, unnerving sound reached Bernard’s ears, a low vibratory
drone that appeared to combine more than one tone. It filled the air and
gradually grew with intensity. Turning around, an extraordinary sight greeted
them—several balls of electric-blue light, about the size of footballs, hung
motionless a few feet above the ground at the far end of the room. They were,
Bernard felt, in some way linked with the peculiar humming noise, for they were
growing in brightness each time the sound increased. But what were they?

‘Manifestations of imbalanced psychic energy,’ he announced, after being passed

the answer from an unseen source. ‘They will have to be dealt with, and fast.’

‘A Christian banishment,’ someone shouted, as Andy quickly bent down and

picked up a length of scrap wood, which he snapped in two and brought together
to form the sign of the Cross. The others, upon realising what he was doing,
likewise constructed crude wooden crosses, which were held out between them
and the visible manifestations.

‘I command thee in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to leave
this place,’ Andy shouted sternly. Nothing happened. ‘I command thee in the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to leave this place,’ he repeated,
but still nothing happened. Andy gave the command several more times before
the balls of light eventually started to fade. It looked like they were winning.

Suddenly, a light bulb exploded overhead, sending everyone scurrying for cover.
Luckily, no one was hurt. But then another bulb exploded in a separate room.
Then another, and another. The dissipation of the psychic energy was somehow
disturbing the house’s electrical circuit. Odd cracking sounds within the room
completed the eerie spectacle, which was by now unsettling each and every
member of the group. Never had they seen anything like this before.

With the glowing orbs out of the way, yet with the low humming sound still
detectable, they quickly left the room and decided to go upstairs to the first floor,
where he had practised his dangerous brand of magic and alchemy.

The doors on the landing were systematically pushed open to reveal further
rooms in a state of chaotic disarray. Everywhere personal effects of every kind
littered the floor. He had certainly made a good job of wrecking the house before
his death, Bernard thought. But for what reason? Had he gone mad?

But then an odd creaking noise begged their attention. Turning around, they
beheld a disconcerting sight: a door leading into one of the rooms at the end of
the landing was bulging outwards, as if something of immense strength was
pushing it from the inside. But no one else was in the house. So what lay behind
that door?

A powerful boot by Andy not only stopped the unnatural bulging, it also sent the
door flying onto the floor inside the room. And the scene inside was simply
bizarre—ancient leather and skin-bound books of all sizes lay scattered across
the filthy carpet, their covers and pages opening, shutting and flapping about
completely of their own accord.

‘I baptise you in the name of Jesus Christ,’ one of the group bellowed out, as
Bernard turned around to see him grabbing two forks, all he could find suitable
to make the sign of the Cross.

And then darkness …

Bernard awoke from his vivid nightmare and was almost sick. To make sure he
did not lapse back into the same imagery, he sat up in bed. The time, he noticed,
was 4.25 am.

His head could not take any more. Yet questions begging answers already
danced around his mind. What the hell was going on? Why had he experienced
such a thing? And what did it mean? Was the Black Alchemist really dead?

He did not want to know. The ill effects he experienced following the discovery
of the inscribed stone spearhead at Lullington had been enough. He did not want
any more trouble— especially the sort of hassle implied by the unnerving dream.
And what was he to tell Andy? He did not like it one little bit.

Even though Bernard wanted to disown them, psychic impressions now began to
fill his mind. The Black Alchemist was still alive. The dream had been a
symbolic representation of things to come, a portent perhaps. For it seemed the
man was going too far in what he was up to on a magical level and, as a
consequence, would eventually destroy himself.

Tired, Bernard looked across at his wife, still asleep, and decided to try and get
some rest himself. Hopefully, this time his dreams would not be tainted, he
muttered to himself, as he slid down into the sheets and closed his eyes.

Later that morning Bernard paused from his chores at work to consider the
implications of the disturbing nightmare experienced overnight. Was he to tell
Andy or not? If he did, then he would only want him to pick up further psychic
information about the matter—like the man’s name, address and telephone
number for starters. He would then rush off to find the house, wherever it was.

Sussex.
The thought came to him as if in answer to that last question. In fact, to be more
precise, a seaside town somewhere on the Sussex coast. Which one though, he
was not told. This was where they would find the house seen in the dream. So at
least it existed.
On the other hand, if he did not tell Andy, then the memory of the nightmare
would only play on his mind for weeks, and what if it was to come true and the
Black Alchemist really did destroy himself?

Monday, 8th July. Having mentioned the dream to Andy the next time they had
met, Bernard wanted now to write the whole thing down and get it off to the
psychic researcher. So after some days of hesitation, he finally got a chance to
record the full contents of the sickening nightmare.

Retiring to the comfort of the dining room, Bernard pulled out a chair and sat
down at the table, his cigarettes and notepad in front of him. Picking up a pen, he
wrote first the date before commencing the letter with a brief outline of a recent
dream he had experienced concerning the Stave of Nizar.7 Only after this did he
move onto the dream about the Black Alchemist’s house.

After confirming the date it occurred, he paused for a moment to recall the
nightmare. Bringing this to mind, he began to scribble down what he could
remember:

… red-brick Victorian style. Double-bayed, at least downstairs. It is quite close

to the road. Approx 4/6 paces. Front is black railings and old privet hedge. Path
to door is black and red tiles. Front door is green.

He stopped writing. It would be far easier just to sketch the house. A rough
drawing soon appeared below his written words. He then resumed his letter.

We entered hallway. No one let us in??? The whole house is totally saturated
with negative energy.

At that moment he felt a sudden headache come on. Attuning to the Black
Alchemist’s house was opening up a telepathic link with the man’s unbalanced
mind. He would have to take things more slowly. ‘I’m getting a headache’, he
wrote, before continuing his account of the dream:

One room downstairs—on left—was in very bad state. Books, shelves, contents
of cupboards, ornaments, etc., all strewn over floor.

10. Bernard’s sketch of the Black Alchemist’s house in Eastbourne following a

powerful dream in June 1985 (see Notes and References to
compare this image with a very similar house noted in the town).

He stopped again. Something was happening. Not only did he now have a
headache, but he could also feel and see his handwriting becoming more fluent
and illegible, almost as if he was about to launch into a bout of automatic
writing. Some exterior force, associated with the Black Alchemist, appeared to
be influencing him. He decided to stop for a while—make a cup of coffee, have
a cigarette and return later, see what happened then.

Twenty minutes later he sat down to resume his dream account. Everything went
without a hitch for the next few lines. Yet the headache then returned and, in
place of the memory of the empty house in a state of chaotic mayhem, Bernard
perceived the clairvoyant image of a man—seemingly the Black Alchemist
himself—working alone in a darkened room and apparently aware of the
intruder invading his privacy.

Leaving the account of the dream, Bernard began to write down his new feelings
and impressions:

Someone knows of my presence now. Man in back room. In large room. Benches,
bottles, sulphur, books, Bunsen burners, glass.

Then came his first clear picture of the man:

Tall. Brown sweater. No sleeves. Grey trousers. Short grey hair. Close cropped.
Can’t get name. He’s looking round … at me. Something being thrown. Powder
from crucible …

He flinched backwards with a sudden stabbing pain in his head. It broke the
contact between the two minds. He felt weak and had to stop. The powder
thrown at him was some sort of ash, he decided—something the man used to
dissipate unwanted psychic influences.

The room itself was set out like a kind of homemade laboratory, with bottles and
apparatus strewn about all over the place. Bernard believed his presence in the
house was actually felt by the Black Alchemist, almost as if the man had realised
he was no longer alone.

Another break was in order. So, after more coffee, more cigarettes and a few
mental diversions, he settled down at his dining room table for the third time that
evening.

‘ I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get this finished,’ he recorded, before
quickly completing his account of the dream.
This time there were no further interruptions, and with the details of the house
now out of the way, Bernard ended the difficult letter with some pertinent
feelings concerning the whole Black Alchemist affair—points that he was not at
all happy about:

I don’t know what to make of all this. I do not like it at all. The man can
obviously ‘pick up’ the interference, and I hope he doesn’t track the source— me.
General impressions are that he is, I feel, an academic. Used to working on his
own. Probably holds a position of trust, in a quiet environment, i.e. library,
college, etc.

Has access to equipment and books. Is working on his own and living on his
own.
Has enough knowledge to ‘block’ his name and address, but he is going too far
in what he’s into. Almost, no, most certainly an obsession of re-working ancient
texts. It will be his downfall. He is not heeding the signs of imbalance. The
energies he is building will destroy him.
I will not attempt a name and will not attempt the address. It is too dangerous for
me at the moment. Any strange occurrences and I will ring you immediately.

I received the disturbing letter, and absorbed its contents, fully expecting that
something untoward would now happen. But nothing did. In the months that
followed, only one—rather vital— piece of information was added to our
knowledge of the Black Alchemist. His two-storey, terraced house—seen by
Bernard during his extraordinary dream—was located in Eastbourne,8 a seaside
town in East Sussex, just five miles southeast of the secluded, hilltop church of
Lullington, where it had all begun one hot summer’s day in May 1985.
8 The Dome of Kent
Saturday, 3rd May 1986. The first red glow of the coming dawn picked out the
silhouetted image of a lone church, perched high on a tree-lined hill. Dozens of
large black birds— scavengers—were circling the Christian edifice in an
anticlockwise motion. They were gliding, climbing and swooping, but never
landing.

The sight was out of place. Something untoward was happening at the church.
The birds were symbolic representations of chaotic dark energies, building up
and originating from a point somewhere within this house of God.

Bernard awoke that morning from an extraordinary dream. It had been vivid and
quite disturbing. Although he had no idea of the church’s location, he felt sure
something untoward was taking place there. As to why he should have been
granted a glimpse of this scene, he was not sure. For the moment, he decided to
forget the matter and carry on with his usual Saturday chores—starting with
taking his wife to the shopping mall.

Despite trying to ignore the stark contents of the slightly unnerving dream, a
clear view of the hilltop church stayed with him for the rest of the day.

By early evening the imagery had become so strong he decided to retire to the
relative peace of the dining room. Here he would sit and concentrate on the
haunting image, see what might come to him. Quite obviously, there was a
church somewhere exuding dark, unwelcoming energies strong enough for him
to pick up and register as a psychic. So could he determine its location?

Intrigued, but not over enamoured by the prospect, Bernard closed his eyes. He
could still see the scavenger birds circling the church, but then he began to make
out other details, not revealed in the dream.

The church appeared to be on a hill capped by a copse of tall trees. Its

architectural design suggested it was not old, probably Victorian in age. Despite
this, he could see the huge stone blocks used to construct its walls were slightly
weathered. An avenue of trees—conifers he believed—led the visitor through
the churchyard from a lychgate to a wooden porch on the building’s north side.
No further psychic information came, so he broke off concentration, scribbled
down a few notes and left the room.

Sunday, 4th May. For the second day running Bernard continued to see the
black bird-like energy forms circling endlessly around the unidentified hilltop
church. The feeling was that a powerful ritual act had taken place there, and
whatever had been done was still in progress and growing with intensity.

Shortly after lunch, another, rather chilling, impression was unexpectedly added
to Bernard’s knowledge of the situation. Something told him the person
responsible for this chaotic mayhem was the Black Alchemist. If this was so,
then where was the church? And what was he up to this time? Furthermore, what
had all this to do with him?

No immediate answers came, aside from the impression that the church was
situated somewhere in the southern counties. Probably on the Sussex Downs,
close to the Black Alchemist’s suspected home in East Sussex.

Monday, 5th May. No, the church was in West Kent, not Sussex—this was the
feeling in Bernard’s mind now. Where exactly, he was still not sure. However, it
was beginning to dawn on him that he was about to be thrust into a second
confrontation with the Black Alchemist, a thought he did not relish.

In readiness, he purchased a copy of the Ordnance Survey one inch to the mile
map of the West Kent area. He had no idea exactly what was going on, or why
this man should suddenly want to make his reappearance exactly one year after
they had removed his stone spearhead from Lullington churchyard. All he knew
was that something was gradually building up inside that church, and it would
have to be dealt with before the matter got out of hand.

Tuesday, 6th May. Bernard strolled into The Griffin, bought himself a Guinness
and joined me in the corner of the crowded bar. From his jacket he produced a
collection of notes, which he handed across the table. ‘You’d better read these.
See what you think.’

They contained a series of images and impressions he had received over the past
few days concerning a hilltop church in Kent.

I read them with great interest. Something was undoubtedly going on and,
unusually for Bernard, he seemed eager to find out what.

So, as we sat supping our drinks amid the noisy background din emanating from
the groups of youths standing around nearby tables, Bernard concentrated on the
image of the hilltop church.

‘The scavenger birds are still circling the hilltop,’ he said, after some moments of
silence.
Now came a further disturbing image. ‘I see grotesque demon or gargoyle-like
creatures crawling about at the foot of the church walls, hopping in and out of
reality. They are representative of the chaotic frenzy building up there.’
I jotted this down.
‘I now see more of the church. There is an outer and an inner door within the
porch. The second one leads into the church itself. Also a kind of funny-looking
bell tower attached to the building, next to a protruding piece of gabled
architecture.’
So what’s been going on there?
‘I feel he has walked around the church, somehow closing off its energies. I can’t
seem to break through into the church itself.’
Why should he want to do this?
‘I suppose he’s set up some kind of wall or barrier to prevent anyone from
entering inside on a psychic level,’ he offered. ‘I don’t know why.’
So where was the church?
Bernard broke off his concentration and looked towards me. ‘I’m going to have
to stop,’ he stated, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’m beginning to feel headachy and sick.
In fact, I get the feeling that, if I don’t stop, I’ll slip into a trance and something
rather nasty will come through. I could hear this guttural voice in my head,
which seemed poised to overshadow me.’
Quite obviously, a strange guttural voice issuing forth from Bernard’s mouth
would have been dangerous to his well-being and rather embarrassing in front of
The Griffin’s jocular clientele that evening.
Needing to use the toilets, I took the opportunity to disappear for a moment. On
returning, Bernard was scribbling in the notepad.
Sitting back, he pushed it towards me.
There was a sketch of a huge cave, with steps leading into it, below which he’d
scrawled:

I am the priest of the sanctuary. He has cut my head from my body. It comes as
the sun, as the spring of crystal waters.
It meant nothing to either of us. However, I should have recalled that I’d seen
similar words the previous year when reading about the dream visions of
Zosimos of Panopolis, the fourth-century Graeco-Egyptian alchemist.

‘Come on. Let’s go across to the churchyard,’ Bernard suggested, picking up his
cigarettes and standing up. ‘The atmosphere will be different out there.’

It was a good idea. Since it was still light, it would make an ideal setting for
carrying on any psychic work without interference.

Standing beneath a large horse chestnut tree, which Bernard had always felt an
affinity with, he now received further images and impressions relating to the
situation.

‘As it’s in my mind,’ he said, beginning to pace about beneath the overhanging
branches, ‘I get St Mary’s. Write it down. It’s the dedication of the church, which
I can now see is next to a village green, a big one, with houses beyond that—
quite old, eighteenth or nineteenth century, I should think. Our friend has walked
around the church with his arms up in the air.’

Rapidly, I scribbled down Bernard’s words.

‘Record this down,’ he insisted, stopping to point towards my notepad. ‘Ion. Ion
is the name of the Priest of the Sanctuary I mentioned in the pub.’
His pacing grew more intense.
‘Now I see the imagery associated with alchemy I first saw last year,’ he
continued, ‘when I held the stone spearhead.’
Suddenly, he broke his concentration and looked towards me. ‘Things being
burnt, laboratory apparatus and ancient manuscripts, and also someone’s head
being cut off and mangled with flesh and blood. Very nasty.’ But then the
familiar headache and nausea returned to haunt him.
Realising Bernard might be getting into difficulty, I asked him to stop and rest
for a while. But he just continued to pace.
11. Bernard stands beneath the horse chestnut tree in Danbury churchyard.

‘I feel a serpent or a dragon is connected in some way,’ he now revealed. ‘And

the church is at “Ide Hill”, wherever that is. Something’s been placed in the
church, and he’s sealed off the building on a psychic level.’

What was placed in the church?

‘Same as before, I suppose.’
What? A stone spearhead?
‘I assume so.’
So, what was our job?
‘Remove it,’ he responded, before pausing once more to

compose his thoughts. ‘I feel all this has something to do with Zosimos again.
This priest, whose name is Ion, is one of Zosimos’s visions, which the Black
Alchemist warps for his own ends.’

I had not come across the name ‘Ion’ before, even though I recalled reading
about Zosimos’s dream vision in which a priest sacrifices himself at a dome-
shaped altar.

‘Come on, let’s get back to the pub,’ Bernard now suggested, beginning to make
his way towards the church. ‘I think we’ve got all we’re going to out here.’

Inside the Griffin we again discussed the situation whilst attempting to locate Ide
Hill on the map.

Almost immediately, I found it—a village of this name just a few miles from a
town called Sevenoaks. The contours showed the church is indeed on a hill, part
of the North Downs of Kent, and on its northern side is a fair-sized green with
houses beyond that. So far, so good. The rest I could check out when I got home.

But when would we go there?

Bernard could not make it on a weekday, so it would have to be at the weekend.
However, our Sunday was already planned. I had arranged for Bernard to meet
Colin and Gelly Paddon from Milton Keynes who, in August the previous year,
had been led by psychic clues to a wood close to their home. Here the couple
had dug up two short swords, identical to one I had found with a colleague at a
secluded pool in the county of Worcestershire back in 1979. I had also invited
along my good friends Caroline Wise and Alan Cleaver.
I therefore decided the best thing was to combine this get together with our trip
to Ide Hill and invite them to accompany us on the quest. Anyway, we would
probably need a little extra help and support.
So a time was set. I would inform all parties involved.
After this we returned to the subject of the apparent ritual carried out by the
Black Alchemist at Ide Hill.
What did Bernard think he was up to this time?
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Really not sure, are you?’
Okay, so when did he think this ritual had been carried out? To help Bernard
answer the question, I pointed out that if he had begun to pick up on the church
overnight on Friday/Saturday, 2nd/3rd May, then it had probably occurred on or
around May Day, 1st May, one of the eight pagan festival dates in the calendar
year.
Bernard agreed: ‘Yes, it’s possible.’
If this was so, then perhaps the Black Alchemist had buried the inscribed stone
spearhead at Lullington exactly one year earlier, on May Day 1985, some three
weeks before we came across it.
Bernard shook his head. ‘No, I feel it was buried a couple of months before that.’
I thought again.
What about spring equinox 1985, around 21st March, the main pagan festival
prior to May Day?
Bernard contemplated the idea for a moment. ‘Yes, that feels about right,’ he
said, standing up. ‘Anyway, I’m off. Give me a ring to confirm times, etc.’
I nodded, as he disappeared out of the door.

At home I read through whatever books I possessed on the topography of Kent,

looking for references to Ide Hill. Unfortunately, I found very little information
about the church, which was only built in 1865, i.e. during Victorian times, just
as Bernard had said. It is dedicated to St Mary and, yes, a tree-lined path of
evergreens does guide the visitor via a lychgate on the northern side of the
churchyard to a porch. In addition to this, there is a peculiar bell tower, or
spirelet, attached to the main building.

So Bernard had been right about the site. But why use it? The thought bugged
me. Yet then I found something that provided a vital clue. Ide Hill is known as
the Dome of Kent, due to a large copse of beech trees that crown the summit of
the hill to form an unusual hemispherical canopy around the churchyard. The
tops of these trees give Ide Hill a height of around 800 feet above sea level and
create one of the most picturesque spots in the county.

Now domes, I knew, featured in Zosimos’s Visions (preserved in his work

entitled Of Virtues, Lessons 1-3), In his first vision he writes how the ‘Priest of
the Adytum’, or Sanctuary, whose name is indeed Ion, stands at a ‘dome-shaped
altar’, and announces:

‘I am Ion, Priest of the Adytum, and I have borne an intolerable force. For
someone came at me headlong in the morning and dismembered me with a sword
and tore me apart, according to the rigor of harmony. And, having cut my head
off with the sword, he mashed my flesh with my bones and burned them in the
fire of the treatment, until, my body transformed, I should learn to become a
spirit.’

In some translations of the text, it is Zosimos himself who undergoes this

gruesome form of transformation at the hands of the Priest of the Sanctuary.
Clearly, the purpose of conveying details of this dream vision on Zosimos’s part
was to show that freeing the spirit in order to achieve immortality involves an
incredible, and quite torturous, self-sacrifice, which the initiate should be
prepared to submit to if he or she wishes to complete the alchemical
transformation.

Much of this imagery echoed what Bernard had been saying out in Danbury
churchyard. What’s more, it strongly confirmed that the Black Alchemist was
twisting Zosimos’s dream visions for his own purposes. He had almost certainly
chosen Ide Hill as his ‘dome-shaped altar’ due to its topographical fame as the
Dome of Kent (in some translations of Zosimos’s Visions his original words are
translated as ‘bowl-shaped altar’, which is probably more accurate).

Zosimos writes also in his Visions that in order to become a ‘man of gold’—this
being someone who has completed the transformation—the alchemist, as the
Priest of the Sanctuary, must construct a temple ‘ … as of white lead, as of
alabaster, having neither commencement nor end in its construction.’

Zosimos continues: ‘Let it have in its interior a spring of pure water, sparkling
like the sun’, almost exactly what Bernard had picked up whilst in The Griffin.
Zosimos then relates how ‘a serpent lies before the entry guarding the temple’.
This must be first seized and then sacrificed, after which:

Skin him and, taking his flesh and bones, separate his parts. Then reuniting the
members with the bones at the entry of the temple, make of them a stepping
stone, mount thereon, and enter. You will find there what you seek.

This had to refer to the ‘serpent or a dragon’ Bernard felt was connected with
what was happening at Ide Hill church, which the Black Alchemist saw as
Zosimos’s temple with ‘neither commencement nor end in its construction’.

I was beginning to understand what the Black Alchemist was attempting to

achieve out at Ide Hill. Putting himself in the place of Ion, the Priest of the
Sanctuary in Zosimos’s dream visions— who has suffered ‘intolerable force’ to
achieve transformation into a free spirit—he was preparing the church for some
kind of symbolic birth. The Christian edifice was thus being seen as Zosimos’s
constructed temple, signifying the body and womb of a woman, its perimeter
containing the sparkling waters of life.
So, in the mind of the Black Alchemist, was this feminine principle expressed in
Ide Hill church’s dedication to St Mary, the Blessed Virgin, who carried the
Christ child in her womb? If so, then why exactly was all this important to him?
It was something we would presumably find out that coming Sunday.
9 Ide Hill
Sunday, 11th May, 1986. My car pulled up next to Ide Hill’s village green,
beyond which was St Mary’s church, situated among a canopy of tall trees. I
released the seat belt and started to get out as Bernard did the same.

‘I hope we’re not walking into a trap,’ he said, with a little nervous cough and
laugh.
A trap? I hoped not. Anyway, what did he mean, a trap?
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just a thought. Something I’ve been thinking about for a few
days.’
I let the matter go. Yet I knew from past experience that if Bernard dropped
something like this into casual conversation, then it was usually prophetic in
some way.
As the assembled party disembarked from their cars and began crossing the
green, I kept a careful eye on Bernard, half expecting him to start experiencing
headaches and nausea at any moment. However, he seemed relaxed and openly
admitted that he was deliberately refraining from attuning to the site—for the
time being at least.
Strolling towards the churchyard, we watched as groups of people, seemingly
oblivious to our presence, passed by holding clipboards and studying certain
buildings and features. They appeared to be searching for something.
Curious as to their actions, Gelly Paddon, a slight inquisitive woman with short
wavy blonde hair, approached and spoke to one group before returning with an
answer. ‘The whole village is involved in some kind of treasure hunt,’ she
revealed, with a smile. ‘They’ve been given certain clues which will lead them
to buried treasure of some sort.’
‘Isn’t that bizarre,’ her bearded husband Colin remarked, looking towards the
rest of the group. ‘Here we are on a psychic quest to find a hidden artefact and
the whole of Ide Hill are on a quest of their own!’
‘Maybe they’ll find the spearhead before us,’ Alan Cleaver, a bright young
journalist with the spiritualist newspaper Psychic News, quipped, concluding the
conversation.
It was a thought. However, it was a bizarre synchronicity, if nothing else.
12. Bernard and the rest of the group approach Ide Hill church in Kent.

As our party approached the Victorian building, with its virtually detached bell
tower, we saw for the first time the avenue of evergreen trees leading from the
lychgate to the north porch, all just as Bernard had described. Casually, the party
—led by my old friend Caroline Wise, who, like Alan, worked for Psychic News
— entered the churchyard and followed the worn path that wound its way
around the building.

Quietly turning to Bernard, I asked him whether he was picking anything up yet.
‘He took this path around the church, in an anti-clockwise direction,’ he
revealed, looking up at the wear and tear on the stonework and composing his
thoughts for a moment. ‘The psychic barrier is between us and the wall. I see
him walking around with his arms up in the air, touching the stone walls.
‘Each time he came upon a doorway, he followed its edge with one hand, before
returning it to the top of the door and then lowering it to the ground, as if to seal
off the door to the outside world.’
Accepting his word, we continued to stroll about.
Unexpectedly, a sudden wind squall whipped through the tree-lined hilltop,
sending a strange chill through us all. Taking this as an omen that something was
building up on a psychic level, I called the group together. In a corner, beneath
the overhanging branches of a tree, we conducted an appropriate protection ritual
before venturing any further.
Moving around the outside of the church, we used creative visualisation to
dismantle the Black Alchemist’s imaginary wall, with ‘neither commencement
nor end in its construction’. It left us free to enter through the main entrance.

Inside the church everyone looked around, not knowing quite what to expect or
find. I continued to watch Bernard, just in case he started to get into any sort of
trouble. Memories of what had happened at Lullington the previous year were
still clear in my mind. Yet he seemed to be okay, smiling and joking in his usual
way.

Then, at precisely 3.20 pm, Bernard announced: ‘The spearhead is beneath the
altar.’
Only I heard his words, so without further delay, as Bernard exited the church as
a precautionary measure, I walked briskly into the chancel and pulled up the rear
of the altar draping.
Kneeling down, I tried to locate the hidden artefact.
It was too dark to see anything inside the altar’s wooden frame.
Striking a match, I held it out towards one of the corners. Nothing. The match
went out. Lighting another, I continued the search. Still nothing.
By this time the others had joined me, so I at last revealed what Bernard had
said.
Suddenly, the psychic reappeared in the doorway.
‘Whatever you do, do not touch it,’ he insisted, a worried look on his face.
Everybody looked up to await an explanation, but Bernard had gone.
The search resumed. Several burnt matches later, I concluded that nothing lay
concealed beneath the altar frame. If anything had been planted, then it was
certainly not there now. Despondency and frustration overtook me almost
immediately. What the hell was going on? I needed an explanation.
Bernard re-entered the church again and realised the predicament.
Where was the spearhead?
‘I’m not sure,’ he responded, seemingly just as confused as everyone else. ‘I
certainly picked up it was under the altar. Maybe I was just picking up on its
presence here.’
I wanted to think so. Perhaps the Black Alchemist had returned during the week
to retrieve his inscribed stone. It was the only answer, other than to conclude that
Bernard was wrong. No, that was silly. Why should he pick up so much vivid
imagery concerning an obscure Kentish church just to be wrong?
‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s been a good day out,’ Gelly said, as she continued to
search behind the wooden pews.
This made me even more frustrated. It should not have been just ‘a good day
out.’ The whole thing made Bernard and me look foolish.
Colin conducted a simple Cabalistic banishment ritual in the nave to clear the
atmosphere of any possible psychic residue left behind by the Black Alchemist.
At the same time Bernard sat in a pew and wrote.
Moving over to the psychic, I looked at his notepad, which he quietly turned
towards me. On it was what I took to be a sketch of an inscribed stone fixing
marker. Below this—and arrowed towards the stone itself—was a strange
magical symbol composed of a spiral and the astrological signs for the planets
Mercury and Venus combined.
What was this?
He looked back at his drawing. ‘As Colin was carrying out his banishment, I got
the impression of somebody removing this stone—presumably the one that was
below the altar,’ he said. ‘On it were similar signs to the spearhead we
discovered at Lullington, along with the symbol I’ve drawn here.’
Moving back into the churchyard, I showed Caroline Bernard’s sketch of the
inscribed stone with its curious symbol.
‘It looks like John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,’ she offered, confidently.
Dr John Dee (1527-1609) was a famous English astronomer, mathematician,
scientist and ritual magician who, among many other things, decided the date for
Queen Elizabeth I’s coronation by providing her with a favourable astrological
chart. The Monas Hieroglyphica was a magical symbol he devised and used,
although it was slightly different to the one drawn by Bernard.
Caroline was convinced it was the Monas Hieroglyphica, but I did not agree, and
so failed even to mention this either to Bernard or any other member of the party.
13. Bernard’s sketch of the fixing marker thought to have been placed beneath
the altar at Ide Hill church.

The journey back to Essex provided an opportunity for us to talk about the day’s
non-event. Okay, so the Black Alchemist had apparently retrieved his own
artefact, but where did that leave us? My mind turned to Bernard’s earlier
statement about walking into some kind of trap. Then later, just before we
realised that nothing lay beneath the altar, his warning about not touching the
stone as it would endanger our souls. What had all that been about?

‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted, with a sigh. ‘Whilst I was outside in the churchyard I
heard the words “Do not endanger your soul”. They appeared to come from
some sort of spirit guide, a man who told me he lived as an alchemist in
Elizabethan times.

‘He also said he would help us combat the workings of the Black Alchemist.
Why, I don’t know. Anyway, with this came the distinct impression that anyone
touching the stone would be in grave danger.’

What sort of danger?

‘Perhaps the stone was charged with some sort of selfdefence mechanism,’ he
suggested, ‘something like a psychic booby trap, meant to cause mental torment
if somebody touched it.’
I wasn’t sure. This would not explain his earlier statement that we might have
been walking into a trap. A trap suggests something premeditated—something
set up to ensnare, not defend. Still, to be honest, it did not really matter.
The fact that the day had produced nothing was the only thing I could think
about. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, we both felt sure that the Black
Alchemist would strike again, and soon.

Tuesday, 20th May. Bernard was agitated. Lighting a cigarette, he stared out of
his lounge window and watched the skies darken as the heavy storms grew
closer.

Soon after returning from Ide Hill he had begun to feel that the Black Alchemist
had, in some manner, monitored their visit there. At first he thought that the man
might actually have been present, hiding out of sight perhaps, or blending in
with those taking part in the treasure hunt.

He had dismissed this slightly unnerving prospect in favour of the Black

Alchemist having tuned into their visit from a distance. Knowing we were about
to visit the church, he had returned to retrieve his inscribed stone. It was an
incredible thought, although it was the only solution that made sense.

Then, a few days ago, he had sensed that the Black Alchemist had managed to
track them along a definite compass bearing into Essex, giving him some idea of
their whereabouts in the county. Nothing specific. No names or addresses, only
vague, unconfirmed feelings.

The impression had remained with Bernard, growing stronger as each day
passed.
The hot, humid conditions had brought with them an electric feeling—almost
like an increase in static. It had grown with intensity throughout the afternoon
until the thunderstorms had finally struck.
The atmosphere was charged with a sense of foreboding, and as the storms
passed overhead, new impressions now overtook him: a charged atmosphere is
an ideal climate for psychic disguise—a time to travel and the right time to sow
a seed.
There was no doubt.
These were the thoughts of the Black Alchemist.
Their minds were once again linking as one.
He was poised to make his next move.
Bernard could sense it.
Was he annoyed at their interference at Lullington and Ide Hill? Or was it
something else. Something more?
All Bernard could do was wait patiently and see what would happen next.
10 Shenfield Common
Wednesday, 21st May, 1986. Gale-force winds tore violently across the South of
England throughout the day. Fences came down. Trees were wrenched from their
roots and seas churned and lashed over walled defences in coastal regions.

The fierce, elemental weather agitated Bernard. Something was going on and he
had to find out what.
On returning home from work that evening, he retired to the dining room and
contemplated his feelings of the previous day. Moments passed before an
overwhelming feeling surged through his body.
There had been an encroachment from across the water.
A visit to Essex in the past 24 hours.
Billowing clouds of darkness, like searching black fingers, had sought, felt,
sensed, before quickly retreating.
The Black Alchemist had struck again. But where?

Thursday, 22nd May. The expected call from Bernard came around seven
o’clock as I sat down to watch television.

‘Do you want to go for a drive?’ he asked, rather mysteriously.

Obviously. But why?
‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘The air’s thick, isn’t it? I feel there’s something
going on in the Shenfield or Brentwood area. So I think we should take a look,
don’t you?’
Shenfield or Brentwood. I tried to think of a convenient place to meet. How
about The Green Dragon pub in Shenfield, at eight o’clock.
Bernard agreed.
Shenfield formed part of Brentwood, a large town some eight miles west of my
parents’ home in Wickford. The car journey would take me around 30 minutes,
so I picked up a few ritual items, including a flask of holy water, and left the
house around 7.30 pm.
The two cars entered the car park of The Green Dragon one after the other. After
locking up, I set off with Bernard towards our unknown destination.
So, what did he think was going on?
‘I’m still not sure,’ he admitted, as the car entered a built-up area on the outskirts
of Brentwood. ‘All I get is the impression of dark emanations coming from some
woods somewhere. I suggest we drive around for a while and see what happens.’
Unfolding the local Ordnance Survey map, I immediately noticed that to the
south of Shenfield was a large wooded area marked as Hart Wood. A
coincidence, I pointed out, when considering the links we had already assumed
between white harts, alchemy and the Peredur story.
Two roads bordered the edge of Hart Wood and yet, passing along each of these,
Bernard felt nothing. I had obviously been wrong. But then, to the left, another
wood came into view. This one was not so big. The map had it marked as
‘Shenfield Common’.
Without further word, Bernard pulled the car into a small, gravelled parking area
on the edge of the woodland. Neither of us were sure this was the right place. Yet
it seemed as good a place as any to stop for a while—see whether he could tune
into the epicentre of the apparent negativity.
Stretching our legs, I asked Bernard what he felt.
He pondered over the question before giving his reply: ‘Let’s go for a stroll.’

For a while we just walked in comparative silence, not really knowing where we
were going, or what to expect. As the tree cover grew ever more dense, and the
light gradually faded, we moved into the heart of the wood.

Whenever a path split, Bernard would pause for a moment before intuitively
making a decision to carry on one way or the other. Then, finally, he stopped and
lit a cigarette.

I waited for his thoughts.

‘Well, I feel we are being drawn towards something. We seem to be getting
closer,’ he said, pausing to think for a moment, ‘so I suppose we should carry
on.’
We continued to walk as I attempted to memorise the route.
After some fifteen minutes in the wood, a large clearing came into view, around
40 feet in diameter, and only about twenty paces from the railway cutting that
ran between the stations of Shenfield and Brentwood on the London Liverpool
Street to Southend line.
Bernard came to a halt and grimaced. ‘Stop here,’ he commanded, staring ahead
of us. ‘In that clearing I see finger-like wisps of dark energy radiating out from
its centre and rising up into the air, yet not going beyond its outer limits. They’re
like fingers of coldness, swirling around.’
14. Bernard and the author stop in front of the ominous clearing (pictured)
within the woods at Shenfield Common.

Reaching for my notepad, I began to scribble down his words. To him at least,
something of a chaotic nature was going on inside that clearing.

For the moment, we remained on the path as Bernard tried to work out what to
do next. Before going any further, I insisted we conduct a protection ritual. He
agreed, so, having done this, we moved cautiously along the path towards the
clearing.

Approaching the open space, Bernard held out his hand as a gesture for me to
remain still. ‘It’s too easy,’ he whispered, as if someone might be listening to our
conversation. ‘No, it could be a trap. I suggest we approach it from another
direction. From the undergrowth perhaps.’

Moving into the thigh-high brambles and thorn bushes, we pushed our way
through to the edge of the clearing.

Bernard stopped once more. ‘It’s like walking into a bullring,’ he observed, as
we stared into the open space. ‘Now I sense a flurry of feverish activity. Our
presence is alerting something, or someone.’ Again he paused to think. ‘Come
on, let’s carry on.’

Inside the clearing, his clairvoyant vision altered. ‘The flickering dark fingers of
energy have now withdrawn and disappeared into the centre. I think we’ve
triggered something. But what?’

We were both now fully within the clearing. He seemed okay—no ill effects as
yet. So, what else was he picking up?
‘I can hear the words, the thoughts, of whoever it was who did this ritual,’ he
said, slowly opening up his psychic mind to the site. ‘I hear the name “John”.
Who’s “John”? Someone who “wasn’t right, but thought he was”.’
I said I didn’t know.
Bernard continued his diatribe: ‘“John”, who drew something, which was
“wrong and has now been corrected”.’
He thought again, then added: ‘I feel the person who did this here is pleased, as
if something has been sussed—put right.’ Bernard paced about slowly. ‘I have an
ache in my bones. There was a line drawn with something.’
I did not even try to understand—just kept a watchful eye on the psychic in
between scribbling down his curious statements.
Picking up a long stick, Bernard began scratching a line from one side of the
clearing right across to the other. He then cut another line across the circle at
right angles to the first in order to make the sign of the cross. He did not look as
if he knew what or why he was doing this and did not explain his actions.
‘Someone keeps a diary,’ he revealed, quite out of the blue, ‘and all this has
something to do with matey.’
Who? The Black Alchemist?
‘Yes, and something’s been buried.’
Pausing for a moment, he looked towards me. ‘This has been set on purpose. It’s
a trap, and I think we’ve walked right into it. So, we have two choices, either
find it, or leave it alone. What do we do?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Find it, I
suppose.’ Shrugging his shoulders, he continued to pace about.
What was buried?
‘Another marker, I should think. Buried in or around the clearing. So where is
it?’ he asked, as if questioning his own psychic faculty.
‘Over here?’ He moved across to a large tree in the centre of the clearing and
used a stick to poke about in the leafy earth around its roots. ‘Not here. Then
where?’
He studied another tree on the northern edge of the clearing. Using the stick
again, he prodded about in the dirt between the exposed roots. The soil was soft.
A piece of jagged glass came into view, and then something else—a length of
stone, painted black and clearly inscribed with magical signs.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Bernard yelled, stumbling backwards, retching.
Quickly, I doused the stone marker with holy water. Flipping it over with a
finger, I gave it a second soaking as I noticed its chilling warning, which read:
‘TO TOUCH IS TO ENSLAVE’.
15. A stone fixing marker is uncovered between the roots of a tree at Shenfield
Common. It warns: ‘TO TOUCH IS TO ENSLAVE’.

I could see why Bernard did not want me to touch it! After taking photographs
of the stone in situ, I looked around for Bernard. My eyes found him sitting
down on the opposite side of the clearing, staring out across the railway cutting.
Fearing for his safety, I rushed over to him. He looked as if he was oblivious to
what had just happened. Slightly puzzled, I asked him if he was alright. In
response, he simply nodded and, in a rather complacent and sombre mood,
began to relate a whole series of psychic impressions now pouring through his
mind.
‘I see a black doorway,’ he began, in a calm voice. ‘I’m going down a corridor
… I’m now in a dark room. There’s a smell of gas … He’s there … “And so the
vapours rise … ”’
I could not write down the words quick enough, so lost the next part of the
message.
‘It is to do with the stone, by that tree,’ he said, not even bothering to look
around. ‘The symbol, which “John” drew and he has now corrected … it will
give birth … interference will cease … others will come … The name “John”
again. It is the same symbol I saw at Ide Hill, which was incorrect and has now
been altered.’
Then came a somewhat more disturbing statement: ‘There’s something else here.
I see blood dripping … blood blots … red stuff … numbers … centre of cross …
something to do with travelling to the centre of the universe, a rebirth,
transformation and sending back out in a changed state. Something sealed.’
16. A sealed medicine bottle is uncovered within a pit in the clearing at Shenfield
Common.

At this, Bernard stood up and, virtually ignoring my presence, walked almost

somnambulistically across the clearing as if looking for something. Where the
clearing met the path, he stopped to study a deep, rectangular pit, some three feet
by two feet in size, filled with rotting leaves. It seemed significant so, without
further word, we began searching among the leaves to see if anything was there.
An out of place object soon revealed itself—a large, brown, cylindrical medicine
bottle, its lid sealed with red sealing wax. Inside were folded up pieces of paper,
stained with what looked like fresh blood.

Bernard began retching again as he did a double take, stumbling backwards out
of the clearing and onto the path. I abandoned everything and ran after him,
pleading that he stop attuning to whatever was going on, for his own safety.

Reaching the point where we had stopped on the path to take photographs, I
waited in silence as Bernard recovered.
Several minutes and a cigarette later, he was almost back to his usual self, so I
suggested we try to find out exactly what was going on here.
Both artefacts were still in situ. Should we leave them where they were? Or
should we collect them up and deal with them elsewhere?
17. The Shenfield Common marker and sealed bottle after discovery.

The chaotic emanations coming from the stone spearhead would have been
neutralised when I doused it with holy water. That, therefore, should give us no
further problems. Yet what about the bottle? What were we to do with that?

It almost certainly contained a psychic charge set up by the Black Alchemist that
was to have popped out, like some genie from a bottle, the moment we had
broken the seal and unscrewed the cap. Nevertheless, its contents would have no
effect on us so long as the bottle remained sealed.

So, how might we dissipate, or diffuse, the psychic charge the bottle contained?
We could not douse it with holy water, as this would not affect the bottle’s
contents.

Bernard did not want to listen, as he still seemed to be out of it. Therefore, at a
loss to know exactly what to do, I collected up the artefacts, slipped them into a
holdall, and began moving back to the car. We could go for a drink in The Green
Dragon, see whether he might pick up any psychic clues there.

Walking away from the clearing, he broke his long silence. ‘Do you know,’ he
began, calmly, ‘although we may have outwitted the Black Alchemist on this
occasion, and may continue to do so in the future, he’s gathering together a
group of dedicated followers who will be able to take over, even if he departs
from this world.’
I asked for more information, but he gave none.
11 The Green Dragon
The wooden-panelled lounge bar of The Green Dragon hung heavy with cigar
smoke and joviality from the mostly male clientele. Groups of businessmen,
some still sporting their city suits, stood in small groups laughing and chatting
above the incessant din coming from the jukebox in the corner.

As Bernard placed our drinks on the table and took a seat, I suggested we
attempt to put the whole situation into some kind of perspective. I needed to
know what exactly had happened in the clearing.

Taking out my notebook, I placed it down in anticipation of his response.

‘I believe he slipped into Essex either under the cover of yesterday’s gales, or
during the violent thunderstorms the day before that,’ he offered, before taking a
much-needed gulp of Guinness. ‘Then, having chosen his site, he set up his ritual
trap before moving quietly back to Sussex.’
I remarked on just how close the area around Shenfield Common was to the M25
motorway, which he would have undoubtedly used to enter the county.
‘But why use Shenfield Common?’ Bernard asked out aloud. ‘Why did he not
use Hart Wood? Surely that would have been the most obvious choice.’
I thought for a moment. Why had he used Shenfield Common? A solution came
to mind, although before saying anything, I consulted the Ordnance Survey map,
just to make sure. Yes, I felt I had an answer. It looked very much as if before the
railway line was laid in Victorian times Shenfield Common had formed part of
Hart Wood. So, as well as dividing the wood with a deep cutting, the railway had
symbolically severed the ‘head’ of the hart.
Whether or not this was so, it was the type of landscape alchemy we had come to
expect of the Black Alchemist. The presence locally of a Hart Wood would have
been too much of a temptation for him not to have utilised in some way.
‘You’re probably right,’ Bernard admitted, leaning back in his seat. ‘So who is
this “John” I picked up on inside the clearing? The one who … ,’ he paused to
try and recall his earlier words, ‘ … had not been quite right, so something was
changed and corrected by matey? Somehow, it connects with the symbol I drew
at Ide Hill,’ he recalled, lighting a cigarette and turning it slightly in his mouth as
he drew in smoke.
Of course. The symbol from Ide Hill!
Now I knew who this ‘John’ was. I should have realised. Caroline had been right
—the curious symbol seen by Bernard inside Ide Hill church was the Monas
Hieroglyphica, the mystical glyph devised by Dr John Dee, the Elizabethan
alchemist, astrologer and ritual magician. This was the ‘John’ that Bernard had
mentioned out in the clearing. In fact, on the other side of the inscribed stone
found at Shenfield Common was the same symbol—Dee’s Monas
Hieroglyphica. And yet, as Bernard had suggested, it had been slightly modified
by the Black Alchemist for his own purposes. I knew very little about the Monas
symbol, but would check it out when I got home.
‘Dr John Dee’, Bernard repeated the name. ‘I think that BA believes this man
didn’t quite get the symbol right, so he’s updated it somehow.’
BA (‘bee-ay’)! The obvious acronym for the Black Alchemist!
‘I will even go so far as to say that BA actually believes he corrected the design
under the guidance of Dee himself.’
That was an absurd thought. Why would the spirit of Dr John Dee want to
communicate with someone like the Black Alchemist? The man was obviously
deluding himself.
I now moved onto other matters. What about Ide Hill—what had all that been
about?
‘It was another ritual trap of sorts,’ Bernard admitted, ‘an attempt to ensnare us
for some reason. Ever since Lullington, when we found the original stone
spearhead, I’ve had the feeling that there’s more to this whole affair than we
know so far.
‘It’s almost as if the Black Alchemist was aware someone would remove that
stone from the churchyard. He didn’t know who, or when, only that when they
did, he would know.
‘When we were at Ide Hill I actually felt he was there, watching us. I didn’t say
anything at the time because it seemed ludicrous.’
So he was there somewhere, mixing with the treasure hunters?
‘Maybe, I cannot be sure,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps he was watching us on a
psychic level, from the comfort of his home.’
But why remove the inscribed stone from Ide Hill church? Was it anything to do
with the fact that we had left it too long before going down there?
‘Maybe it was because we went down there mob handed, so the chances of the
right person, i.e. me or you, picking it up were greatly diminished. Someone else
touching it might have sent confusing impressions back to him, so he removed it
and waited for another opportunity to strike.’
So why set up some kind of alchemical womb at Ide Hill using symbolism taken
from Zosimos’s dream visions? How did that fit into it?
Bernard sighed as he took a swig from his drink. ‘Perhaps there’s a link between
what he’s doing in alchemy and why he’s interested in us. He knew that whoever
found that spearhead at Lullington would be a fair match for him. Since then I
think he’s been attempting to locate us. Nothing definite, only vague directions.
From Sussex, into Kent, and now into Essex. I don’t think he actually knows
who we are—not yet at least!’
He obviously knew we were onto him. But why set traps to ensnare us? Why
was he trying to track us down?
‘He seems to think we are equal opponents, and is now trying to strengthen the
mental link between his mind and ours. By touching his buried objects, or by
opening that bottle, he will be able to bring us into his grasp, do his bidding. For
what ultimate purpose, I really don’t know.’
Bernard sat back and watched as a group of teenage girls came over and sat
together on the table next to us, oblivious to the peculiar nature of our
conversation.
He carried on only after they had settled down. ‘The trouble is that BA doesn’t
know who he’s dealing with. He must, by now, have realised that we’re not
fools. Yet, in a way, that gives him the upper hand—he knows what he’s dealing
with, and we don’t.’
We would have to wait and see.
After getting up to buy another round of drinks, I pulled out the inscribed stone,
marked with the sinister message: ‘TO TOUCH IS TO ENSLAVE’.
Like the Lullington spearhead, it was a piece of common shale, shaped to look
like a spearhead. However, this example was shorter, rougher, wider, and painted
black so its inscribed symbols stood out more clearly. On the reverse was the
modified John Dee Monas symbol and a line of strange signs, similar to those
carved on the Lullington stone. Yet missing from this one were the three words
in the strange script which Nigel Pennick and Prudence Jones felt came from a
Bardic alphabet.
Placing down the stone, I turned our attentions to the disposal of the sealed
brown medicine bottle, with its distasteful contents. What were we to do with
that?
I suggested Bernard seek the guidance of the Elizabethan alchemist who had
made contact with him at Ide Hill. He had obviously manifested to Bernard for
the specific purpose of helping us combat the Black Alchemist, so perhaps he
would come forward now.
The psychic agreed. So, with the noise of the crowds and the jukebox reaching a
crescendo, I wrote down the guide’s name on a clean sheet in my notebook and
asked him to communicate with us.
After a minute or so of silence, Bernard nodded. ‘He’s here. Ask what you want.’
What were we to do with the bottle?
‘He says that inside the bottle are two pieces of paper with blood blots—each the
shape of stars.’
I wrote this down.
‘Each of these pieces of paper,’ Bernard tried to explain, as a bellow of deep
laughter issued from a crowd of middle-aged men in front of us, ‘ … has been
impregnated with psychic interference. The bottle was sealed to contain a
message that was meant to affect us. It was to have given him images of us. It
would have acted like a drug hallucination, causing the appearance of
supernatural manifestations.’
So what should we do with it?
Bernard went quiet again. ‘He says: “Use Catholic incense.” You must open it
enclosed in this, with four bowls of holy water, one at each of the points.’
Did he mean each of the cardinal points, the four quarters— north, south, east
and west—which, in magical terms, represent the directions from which the four
elemental forces of Earth, Water, Air and Fire originate?
‘He says yes,’ Bernard confirmed, still miles away from the hearty activities
going on around us in the pub. ‘He also says it was him who influenced me to
pick up the stick and quarter the clearing in the same way. It drained the energies
away to the four quarters. The same thing will happen once the negative energies
are released from the bottle.’
Now I knew what to do. But whilst the guide was still on the line, so to speak, I
asked Bernard to ask him whether he could tell us why exactly the Black
Alchemist had set up his trap in the woods at Shenfield Common?
After a few moments of silence, he give his reply. ‘He says it was an attempt to
get near us before any final action is taken.’ There was another pause, before he
said: ‘“Do not treat other worlds too lightly.” That appears to be his parting
message.’
18. The two faces of the Shenfield Common fixing marker.

Back home I scoured my bookshelves for any books containing information on

Dr John Dee and his so-called Monas Hieroglyphica. This I discovered was not
just a mystical symbol but also the title of a book written by the Elizabethan
magus in 1564. It outlined Dee’s belief that the Monas was a talisman
embodying all the forces of the universe.

It was a magical formula combining Cabalistic, alchemical and geometrical

science to enable the possessor to climb up and down the scales of being, from
the lowest to the highest realms of ethereal existence. By contemplating it
initiates could absorb these powers and experience transformation.

Dee praised God for allowing the Monas to give men ‘such great wisdom, power
over creatures and large dominion’. He explained also how the dot in the centre
of the Monas’s circle represented ‘the centre of all things’. No wonder the Black
Alchemist was showing so much interest in this symbol. Somehow he must have
come to the conclusion that the Monas was a visual key essential to the success
of his alchemical transmutation.

Despite all this useful information, I still did not fully understand what the Black
Alchemist had been up to at Ide Hill. All that business about Zosimos’s Priest of
the Sanctuary dream, the body and womb of a woman, and a ritual birth. It
seemed like an awful lot to have gone through just to ensnare us in some kind of
occult trap. It just didn’t add up. Something more was going on.

I could sense it, and so could Bernard.

In the midst of a rising cloud of incense out in the back garden, I broke the seal
on the medicine bottle and asked the four archangels—the archaic forces
governing each of the four cardinal points—to carry away the negativity it
contained. Inside were two pieces of paper, ink blotting paper to be more precise.
On each one was a crude star-like pattern in what looked like fresh blood, yet
was, on closer scrutiny, simply red ink. With the ritual complete, I closed down
the proceedings, cleared up the mess and went to bed.
19. The blood-like stains inside the bottle found at Shenfield Common.
12 St Anne’s Castle
Thursday, 29th May, 1986. For once, we tried a different pub. It was the turn of
St Anne’s Castle in Great Leighs, opposite the Essex showground, some miles
north of Chelmsford on the A131 Braintree road.

After seating ourselves at a table in the quaint fifteenthcentury inn, Bernard

reached into his jacket pocket and slid out a bunch of folded notes. It was a four-
page commentary on the events surrounding our visit to Shenfield Common the
previous week.

I then asked the inevitable question—had he picked up any further information

since then?
A knowing smile emerged on his face. ‘Well, on Saturday night I decided to sit
down in the dining room and just let my mind wander. I drew the Monas symbol
on a clean sheet of paper and waited. I wasn’t sure what would happen, or
whether I was doing the right thing.’
And what happened?
I lit a Marlboro and waited in anticipation.
He responded by producing a further sheet of lined paper. On the top was the
Monas symbol and below were a series of written statements, yet not in
Bernard’s usual careful handwriting. They were quickly scrawled responses
inspired by his concentration.
I read them quietly:

Embodies all dark powers of universe. Think of this symbol. You will absorb all
the powers and transform. Will give power over all creatures and areas of land.
The point is the centre of all things.

They appeared to be statements concerning the occult virtues of the Monas

Hieroglyphica. Each one had come to him gradually over a period of nearly half
an hour, following which he had written: ‘Nothing more coming.’ Yet then, in a
large, clearly automatic script his pen had suddenly scrawled: ‘If the circle closes
a message will come’, after which he had commented in his own hand: ‘I was
wrong. Don’t know who gave this.’

It was relatively interesting material, although it did not further our

understanding of the Black Alchemist’s activities.
So, had there been any more psychic information since Saturday night?
‘Just vague stuff really. Nothing positive,’ he replied, turning his nose up at its
possible significance, even before saying a word. ‘I don’t know. A stinking,
fleshy heart about, somewhere.’
His words took me by surprise. A stinking, fleshy heart? Buried somewhere by
the Black Alchemist?
‘I don’t get any more. I’m not sure,’ he admitted, before adding: ‘That’s it, I’m
afraid.’
I was intrigued, and although I could see Bernard now wanted to move onto
other matters, I tried in vain to steer him back to his statement. But he would not
have it.
20. The Elizabethan astrologer and magus Dr John Dee (1527-1609), next to his
Monas Hieroglyphica symbol.

I waited for an hour, then tried again to persuade him to concentrate his thoughts
on the image of this stinking, fleshy heart to see if he could get any more.

‘You’re pushing me,’ he said, jokingly, as he collected up our glasses and stood
up to make his way across to the bar. ‘Same again?’
St Anne’s Castle

Yes, I nodded, and yes I was pushing him, gently. Unless I did, then that would
be that and the mystery of the stinking, fleshy heart would be lost. And what if it
was human? And we were to find it ... I had to know more.

He returned from the bar with more drinks and placed them down on the old
wooden table between us. ‘Well,’ he began, as he sat back down. ‘Again, it’s
only vague stuff, but I get a connection between this heart and St Mary.
Something to do with wombs, birth and blood.’

He lit a cigarette and remained silent for a moment to compose his thoughts.
‘There is also an involvement with the planetary influence of Mercury and
something to do with this circle closing. This “a message will come” business I
picked up on Saturday night,’ he said from behind a thin mask of rising smoke.

Now we were getting somewhere. My pen recorded his words on the notepad.
He went silent for a moment. ‘I now pick up the words “squeeze the circle strong
enough, the heart stops and rebirth will follow.” And I get the feeling of
something coming up, rising out of something, after which a change will occur.’
He stopped to scan his mind for any further thoughts. ‘No, that’s it. I don’t get
any more.’
It did not make a lot of sense. Perhaps it was some kind of dark ritual the Black
Alchemist was carrying out down his own way, somewhere. Maybe it was
something that was not necessarily our concern. If not, then maybe it was a
portent of future things.
Whatever the answer, it implied BA was not averse to using flesh and blood—
something I had suspected ever since we had realised he was familiar with the
dream visions of Zosimos, which contained some quite gruesome imagery.
Yet what about the reference to St Mary? It might be a church dedication, I
pointed out, possibly even a reference to Ide Hill church. Perhaps he was going
to strike there again. On the other hand, it could be a reference to the Virgin
Mary as a holy figure of the Christian faith, or to another Mary.
‘All I know,’ he began, ‘is that I hope I never come across the man again. It’s too
much hassle, and something I can do without. And whatever he’s into, it’s
ultimately none of our business, so long as he doesn’t interfere with us.’
But using blooded hearts did seem a little crass, if not a bit sick.
Bernard, looking now to go, finished his pint before glancing at his watch. ‘Well,
let’s wait and see. It could all be my imagination, and if so then good! But, well,
otherwise, we’ll just have to deal with it when it happens.’
I said no more, as Bernard stood up to leave. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though. I
sense that it’s not over yet,’ he revealed, picking up his cigarettes.
‘I almost don’t want to think about it, but we should be vigilant, as I don’t think
either of us has any real idea of where this is going to go. Not yet at least.’
Part Two White
13 The Ring of Darkness
Monday, 6th October, 1986. The incessant telephone rang again. The junior
clerk picked up the receiver and engaged the caller in casual conversation. At the
same time, one of the company directors spoke from behind his desk before
standing up and moving out of the glass panelled office.

Bernard stared into nowhere. Something troubled him. His visionary eyes saw,
not the hanging net curtains covering the small office’s metal-framed window,
but a scene much further away—not in Essex at all, but in Kent, or Sussex. He
was not sure which.

The telephone receiver went down with a thud as the junior clerk muttered
words of frustration to a non-existent audience. He too then walked out of the
room.

Fields. Bernard could see fields, and trees. In fact, woods, with a stream nearby.
It was a pleasant green area, and yet, for some reason, one with a bad feeling.
Why was he seeing this?

An offer of coffee from an adjoining room was greeted with no particular

enthusiasm by the elderly director who had returned to collect a completed order
form. Picking it up, he stopped momentarily to read its contents.

Bernard could still see fields, but now his eyes zoomed in on four figures in
black cowled robes standing, facing each other, in a circle. Each wielded a long,
black baton—one end held against their stomachs, the other pointing towards a
motionless central figure in a deep red cowled habit and cloak. Their floppy
hoods concealed their identities, and their sex.

Chatter from the office doorway was followed by the appearance of a cup of
coffee on Bernard’s desk. He forced a polite ‘thank you.’

The central figure in red was familiar and, upon realising his identity, Bernard
wanted to disown the uninvited vision. But then came movement. The four
figures in black began to sidestep around in an anti-clockwise direction until
they had made one complete revolution.

It was the Black Alchemist. The figure in red was undoubtedly the Black
Alchemist. Now the Red Alchemist?! No, this was no joke.

What was he up to now?

A distinct impression suggested their adversary was on the move. What was
more, Bernard felt that the ritual was being conducted as he was viewing it.
At that moment, Bernard’s fellow director called out his name and the vision
ceased like a television screen suddenly going blank. Yet the disconcerting
memory remained in his now agitated mind.
Glancing at the wall clock, he noted the time. It was 10.40 am.

Bernard felt unsettled for the rest of the day. The air was thick. The Black
Alchemist was up to something, and the feelings were not good. Luckily, he was
seeing Andy that evening, so perhaps they could try and find out what was going
on then.

He left his home soon after 6.30pm and drove the few miles out to Wickford.
Andy had hired a small hall in Basildon so that they could watch an audio-visual
slide presentation he had put together. The plan was to pick him up around
seven, although the car clock indicated he would be late.

Turning off at the Rettendon Turnpike roundabout onto the A132 Wickford road,
Bernard began to experience an unexpected anxiety. He found it difficult to
concentrate on his driving, and realised he was now cruising along at well over
the legal speed limit.

Suddenly, in front of him was a stationary car, an indicator light showing it was
about to turn right. Bernard slammed on the brakes and slid to a halt just inches
from its rear bumper.

He was now in a fluster. For a moment he decided to turn on his hazard lights
and just let the car in front make its turn.
A short distance further along the road, Bernard again found himself driving at
well over the speed limit. Taking his foot off the accelerator, he just could not
understand his unusual actions.
Yet then, as the car entered the village of Runwell, just outside Wickford, he
caught sight of an ugly scene through the windscreen.
Hundreds of plucked chickens lay strewn across the road, squashed to a pulp by
passing vehicles.
They had undoubtedly fallen off the back of a lorry and, as he drove over them,
the stench almost made him retch.
It was a peculiar coincidence that did not help his rising state of agitation.
The road then curved to the left and in front he now saw another stationary car
waiting to turn right into a side road. Stamping on the brake pedal yet again, the
car skidded to an abrupt halt in good time—but this was the final straw. His heart
palpitated and his hands shook uncontrollably.
He waited for the oncoming traffic to pass so that the car in front could make its
turn.
Glancing to his left, he acknowledged the presence of the dark, silhouetted tower
of Runwell church, partially hidden among the shadows cast by the surrounding
tree line. Bernard shuddered at its close proximity for, although it was a key site
in Andy’s book The Running Well Mystery, it was a place he had never felt
inclined to visit. For him, it exuded an unwelcoming, oppressive atmosphere
linked probably to the belief that the churchyard was haunted by the devil.
Yet as Bernard stared suspiciously at the unnerving structure, a new,
overpowering and sickly vision greeted him.
The church was engulfed by a dense, swirling cloud of chaotic energies that
circled upwards before streaming off towards the direction of the Rettendon
Turnpike. Precisely where he had just come from.
With this disturbing image now came the distinct impression that the black
swirling cloud was the result of a dark ritual carried out in the churchyard only
shortly beforehand.
More disturbingly, whoever was responsible for this chaotic act was still in the
vicinity.

Bernard’s Ford Orion pulled up outside my home around 7.20 pm and, as I

opened the passenger door, he asked me to sit down as he had something to say.

‘Some very strange things have been going on today and I feel something’s up,’
he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I don’t like it one bit.’

Why? What had happened?

He told me.
So the Black Alchemist was on the move again, and this time

he was working with a group.

Runwell’s church of St Mary, and a local holy well situated a couple of miles to
the north known as the Running Well, featured in my book The Running Well
Mystery, published three years earlier. It contained an in depth study of the
folklore and legends of the parish, from what might be described as an earth
mysteries perspective.

‘I suggest we give the slide show a miss and head straight for the church,’ he
proposed, quite perturbed by the situation.
I agreed. So after rushing around, picking up a few things I felt might prove
useful that evening, we sped off in the direction of Runwell.

Twice we drove past the church to see if there was any movement within its
darkened churchyard. Nothing seemed out of place, and there was certainly no
one hanging around in a black cowled robe.

Further along the A132 Runwell Road, I saw, and smelt, the putrid chicken
carcasses still scattered across the road. This was not a good omen by any stretch
of the imagination.

Church End Lane, the side road facing onto the fourteenthcentury stone tower of
St Mary’s church, seemed an appropriate place to park the car. So, after
conducting a simple protection ritual, I picked up a torch and opened the car
door.

Stuffed into my leather jacket was a wooden cross, given to me in good faith by
a Greek Orthodox monk on Mount Athos in Greece, along with a Janus-headed
wand, one of the last vestiges of my ritual magic days. If necessary, they could
be used to bind, hold, dissipate or generate psychic energies.

Bernard had more realistic thoughts in mind when he picked up a penknife and
silently slipped it into his coat pocket.
Moving swiftly into the churchyard, he hesitantly approached the building’s
north wall and gently touched its uneven ragstone surface. ‘Somebody else has
done the same,’ he announced, patting the wall before moving away.
By this I assumed he meant the Black Alchemist.
‘Is there a porch around the back of the church?’ he asked, looking up at the
stone tower.
Yes, the porch in question was the focal point of the devil legend attached to the
church. The building’s heavy wooden south door bore a deep vertical ‘claw’
mark on its inside. This was said to have been made by the archfiend himself,
after his exit from the church was cut off by a corrupt priest named Rainaldus,
who had unexpectedly conjured Satan into manifestation at the high altar.
21. Runwell’s church of St Mary loomed out of the darkness.

We made our way now towards that porch.

‘Ah, a porch,’ Bernard said, almost as if he had not expected it to be there. ‘I’d
say something’s been going on here. I see dark energies coming from inside it.’
Once more, I insisted on caution and suggested he go no further, for the time
being at least.
He nodded towards the wooden structure. ‘He’s put something in the porch,’ he
said, picking this up now.
It was on the red-tiled floor of this porch that the corrupt priest Rainaldus was
said to have dissolved into an oozing black mess after the devil had managed to
escape from the church by burrowing through the south wall. The medieval
viewing squint or ‘spirit hole’, still visible today, is pointed out as proof of his
exit.
All that remained of Rainaldus after the devil had got to him was his shrunken
head—actually an odd-shaped flint resembling a skull—that was set into the
wall of the church. This, however, was removed in the late 1960s at the behest of
the worried rector, who detested St Mary’s associations with Old Horny.
The rector also blocked access to the devil’s claw by hiding the south door
behind a full-length drape, and placing before it a heavy lump of furniture and a
huge wrought iron candle stand. In the church’s opinion, the presence of the
claw mark was a constant reminder that sometimes God does not have full
control over what goes on inside his own house.
It was an attitude that continued at Runwell, for in 1983 I was banned from
entering St Mary’s church following the publication of The Running Well
Mystery, which was seen to promote Runwell’s associations with the devil. It
was a decision upheld by the local bishopric, headed by the Bishop of Bradwell,
and supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of
England. So unique was the ruling, which essentially excommunicated me from
the Church, it made the national headlines. Yet I doubted whether any of this had
anything to do with why we were here tonight.
So where was the object concealed?
Concentrating, Bernard gave his verdict: ‘Right-hand side. In the corner, at
ground level.’
Quickly, I entered the porch and shone the flashlight down between the wooden
bench and tiled floor. Two piles of roughlystacked roof tiles stood haphazardly
against the wall—but to their right, in the corner, among the cobwebs and dirt,
was a now familiar sight—a dark grey length of stone inscribed with magical
symbols.
Announcing the discovery, Bernard ignored my earlier advice and entered the
porch to look on silently as I visualised golden energies flowing through the
Janus wand into the stone. This would hopefully nullify its psychic charge.
Moving in closer, he reached out with his right hand and started deliberately
attuning to the stone. ‘Something else,’ he strained, forcing his hand into one of
the two untidy stacks of roof tiles, as if feeling for something. But it was too
much for him. Pulling away sharply, he stumbled backwards, almost losing his
balance. ‘He’s left something else. Look there. A message. In the roof tiles.’
With this, he vanished out of sight, leaving me to search for this ‘message’.
Lifting the first few tiles I soon found the source of Bernard’s concern—a sealed
black envelope, thick with contents, on which was sellotaped a white strip of
paper bearing—in small black type—the name ‘Andrew Brian Collins’.
My heart raced. What the hell was this?
Collecting up both the envelope and the inscribed stone, I ran off to find
Bernard. Catching up with him, we made a quick exit from the churchyard and
retired back to the car.
Bernard complained of a slight headache and a nauseous feeling inside his
stomach, but otherwise he seemed okay.

Looking at the sealed black envelope, illuminated by the car’s interior light, I
decided not to open it until we knew a bit more about what was going on.

‘I don’t think you should open it at all,’ he jested.

Perhaps that wasn’t such a bad idea. Yet one thing was for sure—the Black
Alchemist was now in possession of my full name. In which case, he also knew
of my association with Runwell church and, presumably, the diabolic legend
attached to its south porch.

Did he also now possess a copy of my book The Running Well Mystery? It
looked that way, which was slightly disconcerting really, since it contained my
home address.

‘I also think he knows there’s someone else working with you,’ he added,
glancing out of the window at a couple walking by. ‘However, I don’t get the
feeling he has my name or address. Not yet at least.’

This was probably due to the fact that I had deliberately tried to keep Bernard’s
identity out of the limelight. Yet if the Black Alchemist knew of my interest in
Runwell church, he knew also of my association with the Running Well.

It was a local site of immense sanctity with a history stretching back at least two
thousand years. I just hoped this was somewhere he might avoid.

Bernard suggested we should get out of the immediate influence of the church
and then stop for a while—see if he could pick up any further psychic clues. So,
moving the car just a few hundred yards up the lane, he brought it to a halt in a
side road. Here we rested for a few minutes by cracking open a bottle of wine we
had intended to have at the slide show.

Emptying his glass, Bernard began to concentrate his mind on the church once
more. We needed to know how effective our removal of the inscribed stone had
been and what exactly we were to do next.

After a minute or so of silence, he began to speak: ‘Right, I still see this dark
swirling cloud around the church. Removing the stone has not stopped it. I can
see it sweeping off in a northeasterly direction, like a wall of black mist. It’s
vaporous, very strong and seems to be curving across the countryside.’

Suddenly, he went quiet for a few moments. ‘Who’s “Talbot”,’ he enquired, out
of the blue. ‘It’s a name connected somehow.’
Talbot … Talbot. I thought for a moment. The name John Talbot was, I knew,
carved into the wood of Runwell church’s north porch. It is thought to be the
signature of its fourteenth century carpenter. Was the name, therefore, connected
with the building?
He shook his head. ‘No, all I get is that “Talbot” is dead, and nothing else.’
For a few minutes more we just sat in silence waiting for something to happen.
Then I noticed that Bernard was once more in a state of deep concentration.
‘You must go,’ he whispered, breaking the long silence and coming out of his
meditative state. ‘Okay, I’m being told by a female spirit we have to go
somewhere. She’s on our side—a site guardian I should think, larger than life
and blue-white in colour. She’s pointing towards a spot by some trees. High up.
There’s a church there. She says the Black Alchemist has been there.’
A spot high up, with trees and a church. Could I identify it? I thought for a
moment.
‘I know where this is,’ Bernard exclaimed, smiling. ‘It’s Rettendon church.’
All Saints, Rettendon, one of the most prominent churches in southeast Essex.
Yes, it made sense.
‘It appears to be the next point on this ring of darkness.’
Ring of Darkness?
‘Yes, that’s what it is—a huge ring of energies, encircling sites.’ There was a
further pause before he spoke again. ‘That’s it,’ he said to himself. ‘That’s why I
picked up such bad feelings on the Runwell Road, coming into Wickford. It must
have begun as I unknowingly passed through the ring on its path between the
two churches –Runwell and Rettendon.’
They were, it seemed, just two points in a great circle of dark energies set up by
the Black Alchemist. If so, then where did it go after Rettendon? And what was
its function, or purpose?
As we sat there in the car, I attempted not to think about the sealed black
envelope so ominously addressed to me. That would have to wait until we got a
chance to sit down and work out what else was happening here.
‘The blue lady says she will be waiting for us at the church. So I suppose we
should go there now.’
14 The Blue Lady
Bernard switched off the headlights as the car coasted to a halt in front of the
church of All Saints, Rettendon, its darkened form dominating the hilltop in
front of us. For a few minutes we just sat there wondering what to do.

‘Do you get anything?’ he asked, hoping I would be able to either confirm or add
to his own feelings on the situation.
I said no.
He sighed to show his concern. ‘Well, I’ve got a pain in my stomach and I feel as
if I’m being pulled towards the church for some reason.’
Minutes passed before he finally spoke again in a low decisive voice. ‘I’m being
shown an aerial view of the church as if I’ve been lifted off the ground to treetop
level,’ he said. ‘I can see a black, swirling cloud of energies—the same as at
Runwell— enclosing the church and curving away towards the northwest.’
He stopped for a minute to gather his thoughts. ‘The strongest emanations
appear to be coming from a spot on the opposite side of the church, somewhere
beneath the tower.’
Just like at Runwell, completely out of sight of the approach road, I thought to
myself.
‘And I can still see the blue lady,’ he confirmed. ‘She’s standing by the west end
of the church, pointing towards the ground. She’s weak now, drained of energy
for some reason.’
There was a pause before he continued. ‘She’s still pointing … there’s a stone ...
a white stone on the ground, near a door, about a foot across. Something about
putting the sword in the stone.’
As the pauses between the sentences grew longer, I feared Bernard was losing
consciousness. I was afraid he was being engulfed within this Ring of Darkness,
and that could, I knew, lead to possession or the usual ill effects of attuning to
the Black Alchemist’s chaotic activities.
But he opened his eyes and broke his concentration without any obvious signs of
discomfort. ‘Don’t worry, I’m alright,’ he affirmed.
We left the car and made our way up the gravel path towards the darkened
church. The staggering view of the surrounding countryside quite overwhelmed
Bernard. I pointed out the glittering lights of the Thames Estuary and the North
Downs of Kent—it was a magnificent vantage point.
Reaching the western end of the church, I stood by the great wooden door below
the tower and looked around for a concealment place. So, was something buried
here?
‘There’s a white stone. That’s all I’m getting.’
A white stone. I shone the torchlight onto the grass. Almost immediately it
picked out a smooth white slab of marble set into the earth next to a wooden
seat. It was obviously a chunk off an old grave slab, and yet somehow it
appeared to be exactly what we were looking for.
Seeing the white slab, Bernard cautiously reached out with his hand and
attempted to attune to it. Instantly, and without warning, he began to retch as he
slowly moved his fingers closer to the offending stone.
But then he quickly withdrew his hand and stepped backwards. ‘Down the side,’
he choked, despite the obvious ill effects. Forcing himself back to the spot, he
touched the grass at the side of the stone. ‘It’s down there. Take it out.’
I shone the torch into the grass and soon found the source of his discomfort as a
slim piece of slate, shaped like a sword tip and inscribed with familiar-looking
symbols, came into view.
It had been jammed between the edge of the stone and the soft grass. As Bernard
moved away, I used the Janus wand to conduct a cleansing visualisation, hoping
it would destroy the charged energies contained within the stone. Picking it up, I
slid it into my jacket pocket before catching up with Bernard who was already
making his way back to the car.

Something bothered me as we sat silently waiting for further psychic clues. We

had now found not one but two inscribed stones that evening. It looked very
much as if the Black Alchemist was using them as fixing markers to contain,
warp and channel the inherent energies present at each of the sites he had
selected for his Ring of Darkness. The first of these had been located together
with an envelope addressed to me. So, if we were meant to have found the two
items at Runwell, then we were almost certainly meant to have found the stone
in Rettendon churchyard.

But there was more. The Ring of Darkness was almost predictable. I quickly
sketched a map of the local landscape and drew a great circle incorporating the
churches of Runwell and Rettendon. It did not take a rocket scientist to work out
that the circle also included the hilltop church of Downham, a few miles
northwest of Wickford, particularly as this church, along with those of Runwell
and Rettendon, features as part of a rather speculative theory of landscape
geometry I outlined in The Running Well Mystery. It postulates that several of the
churches, hilltops and ancient sites around Runwell and Wickford conform to a
huge circular ground plan, based on a mystical symbol known as the Runwell
Cross, which features in local legend.
22. Bernard and the author were led by the blue lady to Rettendon church, the
second site on the Black Alchemist’s Ring of Darkness.

The Black Alchemist’s Ring of Darkness did not correspond exactly with my
own circular arrangement of sites, yet the concept was the same. More
worryingly, the Ring of Darkness’s centre point looked like being the Running
Well—the most sacred site in the area and a place very close to my heart. For the
moment though, I decided to keep all this to myself. I did not want to
unintentionally influence Bernard’s psychic information.

‘We’re not finished here,’ Bernard now said, breaking the silence in the car. ‘I’m
being pulled back towards the churchyard for some reason, and I’ve got to go.’
I told him to be careful. It could be a trap.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, opening the car door. ‘I’m going out there anyway.’
Leaving the safety of the vehicle’s warm interior, he made his way up the gravel
path and began cutting across the wet grass towards some unknown destination.
I followed close behind, pen and paper in hand.
The tireless psychic came to a halt in front of an unidentified grave in the middle
of the churchyard. He stood there, silent and motionless, in a world of his own.
As I looked on, he slowly raised his arms into the air.
‘Her name is Cecilia,’ he said, without explanation.
It was a reference, I realised, to the blue lady. So, who was Cecilia? The spirit of
the person buried in the grave he was standing over?
Ignoring me, he began to mumble something I could not hear properly.
Approaching him, I listened carefully. He appeared to be in a light trance.
Words in a low monotone voice issued from his mouth. They included: ‘Church
down lane … very near water … nothing left … linked with mind, but left no
mark … church on hill ... we go there ... we find and take ... we will destroy.’
His words were, I realised, responses to commands being given by Cecilia. I
recognised the church on the hill. That was Downham. So I was right. Downham
was one of the sites making up the Ring of Darkness. However, I could not
identify the other church down a lane, close to water.
Dropping his arms, Bernard snapped out of the altered state and confirmed that
he had just spoken to the blue lady. ‘She called me and I found her standing by
the grave,’ he said, pacing about to keep warm.
‘I’m not sure who she is. She raised her arms into the air, so I thought I should
do the same. She told me her name was Cecilia and that, in addition to Runwell
and Rettendon, BA has been to another church down the end of a long unmade
track.’
‘However, for some reason he only attuned to this church, and did not leave a
stone or anything. Just a mental instruction of some kind.’
So where was this church? Lighting a Marlboro, I waited for his reply.
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘As I say, all I get is that it’s
down a lane and near a large expanse of water. The Hanningfield reservoir, I
suppose.’
That was my conclusion too—the reservoir at South Hanningfield, a few miles
to the northwest of Rettendon.
‘She also told me that BA has visited another church—on a hill—where he did
leave something.’
Downham, I told Bernard. Perhaps the other church down the lane was the one at
South Hanningfield. However, I had never been there so knew nothing about it.
Had he been there in his travels?
Bernard twisted around, having only caught the last part of my question. ‘Er, no,
I haven’t. Anyway, if he’s not left anything, then I don’t see any point in going
there. Do you?’
Okay, so it was straight to Downham church.

Passing swiftly along the quiet, narrow lanes of South Hanningfield, on our way
to Downham, Bernard suddenly became agitated.

‘I don’t like this at all,’ he admitted, in a concerned tone for the umpteenth time
that evening. ‘I just feel as if something not very nice is looming over the
horizon, and we are walking, or more correctly driving, straight into it.’

What did he mean?

‘I don’t know. The one thing I do get though, is that whoever’s defiling these
sites is still in the area, and close by.’
It was a disconcerting thought.
‘I now see a horrible sight,’ he announced, as the car continued on through the
dark lanes. ‘I see a body hanging by its neck from a noose strung over a tree. I’m
not sure what it means, but I hope it’s not a portent of some sort.’ He forced a
little laugh to try and lighten the atmosphere.
I said nothing, just looked out at the passing hedgerow.
Minutes passed, and then he spoke again. ‘Now I see the whole landscape
engulfed by a mass of enormous flames. Above it is a huge flaming sword.’
I did not understand and the clairvoyant picture was quickly forgotten.
‘Hold on,’ Bernard said, re-opening the conversation and momentarily slowing
down the car. ‘D’you know, I reckon that BA came along this same road just a
short while ago.’
We carried on. A minute or so later a small lane emerged out of the darkness on
the right-hand side. A sign announced its name—Church Lane. On impulse we
decided to take it. It was an unmade track which, after only a few hundred yards,
came to an abrupt end in front of a double gate.
The headlights picked out a painted wooden signpost indicating the gateway was
the entrance to a farm called Bifrons.9 Another sign prohibited cars from going
beyond this point.
It all appeared to make some sort of sense. Beyond the gate was quite obviously
a church—the one mentioned by Cecilia as being down ‘a long lane’—which
could only be reached by walking through the farm. If so, then it was this church
that formed the next point in the Black Alchemist’s Ring of Darkness.
It looked as if he too had gone down this unmade track, expecting to find access
to the church. Instead, he had quickly realised the only way to reach it was on
foot, which he had apparently decided against doing. In consequence, he had
simply carried out a visualisation ritual to fix the church as the third point in his
Ring of Darkness, before continuing onto Downham.
So we continued the journey ourselves.
23. The entrance to Bifrons, next to the church at South Hanningfield.
Minutes later, on the left-hand verge, a piece of red cloth was picked out by the
vehicle’s headlights. It had obviously been discarded by some careless motorist
or passer-by, but, for some reason, its image instantly registered in both our
minds. Bernard jammed on the brakes and brought the car to a halt in the middle
of the narrow lane. Yet we did not go back to pick it up. Neither did we feel it
was part of the quest—but it did mean something.

It was an omen.
‘Like a red rag to a bull,’ I said out aloud, as I tried to reason our actions. Then I
knew. This whole journey was like a red rag to a bull. The Black Alchemist had
set up the Ring of Darkness for a specific purpose—to play us at our own game
—psychic questing: following psychic clues to discover hidden artefacts and
uncover long lost secrets of the past. We were acting like charging bulls, the both
of us.
Now his intentions were clear. The Black Alchemist actually wanted us to find
each and every one of his hidden artefacts, knowing that this was exactly what
we would do. The sealed black envelope found in Runwell churchyard was
addressed to me, so, if he knew we would find this, then he also knew we would
continue the quest and find the rest of the artefacts used to form his Ring of
Darkness. So what was to happen then? Was he luring us into a trap somewhere?
At the Running Well perhaps?
Bernard looked unsettled. ‘I think you’re right. He’s been up to the well. Let’s
just hope he’s not waiting for us there.’

Ten minutes later the car rolled to a halt in the lay-by next to the hilltop church
of St Margaret’s, Downham—the fourth and final point on the Ring of Darkness,
and just two miles northwest of Wickford.

Leaving the car, we made our way to the churchyard and entered the wooden
lychgate. Here I took Bernard through a protection visualisation before we
stepped into the stillness of the darkened churchyard. Swiftly, we made our way
across the dewladen grass to the secluded east end of the Christian edifice.

‘Here,’ Bernard nodded, indicating towards an area beneath the east wall. ‘He’s
done something down there. I can feel it.’
Bernard ran his hand across the stonework and, about half way along, dropped it
towards the ground. He attempted to attune directly to the concealed artefact by
placing the palm of his hand close to the earth, then moving it around before
returning to a spot in the grass, close to the base of the wall. ‘There,’ he
announced, indicating with his hand.
Kneeling down, I parted the strands of wet grass and, in a small ready-made
hole, found our fourth artefact of the night— another inscribed piece of shale.
The psychic stepped backwards with the inevitable ill effects of attuning to
objects used in such unstable practices, as I quickly carried out a simple ritual to
destroy the psychic charge contained within the stone. This completed, I pulled
out the artefact and slipped it into a pocket, although not before I noticed one of
its crudely inscribed images. It was the outline of a long snake, inside which
were two matchstick men and the word: ‘SOON’!
24. Downham church, the fourth and final site of the Ring of Darkness.

I was satisfied at our swift recovery of the concealed artefact without any
obvious problems. Next stop would be the Running Well itself. It had to be. Yet
whatever the real meaning and purpose of this whole affair, no one could say it
was not a fantastic story. But who would believe it? Not many, I decided.

Smiling, I stood up straight and looked around for Bernard. Where was he? I
could not see him anywhere. Perhaps he had gone back to the car? Leaving the
spot, I walked briskly back into the more open and illuminated part of the
churchyard.

Over by the lychgate, I glanced towards his Orion. It was empty. So where was
he? My fears began to increase by the second. This was all I needed—Bernard’s
sudden, unaccountable disappearance. He had to be here somewhere.

Running through the churchyard, I shouted out his name once, twice, three
times. There was no response at all. I frowned in annoyance. He could not have
gone far, I told myself, as my stomach began to churn wildly.
Walking back towards the east end of the church, I again called his name.
A low murmur came in response. I shouted out to pinpoint its direction. Another
faint sound emanated from an unseen spot among the dark shadows cast by the
overhanging hedgerow on the northern edge of the churchyard.
Running frantically in the direction of the strange sounds, the torchlight
illuminated Bernard in an almost unconscious state, lying curled up on the
ground. By the tormented expression on his face I realised he was fighting to rid
his mind of an uninvited intruder.
In desperation I tried to carry out a banishment ritual using the Janus wand. But
it had no effect, so I had to think fast. What could I do?
I knew. Placing my hands on his shoulders, I visualised my own vital energy
going into his body. This would hopefully give him enough inner strength to
overcome whatever was inside him. But it did not work.
I tried another banishment ritual. This time it seemed to have some sort of effect,
as he gradually began to push himself up off the ground. But still he appeared to
be in a state of mental torment—stumbling about aimlessly, until his hand
reached out and grabbed hold of a gravestone, which he used to support himself
as he mumbled something about having ‘been hit’ and wanting to ‘earth’ himself.
Constantly, I talked to him hoping he would snap out of this terrifying mental
torment. Then, and only then, did he start to recover.
It was time to leave.
Taking his arm, I helped him out of the churchyard. Inside the lychgate, he
slumped onto its wooden bench. I could see he was still weak, both mentally and
physically. So, in an attempt to get him to regain some of his lost vital energy, I
led him through a simple aura building exercise. It took several painstaking
minutes before he recovered fully, and as I waited for him to speak, he took out
and lit a cigarette.
So, what the hell had happened out there?
He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and actually began to look as if life was
returning to him, ‘Well, it began after we’d found the stone,’ he started. ‘Its
retrieval drained me and I started to feel sick and weak. I also felt as if my
protective shield was fast disappearing.’
He drew deep on his cigarette before continuing. ‘I tried to get away, but then I
saw and felt something hit me at great speed. I don’t know what it was. All I saw
was like a concentration of darkness, shaped like a ball. It just came at me and
entered my stomach, after which I hit the ground, and that was it.’ He shook his
head in frustration. ‘The next thing I remember was you shouting behind me. I
got up and just knew I had to earth whatever was inside me. That’s why I
grabbed the gravestone. I pushed it into the earth and things seemed to get better
after that.’
Many psychics believe it is possible to earth negative energies by mentally
pushing them into a stone heavily rooted to the ground—like a standing stone or
gravestone, for instance. So it made sense. Yet I needed to know whether my
banishment had worked.
‘Yes, I think so. It certainly helped,’ he admitted. ‘But I felt the need to earth the
force in some way.
Accepting his word, we walked across to the car.
Bernard was reaching a point of absolute exhaustion. I could see it in his eyes.
There was no way he could continue on the quest to the Running Well unless he
regained his strength. He was the driver, so if anything else tried to get at him it
could easily result in disaster.
We now needed to know exactly what was going on at the well, and what to do
when we got there.
To this end Bernard needed to make contact with his spirit guide, the Elizabethan
alchemist. This he would only be able to do in a fit state of mind. So we needed
to rest somewhere.
Along the road into Wickford was a pub called The Downham Arms. I suggested
we stop there. We could have a quiet drink, suss out the situation and open the
sealed black envelope. See what was inside that.
Without much thought, Bernard agreed.
15 The Downham Arms
It’s not often that a young man strolls conspicuously into a family pub dressed in
a leather biker’s jacket, jeans and boots, holding a wooden crucifix over a sealed
black envelope. Upon realising this, I rapidly tried to secrete the cross and
envelope about my person whilst ordering drinks.

Sitting down opposite Bernard, I pulled out the black envelope and stared at it
apprehensively, dreading what it might contain. Still, I had decided it was the
correct time and place to reveal its contents so, with some slight hesitation, I
used Bernard’s penknife to slit open its lip.

Peeking inside, I saw it contained various bits and pieces. There was a large
orange-red crystal of some sort. I could also make out a couple of pieces of
paper, and another black envelope, sealed and folded in two. Lastly, I could see
some folded sheets of paper, which looked as if they were pages from a book.

The crystal bounced onto the table as I slowly tilted the envelope. Quite
understandably, Bernard refused to touch it. It was about half an inch square and
made of a translucent substance of very little weight. Leaving it between the
stained beer mats and ashtray, I slipped out the white sheets of paper.
Immediately, I recognised what they were—four pages torn from my book The
Running Well Mystery—pages 31 to 34, to be more precise.

Involuntarily, I gulped at the sight.

Various words and sentences had been underlined or lined through with a red
fibre-tipped pen, as if to emphasise their importance or irrelevance. Their subject
matter seemed connected with our current predicament, since they featured one
of the most memorable of the folktales associated with the Running Well—the
story of the Prioress’s Ring.
It concerned a magical, talismanic ring of office that had belonged to the prioress
of a medieval convent thought to have served the holy well. The essence of the
legend spoke of the ring’s topaz stone being used by the prioress as a kind of
scrying glass to keep a watchful eye on the activities of the young novices.
Yet it was the way in which the magical ring had been endowed with its
talismanic properties that had intrigued me at the time of writing the book.
Apparently, the prioress fasted for nine days and nine nights. On the final night
she witnessed the Virgin Mary entering the convent through an open window on
a moonbeam, which had slowly swept across a table until it illuminated the
talismanic stone.
As I proposed in The Running Well Mystery, this curious legend seemed to
embody a much older tradition—one of aligning ancient sites towards prominent
solar and lunar risings and settings at certain times of the year. The legend of the
Prioress’s Ring was used also in the book as evidence of my belief that the
Runwell landscape, which included the Running Well, was associated with the
influence of the moon.
Anyway, the words underlined were as follows:

… denied the balm of sleep for nine … nights . .. Rested a ring of noble dignity
… gold … topaz … black … secret words … talisman … watch and ward … ring
… talisman … which could, henceforth, be used to keep an ever-watchful eye …
various mystical overtones … denied the balm of sleep … nine … powers …
moon … ring … alchemy … setting sun on a specific date in the year … energies
… dormant natural forces … power centres … altars in the east … giving light,
life [with the word ‘light’ crossed through] … pure gold … practices of age-old
cultures … bringing life … ring … ring … gold ring … topaz … 1514 (AD) …
talismanic qualities … Where was the ring now? … three giant hounds ‘dun
coloured with eyes a-fire, foam dripping jaws and savage teeth that gnashed.’

Some of the words and sentences highlighted bore no obvious relevance to the
situation, but the rest clearly did. In a sense, the whole exercise could be
interpreted as a kind of cryptic message directed at me, provided that one read
between the lines, so to speak.

Leaving the torn out pages for a moment, I turned my attention to the remaining
contents of the black envelope. Tipping it upside down allowed three small
pieces of paper to fall out. Each was a cutting taken from The Radio Times
magazine. On the first was the word ‘you’, and on the second were the words
‘who looks after’. The third showed the front cover of a recently published book
entitled The Power of the Mind, put together from articles originally published in
The Unexplained, a newsstand magazine on ancient and more modern mysteries.
The cutting had obviously been taken from an advertisement for some kind of
‘mysteries’ book club.

So, when placed together, the message read: ‘ You who looks after the power of
the mind’.
The Radio Times issue used to construct the message was recent, as on the back
of one cutting were snippets of a programme guide mentioning the 1986
Liberal/SDP Alliance party’s annual conference held at Eastbourne in Sussex,
which had ended just ten days earlier.
Even though Bernard had picked up that the Black Alchemist lived in
Eastbourne, I decided this had to be a bizarre coincidence. Nothing more.
With the cuttings still scattered across the table, alongside the orange-red crystal
and torn out pages, I pulled out the envelope’s final item—the folded black
envelope. Shaking it, I realised it contained some loose items, so hesitantly slit it
open. They turned out to be further fragments of the crystalline solid found in
the first envelope. With them were two more cuttings from The Radio Times.
One read ‘say goodbye’, and the other was another book cover from the same
‘mysteries’ book club advertisement. Its title: Life after Death!
I positioned the final two cuttings at the end of the first three and read out the
complete message:

You who looks after the power of the mind, say goodbye. Life after Death.
It was a death threat! Well, that’s the way it looked at least.

So the macabre jigsaw was beginning to take shape. Somehow the Black
Alchemist had managed to link my name with the interference of his dark rituals,
probably through a contact in the magical community, or perhaps through
psychic means. He then obtained a copy of The Running Well Mystery— which,
incidentally, had been out of print for three years—and, upon reading it, realised
its association with the various ancient and sacred sites in the landscape around
Wickford and Runwell. He had then familiarised himself with their history,
legends and apparent psychic influence in readiness for some kind of concerted
effort to eliminate both me and Bernard, whose name he did not appear to know.

If this was the case, then perhaps he was leading us into some kind of ritual trap,
which we would encounter at the well. Whether he intended eliminating us by
psychic attack or sawn-off shotgun, I did not wish to think. Bernard’s impression
that the man was still in the area did nothing to calm my nerves.

However, there appeared to be more to the Black Alchemist’s plans than simply
this. The statements and words underlined within the torn-out pages spoke of
‘denying the balm of sleep for nine nights’, which suggested that once we had
walked into the ritual trap we had just night nights to live. This provided a
culmination date of Wednesday, 15th October. So, by this date, if the Black
Alchemist had his way, both Bernard and I would be experiencing life after
death!

I tried to make a joke of the whole thing, but Bernard was not laughing.
25. The contents of the black envelope addressed to ‘Andrew Brian Collins’
found concealed in Runwell church’s south porch.

Quite rightly, he felt this was a very serious matter. The Black Alchemist was not
only an adept magician and a dangerous psychic, he was also, in our opinion, an
unbalanced, and very devious, psychopath who wanted to cause us real harm.

At Bernard’s suggestion, I changed the mood of conversation by asking him

about the daydream he’d experienced at work earlier that day in which he had
seen four black cowled figures with batons side-stepping around a fifth character
attired in red, thought to be the Black Alchemist.

The four figures in black represented, I was pretty sure, the four churches
making up the Ring of Darkness. In which case, the central figure in red
signified both the Running Well and the orange-red crystals found in the sealed
envelope. Maybe the Black Alchemist had been trying to use the crystals to
forge a psychic link with me, in the same way that the Prioress used the topaz
ring to keep a watchful eye on the convent’s young novices.
Shifting the subject of conversation again, I brought up the name ‘Talbot’, which
Bernard had picked up shortly after the discovery of the inscribed stone and
sealed black envelope in Runwell churchyard.

Talbot, or Edward Talbot, to give him his full name, was, I realised at last, the
true identity of Dr John Dee’s close friend and accomplice Edward Kelley
(1555-1597). He too was an accomplished alchemist as well as Dee’s scryer, or
spirit communicator, who, for many years, trafficked with denizens of unseen
worlds on behalf of the Elizabethan magus.

I knew the pair used a crystal ball, as well as a black obsidian scrying mirror, to
make contact with spirits, angels, and archangels. Kelley had also been a bit of a
rogue—a fact that has often led scholars to doubt the authenticity of his spirit
communications.

So, did Bernard feel that the name ‘Talbot’ was a reference to Dee’s sidekick,
Edward Kelley?
As usual, Bernard simply shrugged his shoulders with a smile. ‘I don’t know.
Maybe.’
I left the subject. What we now needed was a directive of some kind. We needed
to know what to expect when we arrived at the Running Well, otherwise we
could find ourselves in serious trouble either on a psychic or physical level. I
asked Bernard if he would try to communicate with his spirit guide, the
Elizabethan alchemist. Perhaps he would be able to throw some light on what
was happening at the well.
Bernard nodded in agreement. ‘Okay, but I don’t suppose I’ll get much,’ he
insisted, finishing off his drink. ‘However, I’m not doing it here. Let’s go out to
the car. It’ll be quieter out there.’

As the first noisy revellers spilled out of the pub’s double doors and ambled
noisily back towards their cars, Bernard sat silently contemplating the presence
of his sixteenth-century spirit guide. Glancing at the car clock, I noticed the time.
It was 10.15 pm.

Waiting for some sort of response, I stared into the darkness, before I heard the
familiar sound of Bernard’s hand scribbling at a fast pace.

A minute or so later, the psychic stopped writing and handed me the notepad.
Switching on the torch, I focused my eyes on the scrawled sentences:
[He, BA] Is practising the [magical] art and carry[ing] to extreme psychic level.
Sees water as Mercury. Is using the crystal as Dee on table of many colours.
Talbot killed himself. Jumped from window. No contact is possible with him. The
table is on many seals as Dee. Uses the Elder of URIEL. Knows of involvement
with Glaston. Tries to contact many of the departed souls of the art. Table of
many colours stands on seals. Draws the energies. Mind power is very strong.
Knows much of ancient laws and Treatise. Energy flow at well now very dark.

From what he had written, it was quite clear that the earlier mention of someone
called ‘Talbot’ was indeed a reference to Dee’s sidekick, Edward Kelley.

Kelley died in 1597 as a result of a fall incurred whilst attempting to escape from
a castle in Bohemia, a historical region of central Europe. Apparently, the Holy
Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1576-1612) had imprisoned Kelley in the castle of
Krivoklát in what is today the Czech Republic, ordering him to accomplish the
alchemical transmutation of base metal into gold, otherwise he could hope to die
in captivity.

Kelley did, however, manage to escape in 1593, losing a leg in the process. He
was then recaptured and submitted to a second confinement in the more secure
castle of Hnevin, also in the Czech republic.

Although Kelley is rumoured to have completed the alchemical transmutation,

the emperor refused to let him go, forcing the English alchemist to attempt
another escape. It failed miserably, leaving him in great pain. He died shortly
afterwards.

The reference in the automatic script to ‘Glaston’, i.e. Glastonbury, stemmed

from the fact that Edward Kelley, with or without Dee’s help, is alleged to have
found in its famous abbey ruins (or a local churchyard) a glass phial containing
‘the Elixir of Life’, which could be used to turn base metal into gold.

The story is, however, apocryphal, and might never have happened, even though
there is some evidence that Dee had family connections in the area.

Dee and Kelley certainly used magical seals to call upon the denizens of the
spirit world. They were inscribed in a strange script known as the Enochian or
angelic alphabet, originally conveyed to the pair during psychic
communications. Among their communicants were the archangels Gabriel, who
presided over the element of Water, and Uriel, who governed the element of
Earth.

26. Dr John Dee’s

accomplice, the
alchemist and
scryer Edward
Kelley (1555-1597),
who died following
a failed attempt to
escape from a
castle in Bohemia.
So, BA not only believed he was in psychic communication with Dee, but he
also used the Elizabethan magus’s Enochian system to call upon the same
angelic forces.

The reference in the text to a ‘table of many colours’, standing on seals, meant
nothing to either of us, although it made sense that Dee and Kelley should have
strengthened their contact with the unseen realms through such a process.

Other than this, the automatic script was not enough. We needed more.
Bernard accepted this and so, once more, sat with his pen poised over a clean
sheet in the notepad.
The car clock showed the time was now 10.30 pm.
The pen again began to scribble out words. On finishing, he handed me the pad.
Turning on the torch, I read the new message:

To undo the Mercuric black flow [at the well] you must use the opposite force for
a short duration. You must use gold and the heavenly body.

Although the communication was brief, it told me precisely what to do. The
Running Well, as I pointed out in The Running Well Mystery, is associated with
the power, energy and influence of the moon. In the Western mystery tradition
this is usually personified as a female goddess, or spirit form. Such lunar
influenced sites include nearly all sacred and mystical places associated with
water, such as springs, pools, waterfalls and lakes. Each exudes subtle energies a
good psychic will see as a silvery-blue light that is slow and graceful in
movement.

Other types of site, such as standing stones, stone circles, dolmens, chambered
mounds and holy hills, might be seen as attributed to the moon’s equal and
opposite force—the sun, the ‘heavenly body’ of Bernard’s message. Such places
are usually spoken of as male in aspect, with a purpose, tradition and psychic
influence connected with the sun and solar worship. They are usually presided
over by male deities and spirit guardians. A good psychic will see these solar
energies as either gold or orangeyellow in colour, and generally fast moving and
radiant in splendour.

It now appeared as if the Black Alchemist had deliberately invoked, harnessed,

and then changed the Running Well’s inherent lunar energies to give him the
necessary grip over the site he required to conduct his dark ritual. In doing so, he
had disharmonised and blackened the well’s energy flow. Therefore, if Bernard
and I had reached the well and nonchalantly attuned to its natural energies, we
might easily have fallen under the control of the Black Alchemist’s ritual trap.

The message seemed clear. We were to flood the site with its equal and opposite
force—golden solar energy—which could, I knew, be manufactured in the
human aura and sent out into the landscape by means of mental visualisation. A
good psychic might actually see such energies emanating from a person’s aura.
This Bernard had witnessed the previous year at Burlough Castle when I had
attempted to restore Ogmor’s lost strength, which was somehow associated with
the influence of the sun.

One of the most powerful forms of solar energy on a psychic level could be seen,
or visualised, as a kind of orange-gold fire. In mystical terms, this ‘divine fire’ is
delivered by the archangel Michael, who governs the element of Fire and wields
a flaming sword—precisely the image Bernard had seen in his mind earlier that
evening. The Fire of Michael, as it is known, can be used for various purposes. It
can either be drawn around a place or person to protect them from malevolent
forces, or it can be used to purify, cleanse and even destroy thought forms, place
memories and localised energy fields.

It therefore seemed as if the best way to destroy BA’s ritual trap, apparently
waiting for us at the Running Well, was to invoke and draw down the Fire of
Michael to burn and purify the site. However, I knew only too well that this
could also destroy residual memories and energy forms created over a period of
perhaps two thousand years of religious devotion at the well. But it appeared to
be the only way.
16 The Blackened Well
In the darkness, Bernard’s beige Ford Orion rolled to a halt outside the disused
wooden barn next to Poplars Farm, close to the border between the parishes of
Runwell and East Hanningfield. A metal-barred gate and a short walk across a
sloping meadow was all that separated us from whatever lay ahead at the
Running Well.

No cars were around, so it looked as if we might be alone after all. I thought of

calling at Poplars Farm to see whether the occupants had seen any other cars that
evening. However, I resisted the temptation, as I did not feel they would
appreciate answering the door to strangers at that time of night.

‘I feel the best thing we can do is try and attune to the well from here,’ Bernard
suggested, winding down his window to let out cigarette smoke.

Agreeing, I sat with pen poised to paper as he closed his eyes and began to
concentrate on our predicament.
Soon his mind picked out a clear vision. ‘Right, I see Cecilia by the well.’ There
was a short pause. ‘Is there a body buried around there, somewhere? I’ve said
that before, haven’t I?’
He had. Exactly one year beforehand on his only other visit to the well. On that
occasion he had picked up on a teenage girl who, centuries ago, would withdraw
to the calm serenity of the well to stare into its crystal-clear waters in order to
glimpse future events by the light of the moon. The local people had regarded
her as a witch and, one evening, as she had stood by the water’s edge, the poor
girl was set upon and beaten to death, her body hurriedly buried close to the
well. Bernard even gave her full name and the date she died.
‘I see BA there now,’ he continued, breaking my train of thought. ‘He’s
definitely been down there. I see him stirring the water in an anti-clockwise
direction with a stick … dark swirling energies pour out of the well. He’s now
quartering the water’s surface … It will make each of the four church marker
points stronger ... I feel somebody wants to get rid of us here at the well itself …
There’s a feeling of death, and fire for some reason ... I hear words: “A body will
be found with a rope around its neck. A body will be found in a fire”.’
Bernard’s voice was becoming lower and more monotone— the first signs of a
potentially dangerous possession. I had to stop him, so I shouted out his name.
‘Don’t worry,’ he responded, opening his eyes. ‘I’m okay. Those are the words
he said as he stood by the well: “A body will be found with a rope around its
neck. A body will be found in a fire”.’
Charming. I remembered the image Bernard had seen earlier—a body hanging
by its neck from a rope strung over a tree. The Black Alchemist wanted one of
us to hang ourselves, and the other to die in a fire. The thought sent a deathly
chill down my spine. We had been correct, the contents of the sealed black
envelope did indeed add up to a death threat.
‘Cecilia appears to be wearing a blue and white nun’s habit,’ he offered, quite
unexpectedly. ‘I think she might have been a nun at the convent.’
Of course, one of the nun’s that tended the holy well and came from a nearby
convent or nunnery, thought to have stood on the site of Poplar’s Farm. Visitors
to the well often spoke of seeing a ghostly nun there.

Leaving the car, we climbed over the padlocked metal gate and began the short
stroll across the wet meadow towards the copse of mature trees marking the
position of the well. Being one of the high spots of southeast Essex, the orange
and white lights of Runwell, Wickford and beyond to the Thames Estuary, even
the North Downs of Kent, were visible. For a moment, we stopped to admire the
scenery before continuing our journey.

The Running Well is located within an earthen hollow, concealed inside a tree-
lined, triangular piece of land situated between three fields. A large concrete
platform, complete with steps down into the well’s depths, complements the
large, half moon-shaped expanse of water some eight feet across. Its clear water
originates from a spring at the base of the well which, it is said, has never been
known to fail. The excess water drains away into an adjoining, sleeper-covered
concrete cistern. This in turn overflows into a drainage channel that runs
westwards for no more than 20 yards before turning south to form a brook that
flows all the way down to Runwell church.

Interestingly, both the church and well are dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. They
form part of an alignment of ancient sites, which also includes Wickford’s
medieval church of St Catherine and an ancient moat that once existed
immediately behind my parents’ home, making this a perfect example of an
Alfred Watkins style ley line.

I had uncovered firm evidence of a human presence at the Running Well going
back at least 2,000 years, and there seemed little question that Runwell gained its
name—which in the AngloSaxon tongue breaks down to rune, meaning ‘secret’
or ‘mystery’, and welle, meaning ‘spring’—from this ancient spring.10

It was not, however, the virtues of the well we were here to appreciate tonight.
Other more pressing matters filled our minds, as simultaneously we both came to
a halt some twenty paces from the tree line.

Something now stood in our way.

Within the gap in the hedgerow, on the path right in front of us, stood a black
amorphous form. Though bilious in quality, it bore a distinct anthropomorphic
appearance, and I sensed it was conscious of our presence.
‘Do you see that?’ Bernard asked.
So he could see it as well. I knew what I could see, but what about him?
‘A dark human-like shape.’
The same.
It was almost certainly a thought form set up by the Black Alchemist to guard
the gateway through which he knew we would have to pass if we wanted to
reach the well. If this was so, then he had obviously not bargained on both of us
seeing it.
Bernard seconded my evaluation. ‘I think the idea was for us to have
inadvertently come into contact with that thing. It would have acted like some
sort of trigger mechanism setting off whatever lay in store for us at the well.’
We could go no further. The whole site would have to be blasted by the Fire of
Michael from where we stood.
Raising my arms, I called upon the archangel to deliver his divine fire by
reaching down and touching the well with his flaming sword. In my mind’s eye,
I pictured a huge pillar of fire slowly descending out of the sky towards the
group of trees surrounding the holy well. I saw the waters burst into flame—as if
they were petrol ignited by a match. The trees were consumed first, then the
undergrowth, and then finally the earthen banks making up the well hollow. As
the flames rose steadily, I directed them to encircle the site as a cloud of fiery
light that gradually spiralled into the air like a mini tornado.
Bernard could see the whole light display with his eyes firmly open, as if the site
really was on fire. And to him it was real. The visualisation was working.
When the fire died away, I opened my eyes and asked Bernard how the site now
looked on a psychic level. At that moment, I swear I saw a tiny ball of white
light flash past me, coming from the direction of the well.
‘I’ve been seeing them for some minutes,’ he coolly announced. ‘Tiny balls of
bluey-white light flitting about in every direction, very close to the ground.’
The Fire of Michael had worked, destroying both the Black Alchemist’s ritual
trap and the thought form guarding the gateway between the two fields. For that
had now gone.
We moved through the gap and turned left to walk the final few paces across to
the well. Peering through the undergrowth, I shone the torchlight onto the
water’s surface. Stuck upright in the mud by the edge of the concrete platform
was a long black stick, cut from a tree, the bottom six inches of which were still
wet. It had been placed there deliberately and, unless it was a bizarre
coincidence, there seemed little doubt that this was the stick used by the Black
Alchemist to stir the well.
Stepping down onto the well’s concrete platform, we used the torchlight to
explore every conceivable hiding place for further evidence of our adversary’s
presence.
‘I feel he spent some time here,’ Bernard revealed, staring into the shimmering
water. ‘Other than that, I don’t get anything.’
The Fire of Michael had completely destroyed not just the Black Alchemist’s
dark ritual, but also the site’s own residual energies. The only answer would be
for us to move out into the field, away from the site’s immediate psychic
influence, where the localised energy fields hopefully remained intact. Maybe
the memory of the Black Alchemist’s visit to the well would still be available
there.
Agreeing, Bernard moved back out into the open as I followed close behind. At a
distance of some twenty paces we stopped and turned back to face the well.
The psychic concentrated once again. ‘I now see someone down there. It was
definitely today. He came across the fields, not from where we parked, by
Poplars Farm.’
So where exactly had BA parked his car?
Bernard could still picture the Black Alchemist at the well: ‘He stands … near
the water’s edge … says words: “Mercury” something … “in that silvery flow”
… “look there” … a change in the water … more words: “Two shall end as my
sword … ” Something about a sword … I see him put something in the water.’
That was it. Opening his eyes, he looked at me and smiled as we both said in
unison: ‘There’s something in the water!’
Walking briskly across to the well hollow, I took off my jacket, rolled up my
sleeves and reached into the icy-cold water. Carefully, my fingers explored the
top of the first underwater step, some nine inches below the surface. I had a good
idea what I was looking for as I touched the rotting leaves, tiny pebbles and
slimy algae. First, I found only an old horseshoe, left there as a votive offering
by some past visitor to the site. But then I touched it—a length of stone, similar
in size and shape to those used by the Black Alchemist.
Pulling it out of the water, I shone the torchlight on our latest find. Yes, this was
definitely what we were after—a shaped stone, some four inches in length and
an inch in width. Painted black, it bore none of the usual magical symbols found
on the other stone fixing markers.
In their place were two orange-red crystals, each about half an inch in diameter,
glued into shallow holes gouged into one of its narrow edges. They appeared to
be of the same substance as the crystals found in the black envelopes.

27. The stone fixing marker retrieved from the Running Well, with the fragments
of orange-red crystal found affixed to its angled edge.

Upon touching one, it immediately fragmented and left a strong amber stain on
my hand. They were obviously soluble and not rock crystals as I had initially
suspected.

What if the substance was poisonous? The thought now occurred to me, so I
popped the fragments into a pocket and decided not to eat anything until I had
washed my hands, just in case.
It was not difficult to work out that the two crystals, each one gradually melting
into the well’s sacred waters, represented Bernard and myself. Of this I had no
doubt whatsoever. As they faded, so would our lives, until nothing was left. No
longer did I want to linger at the well. We had endured enough excitement for
one night.

‘Let’s go home, then,’ Bernard responded.

Pulling up outside the family home around 11.45pm, I gathered together my bits
and pieces and told Bernard I would call him. As I went to get out, he turned to
me with a concerned expression on his face. ‘Do you know, I get the feeling that
not only is the Black Alchemist still in the area, but that he is using a crystal ball
on a table, just like Dee, to try and see what we are doing. What we know.’

It was an unnerving thought. Where was he now?

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A guest house or hotel, I suppose.’

If so, then the Black Alchemist could strike again at any time.
‘I know,’ he said, revving the engine as I picked up the black envelope with its
macabre contents.
‘I should be watchful tonight,’ were his parting words, as I climbed out of the
vehicle and shut the door.
Did our adversary know that Bernard had just dropped me off and that I was now
back home? I sincerely hoped not.

As Bernard’s car disappeared out of sight, I retired into the safety of the
bungalow and searched around for an old shoebox. Within it I placed the black
envelope and the four stone fixing markers, which were then relegated to the
garden shed. There was no way I was going to sleep with them in the house, not
tonight at least.

Afterwards, I strolled back into the front garden and stood gazing out onto the
quiet street. The air was calm and still, and relatively mild for that time of year.

A lamppost on the opposite side of the road unduly caught my attention, just as I
thought I imagined someone, a shadowy form, standing within its diffuse orange
glow.

Looking more closely, I realised it was just a trick of the light, and that the street
was empty.
I tried to dismiss the thought that anyone might actually be out there,
somewhere. Watching me, somehow.

I needed to think—put into perspective the events of the evening. It all seemed
so absurd. Bernard and I were now under the threat of death from a shrewd
psychopath who had given us just nine nights to live.

I told myself this wasn’t really happening, but of course it was. If the Black
Alchemist had his way then Bernard and I would be dead by Wednesday, 15th
October. So how was I to react? Should I believe the threat at face value, or was
it all just a crazy idea that the warped character had no intention of following
through? Could there be another, more mundane, explanation to this whole
affair?

Perhaps we had over-reacted. No, that was stupid. We had discovered four more
psychically-charged stones, a sealed black envelope addressed to me, and a stick,
still wet, seemingly used by the Black Alchemist to stir the Running Well. None
of this was imagination.

More urgent thoughts now presented themselves. If he wanted to kill us, why
had he not done so tonight? Okay, so he did not appear to possess Bernard’s
name and address, but he certainly knew mine. Surely it would have been far
easier for him to have blown my brains out there and then, instead of setting up
some slow burning curse with a nine-night fuse.

The two crystals glued onto the stone found at the Running Well were obviously
meant to have dissolved slowly within the well’s crystal-clear waters. Had he
therefore anticipated our discovery of this stone? I thought not. It appeared as if
the plan was for us to have stumbled into the psychic trap by attuning to the
well’s own energies. But it had not worked. So, was the man stupid?

I decided against this. In fact there was a good chance that every single last thing
had been planned right down to the letter. He was playing us at our own game,
leading us from one place to the next, until we could go no further.

One nagging question did demand an immediate answer: why should the Black
Alchemist want to kill us? However warped and twisted the man was, surely he
would not be foolish enough to want us dead simply because we had interfered
with his alchemical operations. No, there had to be more to it than that. Perhaps
he thought we knew more about his clandestine activities than we actually did.
Maybe there were other, more sinister motives behind his actions. Perhaps our
timely demise would form part of his own warped attempt to achieve
immortality.

All I could say for sure was that the next eight days would be the most intense,
no disturbing, of my life.

Moving back inside, I made sure that the back door was locked before finding a
seat and slumping down, ideas and paranoia still racing through my brain.

Placing Bernard’s penknife by my side, I tried to find the effort to check out
some of the psychic information offered that evening. But I could not get the
idea out of my mind that someone was outside, watching the bungalow. I
imagined someone approach the front door, which I now gazed towards intently,
knowing full well this was madness.

Sitting in the darkness, I anticipated the inevitable BANG on the window.

With my parents asleep in the front bedroom, oblivious to all that had happened
that evening, I sat there and waited, and waited, until the birds began to sing.
17 Nine Nights to Live
Tuesday, 7th October, 1986. When eventually I did manage to sleep I would
awake suddenly from chaotic dreams and nightmares involving the Black
Alchemist. With these now came an irritating headache that I could not shake
off.

Tense stress pains across the brow of my head persisted when finally I got up
around eight o’clock. Tired, drained and exhausted, I went off to work. Yet
however much I tried, I could not concentrate. Every time I attempted to listen to
the advertising and journalistic needs of the shopkeepers and businesses around
Leigh-on-Sea, I found myself wandering back to the mind-numbing events of the
previous evening.

Giving up around late morning, I returned to the office and tried to find out
where I might check out the composition of the orange-red crystals found inside
the black envelopes, and also on the black-painted stone retrieved from the
Running Well. The news editor, Jonathan Guy, suggested I take them to his old
school, Belfairs High. He was sure someone there would take a look at them.

So that lunchtime I left the crystals and folded black envelope with a Mr Paul
Lark, one of the science teachers at the school. It would take a couple of days to
analyse them, so I was asked to return for the results on Thursday morning.

I telephoned Bernard around 7.30 pm to find out how his day had been.
‘Headachey,’ was his answer, in a subdued manner. ‘I feel drained and
exhausted. I’m going to lay low for a few days, regain some strength.’

Any new psychic information?

‘No. I shan’t be attuning to anything,’ he told me. ‘I’m shutting down
completely. I don’t need the hassle. I’ll give you a ring if anything happens.’
Replacing the receiver, I decided it was time to take a closer look at the various
stone fixing markers discovered the previous evening.
Retrieving the shoebox from the shed, I carried it into the house and took out the
first stone for study. Switching on an adjustable table lamp, a bright glow
illuminated the piece of stone discovered in Runwell churchyard. It was a length
of grey shale, some five inches long. On one of its three faces were, in order, an
inscribed number ‘2’, below which was a symbol that looked like a question
mark. On the same side was a large matchstick man with its head separated from
its body. I put it away.

28. The fixing marker retrieved from Runwell church’s south porch. Note the
beheaded matchstick man and inscribed number ‘2’.

Next, I took out the thin length of slate removed from the side of the white
marble slab located beneath the tower of Rettendon church. It had been
fashioned to resemble a sword tip, and was, like the Runwell stone, five inches
in length and around one inch in width.

Studying it closely, I realised something significant, but brought out the

Lullington spearhead just to make sure of my observations. Yes, I was right, the
symbols on one side of the Rettendon stone were identical to those inscribed on
the spearhead found in Lullington churchyard eighteen months earlier. Yet those
on the Rettendon stone were far clearer and more accurately inscribed.

This time some of the symbols appeared to be more familiar. For example, there
were three distinctive words written in a kind of joined-up script. Previously,
these had looked totally unfamiliar, leading Nigel Pennick and Prudence Jones to
identify them as characters from a Bardic script. Not so any more, for they were
clearly letters from the Greek alphabet. Their presence on both the Lullington
and Rettendon stones certainly lent weight to our belief that the Black Alchemist
was using GraecoEgyptian alchemy and magic from the time of Zosimos of
Panopolis, who lived around the year AD 300.

Other symbols also made more sense now. Like the eleventh character in from
the left. It was, perhaps, the astrological symbol used to represent the zodiacal
influence of Leo. And the eighth character in looked like a Greek epsilon ( ),
which corresponds to ‘E’ in our own alphabet. The first two characters in the
sequence were familiar as well. They seemed to be the letters ‘C’ and ‘H’,
locked together to form some sort of personal monogram. Was this anything to
do with the Black Alchemist? It was certainly a thought.

29. The Rettendon sword tip fixing marker. Above, side one showing the same set
of symbols as those displayed on the Lullington
spearhead. Below, the reverse showing the triangle representing the well and the
spiral leading to an updated Monas symbol.
I was making progress. However, the rest of the symbols still remained a
mystery. They did not belong to any magical script I had ever come across
before.

On the reverse of the Rettendon spearhead was a further series of symbolic

images. Nearest the tip, reading downwards, was a large number ‘1’ in the same
style as the number ‘2’ on the Runwell stone. Below this was an equilateral
triangle, point downwards. From its centre came an anti-clockwise heliacal
spiral, which extended beyond the triangle and trailed off as a line down to the
base of the stone. At its termination was the symbol for Mercury, diagonally
quartered through its arms with zigzags.

An interpretation of this arrangement of symbols seemed easy enough. The

triangle, I felt sure, represented two things. First, it was the alchemical symbol
for the element of Water, and second, it represented the small triangular piece of
land in which the Running Well is situated. The Mercury symbol, and the
anticlockwise spiral, symbolised the Ring of Darkness and the spiralling source
of the Mercurial energy flow at the Running Well. The zigzags crossing the
centre of the Mercury symbol showed how by fixing the ritual at the four marker
churches, the ritual trap was strengthened.
What the number ‘1’ meant, I could only guess. Perhaps it indicated that
Rettendon was the first of the four churches the Black Alchemist had visited
when creating his Ring of Darkness. Yet if this was so, and the four churches had
been set up in an anti-clockwise direction, then this made Runwell church the
ring’s fourth and final site. However, the number on the stone found there was
‘2’, so the theory did not hold up.

Then I looked at it another way. Perhaps the Black Alchemist had begun his
ritual at the Running Well, and then moved out to create the Ring of Darkness,
starting at Rettendon and then visiting the other three churches in a clockwise
direction, and not in an anti-clockwise direction as I had earlier assumed.

If so, then it explained why the Black Alchemist was able to find the Running
Well across the fields, for his cross-country journey had almost certainly taken
place whilst it was still light. It also made sense of the number ‘1’ on the
Rettendon stone, and why on its reverse was an abstract portrayal of the Ring of
Darkness, signified by the clockwise spiral radiating out from the triangle
representing the well.

It was a scenario that explained also why the number ‘2’ was inscribed on the
stone found at Runwell, for this would have been the second church visited.
Over and above all this, it made sense of why Bernard had felt that BA was in
the vicinity when we’d passed through South Hanningfield, for as this was the
fourth and final church in his Ring of Darkness he might still have been in the
area as we reached the church ourselves.

Despite the black cowled figures side-stepping their way around the red-robed
Black Alchemist in an anticlockwise direction and, according to Bernard, BA
stirring the Running Well in an anticlockwise motion, everything was now
falling into place.

Our adversary had created an expanding spiral, beginning at the well and then
spreading out to envelop and contain the energies of the chosen four churches.

Clearly, we were to have been drawn into the spiral, ending up eventually at the
well where BA had set his trap, which, thankfully, had not worked.

Putting aside this disturbing scenario, I next examined the inscribed stone
retrieved from beneath the east wall of Downham church. It measured nearly
seven inches in length and was made from a naturally-shaped piece of grey
shale. One of its faces was rounded along its length, while the other bore a
natural furrow that looked as if it might once have formed the matrix to a fossil,
quite possibly a piece of petrified wood.

30. The fixing marker retrieved from Downham churchyard. Note the two
matchstick men and the word ‘SOON’ inside the serpent.

In the hollowed-out face was, as I had already noted, a scratched outline of a

long serpent or snake with two eyes. Inside its body were two small matchstick
men representing, I presumed, Bernard and myself. Below these was the word
‘SOON’!

The message seemed clear enough: it would not be long before the two of us had
been ensnared in the Black Alchemist’s ritual trap waiting for us at the Running
Well.

On the other, rounded face of the stone were six of the usual Black Alchemist-
style symbols scratched into a narrow flat surface.

Last up was the black-painted stone retrieved from the Running Well, with its
gouged out sockets into which had been glued two orange-red crystals. It bore no
inscribed symbols.
Putting the inscribed stones to one side, I spent the next few hours trying to write
up the events of the previous evening.
But it was impossible. I just was not in the right state of mind. A stress headache
still dominated my left temple and I felt so tired.
The diary would have to wait. All I wanted to do was sleep.

Wednesday, 8th October. The day was a little more productive work-wise, but
uneventful in other ways. At home I continued to write up the diary, and then the
telephone rang. It was Bernard. Since he rarely telephoned, something had
obviously happened.

‘I’ve got to ask you for permission to be at the Running Well on the evening of
Tuesday, 14th October,’ he said, somewhat mysteriously.

That was the last of the nine nights before the Black Alchemist’s death threat
deadline. Of course he could be at the well that evening. Why ask me?

‘I’ll explain,’ he began. ‘Yesterday I said I would not attempt to attune to the BA
problem until I had fully regained my strength. However, I woke up this morning
with a very clear impression. I was “told” that on the final night before the
deadline, soon after sunset, I should be at the well ready for some kind of
confrontation.’

What kind of confrontation?

‘Don’t know. All I get is that we can expect trouble, and for this reason we need
to be prepared on all levels.’
So, it was all going to kick off then? What could we expect— psychic battles?
Car loads of hoods turning up with sawn-off shotguns? Perhaps we should enlist
the help of a few bodyguards?
‘I’m not sure. We’ll just have to wait and see,’ he laughed, nervously. ‘All the
message said was that before I could go up there I had to ask the guardian of the
Running Well for permission to be there. So that’s you, isn’t it?’
Me? Possibly. Guardians of sacred sites are a major feature in questing lore,
which asserts that ancient and mystical sites possess both an astral guardian and
a human guardian. Such people are chosen by the genius loci, the spirit of the
place, to preserve not just its presence, but also any knowledge regarding the
site’s function and influence on a subtle level. Usually, site guardians either live
or work near the site in question.
Obviously, due to the extensive restoration work and research I had carried out at
the well, Bernard presumed I was the physical guardian of the site, which would
not have amused the owner of the estate on whose land the well is situated. If,
however, I was the site guardian, then he could happily have permission to be
there on the night in question.
‘Thank you,’ he responded. ‘I get the feeling I will have to sit within a circle of
protection inside the well hollow and attune to the surrounding area on a psychic
level,’ he now revealed. ‘You, I think, will have to keep watch over the area in
readiness for any physical interference, which hopefully there won’t be.’
How long would all this take?
‘No idea. A few hours, I should think.’
I would look forward to it! I needed some kind of closure to this business.
‘I also believe that I now know a little more about the ritual BA carried out at the
well,’ he said. ‘It involved the creation of some kind of entity through the
combining of two different types of energy, both associated with the influence of
Mercury. One male, the other female.’
Was this process connected with alchemy?
‘Yes, I think so. I was also told that this entity was the thought form we
encountered in the gap between the hedgerow.’
It made sense. Thought forms could undoubtedly be created through magic
rituals. Perhaps the Black Alchemist had used this particular formula to manifest
the entity to do his bidding at the well. By coming into contact with it we were
obviously meant to have triggered some kind of ritual ensnarement, which could
have had very nasty consequences for both of us.
‘Well, quite,’ he replied, a little concerned by the thought. ‘I’ll be in touch if
anything else happens.’

To me, alchemy is a very complex and confusing subject. Despite this, I did
manage to discover one reference to the process Bernard described. It seemed to
concern a stage in the alchemical transmutation where a liquid solution, which
includes a base metal such as lead, is mixed with a deposit of liquid mercury. If
the desired result is achieved, the mixture separates into two distinct substances
—one a white liquid, called Athoeter, or Mercurial water, and the other, a deep
red tincture. These substances are known respectively as the White and Red
Mercury, and correspond, respectively, to the force of Luna (the moon) as the
divine mother, and Sol (the sun) as the divine father.

When eventually brought back together, the two substances are believed to form
a mixture described as a deep amber-gold liquid known as the Philosopher’s
Gold. This new substance is considered a potent elixir, or life retainer, as well as
an essential catalyst employed in the ultimate stages of the alchemical
transmutation. It is also the magical liquid necessary to form an alchemical being
known as the Mercurius.

The Philosopher’s Gold reminded me of the amber-coloured stain left on my

hand after I touched the orange-red crystals glued to the stone pulled out of the
Running Well. Quite obviously, the two crystals were meant to have dissolved in
the spring water to create an amber-coloured liquid. Was it possible, therefore,
that the Black Alchemist had symbolically viewed the well’s water, along with
the site’s inherent, female lunar influence, as the White Mercury? If so, then had
he symbolically added to this the Red Mercury, the force of Sol, the divine
father, in the form of the orange-red crystals, so that he could symbolically
transform the well water into the amber-coloured Philosopher’s Gold? Then,
once this had been accomplished, had he used the water’s combined psychic
influence to breathe life into his own Mercurius—the dark thought form
encountered in the gap by the well? I thought it possible.

Yet, in comparison with the rest of Bernard’s telephone conversation, the

intricacies of the Black Alchemist’s ritual at the Running Well seemed
insignificant. The direct confrontation with our adversary, which from the outset
had seemed inevitable, now looked more likely than ever. But would the man
dare to venture back into our territory in the knowledge that we would be
waiting for him? Bernard thought it possible. If BA really did intend to hang one
of us and burn the other, then this could only really be done in the real world.
18 Back to School
Thursday, 9th October, 1986. A female teacher, marking an untidy pile of
school exercise books, got up to make me coffee, as I waited patiently in the
staff room at Belfairs High to see Mr Paul Lark. He had asked me to return just
before the 10.30 break for the results of the crystal analysis.

Minutes later, the continuous drone of the school bell indicated break time and
Mr Lark appeared in the doorway.
He greeted me with a polite smile.
‘Oh, er, would you come this way, Andrew,’ he said, beckoning me into the
corridor.
I followed. With kids scurrying in every direction, I was led up a staircase to the
relative peace of a chemistry laboratory. Clear memories of my own schooldays,
carrying out childish pranks and dangerous experiments behind the teacher’s
back, came flooding back.
‘It’s not a dangerous substance,’11 the teacher began, handing me back the folded
black envelope and a small glass bottle containing the remaining crystals. ‘They
are ammonium dichromate, which is strange in itself as, to my knowledge, it can
only be obtained in powdered form from industrial laboratories. These crystals
must have been home grown using a supersaturated solution.’
Like the copper sulphate crystals I used to grow in large flat bowls in the garden
shed. But what would such crystals be used for?
‘Pyrotechnics mainly,’ he explained. ‘Ammonium dichromate is an active
ingredient of indoor fireworks. Have you heard of a firework called Snake in the
Grass, or another called Vesuvius Fire?’
I struggled to remember.
‘When heated, the powder ignites and burns violently, giving off an irritating
dust that leaves a film of black ash wherever it falls.’ He moved away. ‘We have
a simple experiment to demonstrate its pyrotechnic properties. Would you like to
see it?’
I said I would as Mr Lark filled a beaten metal crucible with powdered
ammonium dichromate and placed it on a stand over a Bunsen burner. Within
seconds of lighting the hissing gas jet, the powder ignited with a ferocious flame,
which quickly reduced the entire contents of the bowl to a mass of grey ash and
left a bellowing cloud of dust particles wafting about in the air.

31.
Ammonium
Dichromate
crystal
prepared
from a super
saturated
solution.
‘You see what I mean about the irritating dust,’ he exclaimed, running his fingers
across the thin dark film now beginning to cover the bench top, before further
expounding the properties of the chemical.

Yet my mind was on the Black Alchemist. Why had he chosen to put crystals of
this substance inside the sealed black envelope? I felt I understood why he
placed the crystals in the well, but why use them as a psychic link between him
and us? Why not use real rock crystals of a similar colour, such as garnet or
topaz, for instance? Perhaps they were too expensive. And what connection, if
any, was there between ammonium dichromate and alchemy? I had to ask.

‘Alchemy?’ the teacher queried, with some curiosity. ‘I don’t know anything
about alchemy, but we can look it up.’
The teacher disappeared into a storeroom and returned with an encyclopaedia of
chemicals. He searched through its alphabetical listing for ammonium
dichromate and, on finding it, read the entry out aloud.
There was no mention of alchemy. All I could conclude was that the Black
Alchemist had used this orange crystalline substance as a substitute for Red
Mercury. Other than that, its ultimate purpose would have to remain a mystery.
Caroline Wise, Alan Cleaver, and another friend, Johnny Merron, Caroline’s old
partner and flatmate, arrived from London that evening to hear the latest
developments in the Black Alchemist saga. Having picked me up from my
home, I suggested we drive out to The Downham Arms—the pub where, only
three nights earlier, Bernard and I had sat and opened the sealed black envelope.
Here, amid the crowds of local youths and noisy jukebox, I told them the whole
story—the setting up of the Ring of Darkness, the discovery of the inscribed
stones and the contents of the sealed black envelope. An hour later, with the
story brought up to date, I bought a round of drinks and asked for their thoughts.
All three were numbed into virtual silence.
‘Wow,’ Johnny Merron finally said, seated opposite. ‘Is Bernard alright about all
this?’
No, not really. But we would deal with it.
‘What about you?’ Caroline said. ‘This has got to do your head in.’
‘Well, it will make a good story,’ Alan added, thinking only as a journalist
would. ‘You are writing this stuff up, aren’t you?’
Bernard and I were okay, I assured them. Whatever might be thrown at us, we
could handle it. And, yes, I was recording down everything in my diary.
‘But you’re talking about a death threat here,’ Caroline tried to point out. ‘I
mean, this is serious business. You don’t know what might happen—what these
people are capable of.’
I found little to say, so simply reassured them that we would be okay.
Their minds put at ease, we moved onto other aspects of the quest, including the
involvement of the Elizabethan magus Dr John Dee and his sidekick Edward
Kelley. According to Bernard’s psychic material, received in the car park of that
very pub, Dee had placed his crystal ball on a special table on which were
magical seals and designs of many colours. However, I had been unable to trace
whether any such table existed.
‘It does exist, or it did once,’ Caroline eagerly confirmed, ‘and I know at least
one book you have which actually shows a picture of it. It’s Chris Morgan’s
Strange Oxford.’
Johnny nodded. ‘It’s in there because a marble copy of Dee’s wooden original—
which unfortunately got destroyed—is in Oxford’s science museum. I’ve seen it
there.’
I said I would check it out when I got home.
‘So, what will you do on Tuesday evening?’ Alan asked, placing down his drink.
‘At the end of the nine nights.’
It was a question they knew was forbidden. I had already decided not to reveal to
anyone what Bernard and I would be up to that night. The reasoning behind this
possibly foolhardy move was to ensure that if anyone did turn up at the well, it
would not be because our intentions had been inadvertently leaked.
The three accepted my silence on the matter.
‘Well, good luck,’ John mustered, raising his glass.
‘Yes, good luck,’ Caroline added, doing the same. ‘I think you’re going to need
it.’

Back home, I searched through the book recommended by my friends and found
the illustration of John Dee’s ‘Holy Table’. It was taken from an old woodcut
that had appeared in Dee’s spiritual diaries, edited by one Meric Casaubon and
published in 1659.

Diaries. Bernard had talked about someone keeping a diary when out at
Shenfield Common in May, so I wondered whether this was a reference to John
Dee’s magical diaries. It seemed possible, especially as the subject had been
mentioned in the same breath as the Elizabethan magus’s name.
32. The Holy Table of Dr John Dee used for angelic invocations.
Although the reference in Strange Oxford (Golden Dawn, 1986) was only brief, I
soon discovered a little more about Dee’s Holy Table in a book entitled The
Heptarchia Mystica of John Dee (Aquarian Press, 1986), edited by occult writer
Robert Turner and published earlier that year. A great deal of the book seemed
devoted to the subject, including the procedure for setting it up for use in spirit
communications. It described how the table’s legs would be placed upon four
identical magical seals made of wax and protected by wooden frames. A larger
version of the seal—known as the Sigillum Emeth—would then be positioned at
the centre of the table, surrounded by seven tablets of pure tin. The whole thing
would then be draped in a red silk cloth, shot with green, which would hang
loosely over the sides of the table with a tassel at each corner.

The crystal, or scrying mirror, would then be placed within a golden frame on
top of the red silk cloth, exactly over the position of the central Sigillum Emeth.
As to the precise colour scheme of Dee’s Holy Table, no one rightly knew.
However, it did contain at least three distinctive colours—red, green and yellow
—which might well constitute the ‘many colours’ alluded to in Bernard’s
psychic message received in the car park of The Downham Arms.

Even though the Black Alchemist seemed to see himself as a latter-day John
Dee, there was actually more in common between the manner in which Dee and
Kelley operated and that adopted by Bernard and myself. Like me, Dee acted as
the recorder of all spirit communications, while the communicant was generally
always Kelley, the role played by Bernard in our partnership.

I wondered whether Dee and Kelley might ever have become aware of a day
when individuals from the future, with differing attitudes towards spirit
communications, would not only seek out their deeds, but also catch glimpses of
their lives, and even believe themselves to be in communication with them. Did
time and space not really matter beyond the confines of our own limited
understanding of the physical universe? It was an intriguing thought on which to
end the night.
19 Return to the Well
Tuesday, 14th October, 1986. Soon after seven o’clock a tap on the frosted glass
of the kitchen door signalled Bernard’s arrival. As he stood talking to my
parents, I quickly gathered together a whole range of magical paraphernalia,
including incense, charcoal blocks, essential oils and an assortment of religious
icons. I also picked up an air pistol, which I slipped into my holdall, just in case.

Within minutes we were on our way to the Running Well, this time in my Ford
Sierra.
Passing through the streets of Wickford, I brought Bernard up to date on the
latest developments. Throughout the morning I had spoken to questing
sympathisers around the country, asking them to bring to mind Bernard and
myself from 7.30 pm onwards. I wanted them to light a candle and periodically
visualise white light being conveyed from them to us in the hope it would give
us a little added strength and protection during the evening.
Then in the afternoon I had attended a strange sort of party at the Leigh Times.
Believing there was a very slight chance I might not make it through the night,
the staff in the office— including journalists, admin clerks and sales
representatives— had insisted on a farewell bash, which got named ‘the wake’.
Oddly, by the end of it, when we were saying our goodbyes, there were some
girls in tears, fearing we might never meet again.
I had also visited the Running Well earlier in the evening. I wanted to inspect it
in the daylight just to make sure that nothing was out of place and no one was
hanging around the area. Thankfully, everything was as we had left it the
previous week, except for the long stick we believed had been used by the Black
Alchemist to stir the well. This was found floating in the water, so I fished it out
and stuck it back upright.
‘Kids probably,’ Bernard concluded, as the car passed through Wickford High
Street.
I agreed. What about him? Had he picked up any further psychic clues on what
might happen that evening?
‘No, not a thing,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Even at this eleventh hour. And it hasn’t
been for lack of trying. I’ve been attempting to attune all day, but on each
occasion the airwaves have been silent.
‘It’s really peculiar, almost like some kind of radio black out before a major
military operation.’
So he still had no idea what might happen when we reached the well?
‘No. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we,’ he said, with a little nervous
laugh.

Fifteen minutes later the car turned into the private road leading down to Poplars
Farm. Beyond this were the concrete foundations of an old cowshed, used by
visitors to the well as a makeshift car park. No other vehicles were around, so it
looked as if we might be alone.

Before we left the sanctity of the car, and entered the darkness of the night, I
emphasised the need to carry out our normal protection ritual, as once we
climbed over that metal gate, we would be within the well’s influence and
therefore vulnerable to psychic attack.

‘If you want,’ Bernard responded, almost bemused by my suggestion.

It had to be done. There was no way I wanted a repeat performance of the nasty
scenes we had witnessed at Lullington and Downham.
He accepted my reasoning, and with the simple ritual complete, I locked up the
car and joined Bernard, who was already making his way towards the gate.

For most of the day a dreamy, low-lying mist had hung over the rolling Essex
landscape, like an etheric white shroud, but this had now dissipated to leave a
dull overcast sky. The prospect of drizzle was inevitable.

Strolling across the meadow, trying to follow the footpath through the wet grass,
a drop of rain on my forehead made me glance up at the dark, overcast sky. I
hoped it would keep off, for a while at least.

Further on, I stared hesitantly towards the gap in the hedgerow where, only the
previous week, the amorphous black form had awaited our arrival. There was
nothing there now. In fact, the whole atmosphere around the well seemed to be
one more of calmness than tension.

However, psychic impressions were not my concern that evening. I would leave
that to Bernard. My job was physical protection and surveillance, I reminded
myself, as I began to scan every dark corner, distant field and silhouetted tree
line for any sign of movement.

Reaching the well, Bernard shone the torchlight through the undergrowth into
the hollow.
No one was present so, with some slight hesitation, we edged our way down the
earthen steps onto the square concrete platform. The stick still stood upright in
the soft mud by the side of the well.
Quickly, we set up a circle of protection using crystals and a further visualisation
ritual. Incense associated with the element of Water was then placed in an
earthenware bowl and ignited on top of a small round block of charcoal. This
would hopefully clear the air of any unwanted psychic influences.
33. Bernard prepares for a long night at the Running Well.

Two green candles—green being the colour Bernard deemed appropriate for the
occasion—were then lit and positioned in candle holders, one each side of the
incense burner.

With the circle complete, I left the psychic in the hollow, his notepad on a
clipboard in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Emerging out of the
undergrowth, I wandered off and sat beneath a large tree in the gap between the
two fields. From here I could keep watch over the surrounding landscape.

It started to rain. The sound of droplets falling on the leaves was broken only by
the occasional rumble of a passing aircraft or distant train. Once in a while I
caught the distinctive aroma of the burning incense and, here and there, the smell
of cigarette smoke wafting away from the well hollow.

Bernard illuminated his watch with torchlight and wrote down the time: 8.20 pm.
He lit another cigarette in the false hope that it would keep him warm.

Nothing positive yet, but certain intuitive feelings were beginning to creep into
his soul. He decided to record them down, just in case:
Feeling a bit cold and wary of anything. Will have to write and scribble and
hope to decode later. Strange energies here. Keep feeling a presence. Shivery.
Letting mind drift by staring at the well.

Then, in his mind’s eye, he saw a curious and complicated symbol being carved
onto a magical talisman. He sketched what he could see. It disappeared and was
replaced by a second symbol. Yet before he had a chance to draw it in any detail,
it too vanished from sight. He looked at his crude sketches and tried to make
sense of them.

An impression now explained what was going on. Their adversary was, it
seemed, sitting down somewhere, carrying out a meditational ritual and drawing
these symbols at that very time.

Bernard focused his mind in an attempt to gain further clairvoyant pictures. It

was a wood. Yes, that was it. The Black Alchemist was sitting in a wood. But
where? It did not feel close. Yet then came another, more disconcerting
impression which he felt compelled to write down:

Picking up very bad force. I hope it’s what was left by BA [at the well the
previous week] and not his close presence. Feeling frozen to the spot. Held in
some field of energy. Can’t move!

At that moment their minds linked as one, allowing Bernard to involuntarily

scribble down his adversary’s very thoughts:

Rage comes as a beam, trampling the stone to dust, squeezing the forces into a
first matter. Re-fix with mind. Add blood. The one shall spread beyond the places
of my knowledge settling and growing amongst the roots, the woods, the trees
and the streams. Place beneath the stones. Impregnate. Let it grow. Let it form.
The master shall form. All white methods wrong. All teachings of the stone are
despicable. I re-write.

As the scrawled automatic writing became almost illegible, it suddenly

transformed into a strange script, which Bernard now glimpsed being engraved
onto the edge of a serpent, seen curled into a circle and biting its own tail—the
so-called ouroboros symbol of Graeco-Egyptian alchemy and magic.

After scribbling down just a dozen or so of these distinct magical characters,

Bernard began to feel nauseated and frozen to the spot. It caused him to break
off the communication and visualise the protective circle around the well. On his
tongue he placed a few drops of a herbal essence known as Bach’s Rescue
Remedy, given to him by Andy, who said it had the power to purge unwanted
psychic energies from his aura. And it appeared to work. Gradually, he started to
return to his normal self.

A few minutes passed as he tried to recover his lost strength. Linking in mind
with the Black Alchemist had not been a clever thing to do, but somehow he had
got away with it. But where was this wood he seemed to be in? It was not close.
Not even in the same county.

A smirk formed on Bernard’s face. So the Black Alchemist had bottled out of
returning to confront them face-to-face. It pleased him. Yet then, without
warning, his train of thought was rudely interrupted as he realised he was no
longer alone in the well hollow. Had Andy returned?

Turning around, an extraordinary sight greeted him. A shimmering apparition—a

radiant lady, dressed in a blue and white cowled habit, now stood on the earthen
bank behind the well, not twenty feet away.

It looked like the Virgin Mary. Perhaps it was the Virgin Mary! Should he kneel?
No, it was someone else. Cecilia, the blue lady encountered in Rettendon
churchyard the previous week. She had returned to aid them in their hour of
need. He was sure of it.
Bernard just continued to stare, wondering how to react. Yet the glowing
apparition merely remained still and silent, gazing serenely into his eyes. He
became a little scared, and as if sensing this emotion, he began experiencing a
feeling of warmth, wellbeing and comfort emanating from her bright aura. It
eased his soul.
Natural inquisitiveness then intervened. He wanted to know more about the
nature of this strange, beautiful apparition. Who exactly was she?
An answer came in the form of a gentle, melodic, yet authoritative female voice:

My life was as a prioress to the shrine that served this holy place. Upon my
death I chose to become an eternal guardian spirit of these sacred waters.

Bernard glanced quickly at the calm surface of the water and understood her
words. He did not write them down.

My body was laid to rest in the church of Our Lady at Runwell, but I requested
that my relics be gathered together and brought to this place. They did this for
me and reburied them here.12

With her soft words now came the awareness of a specific spot within the well
hollow. He looked towards a certain tree and knew that somewhere beneath its
roots her remains lay hidden, never to be disturbed by anyone.

Suddenly, Bernard’s eyes espied two large hounds, the size of overgrown
labradors, clambering down the bank into the well hollow to the left of where the
blue lady stood. They were heading in his direction. But were they psychic, or
real?

He became a little scared.

Without further word, Cecilia glanced towards the duncoloured hounds and
placed out her right hand as if commanding them to halt. They did so, before
vanishing instantly on the spot.
Following this unexpected intrusion, the blue lady began to fade, although not
before Bernard decided that her style of dress dated her life on earth to either the
twelfth or thirteenth century.
He also now knew why she had appeared to him. In some peculiar way, she was
there to protect them from the full force of the Black Alchemist. It was her site
he had defiled, and now that she had regained her strength, she intended
protecting those who served the well as they did.
The psychic felt grateful and, with the comforting knowledge that the blue lady
was still around somewhere, he thanked her for being there. More confident now,
he decided to use the torchlight to examine even the darkest recesses of the well
hollow.
Interesting, but unconnected, psychic images and impressions wafted in and out
of his mind, like snatched reviews of the well’s long history.
He watched intrigued as a human hand reached out from the well’s crystal clear
waters, before quickly fading away.
A group of giggling young nuns came into view, huddled together, staring
innocently into the starry surface of the water, engaged in a little forbidden
amusement.
They too soon vanished.
Then came an infinitely more sinister vision—the sight and sound of a teenage
girl being set upon, bludgeoned to death and hurriedly buried by a group of
frenzied, but frightened, villagers who thought she was a witch. It was the body
of the young girl he had twice picked up was buried near the well. To his utter
relief, his psychic faculty was able to curtail the vision of this ugly scene.
Bernard now felt a little safer within the magic circle of protection, so he began
to visualise a green mist of energy spiralling upwards from the well and growing
in power like a glowing tornado. This he then pictured spreading out like a
widening ripple that touched, surrounded and embraced the churches featured in
the Black Alchemist’s Ring of Darkness ritual. This, he felt, would help to
restore and harmonise the subtle energy fields disturbed and damaged by their
adversary’s activities the previous week.
Even more confident, Bernard attempted to send out a few psychic thunderbolts
in the direction of the Black Alchemist, a little foolhardiness having now
overtaken his senses. In his mind’s eye he saw green fireballs reaching the black
cowled figure, who remained seated in a wood. As soon as he had done this, the
overwhelming presence of his own spirit guide appeared to warn him not to use
unnecessary retaliation.
Then came another disconcerting incident. Bernard saw a pair of agitated hands
reaching towards his neck from directly behind him. He could actually see them
out the corner of his eyes. Their presence was too strong to ignore, and it left
him frozen to the spot, unable to move. He could not even bring himself to turn
around to see what was going on. Mercifully, the sensation then faded, leaving
him at a loss to understand what had happened, aside from the feeling that it had
been an unsuccessful attempt by someone, or something, to break the circle of
protection.
Once again, an air of calmness returned to the well hollow. The flames of the
two green candles still flickered about in the darkness, although the smoke rising
from the incense burner had now ceased.
The stillness was then interrupted once more as Bernard again felt the growing
presence of his spirit guide. The Elizabethan alchemist now wished to convey a
message of some sort. So, putting pen to paper, Bernard’s right hand leapt into
an unstoppable bout of scrawled, almost illegible, automatic writing:

I used my lifetime to perfect the Art. Many they called me a soulfleur.13 The way
is the way of the ancients. An abusing of the four grades of heat and the sacred
laws of the Art. I tell you that no interest is shown [by your adversary] in the
teaching of the final [Philosopher’s] Stone with its accompanying knowledge of
the mystics of old.

It is found in the country, in the town, in all things created by God. Yet it is
despised by all. Rich and poor handle it, but not one prizes it. Next to the soul it
is the most precious thing upon earth and has the power to pull down kings and
princes. It is cast away and rejected by all.14 From black to white to red.
Numerous varied are the steps along the path. Some say 7, some 12, some 20.
Some even more. The [Philosopher’s] Stone is one, the medicine one, the vessel
one. One the operation and one the method. The great magistery, I say.

The laws of the Art are capable of great variance, but the most successful of the
works and those who formulated those reasonings were only interested in finding
their own Red Stone/God by overcoming the terrors and trials of the mind. The
dedication was carried to the finality of what you will understand as Kether15 or
the highest unknowable in an attempt to bring into manifestation the final truth.

All works are hidden with many riddles because the trials are of a highly
personal nature and so cannot be followed word by word. It is possible to stay
with calcination, the black dark side of the dualist’s treatise, to raise the mind
through the 10 rooms,16 the 32 steps17 to reach the inner heights is possible on
both sides. But on the dark [side] the end result will always be the same, the
death of the practicer of this Art.

It may well be that this is the final step of the years of dwell with the serpent and
toad. In your knowledge Neshama, Yecidah, Chia, Ain Soph.18 A black
crucifixion and resurrection of the anti-lord preparing the palace for the
coronation.

It is hid within the 3 principles of archeius19 and balsamum elementarium

externum.20 There is a continuation of the base within many trees within woods.
Caput corvi and the corpus invisible.21

You must understand I can only give the reasoning from what I know of this.
There is nothing of the righteous soul here [in the Black Alchemist], only the
growing power of the black magistery exorcista. He works on chaos of the Earth,
chaos of the Water, chaos of the Air, chaos of the Fire and Magia Metaphysics,
the art of occult secrets. He also uses pentacula the signs on virgin paper, metals
or stones inscribed with many sigils which are the conductors of arcane forces in
the universe.

In order to end the rising chaos you must use the strict Laws of the Teachings of
your Lord. Use what methods you have well learnt. Use circles of your holy
waters for your protection. Do not use evil vengeance [as you did earlier]. You
can use your method of colours incorporating elixir—the essence of anything.
Graeca magia art of making things appear which really were not in any
existence. You should interpret majus noster, the lodestone to your aid of
purification … Study the Cabala and make use.

The pen stopped scribbling. Bernard’s hand ached badly. Anyway, there was no
way he could have continued without a break. He smiled as he realised the
amount of time it would take to decipher this lot. Dozens of specialist books
would be required to translate the entire message. Yet then, as if in response to
this very thought, the Elizabethan alchemist returned to compel Bernard’s hand
to write: ‘You think of manuscripts?’

What happened next both amused and astounded him, for his hand began to set
down the names of several ancient works dedicated to the subject of alchemy
and the magical arts:

Abul Quesim al Iraq

Aurora Aufore Artis

Pretiosa Margarita Novella

de Thesaro ac Pretios simino
Hermetic Musaeum

Nei Pen of Ko Hung

Amphitheatrum Sapientia Æterna
Viridorium Chymicum
Monas Hieroglyphica22

Only two of the titles—Henricus Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae

Aeternae (‘The Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom’), published in 1595, and Dee’s
Monas Hieroglyphica, published in 1564—were known to him. The other names
meant nothing at all.

Pacing about, he lit another cigarette and waited for his friend to return. So what
would happen next? It was becoming an intriguing evening, full of psychic
surprises. But what about the Black Alchemist? What had happened to him?

Bernard’s intuition told him that BA would make no further moves that night.
Yet he remained convinced their adversary was in a wood somewhere in Kent.
Kent? It came to him at that moment.
But then, another psychic interruption. Beyond the well hollow, in the field on its
northern side, he could hear the sound of male voices, talking together and
moving towards him. They were not speaking English.

He listened. Was it Latin? He was not sure.

A gut feeling told him they were a group of five Roman soldiers passing by the
well hollow. He could neither see them, nor understand their conversation. They
were simply an inconsequential memory of an event that had taken place here
nearly two thousand years ago.
Then came another presence, moving nearer and nearer. Footsteps sounded
beyond the south side of the hollow. It did not feel hostile. Andy’s head
reappeared through a corridor of overhanging branches, a sense of intrigue on
his face.

I had given it 45 minutes before deciding to go back to the well to see how
Bernard was getting on. I found him standing on the platform, seemingly in good
health.

So, what had happened?

‘Pages of scribble,’ was his reply, holding up the clipboard as proof of his
statement.
And the Black Alchemist?
‘Not here. Elsewhere. In woods, I think. Kent somewhere.’ He looked at me as if
I was going to object.
I did feel slightly disappointed, as I was almost looking forward to a
confrontation of some sort. Sighing, I asked to see what he had written.
‘I doubt if you’ll be able to see in this light.’
Looking at the pages of automatic script from the Elizabethan alchemist, I tried
quickly to read what had been written, but it was no use, it was too eligible.
‘I haven’t bothered to look at it,’ Bernard said, pacing about on the concrete
platform. ‘It didn’t seem to make much sense.’
I asked him to tell me what else had occurred, and he did.
So, where exactly was the Black Alchemist? Had he any idea of the location in
Kent?
Bernard shook his head. ‘I really don’t know.’ Yet then he stood still for a
moment and stared into thin air. ‘Actually, I get two place-names—Monksdown
and … Mereworth. Where are they?’ he asked himself. After a few moments of
contemplation he provided an answer: ‘They’re woods, I think. In Kent. I reckon
that’s where he’s been tonight.’
The names meant nothing to me. Yet they could easily be checked out.
Several more minutes passed as I stood in the well hollow waiting to see if
Bernard received any further psychic clues.
Breaking the long silence, he cleared his throat. ‘No, no more. Shall we go?’
I wanted to stay, in the hope that something else might happen. As well as being
disappointed at the Black Alchemist’s non-appearance, I sensed also that this
was not over. Perhaps we had misinterpreted the death threat and he would come
here another night. No, I swept this idea aside as I thought back to the contents
of the sealed black envelope addressed to me. Nine nights to live it had given us
—no more, no less.
With this now came a sense of helplessness, in that we no longer had any idea
where the Black Alchemist would strike next, or what he had in store for us.
Perhaps the whole idea of the death threat was to leave us here in the cold,
wondering what was going on, unable to predict where we go from here. He was
playing us like puppets, and I did not like it one bit.
Frustrated and still a little unnerved, we closed down the circle of protection and
headed back to the car.

I easily found the village of Mereworth. The atlas showed it was a few miles
northeast of Tonbridge. Nearby was a large wooded area marked as Mereworth
Woods. Monkdown Wood was not far away.

‘I’m now picking up somewhere else connected with the Black Alchemist,’
Bernard revealed, flicking ash out the side window, as we sat there in the
darkness.

‘I see him at a place called “ Clapham”,’ he said, with some slight hesitation. ‘I
see woods, with a very bad feeling attached to them. Something’s been going on
there—rituals, I think. I also see a church, reached down a long, winding lane.’
He shook his shoulders as a shiver ran through him. ‘Not a nice place at all.’

I knew exactly where he was talking about. It was Clapham Wood, an eerie
location near Worthing in West Sussex. Back in the mid 1970s I had investigated
various UFO sightings in the area, although I didn’t know it was connected with
the occult.

‘I shouldn’t bother wasting your time checking it out,’ he added, having heard
enough. ‘It’s only vague stuff really, and I don’t think it’s got anything directly to
do with what’s been going on here tonight.’

I accepted his word. It would take me long enough to check out the psychic
material written down at the well that evening. Vague impressions about woods
in West Sussex would have to wait.

Thursday, 16th October, 1986. The late day at work left me tired and headachy.
In fact, I had been suffering from stress headaches and sleepless nights ever
since the Black Alchemist had set up his Ring of Darkness ritual. Despite this, I
sat down that evening, a glass of red wine in front of me, and attempted for the
second night running to write up the events of the past few days.

It was hard going. I felt my eyes wanting to close, but pressed on in the
knowledge that I could give up and go to bed at any time.

Reaching across the desktop strewn with pages of notes, I pulled across those
relating to the Elizabethan alchemist’s lengthy automatic script, scribbled down
by Bernard at the Running Well.

What was I to make of this stuff? Already I had read and dissected the script
dozens of times in the hope that it would eventually make some kind of sense.
Yet then something the Elizabethan alchemist had said drew my attention:

It may well be that this [i.e. the Black Alchemist’s work] is the final step of the
years of dwell with the serpent and toad ... A black crucifixion and resurrection
of the Anti-Lord, preparing the palace for the coronation.

I thought long about these enigmatic lines, and then ran back through the
automatic writing Bernard had scribbled down earlier that same evening as his
mind had linked with that of the Black Alchemist.

The one shall spread beyond the places of my knowledge settling and growing
amongst the roots, the woods, the trees—and the streams … Impregnate. Let it
grow. Let it form. The master shall form …

The master shall form? What master? Maybe the Black Alchemist believed he
was preparing the way for some kind of antichrist … no, this was getting silly.
Yet he did seem to have a fixation with the concept of death, resurrection and
rebirth. It had first surfaced at Ide Hill, where he had attempted to utilise
Zosimos’s Priest of the Sanctuary dream. It had been present again with the
creation of the mercurial thought form at the Running Well on the night he
constructed the Ring of Darkness, and now it had resurfaced again. What was he
trying to achieve? Whatever it was, Bernard’s spirit guide saw it as abominable,
or even worse.

Pushing Bernard’s automatic writing to one side, I looked back at the lined sheet
of A4 paper in front of me, took a sip of wine and continued to write.
20 Danbury
Friday, 17th October 1986. It was late, well past midnight. At first he saw
nothing, only darkness. But then came a sense of motion, and light, raining in
from the full moon outside, illuminating rigid features all around. Bernard’s
squinting eyes identified rows of pews on either side.

He was in the centre aisle of a church.

His fixed gaze moved closer and closer towards the high altar.
Then came a peculiar sight: crouching mythical beasts, grotesquely carved in
wood, sitting upon the edge of wooden pews—awesome, repulsive and yet
somehow warm and familiar. In pairs, they came into view before passing by,
each one maintaining their own frozen stance.
He carried on.
The building appeared quiet and empty, and yet also somehow imbalanced,
oppressive and wrong. He disliked what he sensed and wanted to leave. But he
could not. There was no choice.
The raised neo-Gothic pulpit moved out of sight to the left, while to the right, the
menacing stare of the wooden lectern eagle appeared and disappeared without
incident.
Then he was revolted.
Before him on the tiled floor, above the stone steps leading through to the choir,
lay the prostrate corpse of a black-robed clergyman. It was sprawled across a
crudely-chalked inverted pentagram, enclosed within a circle. Sticky, crimson
rivulets of thick, congealing blood oozed from horrifying wounds, seeping into
the dusty gaps between the ceramic floor tiles.
Yet something was missing.
Slowly his eyes followed the line of the body, along the erratic trails of blood,
across the altar rail, and onto the wooden-fronted high altar.
A dreadful nausea welled up inside his stomach and he retched at what he saw.
Upon the once-white altar draping stood the holy man’s almost unrecognisable
head—its mouth agape and its thick, grey hair matted with viscid blood.
And worst of all, he knew the church, and the culprit.
The Black Alchemist was now nearer than ever before, and it concerned him
greatly.

The soft lunar light spotlighted the psychic as he twisted and turned until the
movement finally broke his sleep.

His head pounded and ached, and for a moment Bernard fought desperately to
keep his eyes from closing. There was no way he was going to return to the
disgusting nightmare. Yet as he began fully to wake up, he realised it was over.
He could now rest in peace.

But neither could he forget or ignore what he’d seen. He knew the church. It was
Danbury. He was sure of it. Here, over the past couple of years, they had
researched the

village’s medieval mysteries for Andy’s book The Knights of Danbury.

The Griffin, just over the road from the church, was still Bernard’s choice for
their regular meetings to discuss on-going and future research projects. Danbury
was his manor, his domain, in the same way that Andy was associated with
Wickford, Runwell and the Running Well.

It was, he realised, just a scare-mongering dream. A vision. A warning. A

portent? He hoped not.
Yet left in his mind was the firm conviction that Danbury was the Black
Alchemist’s next target, a realization he would try to ignore as long as possible.

Tuesday, 21st October. Danbury was unquestionably the Black Alchemist’s next
target, I told Bernard as we sat supping beer in the snug of The Griffin.

‘Ah, well, I’ve already had a dream about that,’ he finally admitted, having not
mentioned it earlier.
When?
‘Last week. Thursday night, I think.’
Around the time of the full moon.
Bernard nodded. ‘It was past midnight, I know that,’ he added.
So, the early hours of Friday, 17th.
Bernard now revealed the details of his macabre dream concerning the headless
priest lying in the choir area of Danbury church.
It sounded disturbing, to say the least.
‘He knows about Danbury,’ Bernard revealed, a slightly worried expression
having formed on his face. ‘And I’m not sure what to do.’
It was inevitable. Shenfield, Runwell and now Danbury. He was obviously
warning Bernard, in the form of a dream, that he knew about our interests in
Danbury and could strike there whenever he wanted.
34. The omnipotent presence of Danbury’s church of St John the Baptist.

Yet if the Black Alchemist did ever turn up at the church, then I felt sure Bernard
would know.
‘How will I know?’ he asked, intrigued.
Because he, Bernard, was very much attuned to the hilltop site and had, in the
past, known when people were up to mischief there. It had happened back in
March 1985, when two French students visited the church. They carried out a
simple occult ritual in which they had concealed a folded parchment containing
magical symbols beneath the head of one of the two wooden knight effigies in
the north aisle.
Working in his garden, Bernard had picked up that something untoward was
taking place inside the church. On arrival, an oppressive atmosphere had hung in
the air and having asked the site guardian, William de St Clere—a
thirteenthcentury knight and lord of Danbury manor—what was going on,
Bernard had been instructed to ‘remove the parchment’.
With this command had come the impression of one of the recessed, wooden
knight effigies and the feeling he should look beneath its head. Here he had
found the sigilised piece of paper.
Further psychic prying had revealed the names of the two students and the fact
they lived in Paris, where they were studying psychology. I had put the feelers
out among my London contacts and had eventually tracked them down.
However, I was advised to ‘stay away from them as they are into heavy stuff.’
‘I know all that,’ Bernard interjected, lifting his glass from the table. ‘But if
someone like the Black Alchemist carries out a major ritual in the churchyard
then it will seriously affect me. It’ll be like someone playing around in my own
garden.’
I realised also that he might be susceptible to psychic attack if BA did strike in
Danbury.
I had an idea. Why didn’t he create a kind of magical barrier of protection
around the church?
He could achieve this, quite simply, by planting a ring of tiny crystals beyond its
exterior walls. This would then act as a psychic alarm system, which would let
him know when anyone with dubious magical intent entered the churchyard.
‘If I feel the need to do so, I will,’ he responded, obviously not wanting to tempt
fate in this manner.
He should do it, just in case.
‘Only if I think it necessary,’ he replied, emphasising the point. ‘I’ll let you know
if I do.’

Tuesday, 11th November. Bernard appeared in the doorway of The Griffin and
joined me in the corner, next to the old Tudor fireplace.

It was three weeks since we had last met, and I was eager to know whether
anything further had happened since the chilling nightmare featuring the
decapitated priest in Danbury church.

‘I was moved to set up the crystals around the church on Sunday,’ he announced.
‘I came up here and laid a circle of small green crystals.’

What had made him do this?

He grimaced and shrugged. ‘Just got the feeling to do it.’ And why green
crystals?
‘Green is a colour relating to balance and harmony, I

suppose. I don’t know, really. It just felt right.’

Any new psychic material?
Bernard said ‘Not really’, but then thought about his answer

for a moment before throwing in a passing statement. ‘The only thing I get is
that the Black Alchemist carries a swordstick.’

A swordstick? Like those owned by well-to-do gentlemen in Victorian times?

‘Indeed,’ he confirmed, lighting a cigarette. ‘But I don’t think he uses it for
physical protection.’
Why?
‘He uses it as a ritual tool to wield magical forces.’
This was an interesting suggestion. Never before had I come across an occultist
who used a swordstick for ritual purposes. Swords, wands, daggers and staves
perhaps, but not swordsticks. In fact, I could not recall anyone who actually
owned such a thing.
Yet then, as I thought about the idea, it began to dawn on me how useful a
swordstick might be, on both a physical and occult level. Someone like the
Black Alchemist could openly walk around with it in the most conspicuous
public places and no one—save perhaps a keen-eyed policeman—would ever
know what was concealed within his walking stick. And, unlike a proper
broadsword, used by magicians in ceremonial magic, a swordstick would be
ideal for ritualistic purposes in circumstances where other people could disturb
their magical activities at any time.
He could slip out the sword blade to invoke and banish magical forces, or merely
leave it inside the walking stick and use the weapon as a ritualistic wand or staff.
It was easy, and very clever.
I wanted one! If the Black Alchemist had one then I would have to have one!
Visions of scouring local antiques shops filled my mind. At least I would have a
good time trying to find one as browsing antiques shops was a regular pastime of
mine.
21 The Bloody Stave
The darkness obscuring the empty desert was broken by the sight of a campfire
burning in the distance. A clearly agitated man, sweating and even a little crazy
—dressed in traditional Arab Egyptian dress and head scarf—half ran, half
walked towards this far away beacon. He was breathing heavily, and suspicious
of those who calmly awaited his arrival.

Moving closer he saw three figures seated in a circle around the fire. For what
he had in his possession they would pay handsomely. It would make his family
happy, and this, he convinced himself, was why he was taking such a dangerous
course of action. He could not refuse what they had to offer, for it was his one
chance to become rich.

He saw now that the three figures were already looking towards him, their dark
eyes visible as slits between black headscarves, which obscured their faces and
blended well with their black attire.

The worried figure began to slow his pace as he saw the three men rise one by
one. Should he be warmed by their welcome, or even more on his guard?

For they were Hashshashin, loyal to the caliph al-Nizar. People not to be messed
with. People not to make angry.
As he approached their camp, the assumed leader, standing on the right,
gestured that the man hand over what was in his possession.
The thief hesitated, but the Hashshashin merely nodded towards his chest,
knowing full well what was concealed.
It was time to make the exchange.
From beneath his flowing garment, the golden stave was brought out for the
three men to see.
It glimmered bright red in the flickering light of the fire.
The hand of the Hashshashin reached out still further, indicating that the rod of
the prophet Moses, praise be his name, be handed over.
The man seemed hesitant, but then relented, as he presented the serpent wand to
the Hashshashin, trusting that they would keep their side of the bargain.
With one hand the dark figure took charge of the holy relic, as with the other he
promptly produced a deadly scimitar, which curled swiftly through the air,
removing the head of the thief, and causing his bloody body to slump lifeless to
the ground.

Bernard, seated by the open fire in The Griffin’s lounge bar that cold November
evening, recalled the contents of his powerful dream about the Hashshashin, or
‘Assassins’, beheading the unfortunate thief in order to seize the precious Stave
of Nizar.23 With it had come a flood of new information, including the
interesting fact that it had been unearthed somewhere in the vicinity of an
ancient Egyptian ruin, possibly one near Cairo.

The stave had then been passed from person to person, until eventually the
Assassins had got their hands on it. They were a Muslim sect founded in the
eleventh century by the Ismaili warrior and mystic Hassan-i-Sabbah (c. 1050s-
1124), known as the Old Man of the Mountains. One of their main beliefs was
that God wished them to harass and murder all enemies of the faith.

When Nizar had assumed the caliphate in 1095, the Assassins pledged their
allegiance to him, afterwards becoming his most loyal and fanatical supporters.
Indeed, they even became known as Nizari in his honour.

Thus to find the Assassins involved in securing the Stave of Nizar made real
sense, and implied its procurement took place during the years when this Islamic
sect supported Nizar prior to his death in a Cairo prison in 1097.

Clearly, these fanatics were not going to pay a common thief for the gold serpent
wand, which was seen as having belonged to the prophet Moses (who was
thought to have lived in the city of Memphis, near modern-day Cairo, prior to
leaving Egypt with the Israelites at the time of the Exodus). He, of course,
famously had a staff or rod of power that with the help of Yahweh could be
turned into a snake and back again into a rod.

Further psychic information had finally revealed the fate of the Stave of Nizar.
Having spent nearly two centuries at Wilmington Priory in Sussex, it had been
removed during the second half of the fourteenth century by a prominent
member of the de Warren family, the Earls of Surrey and Sussex.

The de Warrens kept it as a personal trophy, without any

The Bloody Stave concern for its immense religious significance and value, until
sibling rivalry caused the holy relic to be sawn into pieces.

One section was entreated back into the care of the monks at Wilmington. Here
it was concealed somewhere beneath the altar of the church, where apparently it
remains to this day.

Another fragment was given into the possession of a powerful French family
named de Coucy, whose seat was Coucyle-Chateau, near Laon in northern
France.

A third fragment continued to remain in the possession of the Earls of Surrey and
Sussex.
Another fragment ended up in the hands of the French king Charles V (1337-
1380). He was an avid collector of holy relics and other religious treasures. An
extant inventory records that among his possessions was a piece of ‘Moses’
rod’,24 very likely a reference to the Stave of Nizar.
What became of this holy relic after the king’s death is unclear, although the
sheer fact that it existed was enough to demonstrate the apparent accuracy of
Bernard’s psychic material.
The only fragment of the stave I made any attempt to retrieve was the one
apparently concealed within the wall of an underground room beneath the castle
ruins of Coucy-le-Chateau.
Having gained access to the castle grounds one summer’s evening, I had come
across an old mine shaft earlier described psychically by Bernard, who believed
it had been created during the Second World War. This led directly towards
where the stave supposedly lay concealed beneath the collapsed donjon or
central tower. Once inside the shaft, stone debris had begun falling from the
shored up roof, causing me to go no further.
Realising the stave fragment was now beyond my reach, I had conducted a
meditation in an attempt to release and then contain its serpentine spirit. This
Bernard felt we needed in order to gain entry on a psychic level to a cave
underworld he predicted would be found beneath the Pyramids of Giza (a cave
complex I eventually discovered and entered for the first time in March 2008).
Since then no more had come to Bernard concerning the fabled Stave of Nizar.
‘Well, I don’t know why I’m thinking about it now,’ he admitted, stubbing out a
cigarette. ‘Maybe there’s something in the air.’
I hoped so. Finding just a tiny fragment of this incredible object would be the
achievement of a lifetime.
Bernard laughed. ‘I think the chances of that are pretty low,’ he suggested,
sensibly, ‘but somehow the quest is not over yet. Not by a long stretch of the
imagination.’
22 The Mystic’s Gift
Sunday, 30th November, 1986. There was something nagging at the back of
Bernard’s mind as he got up that morning. It was an impulse within him—an
urge to go somewhere, meet someone, find something, although what exactly he
did not know.

The feelings intensified as the morning progressed, and with them came the
distinct impression of an area locally, and an event taking place that day.

Without either believing or disbelieving his feelings, Bernard consulted a

newspaper to see what was going on. Finger-flicking the pages, he first passed,
and then returned to the coming events section. Scanning the different display
adverts, he found it—and, yes, it was that day—an antiques and collectors’ fair
in a village not far away.

He wanted to go. But what would he find? A relevant book on heraldry perhaps?
Yes, that seemed the obvious answer. For the past year he had been researching
and painting the heraldic devices of members of the Order of the Garter, from its
inception in the fourteenth century right down to the present day. Not an easy
task by anyone’s standards.

Yet to achieve this goal, he needed books—old, rare, out-ofprint—and these

were often difficult to obtain. So it had been in this respect that his acute psychic
ability had come in useful. On rare occasions he had received distinct impulses
to go to either a specific second-hand bookshop or an antiques and collectors’
fair where he had been drawn to books relevant to his research.

Such a talent was, he believed, one of the few ‘perks’ of being a good psychic.
So he would go to this fair, and should he be wrong, and there was no book to be
found, it would still be a good excuse to get out of the house for a few hours
before dinner.

Having locked the car, Bernard walked across the car park to the entrance foyer
and queued behind a couple waiting to pay the nominal admission fee. Seconds
later he was through the pay desk and within the hall itself.

In front of him were stalls selling every kind of antique and collectable item. The
air seemed alive with the muted conversation of stallholders, dealers and visitors
buying, selling, bartering and admiring. Yet the large room was by no means
full. There was ample room to wander from table to table without hindrance.

Bernard strolled about not quite noticing anything other than the occasional pile
of dusty books occupying some corner of a stall dedicated to other, more
attractive items.

One by one, he turned them over or lifted their covers to search for an author or
title. None appeared to be relevant to his work. However, something would leap
out at him eventually, he was sure.

For twenty minutes he wandered about studying more or less every stall in the
hall. But nothing was taking his interest. Growing a little disappointed, he began
to accept that, on this occasion, his psychic abilities might have let him down.

Having more or less given up, Bernard wandered aimlessly and without interest
along the rows of stalls stacked with curious objets d’art of every shape, size and
colour.

Glimpses of faces and snippets of conversation broke through his senses as he

ambled about, not really knowing what to do next.

‘I can come down to twenty-two. No less, I’m afraid,’ a male face with receding
grey hair responded to a lady standing nearby.
‘No, these are repro, darling. Those over there are original art deco,’ a pretty
woman with shoulder-length blonde hair said from behind another stall.
He did not glance to see what they were talking about. It did not seem to matter.
He was lost in his own frustration. Why had he been led to this place? There had
to be something here somewhere.
Images blurred into moving and stationary forms. Distinct conversation now
became a background murmur. He was losing orientation and perspective.
Something was happening.
‘Yes sir, can I help you?’ the clearly Asian voice asked.
Bernard stared up at the intrusion. A smiling Indian youth in his late teens,
dressed in an old, out-of-fashion man’s casual shirt with frayed collar, stood
behind a stall awaiting a reply.
In front of the boy was an assortment of oriental curios and antiques, mostly of
brass or wood. Patterned plates stood behind brass incense burners, cheap
jewellery and crudely-cast statues of Hindu deities.
Bernard shook his head, but found his eyes scanning the stall for anything of
interest. They caught sight of an antique brass cobra, standing some three inches
in height, nestling among the collection of statuettes.
It resembled a pair of cobra candlesticks owned by Andy and used by them the
previous year in astral workings in which they had explored the cave world
existing beneath the Pyramids of Giza. To achieve this they had hired a secluded
meetings hall on some run down estate in Basildon, which had then been
transformed into a temporary Egyptian temple for the night. The essence of the
Stave of Nizar that Andy had brought back from Coucy-le-Chateau in France,
contained within a small magical talisman, had then been used to gained access
to this underworld domain.
Bernard picked up the candlestick. It was a little worn and, turning it around in
one hand, he saw that on the snake’s head was a small dancing figure.
He felt he should have it.
‘How much?’ he asked.
The Indian youth took hold of the item and surveyed it for a moment. ‘Two
pound,’ he said, a note of exactness in his tone.
Nodding in acceptance, Bernard produced two one pound coins and handed them
over.
The Indian carefully wrapped the coiled snake and returned it to him, the
transaction over. For a few seconds Bernard paused, enough for the young Asian
to meet his eyes and ready himself to speak: ‘You are in conflict with the one
who reverses the wheel. Is this true?’
The question caught Bernard off guard. Looking up at the youth, he realised that
he was merely conveying the question on behalf of an elderly Indian gentleman
sitting down behind the stall, who also now looked up, waiting for a reply.
Bernard tried to take in the situation before even contemplating an answer to the
curious question. The old man looked strange. He wore a long white robe that
contrasted sharply with his deep brown wrinkled skin, jet black eyes, long grey
hair and wiry beard. In his right hand he fingered a long string of orange prayer
beads—an act he appeared to be doing almost involuntarily.
It seemed that whilst Bernard had been studying the brass cobra, the old man,
who, he assumed, spoke little English, had asked the youth to put the question to
him and now the pair eagerly sought an answer.
What did they mean? ‘You are in conflict with the one who reverses the wheel.’
Bernard thought it might be a reference to the Black Alchemist and his warped
alchemical operations.
Could he not be described as ‘reversing the wheel’ by causing the harmonious
forces at ancient sites to fall into a state of chaotic disarray through dark
ritualistic activity? It was the only explanation. So, in response, he said, simply,
‘Yes.’
Accepting his word, the old man beckoned for the youth to lend an ear again.
More words were spoken and, nodding, the boy returned to Bernard. ‘There is
one who seeks to unblock the dam. Is this true?’
He thought carefully before answering. One who ‘seeks to unblock the dam.’
That had to be Andy. Yes, Andy. He was undoubtedly attempting to repair the
psychic damage caused by the Black Alchemist. So, once again, he said, simply,
‘Yes.’
The reply was acknowledged by the old man who again beckoned the boy down
to his level. Further words were exchanged and once more the youth stood up
and looked towards Bernard. ‘Is he the one where the two rivers meet?’
Where the two rivers meet? That was a tricky one. Andy lived with his parents in
Wickford, but was this near the meeting of two rivers? He was nowhere near the
Thames. But what about the River Crouch and the River Blackwater? Bernard
couldn’t think. It did not appear to be the answer.
He thought again. Was it perhaps not a reference to real rivers, but rivers of life,
their coming together creating a duality, opposing polarities—one positive and
the other negative, one black and the other white.
Andy often trod a narrow path between what some might consider as black and
white magic. One week he might be in prayer with Orthodox monks in a
secluded monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, whilst the next he would be
wielding powerful and dangerous occult forces under the cover of darkness,
combating fire with fire, so to speak. This was the answer the Indians were
looking for, so Bernard agreed and once again waited for a response.
The old man, still turning the beads through his fingers, then spoke again via the
youth, a more serious expression on his face this time.
‘The one you seek is like the coiled serpent,’ were the boy’s next words.
It was, he felt, another reference to the Black Alchemist’s nefarious activities, so
he agreed once more.
More conversation between the old man and the youth produced another strange
statement: ‘The one will stand in front of many dangers.’
‘Oh,’ Bernard responded, assuming this to be another reference to Andy.
‘My grandfather asks that you accept a gift from him,’ the boy said.
A sort of smile appeared on the face of the old man, who now nodded at
Bernard.
‘Yes, but what for?’ Bernard asked, wondering what was going on.
More words passed between the grandfather and the grandson before the youth
spoke again: ‘But it will not be yours. You will not keep it.’
With this statement the old man had now raised his hands in a gesture that said:
need I say more? You will know what to do.
He did. It was to be given to Andy.
At that point the Indian youth turned around and picked up a long, thin package
wrapped in brown paper, which he handed to Bernard. It was over four feet long,
pole-like and quite weighty.
Instantly, Bernard began to feel his hands tingle, almost as if he had just grabbed
hold of a live wire. What was this ‘gift’? It seemed to be exuding an intense
energy of some sort, so much so he almost dropped it.
Still the conversation between the grandfather and the grandson continued. The
boy looked up at Bernard. ‘It will protect you and give protection of the seven.’
Protection of the seven? He did not understand. Seven what? And protection
from what? The Black Alchemist? Was he just to take it?
‘Yes,’ the grandson responded.
Did he want any money?
The boy shook his head, and the old man merely lifted up his string of beads
with a smile, as if to gesture goodbye.
It was time to leave. Bernard moved away from the stall still holding the gift at
arms’ length. Without stopping, he walked away from the hustle and bustle of
the fair and stepped out into the solitude of the gravelled car park.
Once inside the car, Bernard carefully removed the wrapping paper concealing
the object. To his amazement, he saw it was a long walking stick in varnished
black wood with a metal cap protecting its tip.
Just below the handle was an inch wide brass ring set into the wood, and
nudging up to this was what looked like an inset bone piece with a recurring
floral pattern. Screwed into the end of the handle was a brass metal cap with the
carved face of a lion.
It looked very much like a standard design in oriental walking sticks, had it not
been for one seemingly unique feature. Scratched into the wood were strange
looking symbols composed of zigzags, circles and lines. He partially recognised
their symbolism, but decided to leave their interpretation to Andy for when he
saw him at The Griffin the following evening.
More extraordinary than the walking stick’s physical appearance was the bright
aura of light surrounding the shaft and extending beyond each end by at least a
couple of inches. But that was not all.
Moving down from the handle towards the tip was a pulsating spiral of rainbow-
coloured energy, which about midway along the shaft altered into rings of
coloured light that slowly advanced towards the tip, before reforming back into a
heliacal spiral and extinguishing completely just beyond the metal tip.
At any one time, no less than five of these detached rings of light could be seen
moving down the central axis of the walking stick.
It was an amazing sight, yet one Bernard knew could only be witnessed by
another psychic.
And its purpose was becoming apparent as well. It was a rod of magical power, a
highly-charged ritual tool, imbued with supernatural energies by someone—
possibly the old man, maybe someone else—for a specific purpose. If this was
so, then it was to be used to invoke, banish and channel psychic energies for
magical purposes. It would also be able to protect them from the rising might of
the Black Alchemist. How exactly, he wasn’t sure. Yet he sensed that all would
be revealed soon enough.
23 William’s Warning
Monday, 1st December, 1986. ‘ … and so I wrapped it back up and left it in the
boot of the car,’ Bernard said, concluding his story. ‘Which is where it is now.’

He picked up his drink and awaited a response.

I sighed in utter disbelief. I had listened to some unreal episodes from the
psychic’s remarkable life, but this one took the biscuit. I told him to go and get
it.
‘Right, just give me a minute,’ he said, getting up and walking out of The
Griffin’s lounge bar.
I pondered over the whole extraordinary story. Who were the two Asian guys?
The old man was perhaps a mystic of some sort. The description was classic, but
had he known that someone was going to approach him at the fair? It seemed so,
as the walking stick was already wrapped when given to Bernard. Perhaps these
people regularly give away ‘gifts’ to those whom they feel some affinity.
Bernard re-emerged whistling to himself and holding the long, wrapped package.
Excitedly, I removed the brown paper. For a few seconds, I just stared at the
stick in utter amazement.
‘And this is the brass cobra with the dancing figure on it,’ Bernard offered,
placing down the Indian artefact.
Bringing it closer, I studied the two symbols scratched into the stick’s varnished
surface. One, on the handle, was a finely carved, anti-clockwise fylfot, or wheel
cross. The other, a little further down, was a little more complex. It consisted of
a ninepointed star with a small circle at its centre, overlaid on which was a circle
inscribed using a much wider tool. Cutting diagonally through both the circle
and the star was a thick zigzag line.
These were mystical symbols alright. Both the fylfot and the nine-pointed star
were Hindu symbols representing the creative force of the universe. The zigzag
overlaying the star perhaps symbolised either a serpent, or flowing water, while
the thicker circle signified either the sun or the cyclic nature of cosmic energies.
Yet who carved these symbols, and why?
For me, this was the greater mystery.
35. The mystical symbols found carved on the Indian swordstick.

Fiddling around with the wooden rod, I heard something rattle inside. A sense of
excitement rose inside me.
I knew what this was. Twisting the brass ring released the handle, which I then
pulled away from the rest of the stick. A long, thin blade, greased for protection,
suddenly came into view.
It was a swordstick.
Bernard looked delighted and bent across the table to study the blade. Inscribed
along one of its surfaces was the word ‘India’ between two simple decorative
patterns. It had been punched into the iron blade with a fine point.
Yet then a pressing thought spilled out as a question: how come he had not
realised it was a swordstick?
‘I didn’t really look at it that closely,’ Bernard responded, wondering the self
same thing. ‘I only studied it briefly before rewrapping it and putting it in the
boot. And that’s where it’s been until now.’
I accepted his word. Yet the whole story still baffled me. What did an Indian
swordstick have to do with the activities of the Black Alchemist? Okay, so he
had one the same …
‘No, not the same,’ Bernard interjected. ‘The one I saw him with had a more
rounded cap. I don’t think it had a brass ring either.’
So his swordstick appeared to be of a more traditional design, like those carried
by Victorian gentlemen. But how old was our one?
‘Don’t know,’ he admitted, getting up to go to the bar. ‘Same again?’ he asked,
nodding towards my empty glass.
I placed the swordstick on the table for a moment. A tingling sensation throbbed
across the palm of my hand. Whether this was the result of auto-suggestion or
not, I could not say, but my hand actually felt as if it had been caned.
Bernard placed a pint in front of me, before sitting back down and reaching for
his cigarettes.
So what was this strange sensation in my right hand? Was it me, or what?
He glanced towards the swordstick before answering. ‘Well, it’s as I said, some
kind of rod of power. The feeling I get is that it can be used to affect subtle
energy fields present in the body and outside, in the open. It can produce or
change energies and create thought forms.’

36. The handle and termination of the Indian swordstick.

He then hesitated for a moment as if composing his thoughts. ‘You know, I get
the distinct feeling that although the swordstick is not old, it embodies an
essence, or spirit, of something much older.

So it was not so much what it was, but what it contained that was important.
‘I think so, yes,’ he said, flicking ash into the already busy ashtray.
Shaking my head with a disbelieving smile, I twisted around and stood the
swordstick up against the side of the Tudor fireplace, already decorated for
Christmas. It actually blended in well among the pokers, coal scuttles and festive
draping.
Seeing the brass cobra Bernard had bought at the antiques and collectors’ fair
still on the table, I picked it up. The little dancing figure standing on the head of
the snake was unquestionably Shiva, one of the principal deities of the Hindu
faith. I had a small statue showing a dancing Shiva trampling on a much smaller
snake. Bernard’s cobra certainly had some age to it, and was probably made for a
personal altar.
Placing it back down, our conversation now turned to other matters and half an
hour quickly passed.
Suddenly, and without warning, Bernard lunged forward in front of the fireplace
and made a grab for the swordstick as if it was about to fall to the floor.
What the hell was he up to?
Realising the swordstick had not moved, he returned to the comfort of his seat,
somewhat embarrassed by his actions.
Bernard seemed flustered. ‘Sorry about that, but it appeared to change into a
snake.’
A snake?
‘Yes,’ he responded, before adding: ‘Perhaps it’s some kind of serpent stick.’
A serpent stick. Yes, of course. The zigzag symbol on the shaft seemed to
suggest a connection with serpent energies. Bernard had said that the
swordstick’s subtle energy field consisted of a spiralling band of rainbow light,
and now it had appeared to change momentarily into a writhing snake, a totem of
the god Shiva in Hindu tradition. It was all beginning to sound a little like the
accounts of the Rod of Moses that the Biblical prophet was able to change into a
writhing snake and back again, purely by verbal command. This linked it with
the Stave of Nizar, which King Charles V of France certainly believed was
‘Moses’ rod’.
‘You’re probably right,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps the swordstick’s a replacement for
the Stave of Nizar!’
Maybe it was.
I picked up the swordstick again. So if it was that powerful what would happen
if we were to take it out into Danbury churchyard and play around with it for a
while?
Bernard looked at me in utter disbelief as he began to shake his head. ‘No, no
way. It’s cold out there, and it’s raining as well. What’s more, I don’t think it’s
the sort of thing you just “play around with”.’
I persisted. If we were to go out in the churchyard I felt sure we would get some
sort of response from the swordstick. If nothing else, he might ‘see’ changes in
the energy field surrounding it.
‘Christ, you don’t stop, do you?’ he said, playfully. ‘Okay, we’ll go out there, but
let me finish my drink first.’

In the relative stillness of the cold, damp and darkened churchyard—which in

size dwarfs that of its nearest rivals—the two conspicuous figures came to a halt
on the gravel path next to the old horse chestnut tree, their usual spot for
carrying out psychic activities. Here they readied themselves for the paranormal
experiment.

Bernard stood by as I half closed my eyes and ritually rammed the magical
swordstick—its blade concealed—into the soft earth.

In my mind, I visualised golden energies pouring from me, through the

swordstick and into the ground. I saw them radiate out in all directions, like the
spokes of a huge wheel that now filled the churchyard.

Mentally, I began to turn this wheel of energy in a clockwise direction until its
spokes blurred into a swirling mass of vibrant light. This was what I could see.
How about Bernard?

‘The swordstick’s glowing gold,’ Bernard revealed, in a quiet, decisive voice, as

he began to pace about. ‘Golden energies are now encircling the whole
churchyard.’

Good. He could see what I was actually creating through visualisation.

But Bernard was experiencing much more than that. He stood and listened to the
night. ‘Can you hear that?’ he asked.
‘What,’ I said, as I continued to visualise the golden wheel of light, pulsating and
rippling through the churchyard.
‘It’s like a choir … an angelic choir, coming from somewhere.’
For a moment, I paused to listen, but heard nothing.
Perplexed, he started to walk towards the silhouetted image of the church. ‘Can’t
you hear that?’
Still I continued the visualisation. My eyes momentarily caught sight of Bernard
walking towards the great shadow cast by the towering Christian edifice, as he
attempted to locate the source of his angelic choir.
For just a few, brief moments I forgot Bernard. Then, without warning, an
almighty BANG came from the direction in which he had vanished out of sight.
I looked up. What the hell was he doing?
Fearing for his safety and curious to know what was going on, I curtailed the
visualisation and scurried across the wet grass towards the church.
I found Bernard around ten yards short of the south wall. He just stood there,
perfectly still and silent, staring towards the building’s little used south door.
Instantly, I saw the cause of his concern.

The great wooden door was wide open!

Something was clearly amiss. In my three years of regular visits to the church I
had never once known this door to be unlocked, never mind open!
What had happened?
‘It opened by itself,’ he announced, quite casually. ‘I was listening to the choir,
which sounded as if it was coming from the church, so I came over here.’
Then what happened?
‘As I got nearer I could see a silhouetted human form standing in the doorway.
When I got here the door just opened on its own, almost as if the lock had been
blown off with an explosive!’
The night was getting silly. First the swordstick. Now a church door blasting
open by itself. I shook my head. Could I take any more?
Moving up to the open door, I inspected its lock and handle for any signs of
damage. There were none. However, the bolt had retracted into the lock
mechanism, suggesting the door had been opened from the inside. Perhaps it was
a sign we should go inside.
‘I’m not going in there,’ he protested, quite troubled by the thought. ‘What if
someone comes along and finds us? How would we explain that? No, I’m
staying out here, thank you.’
Doors don’t open of their own accord without good reason. It was quite apparent
that if we were to go inside, he would probably gain a psychic message from the
church’s medieval spirit guardian, William de St Clere.
Perhaps the Black Alchemist had already visited the church. Maybe we were
meant to discover whatever he’d left behind. We had to go inside, and I told
Bernard so.
Advancing into the church itself, I at last managed to coax him into moving just
beyond the open door.
‘This is as far as I go,’ he categorically stated.
As a pillar of local society with a professional job, I understood why he was so
hesitant about entering the church. If he and I were found inside, there was every
chance we would be arrested, and the story splashed all over the local papers. So
I said no more.
Knowing that a message would almost certainly follow, and that we might not
have much time, I urged Bernard to ask William what was going on. He agreed,
so I waited for a response. ‘There’s a threat, he’s telling me.’
A thread? What the hell had a thread to do with this? ‘A threat,’ he corrected me.
From whom?
‘Visitors,’ came the stern reply, out of the darkness. What … visitors will come?
‘Yes.’
When?
‘He doesn’t know. But I will know when.’
I recalled the swordstick still in my right hand. Had that anything to do with the
door opening by itself?
There was a momentary silence. ‘No answer to that question.’
So what was all this about?
Another pause. ‘I know what this is about and I think it’s time to leave.’ Bernard
shuffled in the darkness, ready to go.
Why? What?
‘I see the same images I saw during the nightmare. The headless priest. The
blood stains. Everything. Come on, let’s go.’ He moved away from the door and
back into the cold December air.
Pulling closed the heavy wooden door, I followed him onto the gravel path.
‘I’m going home,’ he exclaimed, making his way across the green.
So it seemed as if the Black Alchemist looked set to pay Danbury church a
personal visit, and it would not be to attend a service, either. Hopefully, Bernard
would know when this was going to happen, so at least we would have a chance
to prepare ourselves for any kind of confrontation.
For the moment though, we had a more immediate problem on our hands—such
as what were we going to tell the rector? Sorry, our magical serpent swordstick
has just blasted open the south door of your church, so that a former lord of the
manor could inform us that the site was about to be attacked and desecrated. I
wasn’t too sure he would understand!
As I said goodbye to the psychic, I had an idea. How about telling the rector we
had been sitting in the pub, when Bernard—whom he knew was psychic—had
suddenly received the impression to go over to the church. This we had done
and, feeling that something was amiss with the south door, had discovered it
unlocked.

It was a plan! Turning around, I strolled back towards the green in front of the
church, before turning right into the rectory’s long driveway.

The rector’s wife answered the door. ‘I’m sorry but my husband’s out at the
moment,’ she announced. ‘Can I help you?’
I told her the story and she accepted my word.
‘Oh dear, that was probably the choirmaster,’ she said. ‘He uses the south door
for choir practice on a Sunday evening.’ She sighed with concern. ‘I shall have
to speak to him. Perhaps he forgot to lock it when he left last night.’
Perhaps. Either that, or there was another explanation—one I didn’t have the
heart, or bottle, to tell her.

Time passed. Christmas came and went. Winter melted into spring. Spring
blossomed into summer, and summer matured into autumn. The nights grew
longer, the air turned colder, but still the Black Alchemist did not turn up at
Danbury, or anywhere else for that matter.

Bernard and I continued to meet for a drink in the familiar surroundings of The
Griffin and the subject of the Black Alchemist would inevitably crop up in
conversation. In answer, he would merely shake his head and say: ‘No, nothing
on him at all.’

As each passing month pushed the October 1986, Running Well confrontation
even further back in time, the subject of the Black Alchemist began to slip away
from our conscious thoughts.

The Indian swordstick remained dormant, and other more productive quests
occupied our lives.
August 1987 saw my departure from the family home at Wickford. I moved into
a comfortable first floor flat within a terraced house in sunny Leigh-on-Sea. It
was exactly what I needed, independence and a place to write freely. Then,
unexpectedly, as I attempted once more to finish my written account of the Black
Alchemist affair, it all began again.
Part Three Red
24 Night of the She-Wolf
Thursday, 15th October, 1987. 8.00 pm. ‘Tonight, I want you all to imagine
yourselves as a tree, with your body as the trunk and your arms as branches,’ the
vivacious lady teacher told the small, but attentive class. ‘Sense the wind
blowing through its leaves. See it. Feel it. Experience it. Then write and draw
whatever comes into your mind. I’ll give you ten minutes.’

The class quietly opened their loose-leafed files and picked up pens and pencils
in anticipation.
Chesca Potter was first and foremost an artist—a painter of magical and mystical
themes and subjects. Indeed, success and recognition had come to her in recent
years in the form of several commissions for book covers and illustrations.
However, the creative writing class, held close to her King’s Cross flat in the
heart of London, was helping to develop her writing skills, and she enjoyed the
company of the other young writers.
Content, Chesca picked up a pencil and mentally contemplated the evening’s
chosen image, which she found comparatively easy to draw as many of her
pictures were created in a similar way.
For a few moments she closed her eyes and became at one with her drawing,
before writing: “I am the lightning blasted tree”. Yet she had to stop and re-open
her eyes as the image seriously disturbed her for some reason. A nauseous
feeling welled up inside her, and she shivered with concern.
Chesca looked around at her classmates silently engrossed in their own work and
could not understand her irrational feelings. Why should visualising yourself as a
tree produce such an oppressive reaction? Something was undoubtedly wrong,
and it worried her.

Friday, 16th October. 3.00 am. Chesca had been unable to get to sleep. The
disturbing feelings she had experienced whilst at the writing class the previous
evening had grown with intensity as the night had advanced, and with them had
come a sense of depression and hopelessness. Why, she could not say. It
concerned her almost to the point of desperation, and the incessant gale-force
winds had not helped calm her nerves. They had started around eleven o’clock
and had been growing in ferocity ever since.
She was on edge, and something else was happening now. An ugly image kept
looming out of the dark depths of her mind—a hideous demon with a long
tongue protruding from an open mouth. Chesca recognised its form from her
past studies of Hindu mythology. It was Kali, an Indian goddess of death and
destruction, whose image she had wanted to paint for some while.

Chesca could almost sense the goddess’s terrifying presence getting stronger by
the minute. Yet there was more—a sudden realisation that this image was
connected in some way with her experience at the writing class and, for some
reason, the growing intensity of the gale-force winds.

Something was building up both within her, and outside, across London.
Distraught, she searched for answers. The response came as a sudden
compulsion to paint a picture of the demoness—almost as if Kali was
compelling her to do so. It would take her mind off the events of the past few
hours and, in some strange way, release them from her mind.
Picking up a sharp pencil, Chesca Potter began to sketch an image of Kali, which
she sensed she must finish before the first light of day washed away the
darkness.

3.30 am. The sound of the violent gales woke me from my slumber. The air in
the room was warm, humid even. Strange for that time of year, I thought.

Lying in bed, I listened. Never had I heard anything like this before. Outside the
wind roared, rumbled and hissed incessantly, with ferocious gusts coming
around every 30 seconds.

Suddenly, a loud crash sounded overhead. It was a chimney stack collapsing, I

was sure of it. But whose was it? Mine, or somebody else’s?

Still the wind increased in ferocity. Windows exploded, masonry crashed to the
ground, fences gave way and tree branches snapped. With each almighty gust
further terrifying sounds followed, their intensity reaching towards an unnerving
crescendo.

Something very powerful was manifesting itself. I could feel it. Sense it. It was a
hurricane, yes.
But something more, much more.
Slipping out of bed, I toured the first-floor flat in the darkness, making sure
every window was shut and secured, before moving into the Black Room, my
place of meditation. Kneeling down in front of an ottoman that acted as an altar,
I contemplated the chaotic strength of the winds and closed my eyes.
Images appeared of an almost demonic female face, a crone cackling with
laughter. No, I could not look. Re-opening my eyes, I raised my hands into the
air and shouted: ‘What the hell is going on?’

4.00 am. Caroline Wise could not sleep in her second-floor London flat because
of the worsening winds. The dim light of the bedside lamp on the clock radio
gave her the chance to block them out. She would read.

Minutes passed as the feverish pitch of the terrifying gales grew louder and more
violent. Continually she broke off her reading to glance cautiously at the
vibrating bedroom window that looked like it was about to implode from the
impact of the oncoming gusts.

The room was a darkened miniature city of angular shapes and forms, she
considered. Then, as Caroline looked towards the window, a new shape now
blocked out the faint light coming in from the street lamps outside.

It was human-like and advancing very slowly.

The end of the bed obscured its lower half, but she could see that its torso and
head were those of a wolf. A she-wolf, she felt, and it was no mere image in the
mind’s eye. It seemed physically present in the room and even its minutest
details could be distinguished—its coarse bristles encircling an extended
reddycoloured snout, even the sticky saliva around the edges of its long, jagged
teeth.
Caroline did not want to view the disgusting sight, so mentally pushed the vile
form back towards the window and the oncoming winds. It vanished, but the
lingering thought of its presence nauseated and revolted her.
Somehow, she instinctively knew its nature—malevolent, female and, for some
inexplicable reason, linked with the presence of the chaotic, destructive might of
the hurricane.
Caroline let minutes pass before responding. Casting off the duvet, she slid out
of bed and stumbled across to the door. Pulling it open, only darkness and a
sense of calm greeted her in the hallway.
A window in the kitchen rattled in sympathy with the ebbs and flows of the
gusting winds. She would have to close it. Anyway, it would give her a chance to
compose herself in different surroundings.
Switching on the light, her eyes squinted as her raised hand made for the rattling
pane, which was quickly secured.
The door behind her slid open and a female form moved into view. It was her
flatmate, twenty-year-old Gaynor Sunderland, bleary-eyed and in her dressing
gown. Using the back of her hand to shield her eyes from the intensity of the
bright light, she leaned back on the fridge. ‘I heard someone get up,’ she said, in
a low voice. Her eyes kept closing as if she was about to fall back to sleep.
‘I was having this horrible dream,’ Gaynor now revealed, not thinking that
Caroline would be particularly interested. ‘I was being held in a house against
my will by an old woman with a wolf’s head—a she-wolf of some kind. And
there were two men as well. They also had wolves’ heads.’
Caroline’s disturbing vision returned to her instantly. Gaynor too had seen a she-
wolf. This time in her sleep. Her flatmate was psychic, so had Gaynor
telepathically picked up the image of the she-wolf from her? Or was it
something else—an intrusion into the house of a hideously malevolent force?
And who was this shewolf? They were questions that Caroline did not wish to
answer.
Leaving Gaynor, Caroline returned to her bedroom and climbed back into bed.
She attempted to ignore the foul memory of the supernatural intruder, and the
disturbing sound of the gusting winds, by once more trying to read by the dim
light of the clock radio.
Yet then, over a period of no more than a few seconds, the entire input of light
coming in through the window gradually extinguished as the different electricity
sub stations lost their power and London was plunged into total darkness.

9.00 am. The car tyres crunched over shattered roof tiles and broken pieces of
masonry as I swerved to avoid yet another fallen tree sprawled across the road,
its branches twisted and fractured by the sheer weight of its heavy trunk.

The hurricane had left a trail of absolute chaos and mayhem across Leigh-on-Sea
and the neighbouring ward of Chalkwell, which lay just a short distance from my
flat in Lord Roberts Avenue. Roofs were missing from houses, lines of fallen
trees blocked virtually every road, fences had simply vanished and shop fascias,
Perspex blinds, broken glass and gates littered everywhere. The scene was like
something out of an apocalyptic nightmare.

Further on, in Leigh Broadway, shopkeepers were desperately trying to collect

up what was left of their stock, which now lay scattered across the road, as
emergency replacement glass fitters hastily boarded up disintegrated shop fronts.
On the other side of the street people were clearing away the fragments of a
collapsed brick wall, which now blocked the pavement. And all around, chimney
stacks were either inside roofs or scattered across people’s front gardens.

It was the same story wherever I went. As I drove around, taking in the situation,
I just shook my head in disbelief.
Pulling into a side road, I searched for a parking space. On the corner, wrapped
around a bent signpost, was yet another shop blind, lying next to which was an
ornamented pinnacle, fallen from the roof of a nearby bank.
No, I had never seen anything like this before.
37. The ancient yew in Leigh-on-Sea churchyard wrenched from its roots during
the Great Storm of 1987.
9.30 am. Jonathan Guy, news editor for the Leigh Times, was the only person
who had managed to reach the office before me.

‘The phones are out,’ he announced, pacing up and down in frustration. ‘But if
you do want to use one, keep trying, as I somehow managed to get through to
my father.’

This was Mike Guy senior, the paper’s editor.

‘There’s a tree on his car,’ John moaned. ‘A fence has smashed into my mum’s
car and the roof of her flat caved in as the chimney stack toppled down. My dad
didn’t sound in a good mood when I spoke to him.’
The telephone did work spasmodically and, obtaining a line, I seized the
opportunity to ring Brian Fenning, the paper’s head photographer. We needed
some pictures as no one was going to believe this in years to come.
Brian was almost insulted by my suggestion. ‘Er, before you go any further, I’ve
just got back actually. I’ve been out since first light this morning and have taken
over three hundred pictures so far,’ he announced.
38. Every road in Leigh-on-Sea and neighbouring Chalkwell (pictured) was full
of fallen trees and debris following the devastating hurricane.

‘The whole of Leigh, Chalkwell and Westcliff have been completely devastated.
I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he admitted, trying to contain his excitement.
‘The houses along the cliffs have really taken a battering—roofs off, chimneys
gone, windows out, and there are trees all over the place. In some roads every
single tree has fallen on the houses nearest to them. It looks really bizarre.
Anyway, I keep bumping into photographers from the Echo, so I suppose they’ll
be running a picture special in tonight’s edition.’

Hopefully, we would do the same in the next issue. As morbid as it might seem
to some, a full pictorial account of the damage done by the hurricane would have
to be made and recorded for posterity in a local paper such as ours.

3.00 pm. Johnny Merron, Caroline’s other flatmate, had finally managed to get
to work despite being turned back by police on his first attempt to reach the heart
of London.

Even though it was now mid-afternoon, the electricity had still not been
switched back on and the telephones remained out of action.

Caroline contemplated the absurd situation. With the roads blocked, the
electricity not functioning and the telephones out, it seemed bizarre to think that
one of the world’s most technologically-advanced capitals had been brought to a
standstill by the powers of nature. She mentioned this to Gaynor as they hunted
around for batteries to use in an old radio they were trying to repair in the hope
of reaching the outside world.

Then, as if to signal a return to normality, the telephone rang out. Answering it,
Caroline heard the relieved voice of her best friend Cath, who lived nearby.

After establishing that each other’s homes were still in one piece, Cath went onto
a different matter.
‘Caroline, something awful happened when I woke up around four this morning,’
she said, in a clearly hesitant and concerned voice, which was not like her. ‘As I
opened my eyes I swear I saw Graham as a wolf.’
Caroline had to reassure her that she was not going mad before she would
continue.
‘I even saw a long snout and a hairy face. It was horrible and it frightened the
life out of me so much I screamed out, waking Graham. At that moment his face
turned back to normal,’ she explained. ‘I’m not kidding you, Caroline. I bet you
think I’m going round the bend. Don’t you?’
She knew her friend was not lying, or mad. Even though Cath claimed to be non-
psychic she had shown to Caroline on many occasions she was more susceptible
to paranormal experiences than she liked to admit. So seeing her husband as a
wolf was not as outlandish as Cath obviously believed it to be.
Wolves again. Three separate experiences, and all at the height of the hurricane.
It had to mean something.
Minutes later Caroline answered the telephone to someone else who had been
desperately trying to ring—Marion Sunderland, Gaynor’s mother, calling from
her home in Flint, North Wales.
‘I’ve been trying to get through,’ she confirmed, in her distinctive Liverpudlian
accent. ‘The lines have been down all over the place. We haven’t seen much of
the hurricane up here, but I heard about it on breakfast TV earlier. Is everyone
alright? How’s Gaynor, and yourself?’
After assuring her everyone was fine, Caroline asked Marion if she had
experienced anything unusual over night—any strange dreams or visions? She
asked because Marion was, like her daughter, very psychically sensitive.
‘No, I didn’t, love,’ Marion responded. ‘Why, why do you ask?’
Caroline refrained from giving the game away, and instead asked Marion if she
felt anything as they spoke.
‘All I get now are some words. I don’t know what they mean. I get “the wolves
are running”.’
The wolves are running.
This was the fourth person to pick up on wolves. But why wolves? Perhaps they
were some sort of supernatural aspect of the hurricane. It was certainly a pattern,
but what did it all mean?

4.30 pm. The Leigh Times would put together a pictorial special on the
hurricane, so we needed to find out exactly what had taken place, both locally
and over the rest of the country. We needed to know what had caused it, the full
extent of the damage, and why it had not been predicted by TV weatherman
Michael Fish. The previous evening he had confidently informed viewers that
reports of a hurricane on the way were greatly exaggerated, and there was
nothing to get alarmed about. Oh how those misplaced words would come back
to haunt him in the years to come!

By the end of the day, this is what I had found …

During the early hours of that morning, England had been struck by the worst
gales in living memory and the first hurricane since 1703. Tropical winds
gusting up to speeds in excess of 110 mph had torn through the southeast
counties, leaving a horrifying trail of death and destruction in their wake.
Never before had anyone seen anything quite like it on these shores. Thousands
of families were left homeless as buildings collapsed like houses of cards. Roofs
had been wrenched into the air and windows exploded. Millions of people were
now without heat, electricity and telephones as overhead cables and power lines
crashed to the ground. Caravans, lorries and vans had been overturned and boats
in coastal regions scooped up and tossed onto dry land.
Hundreds of years of heritage had been destroyed in an instant of time as an
estimated fifteen million trees were wrenched from their roots and sent crashing
onto roads, railway lines, overhead cables and houses. And worst of all, as the
first light of day had brought with it a harsh sense of calmness and reality,
twenty people were found to have died as a direct result of the nightmarish
winds.
Now there were angry questions being asked by everyone. Why had a hurricane
not been forecast? There had been no mention at all of approaching gales the
previous evening. The Meteorological Office at Bracknell in Berkshire could
give no satisfactory answer. They had plotted the birth of the hurricane in the
Bay of Biscay around noon on the 15th when a collision of hot air currents from
Africa had fused with cold Arctic air from the North Atlantic to form the deepest
depression ever recorded. Yet they had predicted that the imminent storms would
hit northern France—not England.
They got it wrong. The hurricane was on its way, unannounced. By 9 pm, as the
winds entered the English Channel, they increased to speeds of up to 75 mph. By
1 am the gales had reached the Channel Islands with winds now gusting in
excess of 110 mph. Around 3 am, as the majority of the country lay asleep in
their beds, the malevolent southerly and southwesterly winds had begun their
path of destruction across the coastal counties of Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex.
For three terrifying hours, the hurricane had wrought havoc and mayhem as it
gradually moved north-eastwards towards the East Anglian coast. Only with the
approach of dawn, around 7 am, had the winds begun to abate, moving
peacefully out into the relative safety of the North Sea.
A massive cleanup operation was now under way, although it would take weeks,
if not months, for life to return to normal and the full extent of the hurricane’s
damage to be fully realised.
25 The Dark Goddess
Saturday, 24th October, 1987. ‘I have found more accounts of strange dreams
and visions on the night of the hurricane,’ Caroline revealed, as my Sierra drove
away from her South London home. We were heading for Oxford, where we
were to attend an annual symposium on the nature, origins and history of ritual
magic organised by the Oxford Golden Dawn Society.

‘A girl named Karen from the same magical group I belong to said she dreamt of
wolves that night. She mentioned this without any prompting at all.’

Any more?
‘Yes, Chesca Potter, the artist,’ she announced, before relating what had
happened at the writing class with her drawing of the lightning blasted tree, and
later at her flat in King’s Cross. ‘At the height of the hurricane she was
compelled to paint an incredibly vivid picture of the Hindu goddess Kali,’
Caroline said, gazing out at the crowds of Saturday shoppers lining the busy
streets. ‘She felt she had to finish it before dawn.
‘What’s really interesting is that Hindus who want to keep wolves away from
their homes prey to Kali, as she has power over them.’
Curious.
‘Anyway, Chesca will be at the conference exhibiting her paintings,’ she added.
‘So you can speak to her then.’
I had also come across some strange dreams and psychic incidents that had taken
place at the height of the hurricane.
In Leigh-on-Sea, one woman I knew named Carole Young had spent the night of
the hurricane listening to the terrifying intensity of the gusting winds.
Apparently, around 4 am, her ears had unexpectedly heard a disturbing sound—a
long, piercing scream, seemingly that of a woman, which had lasted for several
seconds and been carried by the wind itself.
So real was the voice that she had immediately jumped out of bed, believing it to
be a woman in distress. Seeing no one, she had moved to the landing, where on
looking out of a window saw a fair-sized tree being dragged along the empty
road by the sheer force of the incredible winds. Perplexed, she had given up and
returned to bed, assuming the female scream to be somehow spectral in origin.
What she did not know is that a high-pitched female voice carried on the wind is
a sign of Black Annis, an ancient British death goddess described in legend as a
hooded crone or hag, with a hideous blue face and long, claw-like nails. In her
Scottish form as Gentle Annie, or Gentle Annis, she is a weather spirit with
command over winds and gales.
Elsewhere in the country, a girl named Andrea from Aylesbury in
Buckinghamshire had spoken to me about a powerful and vivid dream she had
experienced that night. Like Gaynor, she had found herself being held prisoner in
a house by a crone of hideous appearance. The building, she recalled, had been
located at a crossroads, a site associated, like the crone, with Hekate, the Greek
goddess of the night.
The hideous hag had appeared to possess a hold over Andrea, which she clearly
found distressing. The dream had culminated in the old woman continually
approaching her and opening her mouth full of ill-formed teeth to emit a foul-
stinking breath which, she emphasised, had reeked of ‘rotting flesh and blood’,
even of death itself.
Shortly afterwards, Andrea had awoken to the sound of the gale-force winds,
which had by no means been intense in Buckinghamshire. She concluded that
the unnerving dream was linked with the presence of the hurricane.
So what was going on? Why had there been so many closely related dreams,
visions and mystical experiences during the night of the hurricane? More
particularly, why had so many people picked up on wolves, goddesses of the
night and crone-like women?
As the car moved out of London and onto the motorway, we worked out a few
answers to these puzzling questions. After an hour or so of intense discussion,
this is the way it looked …
In the past, the chaotic, destructive might of a nocturnal hurricane was
associated, through its airborne approach, unearthly sounds and unimaginable
power, with the presence of a dark goddess, a supernatural deity perceived as
wrathful and hag-like in appearance.
This terrifying goddess of death and the night was known by various names,
such as Black Annis in England and the Cailleach Bheur or Gentle Annis in
Scotland.
Kali was quite obviously her name in India.
In Europe and Asia Minor she went under the name Hekate, who bore various
titles including Queen of the Night, Queen of Ghosts, Devourer of Corpses,
Lady of Suicides and Untimely Deaths, and Mistress of Magic and Sorcery.
Hekate is usually portrayed as a triple goddess with three heads, three bodies
(sometimes just one), and six arms and legs. Each of her hands clasp a different
object, including a sacrificial blade, flaming torch, large key and writhing snake,
all of which signify different aspects of her worship.
Her appearance is usually that of a mature woman, although more commonly she
takes the form of a barren crone—a hag— dressed in a black or grey cowled
robe, and it is in this guise that she bears the grand title Queen of the Witches.
Hekate is considered at her most potent around the time of the full moon closest
to the beginning of November, the point in the year marking the halfway mark,
or cross-quarter day, between the autumn equinox and winter solstice. Hekate’s
presence then remains strong across the dark, winter months until the coming of
spring when her influence finally wanes.
Over the centuries Hekate, in her role as the dark winter crone, became
associated with an archaic festival of the dead, usually celebrated on 1st
November. In Christian lore this feast day is known as All Hallows’ or All
Saints’ Day, with the evening prior to it being All Hallow’s Eve, or Hallowe’en.
It is a night when witches, spirits and demons are thought to be abroad, and the
veils between this world and the next are considered particularly thin,
necessitating the living to protect themselves against the forces of darkness
(from which we derive the modern Hallowe’en celebrations). It is also the time
that the souls of the dead are thought to return to the world of the living.
It was for this reason that All Souls’ Day, celebrated on 2nd November, became
established—All Saints’ Day being reserved for the return of the Christian saints,
whose combined powers were evoked to banish the dark forces that threatened
the world of the living at this time.
Hekate—or the Dark Goddess in her localised form—was appeased and
worshipped across Europe with great solemnity, and even sacrifice, whilst her
presence was confirmed through dreams and visions experienced by oracles,
witches and sorcerers. More significantly, Hekate was said to have ridden the
storms of the night as leader of the Wild Hunt, in which form she was known as
Lykaina, Greek for ‘she-wolf’,25 a name borne also by her female acolytes.
Somehow, the hurricane striking unannounced, under the cover of darkness, had
unleashed a secondary primeval force of equal potency. This was experienced by
some people as dreams and visions involving crones, wolves and dark
goddesses, all attributes of Hekate in her role as Lykaina, the she-wolf.
39. A Graeco
Roman image of the triple goddess Hekate, with her central head as Lykaina—
the shewolf.

‘So you think all these experiences were simply archetypal dreams and visions?’
Caroline asked, attempting not to react to my cursing as we proceeded to get lost
in Oxford city centre.

I never said that. I meant only that these experiences were all part of some kind
of collective response to the presence of the hurricane on a psychic level.

‘Well, for me, it was real,’ Caroline said, almost indignantly. ‘Very real indeed.’
‘It was as if something was there, compelling me to finish it,’ the petite and
effervescent artist said from behind a trestle table, adorned with her paintings
and illustrations.

Chesca Potter was one of a number of exhibitors in a special room at the

symposium held on the first floor of Oxford’s prestigious town hall, a
remarkable building in the high gothic style.

Finding the picture of the lightning blasted tree, drawn just before the hurricane
struck southeast England, she handed it to me.
40. Chesca Potter’s picture of the lightning blasted tree drawn in the hours prior
to the hurricane striking southeast England. I studied it carefully. It looked as if
the tree was on fire.

She then picked up her painting of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, which was
also engulfed in flames.
‘It was like an obsession,’ she admitted, holding up the picture. ‘I knew
something was wrong, and I just had to draw her, there and then, and finish it by
dawn.’
I listened with great interest to Chesca, before handing back her evocative image
of the tree on fire.
‘No, you can keep it,’ she said, as if it was mine already. What? Are you sure?
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure. You’ll have better use for it than me,’ she said, with a polite
smile.
I nodded my approval, and thanked her implicitly.
Leaving the room full of stalls, I moved out into the foyer for a cigarette—
uncharacteristic for me, as normally I only smoked after six o’clock in the
evening. There was a specific reason for being at the symposium that day. I
wanted to try and find someone who might be able to decipher the strange
symbols on the Black Alchemist’s stone fixing markers.

Caroline had suggested a gentleman named Terry DuQuesne, who would be in

attendance. He was a worldrenowned expert on Graeco-Egyptian magical
papyri, and had already written extensively on the subject in academic journals.

He seemed perfect, and so the two of us waited around until the lecture in
progress came to an end, and symposium delegates started to disgorge out of the
main hall. It was a mixed bunch of people, ranging from bow-tied Oxbridge
post-graduates to blackclad Goths and hardened chaos magicians. They were all
here with one vision in mind—sharing their belief in the reality of ritual magic
and the occult.

I stared intently, not knowing who exactly I might be looking for here.
‘Terry DuQuesne’s over there,’ Caroline announced, as we suddenly found
ourselves in the way of symposium delegates gathering in groups, lighting up
cigarettes and chatting incessantly.
‘If anyone will know what the Black Alchemist is up to, he will.’
Caroline moved through the crowds to pick out a tall, stocky, quite distinguished
gentleman in his mid forties with short, wavy, light-coloured hair and large
metal-framed glasses.
‘I wonder if you can help us,’ she was saying to the bewildered academic. ‘I
want you to meet my friend Andy Collins. He’s been having some problems
from someone called the Black Alchemist who keeps leaving his calling cards at
sacred sites.’
The large man came towards me, politely holding out his hand for me to take.
‘Terry DuQuesne, Andy,’ Caroline said, stepping out the way with a look of
accomplishment on her face.
Before he had a chance to say much, I presented him with one of the fixing
markers—the sword-like piece of slate found almost exactly a year earlier
beneath the church tower at Rettendon in Essex. Perhaps better than any other, it
displayed the Black Alchemist’s combined use of Greek words and magical
symbols. It mimicked also those carved on the original stone spearhead found at
Lullington in 1985.
His look of mild bemusement seemed to disappear as he peered intently at the
slim piece of slate with its curious inscription. Silently moving over to a nearby
table, he opened his attaché case and slipped out several sheets of personalised
headed notepaper.
It was looking good. So, were they Greek words on the spearhead?
‘Oh yes, they’re definitely Greek,’ he confirmed, still studying the ritual artefact,
which he now placed on the table next to the headed notepaper.
‘Look here, at this word,’ he began in a slow, refined tone. He stabbed a finger at
the longest of the three words on the slate’s face, which read: . This he now
wrote both in Greek and in the nearest English equivalent, which is M-A-L-I-A-
R-I-OS.
‘And this one,’ he continued, scribbling down the second word— . ‘It reads S-A-
O. I’m not sure about the third word.’ This Terry wrote down in Greek as and in
English—O-M-OE.’
But what did they mean?
Terry thought about the question. ‘Well, although I’ve not come across these
particular spellings before, I’ve seen very similar words in Graeco-Egyptian
magical papyri,’ he explained. ‘They are goetic barbarous names—words of
power used in the Graeco-Egyptian world by priests and magicians as chants or
tonal calls to invoke or banish perceived magical forces.’
Goetic barbarous names. I had heard the term before, but knew no more.
‘Goetic means, literally, “to howl”,’ he pointed out. ‘Such words were always
thought by scholars to be gibberish, meaningless expressions.
‘However, I have been studying this subject for some years and have found that
a great many such names are in fact corruptions of Aramaic, Egyptian and
Hebrew titles of God. Look at this.’ He returned to his own renderings of the
three Greek words from the spearhead.
Caroline and I stood either side of him, taking in his every word.
‘Maliarios,’ he pronounced, decisively. ‘It’s a word found in certain Graeco-
Egyptian magical papyri, under the spelling “Modorio” or “Mabarroia”, which
appear to be corruptions of the Aramaic/Hebrew title “Lord of Luminaries” or
“Lord of Hosts”, a name of God. I’m working on a new translation of a
GraecoEgyptian magical spell right now that contains the same term.’
His index finger now moved to the second of the three words—sao. ‘S-A-O,’ he
offered, ‘is probably a mispelling of IAO, an Egyptian Coptic and Gnostic
Christian name for the Supreme Being, which is itself a corruption of the
Hebrew title Sabaoth meaning, simply, “hosts”. As I said, these goetic sounds
are very often scrambled names of God.’
What about the third word: omoe?
Terry took his attention away from the spearhead and notepaper scattered across
the table. ‘Unfortunately, it means nothing that I know of,’ he admitted.
Shifting his interest now to the Black Alchemist himself, the academic summed
up his suspected image of the man: ‘All I can say about this person is they don’t
use Greek fluently, as it is poorly written. Having said this, whoever inscribed
this stone is conversant with the intricacies of Graeco-Egyptian magic.’
I wasn’t entirely sure what Graeco-Egyptian magic actually meant. Greek-
influenced Egyptian magic, I assumed.
Terry shook his head. ‘No, Graeco-Egyptian magic is a combination of Egyptian,
Greek, Roman, Hebrew and Gnostic Christian curses, magic and spells, which
came out of Egypt between the first and sixth centuries AD. It even has its own
magical alphabet.
‘Most Renaissance magic and symbolism has its roots in Graeco-Egyptian magic
and alchemy,’ he explained. ‘Yet so few of the primary texts have ever been
translated.’
I had no idea.
‘Anyway, I would certainly like to know more about this Black Alchemist, as
you call him,’ the academic said, intrigued by the thought of such a character out
there somewhere, using archaic forms of magic so important to him.
So would we.
‘Give me a call sometime, and we’ll discuss this further. Let me write down my
number.’
Collecting up the inscribed stone and notepaper, I said I would ring him to
arrange a meeting.
Terry was now being coerced away by a group of conference goers who
appeared to want to steal his attention. ‘Are you coming to the café for a tea or
coffee?’ he asked, glancing back towards us for the last time.
We thanked him for the offer, but instead made our way out onto the balcony
overlooking the town hall’s main foyer.
‘So BA’s using Graeco-Egyptian goetic barbarous names,’ Caroline began,
resting her arms on the top of the balustrade.
It seemed so. However, it also confirmed something Bernard had indicated as
long ago as June 1985, following his dream about the Black Alchemist’s
Eastbourne home: our adversary was almost certainly an academic working in a
university and/or a library with access to rare books and manuscripts.
It was interesting information, although it took us no nearer to identifying the
Black Alchemist, or knowing what he was really up to right now. This would
come only from fresh moves, and there seemed little chance of this as well over
a year had now passed without so much as a hint of his presence, at Danbury or
anywhere else for that matter.
‘Perhaps you really have seen the last of him this time,’ Caroline suggested.
Perhaps. I wasn’t sure.

Working alone one evening on the Black Alchemist manuscript in the kitchen,
where the heat from the rings on the gas cooker offered the easiest warmth, I got
up to answer the phone.

‘Hi, it’s Caroline,’ the voice announced. ‘I’ve finally tracked down the sequence
of magical characters found on both the Lullington and Rettendon fixing
markers,’ she said, matter-offactly.

Intrigued, I wanted to know more. Where had she found them?

‘They’re in a book called Alchemy: the Philosopher’s Stone, written by Allison
Coudert. It was published in 1980.’
I had not come across it.
‘Nor had I,’ she added. ‘I found it in Johnny Merron’s book collection.’
What did it say?
Caroline examined the illustration, which showed the exact sequence of
symbols, including all three goetic barbarous names identified by Terry
DuQuesne. ‘It’s definitely the same symbols,’ she emphasised. ‘The complete
sequence was devised by Zosimos of Panopolis. It’s known as the Formula of the
Crab.’
Another link with Zosimos, whose dream visions had been employed by the
Black Alchemist as part of his unique brand of landscape alchemy. But what was
the Formula of the Crab?

41. Zosimos’s Formula of the Crab inscribed on the fixing markers found at
Lullington in 1985 and Rettendon the following year.

‘Well, the crab is one of the symbols—the one, two, three, four, fifth one in from
the left—the one like a teardrop on its side, with eight lines coming off of it,
representing legs, I suppose. The book says it means “fixation and the process of
whitening”.’

What else did it say?

‘The “CH” monogram inscribed on the stones is also present—it starts the
sequence.’
Oh well, it was not BA’s initials then, as I’d hoped. ‘The book interprets the
three Greek words as ingredients in

the alchemical process,’ she added. ‘Apparently, the Formula of the Crab
conceals the secret of the alchemical transmutation, but to be honest it’s all just
speculation. Nobody knows for sure.’26

I asked her to send me photocopies of the pages in question.

‘You can have the book,’ she said. ‘Johnny said I can send it to you.’
I thanked her.
Putting down the phone, I felt elated. All this was confirmation yet again that the
Black Alchemist was an expert in Graeco-Egyptian magic and alchemy.
That Zosimos’s Formula of the Crab was the key to the alchemical transmutation
would not have gone unmissed by him. It was why the Black Alchemist was
inscribing this specific sequence of sigils and signs on his fixing markers, along
with John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica. Yet each symbol used was being tested
and continually updated in the firm belief that it would lead, eventually, to the
completion of the alchemical transmutation, which for him meant immortality.
All this might be so, although we were not to forget that the Black Alchemist
was also a quite dangerous and clearly deranged psychopath. He was someone
who would stop at nothing to fulfil his aims, whatever price he, or anyone else,
had to pay.
26 The Body of Christ
Sunday, 25th October, 1987. In the ten days since the hurricane had struck
southern England, Bernard had spent much of his spare time clearing up the
damage done by the high winds. He had lost a number of roof tiles, a set of
double gates and three sizeable trees in the back garden.

Having replaced the tiles and repaired the gates, he now turned his attention to
sawing up the fallen trees sprawled across the lawn. Taking out a wood saw, he
started to attack the branches of the largest of the three.

Time passed, and as the low sun began to sink towards the horizon, a sudden
urge began to pull at his stomach.
Something wanted him to go up to Danbury churchyard. He felt more—a
connection, somehow, with fire, and heat. He was being drawn up there and,
unless he went, he would get no peace of mind. Frowning, he put away the saw
and announced to his wife that he was going to Danbury for an hour or so.

Bringing his Orion to a halt alongside the small green in front of the church,
Bernard saw that a group of some eight or so cars were parked on the green in
front of the churchyard. There was obviously a service in progress and, noting
the day and the hour, realised it was a christening.

Moving up to the church his thoughts returned to the night of the hurricane. A
number of slates were missing from the building’s tall conical spire above its
west tower. Still, if this was the only damage it had sustained then it was a
blessing. This is what he told himself, as he entered the churchyard, which is
contained within the circular bank of an Iron Age hilltop fort constructed around
2,500 years ago.

Then a sight saddened him greatly. The old horse chestnut tree where he and
Andy had conducted their psychic sessions on so many occasions, had been
uprooted by the hurricane and sawn into manageable segments in readiness for
removal.

The scene disheartened the psychic. He had always felt inexplicably drawn to
this particular tree. It exuded a warm, protective atmosphere ideal for psychic
work.
Light-heartedly, they had always referred to it as ‘the centre of the universe,’ as
it had appeared to be at the very heart of the hilltop site. From here they had
attuned to sites all over the world. Now it was gone, forever.

42. Bernard approaches the fallen horse chestnut tree in Danbury churchyard,
following its destruction during the 1987 hurricane.
For a few moments he stood in silent respect to the death of a tree. Then, moving
in closer, Bernard became annoyed when he saw that someone—kids most
probably—had extensively burnt the area to one side of the tree stump which,
although still in situ, lay on its side, like a plug twisted out of its socket. A thick
layer of fine silver ash covered the charred stump and the ground around it.

He sensed the tree had suffered in more ways than one. Suddenly remembering
his earlier impressions of fire and heat, the burnt tree stump now took on a new
significance. He mentally focused his mind on the spot and immediately gained
the impression that something—an artefact of some sort—lay secreted around its
base. Glancing about, his eyes saw nothing. However, he felt drawn intuitively to
a crack-like hollow, caused as the hard earth had split and fractured when the
tree had overturned. It was half filled with dirt and ash, and yet his

The Body of Christ instincts told him something would be found there.

Making sure no one could see what he was doing, Bernard picked up a stick and
began prodding about in the hole.
Realising this was not going to solve anything, he got down on his hands and
knees and felt about within the loose dirt. Unexpectedly, he caught hold of
something cold, hard and metal. Withdrawing it, he picked off the encrusted
earth and recognised its shape and form—it was a cast iron figure of Christ
crucified, about six inches in length and five inches across. It had once been
attached to a wooden cross or plaque, this seemed obvious, but how had it got
there in the ground? And who had put it there, and when? Only one point was
clear, it must have lain at the spot for some years and would not have been
brought to the surface had it not been for the hurricane.
Flicking off more of the dry earth clogged around the metal figure, Bernard
contemplated the new find and tried to open up to the situation. Just one name
came to him. It sounded like ‘Chris’, or ‘Christopher’. Yet he realised quickly it
was actually Christos, the Greek rendering of ‘Christ’.
Something else told him that although the Christ figure was psychically dead, it
had once contained a relevant memory concerning the purpose of its burial. Yet
this was wiped clean when the fire consumed the area around the upturned tree
stump.
It was a frustrating and peculiar feeling, but there was something more to it than
that. Something he could not quite put his finger on.
Something seemed out of place and not quite right.
Unexpectedly, a sudden gust of wind swept through the churchyard, blowing an
assortment of autumn leaves into the air. As the breeze dropped they fluttered
back down several yards on from their original position.
A chill ran down his spine, sending his body into a sudden shiver. The
churchyard felt unfamiliar, even a little unwelcoming—a feeling he had never
before experienced at Danbury. He felt as if he was intruding, and that unseen
eyes were burning into his back.
And now he felt angry.
Looking at the rest of the churchyard, he saw that out of the dozens of trees of all
shapes and sizes only their tree, and one other in the adjacent hedgerow, had
been torn down.
Others, taller, older and in more exposed positions, had been left unscathed. It
almost seemed as if the hurricane had been selective in its targets. A bizarre
thought, he knew.
He had to leave. Wrapping up the Christ figure in tissue paper, Bernard slipped it
into his jacket pocket and promptly left the churchyard, perplexed by his attitude
and feelings.
Danbury churchyard was different. Something was changing, and he did not like
what he felt.
43. The cast iron figure of Christ found by Bernard beneath the fallen tree stump
in Danbury churchyard.
27 The Foul Virgin
Tuesday, 27th October, 1987. ‘No one would have found that Christ figure had
the tree not fallen down in the hurricane,’ Bernard emphasised, after revealing
the story behind the artefact’s discovery just two days beforehand.

As he disappeared off to the bar at The Griffin, I carefully examined the cast iron
figurine. Its reverse was hollow and several clods of oxidised earth still clung
tight, like small orange growths. This oxidisation was not natural—it was the
sort of effect achieved when a buried object is exposed to a great deal of heat.

No wonder any psychic residue it might have contained was destroyed by the
fire, which I felt sure was not caused by kids, as Bernard seemed to believe. It
had probably been lit to consume the branches and leaves removed from the tree
shortly after its fall.

There were also two screw holes in its hollow back, suggesting the object had
once been attached to a wooden cross. Yet since no screws were actually present
it implied the figure had been buried on its own, either before the tree was
planted or whilst it was still in its infancy.

Assuming the tree was around 100 years old when it was torn down, the figure
had to be a similar age, meaning it probably dated back to Victorian times. But
who had placed it there, and why?

The logical answer was that someone, a past Danbury parishioner perhaps, had
left it at the spot as a devotional act in remembrance of someone who was buried
nearby. Maybe the tree had been planted for the same reason.

We could go no further on the matter, so, on Bernard’s arrival with more drinks,
our conversation inevitably switched to the subject of the hurricane.

I felt it had been a cleansing agent, cropping the countryside like a gardener
might prune a tree. Although the tree would look ugly for a while, it would
benefit in the long run.

Bernard disagreed. ‘Look at the way it struck. It was calculated and destructive,
and hit the country under the cover of darkness. It almost seemed as if some
supernatural agency had stage managed its path of terror.’

44 & 45. Above and below, trees destroyed by the Great Storm of 1987 at
Emmetts House, near Ide Hill, Kent.

I explained how, during the night of the hurricane, several people known to me
had experienced strange dreams and visions concerning wolves, crones and dark
goddesses.
‘Well, all I saw that night were balls of electric-blue light bobbing up and down
above the distant treetops,’ he said, drawing on a cigarette.

‘Did you know that the hurricane reached its peak around 4.30 am—the darkest
point in the night, and the time when the human body is at its most vulnerable?’

He sat back and looked as if he knew what he was talking about. ‘More people
die around four to four-thirty in the morning than at any other time of the day—
just ask a funeral director!’
46. The anemogram, or wind record, from the meteorological station at
Shoeburyness, Essex, showing how the Great Storm reached its maximum
strength around 4.3o am on 16th October, 1987.

But what had any of this to do with us?

Bernard frowned, stubbed out his cigarette and looked serious for a moment.
‘Look, I know the hurricane was a terrible natural disaster. Even so, the winds
were an elemental force of immense potency, which could easily have been
tapped and utilised by those who knew what they were doing.’
Only partially understanding where he was going, I returned to the cast iron
Christ figure still lying on the table before us. There was something I had just
remembered which might be relevant to its discovery. A day and a half after the
hurricane, during the evening of Saturday, 17th October, Bernard had picked up a
clear image—his first clairvoyant vision for some time—of a metal figure of
Christ crucified affixed to a wooden cross. He had seen it floating above a
flickering flame of light. However, as this psychic image had entered Bernard’s
mind whilst we were working on a quite separate quest, I had not made the link
until now. Yet this vision appeared to take on a new significance in the light of
him finding the cast iron figure out by the burnt tree stump. So, was this earlier
clairvoyant image somehow relevant to the situation?
‘I had thought of it,’ Bernard admitted, picking up his drink. ‘Although I hadn’t
really come to any sort of conclusion.’
For a moment, I let the subject drop. But then I thought seriously about the
matter. It was a strange coincidence. Hold on, there was no such thing as
coincidence in this game. It had to be connected. Surely he could see that?
‘Well, alright. I suppose it must be linked somehow,’ he conceded, forcing a grin.
Thank you. At the time, I had asked him whether he considered the crucifix to be
buried somewhere, and he said it was. We were therefore meant to have found
this Christ figure, and I needed to know why. Bernard seemed eager to show me
exactly where he had found it, so, after emptying our glasses, we left the noisy
pub and ventured out into the cold autumn air.

In the darkness, kids heading across the green towards the small hall at the side
of the church were shouting, screaming and letting off fireworks.

Fireworks. Of course, Thursday week was Guy Fawkes’ Night.

Perhaps we should retire back to the warmth of the pub and come back later.
‘No, let’s carry on,’ Bernard said, uncharacteristically, as we began to pass
between the groups of youths standing by the front entrance to the church.
Having forgotten to bring a torch, Bernard used his disposable lighter to
illuminate the crack-like hole to the side of the upturned tree stump. In turn, we
both probed the dirt and ash-filled hollow with our fingers to make sure nothing
else lay hidden. Satisfying ourselves that it was empty, I asked Bernard if he
would attempt to attune to the site by holding the Christ figure.
‘I don’t suppose I’ll get anything,’ he responded, as he reluctantly stood in a
quiet, meditative state.
A minute or so passed.
Breaking his concentration, he shook his head. ‘No, I get nothing. Only the same
name, “Christos”.’ Losing interest, he began pacing about and lit a cigarette. ‘It’s
as I said. The fire has cancelled out any memory or message left in both the
Christ figure and the ground.’
No way was I was going to let him give up that easily. There had to be more to
the discovery of the Christ figure than simply this, so I asked him to go over to
the other side of the path and touch another tree. Making contact with it might
allow him to link in mind with any spirit presences in the churchyard.
As he reached towards its trunk, a sudden wind squall unexpectedly tore across
the hilltop and hissed through the branches of the trees. I commented on this.
‘I know. Not a good sign,’ he admitted, light-heartedly. ‘I’m not sure I like it.’
Yet, calming down, he stamped out his cigarette, relaxed his mind and
concentrated again.
Minutes passed, and then the information began to flow.
‘I pick up a laying to waste of good intentions caused by both the hurricane and
the fire … and an opposite force to what there should be—here in the
churchyard.’ He paused for a moment to work out his feelings.
‘There are odd forces abroad at the moment. Someone is working on a magical
level. On the night of the storm several occult groups and individuals took
advantage of the situation ... many not even known to each other. Those forces
are still about.’ He paused to think about this for a moment, before adding: ‘I feel
I ought to be careful.’
Another long pause followed before he turned his attention to the effects of the
hurricane.
‘The gales destroyed countless millions of trees in a very short time. Each was a
focal point of localised energies. Now they are no longer there, leaving gaping
holes in the landscape’s normally balanced and harmonious energy matrix.
‘I see many other points like this site. All have changed. I also see and feel
uncontrollable heat coming from here and other similar places across the
country. Yet the hurricane also seemed selective in its targets, almost as if
somebody chose which sites were to be destroyed.’
In total darkness, I tried frantically to scribble down his every word. I could not
help but think of Chesca Potter’s picture of the tree sketched on the night of the
hurricane. It seemed alive with flames rising from its branches. Had this been an
omen of some sort? A warning of things to come?
‘Things are brewing,’ Bernard proclaimed, as he released his hand from the tree
and began to pace about in an unstoppable manner. ‘Opposites ... so an
imbalance ... the way now open for other darker aspects to build up ... a state of
chaotic mayhem.’
What about the Christ figure? Why had he found this?
‘The tree coming down, and the fire. It was a spoiling ... a deliberate cancelling
of good intentions left by whoever buried it. There is a strong link between the
spoiling of this place and oddball.’
Oddball? I stopped writing and looked up for an explanation.
‘BA.’
The Black Alchemist? What had he to do with this?
‘Working … that night … took advantage. I shall have to be on my guard,’
Bernard warned himself, as he continued to pace about looking for further
psychic clues.
Then he stopped and flicked a finger at me as if he wanted to crystallise an
impression. ‘Write this down. A name. I’ll spell it: T-H-E-O-S-O-P-I-A.’
He attempted to pronounce it. ‘Thee-o-soap-pia. It’s an opposite force. Not good.
A female aspect … dark.’
At this he moved onto the gravel path.
I followed close behind, my pen still pressed against the notepad, awaiting his
next statement. Yet, from past experience I realised he was sinking into an
altered state of consciousness, which was always dangerous considering his
acute psychic ability. I would have to watch him closely.
Bernard continued to stroll slowly along the path and did not even seem aware of
my presence. He was falling into a trance, and it concerned me. What should I
do? Shake him out of it? Or leave him? I decided to leave him, for a few minutes
at least.
‘Lots of things in the air,’ he calmly announced, as he glanced up at the night
sky, before walking further along the path. Then he shook first his left, then his
right foot.
What the hell was he doing? Something was definitely wrong.
‘I now see a hag,’ he continued, unabated. ‘Name something like Pap-hot-tia.’
He paused to study the clairvoyant form. ‘Who winds the serpents.’
The chilling manner in which he said those final words troubled me. His mind
was being overshadowed by a malevolent influence. I had seen it before, and
unless he withdrew quickly, his body would be fully taken over and possessed.
I asked Bernard not to go any deeper.
But it was useless. He did not respond.
Following behind him, I caught further utterings—almost unintelligible words in
a low menacing voice not meant for my ears. But still I scribbled them down, or
those I could make out. Words such as: ‘the Dark Virgin’, ‘the familiar’, and
‘Nelos’. The rest became inaudible as he muttered strange gibberish in a
disturbing guttural voice, leaving him even more unreachable.

Bernard could no longer hear the voice of his friend. He felt like he was inside a
giant bubble, away from the usual tranquillity of the churchyard. In the air
around him were hundreds of wriggling black snakes, like overactive eels
suspended in space. It mesmerised him for a moment or two, before his eyes
turned to see her.

On the path ahead stood a hideous form—a crone, wearing a black robe, its
floppy cowl concealing her face. She was just standing there, penetrating his
mind, reading his every thought.

Yet he also understood her nature. She was a product, a visible manifestation, of
the chaotic mayhem that had festered into existence at the height of the
hurricane.

So who was she? What was her name? She was many, he realised. But then a
name did come—‘Paphotia, Winder of Snakes.’

Why was she here in the churchyard? And what did she want with him?
No answers came from the foreboding spectre. She just remained silent, facing
towards him.
Looking down, he now saw that around his feet was a moving carpet of snakes,
curling and writhing about. Rapidly they began to wriggle and slide onto his
shoes.
Frantically, he attempted to shake them free from each foot, but still more and
more came, twisting and curling around his legs, reaching ever upwards,
engulfing him completely. They felt warm and dry. He felt sick, and dizzy and
… weak.
She was consuming him completely, and he knew he had to fight back or face
the inevitable consequences, for she was a very real threat to his life. Despite
this, the mental contact with the crone was allowing him some answers, without
her even saying a word. He had sent her—this living evil. Their adversary had
opened up a gateway, here in the churchyard, on that night, the night of the
hurricane, and she had walked through.
The Christ figure had held her, but only for a day or so. The fire removed the
final barrier and now she was waiting ... for him to come to her … in
submission.
Darkness was slowly enveloping his senses and he could no longer fight it. She
was taking control and he ... was losing the will to fight.

Shouting his name, I put my hands on Bernard’s shoulders and began to shake
him. But he would not respond.

I told him to visualise white light pulsing through his body. Nothing happened.
Thinking again, I quickly conducted a protection visualisation by using verbal
commands and pushing streams of golden energy through my arms into his body.

Still he did not respond. So, guiding him over to a nearby gravestone, I told him
to try and discharge the negativity into the cold stone—earth it away, whatever it
was—exactly as he had done in Downham churchyard, when he had experienced
similar problems there.

Fighting the dreadful intrusion, Bernard now reached out and held onto the
grave’s memorial cross, although still he seemed lost to the world, and would not
respond.

I had to think again. I knew—the Cabalistic Cross, a powerful protection ritual

that would hopefully bring him out of it.
Yes, that was it.
So I asked him to visualise a white cross of light forming and growing inside his
body as I grabbed hold of his shoulders and attempted to see streams of golden
energy pouring from me into him, as I shouted: ‘Ateh, el-malkuth, ve-geburah,
ve-gedulah, leolahm. Amen.’
It had no effect. So I did it again.
Ateh, el-malkuth, ve-geburah, ve-gedulah, le-olahm. Amen.
Only at this point did he begin to respond by lifting his hands and touching the
brow of his head. Gradually he emerged from his psychic coma and returned to
the land of the living.
Slowly regaining his senses and orientation, he pulled out and lit a cigarette to
calm his nerves.
With great relief, I suggested we leave the churchyard and go back to The
Griffin, where we could find out what the hell was going on.
28 The Chaotic Gateway
‘Make mine a Guinness,’ Bernard called, as he sat down at a table.

Despite the distressing scenes I had just witnessed out in the churchyard, he
appeared to be none the worse for his encounter with ‘Paphotia, Winder of
Snakes.’

So who was this Paphotia, and Theosopia, the woman he had mentioned earlier?
The former, apparently, was a form of the Dark Goddess. One, it seemed, with
extreme chaotic tendencies. The latter was presumably a corruption of
theosophia, a GraecoRoman word meaning ‘godlike wisdom’, or ‘knowledge of
divine things.’

‘I keep thinking about Zosimos, for some reason,’ Bernard interjected, as he took
the first gulp of his cold pint. He said nothing for a moment, but then leant
forward as if about to make a profound statement. ‘Let me put something to you.
Did Zosimos have a sister?’

My initial silence and blank expression said it all, as I reminded him that very
little was known about him.
‘I think you’ll find he did,’ he insisted, a note of certainty in his voice. ‘This
“Theo” woman—she was his sister, some kind of opposite force to everything
Zosimos stood for.’
I reached for my pen and notepad. He was obviously picking this up as he was
saying it.
‘Whereas Zosimos was of the light, so to speak. A good person. Theosopia
symbolised his dark side. His shadow.’ He leaned back and glanced about at the
crowded pub. ‘She was a spell caster, into serpents, demonology and the age of
chaos. She frequented places where she conjured demons through sacrifice.’
I wrote this down.
‘And this “Pap” woman, whatever her name was …’
Paphotia, I reminded him.
‘She was some form of foul virgin—a sort of opposite to the Virgin Mary, but
looking like an old woman, a crone. “Theo” became possessed by her,’ he said,
stopping for a moment to light a cigarette.
Paphotia was thus similar to Hekate, who in classical mythology was
occasionally shown in the company of writhing snakes.
But Bernard was now onto other things. ‘There was someone else,’ he continued,
‘a priest, into the black side. His name was … ’ He searched his mind for an
answer, then found one: ‘Nelos.’
Nelos. The name he had mumbled out in the churchyard.
‘Give me your pad,’ he said, pulling it across and picking up a pen. For a minute
or two he just sat there staring into space. Then he began to write.
I let him carry on, eager to know what was going on.
There seemed to be a noisy crowd in The Griffin that evening. A gaggle of
women, out on a hen night perhaps, stood by the bar, their raucous conversation
continually descending into loud fits of laughter. Hopefully, they were going
somewhere else pretty soon.
Bernard still appeared to be miles away from the hectic background noise of
piped music, noisy women and passing bodies. Nothing seemed to disturb his
psychic faculty when it was fully operational.
Eventually he placed down the pen and slid the notepad back across the table.
Twisting it around, I read what he had written:

Theo. was into the black side of alchemy with a virgin [Paphotia] and a priest
[Nelos] who was a short, wizened old man. Water was also used. An open pond,
where they would scatter ground-up bones of animals hoping to invoke demons
from the dark.

She was warned by Zos’ but chose to ignore these warnings. She also knew that
the ultimate search was not for a stone [i.e. the Philosopher’s Stone], but a
higher force who would change the landscape to deserts, but would build her
many castles in order for her to spread her word, hoping to bring forth the final
chaos.

Reading the reference to ‘ a higher force who would change the landscape to
deserts’ reminded me of the mass devastation caused by the hurricane.

‘I reckon that after her death Theo’s soul joined with this Paphotia,’ Bernard
said, breaking my train of thought. ‘They became one—a single, very powerful
psychic force. And I reckon this was what I encountered out there in the
graveyard.’

How was it that an antithesis of the Virgin Mary could be synonymous with an
ageing hag or crone? It seemed unnatural. Surely the archetypal form of a virgin
should appear youthful and maiden like.
His answer was simple: ‘She’s a shape changer of many names and forms. To
some she will appear as a younger woman, a maiden, albeit a dark-aspected one.
To others she will appear in her guise as a crone. That was how I saw her
tonight.’

For the next hour Bernard and I attempted to put into perspective everything that
had taken place over the past twelve days.

During the night of the hurricane the chaotic, destructive might of the howling
winds had unleashed an equally destructive power—a primeval psychic force of
immense magnitude, collectively personified in people’s minds as a crone-like
shewolf—ruler of chaos, darkness, death, destruction and disorder. There the
matter might have rested, had not certain practitioners of the black arts realised
the sheer potency of the Dark Goddess, most obviously in her guise as Hekate,
and decided to seize the opportunity to wield this immense magical power for
their own misguided purposes. This is what we call distillation magic—the
manipulation of powerful psychic energies generated by either manmade or
natural disasters.

That the hurricane had been selective in its targets was clearly not so absurd as it
seemed. Aside from the horse chestnut tree in Danbury churchyard, other
prominent sites featured in the Black Alchemist story had been destroyed that
night.

At Lullington, for instance, about half of the trees making up the wooded grove
surrounding the churchyard had been destroyed, as were a number of the beech
trees surrounding Ide Hill church, depriving the village of its title—the Dome of
Kent. The North Downs around Ide Hill was one of the worst hit areas of the
hurricane. On several occasions Ide Hill featured on the national news, because
its electricity supply had still not been switched back on several days later.

Inside the woods at Shenfield Common various of the trees surrounding the
clearing used by the Black Alchemist to set his trap were torn down, including
the one where the stone fixing marker had been found. The clearing was now a
mass of fallen tree trunks amid a wide open space next to the railway line.

At Rettendon the lightning-struck tree that had stood at the centre of the area’s
landscape geometry, and appears in silhouetted form on the cover of The
Running Well Mystery, was also taken out.
Individuals such as the Black Alchemist knew full well that any magical
operation carried out at the height of the hurricane would be many times more
potent than if they were to utilise the same psychic forces at any other time.
Even the time of year had been correct, mid October, when the influence of
Hekate was rising in the lead up to Hallowe’en.

Our adversary had utilised this primeval force to affect the normally harmonious
energies present at Danbury, the site he had been waiting to infiltrate ever since
his failure to ensnare Bernard and me at the Running Well exactly one year
earlier.

In fact, the hurricane had taken place precisely a year and a day after the
Running Well confrontation—a synchronicity the Black Alchemist will not have
overlooked when deciding to hit Danbury.

It was also not the first time he had struck under the cover of very high winds.
The ritual trap laid for us in Shenfield Common the previous year was almost
certainly set up on the same day that some of the worst gales of the year had hit
the country.

Either by accident or design, the hurricane had torn down the old horse chestnut
tree in the centre of Danbury churchyard, which had been the churchyard’s focal
point of localised energies. Its removal had left the site imbalanced, with a
chaotic gateway where the tree had once stood.

It was this the Black Alchemist had used to forge a psychic link with the
churchyard, allowing him to manifest the foul virgin—Paphotia, within whom
was the soul of Theosopia, sister of Zosimos. Only the Christ figure had held her
back, but once the fire by the tree stump had burnt away the artefact’s highly
charged emotion, she had emerged in readiness for whatever the Black
Alchemist had in store for her.

‘Very likely,’ Bernard agreed, glancing at the crowd of noisy women who had
just let out a colossal drunken roar. ‘Well, whoever this Paphotia is, she is here
now, in that churchyard. However, I don’t get the impression that anyone has
physically been here as I’m sure I would have known.’

Why?

‘The energy field I set up around the church using green crystals is still in place.’
How could he be so sure?
‘I checked it when I was up here on Sunday,’ he now revealed, a note of
smugness in his tone.
How were we to rid the place of this Paphotia, before the Black Alchemist had a
chance to strike?
‘Perhaps we should do something out by the tree stump,’ he suggested, putting
away his final gulp of Guinness. ‘What about closing the gateway by placing a
new crucifix in the hole where the Christ figure was found.’
Of course. Another act of devotion, such as laying a new crucifix, was all it
would take.
It would need to be done during daylight hours in order to avoid further
confrontation with Paphotia. Naturally, the act would have to be accompanied by
a simple ritual, or prayer. It was so easy, it was ridiculous.
A time and date was quickly set for the burial of the new crucifix. It would take
place at 4 pm the following Sunday, just before sunset, exactly one week after
Bernard had unearthed the metal figure of Christ.
With the arrangements agreed, our conversation turned to other matters, such as
the goetic barbarous names on the fixing markers found at Lullington and
Rettendon.
My mind then returned to burying the new crucifix. If the Black Alchemist
intended to utilise his chaotic gateway in Danbury churchyard, he was not going
to stand by and clairvoyantly see us closing off his link to the site. Indeed, if he
discovered we were going to conceal the cross, then surely he would do
something about it.
Perhaps the Black Alchemist would try using Paphotia’s presence to ensnare
Bernard by enticing him up to the churchyard on his own one evening. He might
even take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and pay Danbury a visit himself.
This could result in some very nasty scenes!
Bernard twisted his head as he watched a glamorous-looking woman with
shoulder-length dark hair and a powerful lingering perfume walk past the table,
‘Sorry,’ he exclaimed. ‘Distraction. What did you say?’
BA might pay Danbury a visit himself.
‘I hoped you wouldn’t say that,’ he said, with a grimace. ‘I don’t even want to
think about the possibility. I don’t need the worry. Anyway, if BA does turn up
here he’ll win.’
I told him not to be so stupid. That said, I did suggest he refrain from going to
Danbury before Sunday. If he did receive an overwhelming urge to come up
here, he was to telephone me immediately.
Then a horrifying thought ran through me. My stomach turned.
Saturday night was 31st October—Hallowe’en. It was her night—the night
Hekate was experienced and worshipped by devotees past and present. If the
Black Alchemist was going to attempt to utilise, manipulate even, the powers of
Hekate, through the presence here of the foul virgin Paphotia, it would be on
Saturday night. Before we had a chance to plant the new crucifix.
Bernard just sank back in his chair and forced a worried grin.
It was obvious. Why hadn’t I realised it before? Quickly, I gave him the chance
to change the concealment date from Sunday to Saturday, same time.
‘No, leave it now.’
What! Why?
‘I don’t know,’ he responded, indecisively. ‘Curiosity, I suppose. Anyway, we’ve
made arrangements for Sunday, so it’s obviously meant to be.’
Yes, but wasn’t that tempting fate?
‘I know,’ he said, with an uncertain smile. ‘And what’s more, Saturday evening
I’ll be on my own. Both the wife and daughter are going out.’ He paused to
contemplate the predicament. ‘I’ll give you a call if anything happens.’
29 The Sister of Zosimos
Later that night, in some photocopies sent to me by a colleague named Clive
Harper, I found the first reference to Bernard’s ‘Theosopia’.

Taken from a recently published book entitled Arcana Mundi (Baltimore, MD,
1985), written by Graeco-Egyptian scholar Georg Luck, a short account of
Zosimos’s life and works is given. Clive was aware of my new-found interest in
the fourthcentury alchemist and so had dropped them in the post.

The book alluded to a Zosimos text entitled On Completion which, it said, was
dedicated to Theosebeia, whom it described as ‘presumably a wealthy lady who
was interested in Zosimos’ alchemic researches’. There was no mention of her
being his sister, and the spelling was different, although there appeared to be
little doubt this was the same woman Bernard had picked up on earlier that
evening.

Turning to a book entitled The History of Magic by Kurt Seligmann (New York,
NY, 1948), I found another reference to Theosebeia. Here she was clearly
referred to as Zosimos’s sister. Nothing else was said about her, other than the
fact she was an early female alchemist.

For a while I searched no further, having satisfied myself that Theosebeia

existed, and was indeed Zosimos’s sister. But then I remembered another book
that might prove useful.

It was a weighty tome entitled Hermetica—The ancient Greek and Latin writings
which contain religious and philosophic teachings ascribed to Hermes
Trismegistus. Volume IV (Boston, MA, 1985), edited and translated by Walter
Scott (1855-1925).

It is a long, tedious, yet essential work that suffers much from something I hate
most about academic books—the constant use of original languages without
translation! In other words, it was not very helpful unless you happened to read
Greek, Coptic and Latin!

This somewhat pricey, specialist book I had purchased the previous year as it
contained a lengthy chapter on ‘Zosimos Panopolitanus’. However, it had not
proved of any particular use since it did not appear to contain any material on
Zosimos’s extraordinary dream vision concerning the Priest of the Sanctuary,
who sacrifices himself at a dome-shaped altar— imagery featured in some of the
earlier Black Alchemist material.

Regardless of this, I scanned the book’s Zosimos chapter once more and found
that the alchemist’s greatest work—a series of 28 short books, 24 of which were
denoted by letters from the Greek alphabet, with the remaining four being
identified by Coptic letters—takes the form of a personal address to Theosebeia
on the do’s and don’ts of magic and alchemy.

Unfortunately, the surviving extracts from these books remained in their original
Greek. Yet enough could be gleaned from the accompanying notes for me to get
a pretty good picture of Theosebeia, and Zosimos’s advice to her.

The notes spoke of certain persons—corrupt priests—who tried to persuade

Theosebeia to do something that troubled Zosimos. They wanted her to raise
‘daimons’, which could be entreated and called upon for help by means of
sacrifice. In return they promised to help anyone who would do their bidding.

Theosebeia went on to invoke these foul creatures— something that had greatly
concerned Zosimos, who pointed out that daimons rarely keep their promises.
He pleaded with her to ‘Invoke the supreme God alone, and employ sacrifices,
not to propitiate the daimons, but only to drive them away, or avert their
malevolent influences.’

Zosimos offered advice to Theosebeia, telling her ‘the local [daimons] are not
only hungry for sacrifices, but are eager to devour your soul also, that is, they
seek to destroy your soul by inducing you to offer sacrifices to them instead of
worshipping the supreme God alone.’

So Bernard had been correct. Zosimos had attempted to persuade Theosebeia

from calling up the local ‘daimons’ with sacrificial offerings. He warned her also
that, if she continued with these ill-advised actions, her soul would be
endangered.

Perhaps, as Bernard had suggested, Theosebeia ignored her brother’s words and
as a consequence her soul had in death joined with that of the foul virgin
Paphotia.
So far, so good.
Initially, however, I could not find any references to either Paphotia, or the
‘wizened’ old priest named ‘Nelos.’ They
The Sister of Zosimos

remained obscure until eventually I came across a book entitled The Origins of
Alchemy in Greaco-Roman Egypt (New York, NY, 1970), written by Greek
scholar Jack Lindsay. It contained a chapter entitled, simply, ‘Zosimos’, and bore
a quote from one of the fourth-century alchemist’s works entitled On the Treatise
of Magnesia, which was once again directed at Theosebeia. It reads:

My blessed girl, turn away from the useless principles of those who confuse your
ears. I have heard that you’re in converse with the virgin Paphnoutia and other
uneducated persons; and you attempt to put into practice the useless and empty
fables that you hear among them.

Of these ‘other uneducated persons’, Zosimos names one as ‘Neilos, your

priest’. This was the same name Bernard had picked up out in Danbury
churchyard when he had encountered ‘Paphotia’, or ‘Paphnoutia’, as Zosimos
calls her.

Yet this ‘virgin’ was not some dark deity, but an actual person—one who like
Neilos was a corrupting influence on Zosimos’s beloved sister. That ‘Paphnoutia’
is described as a ‘virgin’ probably implies she was an aging spinster, a crone
with the appearance of a classical witch.

If Bernard was correct, Paphotia had remained a force to be reckoned with, even
in death. She had consumed Theosebeia’s own vulnerable soul, combining the
two into an unimaginable psychic power that existed beyond time itself. Now the
Black Alchemist had used the might of the hurricane, personified in the
collective psyche as Hekate in her guise as Lykaina, the she-wolf, to manifest
Paphotia in Danbury churchyard.

The uncanny accuracy of Bernard’s psychic mind implied there was a very real
threat looming—one set to challenge everything we knew about handling occult
forces. It would start with whatever was going to happen on Saturday night—the
night of Hallowe’en—for clearly this was not going to go unmarked.
30 Trouble at the Tree
Saturday, 31st October, 1987. Hallowe’en. A wrenching pain pulled at
Bernard’s stomach as the mantel clock passed 10.30 pm. Something was
building up—he was sure of it. It was time to leave the comfort of the lounge
and move into the quieter surroundings of the dining room.

Sitting at the table, he moved his notepad, pen and cigarettes into position, and
waited patiently. Soon he sensed the presence of a supernatural entity growing
steadily in power. It was a force—female, and connected somehow with the
potency and use of magic spells. So who was it? Paphotia? Theosebeia? Hekate?

An extraordinary vision now crystallised before him. It was of a deity, primeval

and unblemished by time. Not good. Not evil. Just raw intelligent energy—an
ancient Egyptian goddess with the perfectly formed body and dress of a woman,
but with the slim neck and head of a hissing snake. Long, flowing black hair fell
away from an intricate royal crown of silver bearing cow horns and a plume of
feathers. In her left hand was the ankh—the ancient Egyptian symbol of life—
and in her right hand she held a tall lotus sceptre. She was just there, present
with him in the room, locked as one with his mind.

He sketched her radiant form, before trying to obtain her name. A hissing voice
uttered vague and indiscernible sounds that did not quite match the word he
wrote next to his sketch: ‘Urtheku’ (pronounced wer-he-cow).

Then, as promptly as she had appeared, the crystal-clear vision vanished from
sight, like a light bulb being switched off.
Yet he felt she was still around, in the air somewhere, and whether they knew it
or not, it would be her power wielded by practitioners of the magical arts that
night, for she was the true source of Hekate in all her different forms.
Slightly unsettled now, Bernard finished off his sketch and waited for something
else to happen. Then his hand began scribbling down the words of a stern male
voice, which proclaimed:

The Black Alchemist Moses smeared bush with plant root to give instant fire at a
touch.

He re-read what he’d written. The statement seemed innocuous enough, and it
was an interesting hypothesis as well. Instant fire would have impressed the
Israelite tribes, he considered, trying to recall the story of Moses and the Burning
Bush.

Time ticked by.

When Bernard next glanced at his watch it was 11.15 pm, or thereabouts.
Patiently, he waited for further psychic clues. The next came shortly afterwards
as he began to feel an urge to write once more. Words, again from an unknown
source, started to spray across the notepad:

Sword of Dardanus. Seven vowels. Harmony of the seven tones.

What was the ‘Sword of Dardanus’? he asked himself. ‘A rival of Solomon’,

came the clairaudient response. It did not make any sense. However, he knew a
little about

using tonal notes and sounds to invoke magical forces, so that part he did
understand.
Without warning, his hand began to scribble down more words. He looked at
what he’d written:
Saraphara, Araphaira, Bramarapha.

No, these made no sense to him either. Then came a distinct impression. He
recalled the seven vowels and seven tones, for some reason. The tones were not
sung, but made with a hissing sound, he was being told. A bit like a snake’s hiss,
he suspected. Back to Urtheku? He wrote it down.

Another voice then echoed through his mind and, as if recording a freak radio
signal, his hand involuntarily moved again:

The sword will bend souls as is wished. It will torture. Engrave ACHM ACER
ARPEPSEI on stone. Burn Psyche. ACHAPA ADONAIE BASMA CHARAKO
IAKOB IAO E PHARPHAREI. Tie to tree and burn.

There was someone in Danbury churchyard. He sensed it. But not BA.
Someone else—a female, on her own. Not just a visitor

either.
There were strong vibrations coming from her energy form.
Trouble at the Tree She was up to mischief. Nothing heavy, not yet at least.
No impressions of a ritual, or of her leaving anything, just walking around the
church perhaps.
Then the feelings ceased.
She had gone.

47. Bernard’s quickly drawn sketch of ‘Urtheku’, the Great Lady of Magic
Spells, who appeared to him in vision on Hallowe’en 1987.
Glancing at his watch, he saw it was just after midnight. She could only have
been in the churchyard for ten minutes or so. No longer.
There was no point in ringing Andy, as he would only shoot up there and find
nothing. That could wait until later.
Bernard received no more messages that night. Yet the overriding feeling left in
his mind was that the female in the churchyard was, in some way, connected
with the Black Alchemist. She was using this ‘sword of Dardanus’ to ‘bend
souls’ in connection with the element of Fire. How or why, he did not intend
finding out. No, he would leave that for Andy to sort out.
31 The Flint Calling Card
Sunday, 1st November, 1987. The rural housing estates of East Hanningfield
and Bicknacre passed by as the car moved ever closer to Danbury. Already the
tall spire of its celebrated ancient church, dedicated to St John-the-Baptist, could
be seen poking out of the tree-lined ridge of hills on which the village was built.

I had expected a rather frenzied telephone call from Bernard the previous night.
However, by 12.30 am I had heard nothing, so concluded I’d been wrong about
the Black Alchemist hitting Danbury on Hallowe’en.

So if not Hallowe’en, then when? Saturday, 7th or Sunday, 8th November most
probably—the weekend closest to the true crossquarter day, the midway point
between the autumn equinox and winter solstice. Was this when the Black
Alchemist would show his face at Danbury?

Certainly, it was something I would discuss with Bernard when we met.

Pulling up alongside the green in front of Danbury church, I locked the car and
made my way to the upturned tree stump in the rear of the churchyard. It was
three o’clock and, as Bernard would not be arriving until four, I decided to take a
few photos.

Even before I had a chance to take any, Bernard came into view, having decided
to arrive early as well. Without further word, we took various shots of the tree
stump and the hole in which the Christ figure had been found the previous week.

Looking at the charred earth at the base of the stump, I wondered where we were
going to bury the new crucifix. In the same hole as before perhaps?

A guilty expression emerged on Bernard’s face. ‘I’ve forgotten to bring the

cross,’ he now revealed. ‘It went completely out of my mind.’

I was frustrated, but decided to improvise. Couldn’t we find a substitute of some

kind, or even make one, perhaps?
‘I’ll look in the car,’ he suggested, fumbling in his pockets for the car keys. ‘I
might have something in there we can use.’
He disappeared and returned a few minutes later, empty handed. ‘Er, sorry.
There’s nothing there,’ he admitted, with a shrug.
I sighed.
‘Oh well, it was obviously not meant to be,’ he said, with a note of resignation.
‘If I went home now, by the time I’d get back, it’d be dark. I’m afraid it will
have to wait until another time.’
He was right. People I knew had seen a lady actually metal detecting in the
churchyard just that week. So it was highly possible that any new artefact buried
would be discovered pretty quickly, especially if it was left anywhere near the
tree stump.
Changing the subject, I asked Bernard if he had picked up anything the previous
night.
‘Did you?’ he responded, turning the tables.
One or two things, perhaps, but they were of little consequence. What about
him?
‘There was somebody up here,’ he revealed, his hands in his jacket pockets. ‘A
female—a girl, I think. But she didn’t stay very long—about ten minutes or so. I
didn’t ring you because it was late, and you would only have shot up here and
found nothing.’
I wished he had of rung me. I might have caught her in the act. In fact, if I had
staked out the churchyard then … No, I had to let it go.
So, had he picked up on anything else?
He stood balancing himself on the top of a sawn-up log, a contented smile on his
face. ‘Loads of scribbles. See what you make of them.’
Moving away, we entered the comparative stillness and warmth of the church
interior and continued the discussion there.
He produced a bunch of folded notes and handed them over.
Sitting down at a pew I started to read their contents. Unfortunately, they made
little sense to me either. I had never heard of ‘Urtheku’, the ‘Sword of
Dardanus’, the ‘seven vowels’, or of ‘bending souls’. The only part that did seem
familiar was the sequence of strange words he had written. They looked like
goetic barbarous names, similar to those displayed on the stone fixing markers
found at Lullington and Rettendon. One was instantly recognisable—‘IAO’—the
title of the Gnostic Supreme Being, and one of the words Terry DuQuesne had
identified on the Rettendon marker.
So the academic had been right. The Black Alchemist was using goetic
barbarous names to call upon arcane magical forces nearly 2,000 years old. The
only other word I recognised was ‘ADONAIE’, a Hebrew name of God meaning
‘lord’ or ‘ruler’.
Turning to the subject of the girl, I asked Bernard to tell me what he knew about
her.
‘I know nothing more than what I said,’ he responded, moving over to the
medieval knight effigies of William de St Clere and his fellow family member
John FitzSimon, both set within recesses in the wall of the north aisle.
I was almost ready to dismiss her visit. She could have been anybody.
Remember, it was Hallowe’en.
‘No, if that was the case, there would have been no reason for me to have picked
up on her presence here, would there?’
I agreed, as we left the church and strolled back along the gravel path.
‘There must have been others who came to the church last night, but I didn’t
pick up on them.’
It was a valid point. He did not usually pick up on any old Tom, Dick or Harry
who interfered with the church’s energies. No, she had to have been in the
churchyard for a specific reason, so I suggested we take a closer look at the tree
stump.
‘I think she was sizing up the place. Casing it out for some reason,’ he offered, as
we approached our destination.
At the tree, I put my hand down the hole where the Christ figure had been found,
but there was definitely nothing there.
Bernard moved around the stump and studied other cracks and hollows by the
main crater. He came to an inquisitive halt in front of an earthen crevice around
the other side of the stump.
Was he okay?
‘I don’t know. Something going on, perhaps.’
Did he get any feelings from there?
He shrugged his shoulders, hands still in pockets. ‘Possibly. There seems to be a
slight feeling, although it’s weak.’
For him to say there was a ‘slight feeling’ coming from the hole strongly hinted
there was something down there.
Taking off my jacket and jumper, I rolled up my shirtsleeves, got down on my
stomach and forced my hand as far as it would go into the deep, tube-like hole,
which seemed to curve upwards.
If we knew what we were looking for it might help.
‘Well, it must be small, as all I get is … it’s down the hole,’ Bernard responded,
standing close by.
Dirt and gravel came up by the handful. Then, as I deposited another small pile
on the ground, our eyes caught sight of something out of place, and yet familiar.
Staring in amazement, I snatched up the object and studied its form—it was an
inch long, blunt-tipped flint of the type used in antique flintlocks.
Scratched onto its upper surface was a Monas symbol with ‘WE CAME’ written
beneath it, while on its reverse were the words ‘TO TIE’ next to a naive image of
a tree.

48. The inscribed flint from a flintlock, with the message ‘WE CAME’, found in
the roots of the upturned tree in Danbury churchyard.

Below these words were four symbols in a line, beginning with the much used
‘CH’ monogram and ending with a Greek epsilon ( ). Underneath was a roughly
drawn picture of a sword with a flash effect above its hilt. This I took to be a
symbol representing fire of some sort, echoing what Bernard had picked up the
previous night: ‘Sword of Dardanus’, ‘engrave … on stone’, ‘Burn Psyche’, ‘Tie
to tree and burn’.

Flints were employed in flintlocks to ignite gunpowder. So, since the ritual at the
tree seemed to revolve around the element of Fire, it made sense that the Black
Alchemist should have chosen an object like this to use as a fixing marker, for it
had the power to create fire.

Passing our latest find between us, we wondered what was going on. One of the
Black Alchemist’s colleagues—apparently a girl—had visited the tree stump and
left this inscribed flint, despite Bernard failing to pick up on any concealed
artefacts the previous night. It almost seemed as if we weren’t meant to have
found it, especially as it was placed so deep underground.

So the Black Alchemist had finally chosen to target Danbury. But what was he
up to now?
At my suggestion, we retired to the church to see what else he might pick up.

A short while passed before he spoke. ‘Well, whoever it was, they made notes as
they walked around,’ he began, in a low voice. ‘There were three people in all …
two in a car … only the girl got out … she has shoulder-length dark hair and is
wearing a fulllength black coat and boots … she has a long face with sharp
features … and not tall. Medium height, I should think.’

Could he see the car? And was BA one of the two remaining occupants?
‘No, I don’t see a car, only the churchyard. And no, I have no idea if BA was in
the car. I get no feelings in this respect.’
He paused for a moment. ‘She seems to be carrying a peculiar type of cross …
quite big … I’ll draw it.’
He did, in my notebook. It looked like a Calvary Cross with a labyrs, or double
axe design, terminating its two horizontal arms.
What else did she do here?
‘She just walked around the church, stopping at each corner, and feeling at
different heights,’ he continued, as darkness slowly befell the stillness of the
church.
Another pause followed. ‘She didn’t go anywhere else, only to the tree ... I can
see her using a little bottle of something … she’s putting drops around the
stump, at the four quarters … it’s like water, a clear liquid. This, I think, was
after the flint was left.’
Suddenly, the prolonged silence was broken by the sound of someone slamming
shut the west door. Since it was so near to sunset, I had deliberately left it ajar in
order not to be locked inside by the key-holder. Jumping up, we hastily gathered
together our belongings and headed towards the exit. Thankfully, the door was
still unlocked.

Outside, we began to retrace the girl’s path around the church, as I tried to
question Bernard more about her. For instance, how old did she look?
‘She looks as if she’s in her mid twenties,’ he offered. ‘However, I get the
impression she’s a little older. Maybe early thirties.’

So not really a girl. More a woman.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Was she attractive?
He laughed. ‘Yes, I think she is. Is that all you can think

about?’ He shook his head in dismay.

It was just a question!
She was obviously casing the joint for a return visit. That

seemed certain. If so, then we could expect trouble the following weekend.
Perhaps during the evening of Saturday, 7th November. As a kind of last word on
the subject, I reminded Bernard that if we were not able to curtail the Black
Alchemist’s activities here, at Danbury, then next stop would be his home.

I was sure his wife and daughter would not be too amused if they looked out of
the window one day and saw a group of black cowled figures conducting a ritual
in his back garden!

He grinned at the thought. ‘No, I don’t think so, either!’ We had to catch him this
time.
He smiled at my concern. ‘I don’t think I’m taking this

seriously enough. Am I?’

No, he wasn’t. However, we had one possible advantage. ‘And that is?’
There was now a new slant to the man we had come to know

as the Black Alchemist. He was allowing minions to carry out ritual work on his
behalf, and this could turn out to be his biggest mistake. For although he was
careful, well calculated, shrewd and extremely psychic, minions have a tendency
to make errors.

Bernard was pressing to leave, but before he went I had one last question: how
could the Black Alchemist have known that the fallen tree was special to us? It
had not been mentioned in my book The Knights of Danbury, and I could not
recall telling any of my questing associates about its existence. So how had he
known?
‘He didn’t need to know, did he?’ Bernard responded. ‘Like us, he was
intuitively drawn to the site’s psychic epicentre. The tree controlled the entire
energy field within the circular earthwork and therefore had to be captured and
used to his advantage.’

His answer also implied that BA had probably picked up on the existence of the
tree, either directly from the site, or from our own minds.

If that really was the case, it meant our very thoughts were being intercepted and
used against us. We would have to be on our guard.
‘Indeed, we will,’ he said. ‘Indeed, we will.’

Sitting at home that evening, I studied Bernard’s psychic material from the
previous night and looked intriguingly at our latest retrieved artefact.

Starting with his vision of the snake-headed goddess, going by the name of
‘Urtheku’, I searched for any references to her existence. ‘Urtheku’, usually
written Urt-hekau, is a title composed of two Egyptian words: urt, meaning
‘great’ or ‘eldest one’—in a feminine context—and hekau, meaning ‘magical
speech’, used in the context of curses and spells. So together, the name Urt-
hekau has connotations of ‘Great or Eldest Lady of Magic and Spells’. As
Bernard had suggested, she was a primeval force of immense psychic potency
invoked and wielded for the success of spells and enchantments.

Urt-hekau was also associated with the Egyptian snake or serpent symbol known
as the Uraeus, worn as part of the royal headdress by kings and queens.

Some scholars of classical and ancient Egyptian mythology have considered that
Hekate was worshipped in Egypt as a protector of women in childbirth. In this
manner she most likely derived her name from a primeval magical force called
hek, or heq, the root of hekau. That Urt-hekau was the original form of Hekate is
supported by the fact that the Greek goddess of the night was known as Mistress
of Magic Spells, the same title as Egypt’s snake-headed deity.

From Urt-Hekau, I moved onto the ‘Sword of Dardanus’, skipping over the
message about Moses rubbing a plant root on a bush to create instant fire. This, I
felt, was unconnected with the rest of the psychic material.

Dardanus I discovered had been the founder of the Greek kingdom of Dardania,
and was possibly even the founder of the legendary kingdom of Troy. His
birthplace was the Aegean island of Samothrace, where the worship of Hekate
had been particularly strong. Yet no reference to him possessing a sword of
renown was found, and I could see no reason why he should have been seen as a
rival of King Solomon. The two were not even contemporaries.27

I carried on.
Seven vowels. Harmony of the seven tones.

What did this mean? I soon found that in Graeco-Egyptian magic great
importance is attached to the use of the ‘seven vowels’ or ‘seven tones’ of the
Greek alphabet when chanting goetic barbarous names. Each invokes one of
seven different aspects of cosmic energy.

Next up in Bernard’s psychic material were the three nonsensical words:

Saraphara, Araphaira, Bramarapha.

Were these further examples of goetic barbarous names? I suspected as much.

They almost had a Hindu flavour about them, especially ‘Bramarapha’.

After this Bernard had noted ‘tones were not sung, but made with a hissing
sound.’
Snake-like, I suggested to myself. Back to Urt-hekau.
Then he had written:

The sword [of Dardanus] will bend souls as is wished. It will torture. Engrave
ACHMAGER-ARPEPSEI on stone. Burn Psyche. ACHAPA ADONAIE BASMA
CHARAKO IAKOB IAO E PHARPHAREI. Tie to tree and burn.

All this had come to Bernard as the Black Alchemist’s female accomplice was in
the churchyard. They looked to be words she might have said as the ritual was
conducted around the upturned tree stump, for they seemed to correspond with
what was on the flint calling card left in the crevice, especially the words ‘TO
TIE’.

The statement ‘ WE CAME’ on the flint indicated the presence of the woman and
her two associates, I was sure of it, whilst the use of the familiar Monas symbol
was, I felt, implying some sort of affiliation with the Black Alchemist’s
activities.

Sitting back, I poured a glass of red wine and pondered over the situation. The
Black Alchemist had struck again. The flint calling card appeared to confirm this
beyond any shadow of a doubt. So what was he up to this time? It was obvious
he intended moving again pretty soon. Unfortunately, Bernard was a sensitive
and very vulnerable psychic who could easily be affected by occult forces on
both a physiological and psychological level. The killing bone would have great
difficulty affecting my thick skull, but it could kill him—and that was no joke.

Yet the approach was changing. For the first time, the Black Alchemist had
allowed one of his cronies, a woman in her thirties, to conduct a simple ritual on
his behalf. She was obviously trusted by him and enthusiastically accepting of
his warped attitude to magic and alchemy.

What’s more, she shared his distaste for us.

I thought carefully about this woman. She had to be more than just a minion to
the Black Alchemist. Maybe she was his new girlfriend, or a female accomplice.
Perhaps she had even influenced him to invoke Hekate, Mistress of Magic
Spells, during the hurricane. I couldn’t be sure. Whatever the case, I had the
uncanny feeling this was not the last we’d seen of her.
32 Maria’s Calling
Wednesday, 4th November, 1987. Bernard was on the move, walking mindlessly
through a dense, foreboding wood in pitch darkness. He was not sure how he
had got there, or where he was, so he just kept going.

Gradually the trees parted to reveal a large clearing. Smoke from an unseen fire
drifted up and filled the air.
Through the thick, curling cloud of greyness he beheld the form of a woman
clothed in a black cowled robe—its floppy hood leaving her with only a shadow
for a face.
She stood before the open mouth of a deep cave amid a moving carpet of black
eel-like snakes.
Looking in his direction, she slowly slid her hands over a swollen belly to
emphasise that she was pregnant. ‘Soon he comes,’ she rasped, with a self-
gratifying sense of pleasure.
Bernard did not reply. He merely stood there dumbstruck at the unpleasant sight,
inquisitively scanning her image for an identity. Was it Paphotia? Theosebeia?
Who was she?
‘Maria the Jewess,’ she proudly announced, as if he should know that name.
But it meant nothing to him.
Turning around, she entered into the uninviting cave, as if expecting him to
follow.
Bernard did so, not because he wanted to, but because he could not stop himself.
The darkness began to engulf him and gradually he lost consciousness.
When his eyes re-opened, a horrifying experience possessed him. He was slowly
choking to death, hanging by his neck from a noose tied to a gnarled old tree.
Violent gale-force winds hissed incessantly through its branches, swinging his
tormented body back and forth in the terrifying darkness.
Momentarily his eyes glimpsed a fiercely burning bonfire in front of a group of
orange-tinged, silhouetted trees—their branches twisted nearly sideways by the
sheer force of the intense winds gusting across the bleak hilltop, which he now
recognised as Danbury churchyard.
Little by little he was losing the will to live as the welcoming calmness that
precedes death began to envelop him. Not, that was, before the tightening noose
had twisted sufficiently for him to make out two characters—men, he felt—
staring up at the silhouetted church with its tall conical-shaped spire.
The scene blurred and, once again, he lost consciousness.
A sudden bang awoke Bernard and brought an abrupt halt to the sickening
nightmare. His head throbbed, his neck burned with pain and he knew he must
not return to sleep, lest he relive the horrifying experience and face death itself.

Climbing out of bed, he moved downstairs and switched on the kitchen light. It
was too bright for his eyes, but at least he was in familiar surroundings. He noted
the time—it was 3.30 am.

Lighting a cigarette, he filled the kettle and then felt his neck. It was sore, as if
the sensation of the life being choked out of him had been real. But who had
forced him to experience such a thing?

The woman in black—someone called ‘Maria the Jewess’— appeared to be yet

another form of Paphotia, the foul virgin, as well as an antithesis of the Mother
of God. It was not natural. Moreover, she had emphasised that she was pregnant
with the words ‘soon he comes.’

Soon who comes?

Bernard frowned as he stood over the kettle waiting for it to boil. The cave
symbolised a womb, he decided. So he had entered a womb—her womb—and
re-emerged in Danbury churchyard hanging by a noose from a tree positioned at
the same spot as the fallen horse chestnut tree. It therefore implied that someone
now saw this area of the churchyard as the entrance to a womb, somewhere to
bring forth something into life.
At the same time it was also where someone wanted him dead.
So a death for a life?
Not his, he decided.
He let the matter go in favour of coffee and cigarettes.

At work that day the vivid memory of the macabre nightmare kept returning to
Bernard, like something distasteful he had eaten. Its disturbing implications were
clear enough, but he had to know more. Yet the only way to do that was tempt
fate and recall the dream to mind. He knew it had not originated from a friendly
source, so this would be dangerous. But he decided to take the chance. He
needed to understand what was happening to him.

Back home, as Bernard waited for the right opportunity to retire quietly into the
solitude of the dining room, the telephone rang. It was Andy wanting to make
sure everything was okay.
He needed to tell him about the dream, but his wife and daughter were in the
vicinity.
So he spoke to his friend in a low voice.
‘I’ve had a D-R-E-A-M,’ he whispered. ‘Can’t say much, but it was very
symbolic, although it doesn’t make much sense. It might do to you.’
Andy understood his predicament.
‘I’m going to have a little delve later, when I’m on my own. If anything happens,
I’ll ring you.’

It was not until 10.30 pm that Bernard found himself on his own with time
enough to recall the vivid memory of the nightmare.

Slipping into the dining room, he readied himself with pen and paper on the
table. Following a simple protection ritual, he allowed the image of the dense
wood to return.

Once again, he found himself moving swiftly out of the darkness and into the
smoke-filled clearing.
Looking about, he realised this time he was alone. The foul crone who gave her
name as Maria the Jewess was nowhere to be seen.
So, with some slight hesitation, he moved into the cave without any resistance.
Once more, an overwhelming darkness obscured his vision, leaving his psychic
eyes without any images at all.
Then a familiar sensation began to pulse through his body, like a shot of
adrenalin—an impulse to put pen to paper.
But who was overshadowing his senses now?
He could not be sure.
As the urge increased, he scribbled down his feelings.
‘I could stop now,’ he wrote.
‘Maybe I should. Writing becoming scrappy which usually means something is
coming.’
He waited a moment before recording further impressions:

Black forms. Human. Number not known.

Then he lost control of the situation as, involuntarily, his hand scrawled strange
words:

The waters visit the corpse lying in death and darkness, and the waters will
rouse from sleep and they rise anew. Where you take the stones and relics from
their resting place they are not mature until the fire has tested them. They are
nourished in the fire and the embryo grows nourished in its mother’s womb.

At the appointed time the new child will come. The spirit of the blackness
appears and rises up and encircles the child. A cry of awaken from Hades will be
heard.

Arise from your tomb and the pit. Clothe yourself, the voice of resurrection has
sounded and life has entered you. The soul will cling to the body. Darkness will
become your triumph and your dominion and they will suffer for an eternity. The
body and soul united become one. The union of the mystery is complete. Its
dwelling place is sealed. Fire has changed them from the womb. They have gone
forth. Fire brought them from darkness, from death into life.

The pen stopped and Bernard felt sick. He could no longer hold back his
physical revulsion of what he had just written. Getting up, he stumbled into the
kitchen and vomited in the sink.

When was this ever going to stop?

Washing away the unsightly mess, he tried to regain his composure. Lighting a
cigarette to take away the foul taste, he switched on the kettle before walking
into the warm lounge to pour himself a necessary glass of whisky. He needed to
ease his nerves.
Where was this stuff coming from? It was not from any of the dark females who
had been around in recent weeks. No, it was from a male. His voice was clear
and a vague impression told him it was from an ‘ancient priest’ of some sort.
That was all he knew.
As the kettle boiled and clicked off, Bernard downed the glass of whisky. He felt
unsteady, but not because of the alcohol. And he still felt sick. He needed advice.
Should he ring Andy? No, it was 11.15 pm, and what would he say? An ancient
priest had just made him write a disgusting automatic script? Bernard threw out
the idea. It would have to wait.
Making coffee, he thought again about the situation. What had happened that
night meant his senses could easily be controlled by malevolent entities.
So why had the simple protection ritual not worked?
He shook his head as he began to realise he was losing the battle. A few more
incidents like this and it could kill him, and he knew he was not fooling himself.
33 The Griffin
Thursday, 5th November, 1987. Having returned to the office after completing
the advertising copy for the coming issue of the Leigh Times, I sat on a desk and
tried to find the effort to leave for home.

The telephone rang and photographer Brian Fenning picked up the receiver.
‘Andy, it’s for you,’ he said, a look of puzzlement on his face. ‘Someone called
… Bernard?’

He did not recognise the name, and no wonder. It was the first time Bernard had
ever rung the office, so something had to be wrong. Leaping to the phone, I
announced my presence.

‘I’m going up to Danbury,’ he revealed, in what sounded like an agitated tone of

voice. ‘I was violently sick last night when I tried to attune to the dream. I’ve
also been getting all sorts of strange feelings and impressions of the churchyard.’

He paused for a moment as if searching for words to express his feelings.

‘I don’t know what’s going on. I really don’t. But something’s happening up
there.’
Accepting his concern, we promptly arranged to meet at The Griffin. However, I
made him promise not to venture into the churchyard alone, whatever happened.
He was to wait for me before doing anything.
Throwing down the receiver, I rushed home in a state of virtual panic. Flying
around the house, I kept on my shirt and tie, put on an overcoat, picked up
various magical items of protection, including a crucifix and flask of holy water.
About to leave, I remembered the swordstick given to Bernard the previous
November by the Indian mystic at the antiques and collectors’ fair. To date, it
had not been used for anything other than blasting open the south door of
Danbury church, so perhaps it would come in handy. I grabbed it and walked out
the door.

The car clock showed 6.35 pm as I entered The Griffin’s car park. Not seeing
Bernard’s Orion, I picked up the swordstick and decided to take a brisk walk
across to the church. Just to make sure nothing was out of place.

A little apprehensively, I crossed the green before entering the brightly-lit

churchyard.
The brightly-lit churchyard. Of course, it was a full moon. Looking up at the
pale lunar orb, surrounded by an array of twinkling stars, I knew this was why
the Black Alchemist might have struck tonight.
Then, as if to add to the situation, a spectacular firework rocketed into the sky
and exploded in a mass of coloured light.
Of course! It was 5th November—Bonfire Night, the traditional name for Guy
Fawkes’ Night.
I had been expecting the Black Alchemist to make his move at the weekend -
Saturday, 7th November, not on the actual crossquarter day, which was 5th
November, that very day.
So had he been out there already? In the churchyard somewhere, invoking
Paphotia?
I decided to take a look.
A thick blanket of mist hung low over the gravestones and box tombs. Aside
from this everything seemed quiet and still. Nothing appeared to be out of place.
But something must have happened or else Bernard would not have rung me in
such an agitated state.
Anyway, he would arrive shortly, and all would be revealed then.
Walking across to The Griffin, I saw Bernard now standing in the car park
awaiting my appearance. So, after putting away the swordstick, we retired into
the pub.

Sitting down at a table in the lounge bar, Bernard took out a few pages of folded
notes and asked for my comments. They concerned the strange dream he had
experienced the night before last, along with some automatic writing scribbled
down the previous evening.

Having read and digested their contents, I told him what I knew about Maria the
Jewess. She was a female alchemist mentioned in certain Graeco-Egyptian texts
on magic and alchemy. However, no one rightly knew her true identity, as the
title Maria the Jewess was thought to be a pseudonym.

Some early scholars of alchemy even believed she was Miriam, the sister of
Moses. Others saw Maria the Jewess as a Gnostic Christian or alchemical form
of the Virgin Mary, a fact almost certainly relevant to Bernard’s dream.
Moreover, she gets a mention in the works of Zosimos. He talks about her,
almost as if he actually knew her.
Although quite obviously symbolic in content, it appeared that someone—BA
most probably—was warping the traditional associations between Maria the
Jewess and the Mother of God. Instead of a pure, youthful maiden who, by way
of Immaculate Conception, gives birth to the Son of God, this antithesis of the
Virgin Mary was being seen as a crone—an old spinster—who somehow
achieves diabolic conception in an obscene and corrupt manner.

If this was so, then it implied that the hooded crone, who was simply Paphotia
under another name, was being seen as the bearer of an antichrist—a new dark
power of immense magical potency being nurtured through magical operations
initiated by the Black Alchemist.

I had no real idea what the rest of his dream, or the automatic script, actually
meant, especially the noose around the neck.

It made no sense to me whatsoever, other than to say that Bernard was in danger,
especially as hanging was one of the methods the Black Alchemist had intended
to kill us during the Running Well confrontation the previous year. Bernard
would have to watch out, especially in the churchyard.

So had he any idea what was going on out there?

He forced a smile, trying to mask his obvious concern over this simple question.
‘I don’t know yet,’ was his cautious reply. ‘I just keep seeing glimpses of the
churchyard. Something’s going on, so I thought I’d come up here.’
So nothing definite?
He shook his head as he picked up his drink and took a gulp. ‘No… just feelings
at the moment.’
Frowning, I decided to put forward a plan of action assuming, of course, that
something untoward was going on in the churchyard. Bernard, I suggested,
should try to gain mental communication with his spirit guide, the Elizabethan
alchemist. Ask him to tell us what was going on. Then, if something was to be
found, I would locate and remove it myself, safe in the knowledge that he,
Bernard, was still in the warmth and comfort of the pub, away from any possible
danger.
Bernard thought this a good idea. So, picking up a pen, he searched for some
notepaper.
Bugger. I had left my notebook in the car.
‘I’ll use the back of these,’ he announced, turning over his written account of the
Maria the Jewess dream and the automatic script received the previous night.
Waiting for some form of response, he felt he should sketch an aerial view of the
church in case he needed to mark a specific spot.
Bernard fell silent as the Elizabethan alchemist began his message:

Two they were. During afternoon.

Were they the two men Bernard had seen staring up at the silhouetted church in
his dream? It seemed so.
‘Go round church’, was the guide’s next instruction.
Taking this to mean he was to perambulate his little sketch of the church,
Bernard began to move his right index finger slowly around its exterior walls. It
came to a halt at a spot below the middle of the east wall, an obvious place for
the Black Alchemist to have left something.
Marking an X, he intuitively drew a continuous line around the entire church.
More words then explained what was going on:

Placed at east [end of church]. Picture on stone. Church sealed. No entry to

church. Energies sealed. Bernard interrupted the communication to provide his
own feelings on the situation.

‘Well, I understand this to mean that these two characters have placed a stone—
on which is a picture—below the east wall of the church. Apparently, this has
sealed off its energies in some way.’

It would be a simple task, therefore, to go out there, find the inscribed stone and
destroy its magical hold over the church. I could douse it with holy water and
remove it from the spot.

Was it on the surface, or buried?

‘On the surface, I reckon.’
And was it up against the wall, or away from it in the grass

somewhere?
He thought again. ‘Away from the wall.’
Before leaving, I posed a further question, writing, simply:

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Bernard to see what answers came in my absence.
Rising from the seat, I told him to stay put and await my return. I would be no
more than ten minutes.
‘I’ll give you five minutes before sending out a search party,’ he joked, amused
as ever by my actions.
Ten minutes, I told him, as I disappeared from view and walked out into the cold
November night.
34 The Heart of the Quest
Unlocking the car boot, I took out a torch, camera, some holy water, a notebook,
a crucifix and the Indian swordstick, before crossing the busy main road and
heading over to the church.

As I looked up, another firework rocket shot into the moonlit sky and exploded
in a galaxy of multi-coloured stars that slowly fell to earth.

The church green was now buzzing with activity. More than a dozen cars were
disgorging their occupants for an evening service inside the church. People
milled about greeting friends, laughing, talking and gradually moving towards
the entrance door below the stone tower.

It must have seemed a strange sight to them: a lone figure in tiny wire-framed
glasses wielding a swordstick and sporting a collar, tie, and baggy overcoat. Yet
all I could do was stroll past them and hope they did not ask any pertinent
questions.

Reaching the churchyard, I moved swiftly across to the building’s east wall
before disappearing into the long shadow cast by the towering edifice. Switching
on the torch, I scanned the ground at the spot indicated on Bernard’s crude
sketch map.

Several minutes of searching failed to produce any inscribed stone.

Bernard would be wondering where I was. It was no good—I would have to go
back and enlist his help.

Bernard now received an answer to Andy’s question ‘What’s going on?’, which
he’d posed before departing into the night. It read:

To ensnare. Your energies strong. A wish to control. Beware of a stumble in the

dark. Soul can be used after death.

He was not sure what it meant, but knew instinctively that he and Andy were in
grave danger. However, the message was then eclipsed by another, which stated:

At the tree. Very strong.

With this had come the overwhelming impression that, out by the upturned tree
stump, a second artefact lay concealed which had to be removed as soon as
possible.

It was an impulse, an urge that could not be ignored, despite what Andy had
advised. Anyway, he said he would be ten minutes, and over fifteen had now
elapsed.

So he would have to warn him—tell him what was going on. Finishing off his
drink, Bernard slipped on his coat and made for the exit.

Walking briskly back across the green, I saw Bernard coming towards me. As he
approached, I chastised him lightly for not having remained in The Griffin,
although in honesty I was actually quite glad to see him as I had been unable to
locate the ‘picture’ stone.

‘And there’s something else, out by the tree,’ he announced. ‘I think we’d better
see what’s there.’
Obviously, he wanted to join the search so, a little reluctantly, I accepted his
offer. Yet before we went anywhere near the church, or the tree, we were to
employ the use of the Cabalistic Cross. Just to make sure he did not get into any
trouble out there.
In a dark alley located just beyond the eastern edge of the churchyard, we came
to a halt by an old wrought iron gate and conducted the simple protection
visualisation. Once this had been done, we moved swiftly across to the church’s
east wall.
Our eyes followed the torchlight as it illuminated different sections of the grass
and concrete below the stone wall.
Still there was no sign of any inscribed stone.
‘Perhaps it was just a mental incantation,’ Bernard concluded, attempting to
justify his earlier feeling that a physical artefact might have been left there.
I didn’t give up, and a minute or so later we found what we were looking for. It
was a large rectangular piece of slate, some four inches in length and three
inches in width. It was resting on the angled slope of the concrete drainage
channel, exactly below the midway point of the east wall. Flicking it over, we
saw its ‘picture’.
Scratched on one of its two faces was an updated Monas encircled by a fat
ouroboros snake biting its own tail.
Bernard moved away as I quickly doused the stone to break its psychic hold over
the church’s energies. Taking out the camera, I snapped a few shots of it in situ,
before slipping it into my pocket and catching up with Bernard.
He appeared to be none the worse for the discovery, so we moved onto our next
destination.

49. The slate fixing marker—found beyond the east end of Danbury church—
after a soaking of holy water.
Within thirty feet of the darkened mound, which indicated the position of the
upturned tree stump, Bernard came to a halt and stared. ‘Ah, it’s just there, in
front of us,’ he remarked, not having realised how close we had come to the tree
without him suffering any kind of adverse reaction.

Confirming that this was the case, I asked him if it was safe to go any nearer.
Still he stood and stared. ‘I see her—standing between us and the tree,’ he
announced, clearly quite concerned by the sight.
Who?
‘The same woman in the dream—the crone in the black cowled robe.’
Who? Maria the Jewess? Paphotia?
‘No, yes, they’re all the same—they’re all one.’ He paused to listen before
turning around with a very worried expression on his face.
‘She’s saying “Come, come, come, come, come to me.”’ He paused for a moment
to listen to her calling. ‘Now I hear giggling laughter,’ he continued, sensing it
was time to put some distance between him and the source of his grave
discomfort.
Stopping on the gravel path close to the southern edge of the churchyard, he
spoke again with a note of anxiety in his voice: ‘There’s a deep pulling in my
chest. She keeps trying to pull me back to the tree.’
His apparent torment was confirmed as he began slowly to sink towards the
ground, holding his arms across his chest.
This was getting serious. I had to act fast.
The Cabalistic Cross was not working, so what could I do?
A banishment ritual. I would try to banish the spectre’s presence from the
churchyard.
Waving the swordstick around, I used my limited magical capability in an
attempt to dissipate the malevolent supernatural form. It was a hastily conducted
act that I just hoped would work.
Running back across to the path where Bernard now lay in a crumpled heap, I
found him in great pain, muttering something about ‘You’re disgusting. How
could you do that?’
I stood and stared. It was a statement being directed to the dark female spectre
still standing by the tree. My banishment ritual had obviously not worked. But
what was disgusting?
‘JUST GET RID OF IT,’ he pleaded, the agony clearly showing in his voice. ‘I ...
I can’t move … GET IT OUT.’
Get what out? Where?
‘As before … something.’
The artefact. In the same hole as before, where we had located the flint calling
card the previous week. I had to remove it. Dashing back across to the tree
stump, I shone the torch into the darkened crevice.
Oh my God. What I could see stunned even me. It was disgusting.
What was I to do? There was no way I was going to reach down into the hole
and touch that. I needed to think, speak to Bernard, immediately.
Racing across to the psychic, I found him now in a terrible state, bent double in
tortuous pain and looking as if he was fast losing consciousness. He was not
going to like what I’d discovered.
‘JUST GET RID OF IT,’ he cried, in sheer desperation, as he slumped even
further down on the gravel path.
Couldn’t he perhaps get up and move out of the churchyard, whilst I dealt with
what was in the hollow of the tree?
Without waiting for an answer, I lifted the psychic onto his feet and pushed him
in the general direction of the wrought iron gate marking the entrance to the
churchyard.
Bernard remained on his feet as he staggered like a drunken old man towards
safety and I made my way back to the tree stump.
Shining the torchlight into the deep crack, I looked again at the vile sight.
Resting on a ledge, about eighteen inches into the hollow, was a large, blood-
soaked heart into which was speared a black dagger, its handle carved into a
grinning ape.
Realising that nobody was ever going to believe this, I took a few pictures of the
items in situ. Then, slowly reaching down into the hole, I grabbed hold of the
dagger’s carved handle and levered the heart up into the air, trying to make sure
it did not fall off and tumble back into the depths of the crevice. Placing them on
the ground, I took more photographs.
Pulling out the holy water, I doused both the dagger and heart.
What was I to do now? Showing them to Bernard would only send him into
further fits of revulsion. No, I would have to hide them in the grass—temporarily
at least.
So where was he? Picking up the dagger, with its bloody heart still impaled on
the blade, I walked towards the gate and located a suitable spot behind a grave to
conceal the macabre evidence.
Looking for Bernard, I found him still doubled up and mumbling about terrible
pains in his chest. Hoping to alleviate his suffering, I told him I’d removed the
offending items, so they should give him no further problems.
Perhaps we should now leave the vicinity and go back to the pub?
‘I can’t,’ he stated, in a low, frightened voice. ‘I ... I can’t move.’
He sounded like a child who could not face being left alone in the dark.
Attempting to act logically, I told him to follow me.
Instead, he just stood up and stumbled blindly out into the open field to the south
of the churchyard.
We clearly had problems, which I had not bargained for.
Pain showed heavily on his contorted face, lit clearly by the pale moonlight.
He was fighting possession.
Somehow, I had to stop it. Remembering the large crucifix in my coat pocket, I
yanked it out and placed it firmly into Bernard’s hand. I just hoped it would have
some sort of positive effect.
Totally unaware of its presence, he merely stood there, engulfed in his own inner
conflict.
50 & 51. Looking into the crevice beneath the fallen tree in Danbury churchyard
the author saw a vile sight—a dagger impaled into a blood-soaked heart,
pictured above and below.
Suddenly, his hands began shakily to rise with the crucifix, as if he was
beginning to fight back against his uncontrollable actions. I watched cautiously
as they gradually came to rest on his throat.

For a moment there was no movement. Then the large wooden crucifix and
another small brass crucifix Bernard was wearing on a chain, were hurled
simultaneously, with great force, into the long grass as he stood doubled in pain,
his vacant face still gazing at the ground.

He was losing the will to fight, and I was now seriously worried. I wanted
desperately to save him, stop this, but I knew I couldn’t just shake him out of it.
Not only would it not work, but it could cause him to have a seizure, a stroke or
even a heart attack.

Death could follow any unwise actions on my part.

It had to be done ritually, using the forces of light, whatever I believed them to
be.
Another banishment ritual now spewed forth from my mouth, but this too proved
useless. I literally ran out of ideas.
‘Your Christ is nothing,’ a deep and mocking voice then unexpectedly exclaimed
from Bernard’s mouth, as he still staggered around, gripped with torment.
Possession. This was all I needed.
Hoping that he was still trying to fight this barbaric intrusion, I told myself I
knew I had to think fast. Picking up the crucifix, I forced it against his forehead
and held it there with both hands.
‘Your crosses are worthless,’ the foul voice announced, with a nightmarish
guttural laughter. ‘Fool.’
Obviously, this wasn’t working. A different tactic was needed. I had an idea. I
would tell the intruder that if he had something to say, I would listen to him only
if he stopped torturing Bernard’s body and mind. It could work, so I said it
anyway.
Mercifully, it did seem to work. The contorted expression disappeared from
Bernard’s vacant face, even though he still stood there, his shoulders stooped
like a hunchback. All the while, his arms flailed about like they had a life of their
own.
‘Darkness will always conquer light,’ the intruder now began, in a slow, decisive
tone. ‘You will never stop our power. We are too strong for you.’
I heartily disagreed, in a friendly voice. Anyway, who says so?
‘Comarius,’ came the proud, but almost inaudible response. Who? Temarios, did
he say?
‘COMARIUS.’ he bellowed at my insolence. ‘High priest, sage and prophet.’
I still didn’t get his name. Anyway, what did he want with Bernard?
‘His soul.’
Why his soul?
‘It is strong,’ he responded, quickly, as if relishing the sensation of being inside a
human body. ‘I have it.’
Do you?
‘Red plus white equals black. The new child will come, and blackness will rise
up and encircle it. Darkness will be his triumph and his dominion.’
I recognised these words. They were similar, if not the same, as the sickening
automatic script Bernard had received from the ‘ancient priest’ the previous
night. The two sources were obviously the same. But who was this man?
Presumably one of Paphotia’s cronies.
Leaving the intruder to continue his rambling monologue, I took time to think
again about the situation. Trying to banish the intruder using the same old ritual
would almost certainly result in further torment for Bernard. I could let the entity
continue until he departed of his own accord. But that didn’t seem the right thing
to do.
Comarius continued his diatribe, reiterating the automatic script of the previous
night with more references to the ‘new child’ who was to come. But I had heard
enough. I had to get rid of him.
‘ … the path of darkness you will follow … ’
No we won’t. He was barking up the wrong tree with us. No way were we going
to give in to him.
The forces of light would always conquer the powers of darkness, just as order
will always emerge from chaos.
I suggested that if Comarius did not leave whilst the going was good, I would
banish his soul essence forever.
‘ … the serpent will rise and great power will … ,’
He obviously was not listening and, at that moment, Bernard fell to his knees as
if being compelled to do so. Almost inaudible words began to issue forth from
his mouth. One I caught was ‘septemos’, whoever, or whatever, that meant.
Now I really had seen enough. I also had an idea. The Indian swordstick! That
was the answer. Since the powerful imagery and symbols of the Christian faith
were having no effect on this supernatural entity, I would use the primeval
serpent energies inherent within the swordstick, just as Aaron had used his
brother Moses’ staff to demonstrate to Pharaoh the power of the Hebrew god.
When given the swordstick by the ageing Indian mystic and his grandson,
Bernard was told that it would one day be used to give ‘protection of the seven’.
At the time we had not understood what this meant, or why it had been given to
me. Now I knew. The ‘seven’ was a reference to the seven energy centres of the
human body, the so-called chakras, as they are known in Hindu and Buddhist
mysticism. They are positioned amid a vertical column of energy centres located
along the length of the spine, each one regulating a different part of the physical
and spiritual body. In cases of possession, it is these centres that an external
entity takes control of in order to animate a human body
The swordstick, I realised, could be used to purge Bernard’s body of the
uninvited intruder.
With renewed enthusiasm, I again approached the psychic, who remained in a
kneeling position. Clasping the concealed swordstick with both hands, I began to
visualise spinning bands of rainbow coloured light pouring down the length of
the rod and shooting out from the sheath’s metal tip, like some kind of psychic
laser beam.
Slowly, I brought it down on his neck and imagined radiant energies flowing
down his spine, illuminating five of the seven chakras—the first one blue, the
second green, the third yellow, the fourth orange and the fifth and lowest one, at
the base of the spine, red. Only two remained, those in his head. These were now
visualised—indigo within his cranium and, finally, the glow of violet, like a
crown of light, above his head.
Each chakra shone brightly to illuminate his inner soul.
This was real serpent power, I told the intruder, not his writhing black snakes.
For what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only about five minutes, I
continued the powerful visualisation. Eventually, the high priest fell silent.
Bernard began to flex first his hands, then his arms, and then his head.
But was it Bernard?
‘Yes … It’s me,’ he uttered in a low, tired voice. I removed the swordstick from
his neck. He was back in the land of the living.
He just knelt for a while, staring around at the field, as if it was totally alien to
him.
‘How did I get here?’ he asked, a slight note of amusement in his question.
Couldn’t he remember?
‘The last thing I recall was being somewhere up by the tree with these stabbing
pains in my chest.’ Pushing himself off the ground, he took out and lit a
cigarette.
A terrible thought suddenly crossed my mind. Pains? In what part of the chest?
‘About here,’ he replied, prodding the top of his rib cage. ‘Around my heart.’
My own heart sank as I realised what I should have done on discovering the
dagger in the heart. Why had I not thought of it before? It had undoubtedly been
set up at the tree with the purpose of harming Bernard, like some sort of witch’s
poppet pricked with a needle.
On attuning to the tree, the effect of the dagger stuck into the heart had given
him severe pains in his own heart. It was a very nasty trick.
One that was meant to have killed him.
I should have removed the dagger from the heart. It really was that simple.
If this had been done, he would not have suffered the pains in his chest or
experienced the diabolic possession. It just went to show my own inadequacy in
magical matters such as this. In many ways, I actually felt I had let Bernard
down to the point where the opposition had been able to twist us around its little
finger. Our protection rituals and banishments had failed, leaving us defenceless
against any further attacks and confrontations.
Luckily, Bernard seemed to be unaffected by his horrific ordeal, so there was no
cause to punish myself.
I then recalled that the psychic had still not seen what had been placed in the
hollow by the tree stump.
So, leading the way back into the churchyard, I took him over to the grave in
question. Pulling away the loose grass, I shone the torchlight on the dagger
plunged into the heart.
With a worried smile, Bernard just shook his head in mild disbelief. ‘What are
you going to do with them?’ he asked, intrigued by the possible answers.
Take them home.
His jaw dropped. ‘You can’t take that heart home. Bury it somewhere. Out in the
field. Anywhere. But don’t take it home.’
Accepting his more sensible solution, I dug a shallow hole in the grassy earth,
close to where Comarius had possessed Bernard, and dropped in the fleshy heart.
Having replaced the turf, we made our way back to the pub.
35 The Perfect Master
After grabbing an available table in the crowded bar, Bernard and I scrutinised
our latest psychically retrieved artefacts, beginning with the inscribed slate,
which we passed back and forth, studying its symbols. The fat ouroboros (a
Greek word meaning ‘tail devourer’) was a familiar image.

It features in a Greek alchemical manuscript of late medieval origin, but is in

fact a copy of a design from Graeco-Roman Egypt.

52. The slate fixing marker found in Danbury

churchyard
showing its
inscribed
ouroboros and
updated Monas symbol.
We then moved onto the dagger itself, which I had washed thoroughly.
It was easy to see why this hand-carved ebony tribal knife of African origin had
been chosen for use as a magical weapon. Its smooth dark finish made it a
perfect black-hilted knife, an ‘athame’ like that employed by witches and
occultists for their ceremonies. The crouching ape handle was also interesting,
since it probably represented the cynocephalus, a species of sacred baboon said
to menstruate during lunar eclipses. For this reason the ape had become sacred to
Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of writing and the moon, whose Graeco-
Egyptian counterpart, Hermes Trismegistus (‘thrice-great Hermes’), was patron
of alchemy and the hermetic sciences.
Drawing the dagger a little closer, I looked at its inscription and symbols. On one
side were the words:

All haile to the noble companie

A parfet master made them call
53. The ape dagger’s blade, showing, top, its alchemical message and, bottom,
the symbols on its reverse side.

The style of writing was, in my opinion, more likely the handiwork of a woman.
It bore very little resemblance to the writing we had seen on earlier Black
Alchemist artefacts, like the ‘TO TOUCH IS TO ENSLAVE’ warning on the
inscribed stone found at Shenfield Common the previous year.

The flowing loops of its letters tended to suggest that the writer was creative,
intelligent and most assuredly sensuous in her outlook to life. So it seemed
certain that the ape dagger’s previous owner was a woman bearing those same
qualities.

Yet who were the ‘noble companie’? And who was the ‘parfet master’, with
‘parfet’ being a Middle English form of the word ‘perfect’. These expressions
derive from the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, a collection of English
alchemical essays, compiled by antiquarian and alchemist Elias Ashmole (1617-
1692) and published in 1652 (facsimile editions appeared in 1928 and 1967).

The first of these, ‘All haile to the noble companie’ is to be found in a rhyming
couplet included in a book entitled The Hunting of the Greene Lyon by an
alchemist named Abraham Andrewes. It includes the lines:

All haile to the noble Companie

Of true Students in holy Alchemie
Whose noble practice doth men teach,
To vaile their secrets with mistie speach,

The ‘noble Companie’ would therefore imply students of alchemy. The second
statement, ‘A parfet master made them call’, comes from the Ordinall of
Alchemy by Thomas Norton of Bristol, an alchemist who died in 1477. It reads:

A parfet Master ye maie him call trowe,

Which knoweth his Heates high and lowe.
Nothing maie let more your desires,
Than ignorance of Heates and your Fiers.

Thus a ‘parfet Master’ implied an accomplished alchemist, like the Black

Alchemist we must assume.

The only other image on that side of the dagger’s blade was a crudely-scratched
circle to the left of the inscription. This, I assumed, symbolised the full moon
(which had taken place at 16.47 GMT, not long after Bernard had begun feeling
that something untoward was happening in Danbury churchyard).

On the other side of the blade was a series of standard Black Alchemist-style
sigils, beginning with the clear ‘CH’ monogram and ending with an updated
Monas symbol, positioned on its side and close to the tip.

The only other out of place symbols it displayed were the astrological sign for
Taurus, just before the Monas, and the planetary sign for Saturn, inscribed on the
edge of the handle.

Why these should have been added to the normal line of undecipherable symbols
would take some thought.
Concluding my scrutiny of the ape dagger, I asked Bernard whether a woman
had owned it and, if so, whether it was the same person who had visited the
churchyard on Hallowe’en.
He huffed and thought about the question for a few moments before picking up
the dagger again. ‘Well, although it might have been placed in position by two
men, I think it does belong to a woman.’
The same one?
‘Possibly, I don’t get any definite feelings,’ he said, still twiddling the ritual
weapon around in his fingers.
I felt it was the same woman. If so, then big questions needed answering. Such
as: where was BA? Why had he not visited Danbury himself? And who was this
woman who seemed to be taking over the duties of the Black Alchemist? She
was obviously trusted by him, so what was her role in all this?
I wasn’t sure. However, the one thing I did know was that leaving the ebony ape
dagger for us to find was probably the biggest mistake the Black Alchemist had
made.
In the past, the man had always left artefacts fashioned specifically for the ritual
concerned. Never before had he left a working tool, which would almost
certainly have been both consecrated and magically charged before being pushed
into the fleshy heart found out by the tree.
The dagger could now be used as an effective tool to counteract or manipulate
the very forces it was originally intended to wield. Not only this, but at some
later date I would try and persuade Bernard to psychometrise it—see what he
might pick up about its owner. Unlike the Black Alchemist who, we knew, could
successfully block out any attempts to attune to him, this woman might not be so
adept at doing the same. She might take risks, and this was always going to be to
our advantage.
So, where were we to go from here?
‘I know where I’m going,’ Bernard responded, smiling. ‘Home! I’ve had enough
for one night.’
I strongly suggested otherwise. We needed words of wisdom from his
Elizabethan alchemist spirit guide as to what the Black Alchemist’s cronies had
been up to out there in the churchyard. We also needed to know whether they
would strike again in the near future.
Bernard was not keen on the idea. ‘I really don’t think you’ll get much else.’
But we could always try.
He frowned at the thought of more psychic work. ‘Alright then,’ he said, with
some reluctance. ‘Let’s go to the car.’

Sitting in his Orion, Bernard closed his eyes and mentally contemplated the
presence of his spirit guide. Moments passed as I waited patiently in the
darkness.

A group of youths passed in front of Bernard’s car and walked up to their

vehicle, parked on the opposite side of the pub car park. Suddenly, its engine
burst into life as the headlights came on.

‘Right,’ he said, taking in a deep breath to open the proceedings. ‘The ritual here
today. It had something to do with the tree in connection with alchemy,
somehow.’

With its wheels spinning wildly, the other car tore out onto the main road and
was lost from view.
‘The idea was to leave the ape dagger speared into the heart at that spot so that,
with the church’s energies blocked, the potency of the ritual would be increased.’
Yet surely they expected us, or someone, to find it. Anyone looking into that
hollow would have seen the dagger stuck into the heart.
The psychic did not answer. He was now onto other topics. ‘The high priest’s
name. It’s Comarius,’ he offered. ‘He was high priest, sage and prophet to Maria
the Jewess and denounced biblical assertions of the True Cross and the Virgin
Birth.’
Bernard’s words were becoming lighter, slower and more monotone. His bodily
movement had now ceased and, with his eyes still firmly closed, I realised that
he had slipped into a light trance. He was being overshadowed, not this time by a
malevolent intruder, but by our Elizabethan alchemist friend.
I just let him carry on as I attempted to scribble down the psychic
communication in the pitch darkness.
‘The cave and the bower are the same. His (Comarius’s) writing interprets as red
and white to black, which is written as menstruation, fertility mixing to give new
life form, which is interpreted as only a dark form and is not increased by fire to
become white and gold, but reduced further and combined further with water to
produce black life which grows if hidden.
‘This practice has always met with disaster, but many have tried and will do the
formation of chemie (i.e. alchemy) … ’
My pen slipped a few words as I frantically tried to scrawl down the message.
‘… other names given are Bolos28 and Septemos … both very early practicers of
chemie.
‘They say is early chemie but these (i.e. BA and his cronies) still wish to bring
forth the white and gold, and many are given in papers (of) which some (still)
exist and some are lost.
‘Also, Comarius used stones with wording, which he says were obtained from
sealed tombs and so give the right to invoke darkness. Seth (the ancient Egyptian
god of chaos and disorder) also used, but he is wrong. These precious stones and
tablets were only usually placed with kings and royalty to assist a thought
progress (through) darkness, and (supply) main knowledge to afterlife.’
My hand ached like mad. Yet I seized the opportunity to get in a question more
relevant to the situation at hand. I asked what the Black Alchemist was really up
to at the moment?
The monotone voice recommenced its dialogue: ‘He seems to use several
ancient types of chemie writing, and combines to attempt to find what he
considers the final form of growth.’
There was another short pause, long enough for me to get in a second question.
What moves could we expect from the Black Alchemist in the future?
‘Future not certain,’ came the answer from the sixteenthcentury alchemist. ‘But
(he) will withdraw to practise again and possibly discover new formulation (of)
calcination at which point he seems to stop and place (his inscribed stones and
artefacts).’
Who are the ‘noble companie’ mentioned on the ebony ape dagger?
‘This would be a new form of brotherhood. Again, very subservient to darkness,
hoping for a new king form to worship. Hate is involved against all so-called
pure religious practices. This also includes many practices of different nations.’
Then came a prolonged silence. Our Elizabethan alchemist was suddenly no
longer with us. Soon afterwards, Bernard began to open and close his hands and
move his arms, before finally opening his eyes. ‘He wears a floppy hat. Like a
floppy beret,’ he announced, none the worse for his trance state. ‘And he has
white hair.’
I wrote this down.
‘Anyway, I’m off now,’ he exclaimed, knowing full well that his psychic
commitment for the evening had well and truly been fulfilled, and he could
justifiably go home.
I said I would give him a call.
36 Unholy Birth
Friday, 6th November, 1987. The dreadful events of the previous evening put
me into a rather subdued mood all day. I felt as though I had no right to tell
anyone about what had happened, and what we’d discovered in the hollow by
the upturned tree stump in Danbury churchyard. No one was going to believe
what had taken place, never mind understand its implications.

Still despondent by the time I got home from work that evening, I decided I had
to tell someone, so invited my friend Ken Smith across to the flat.

I had been keeping him and his wife Carole Young up to date on the various
developments in the Black Alchemist saga as I valued their comments and
constructive criticisms.

Ken arrived in the early evening and, as we sat in my flat drinking tea, I told him
about the events of the past few days— everything from Bernard’s ‘Maria the
Jewess’ dream to the sickening automatic script from Comarius, the discovery of
the artefacts, and the diabolic possession out in the field behind the churchyard.

At the end of the dramatic account, Ken was clearly disturbed by what he'd
heard.
‘Bernard and you are in real danger,’ he warned. ‘If what you’ve told me is true,
you’re obviously dealing with complete nutters. These maniacs will stop at
nothing to protect their secrecy.’
Okay, so they were dangerous people, but we could handle them without too
much problem.
‘And you just can’t leave that heart,’ Ken stated, incredulous at the fact it had
been buried without first being examined. ‘What if it’s human?’
I hadn’t really thought of that.
‘It’s got to be retrieved at the earliest convenience. Tonight if possible, before it
has a chance to decay.’
Accepting his word, I suggested we go there later.
‘Fine,’ Ken said, satisfied I had come to my senses at last.
He picked up the ebony ape dagger and began to study the inscription and
magical symbols along its blade. ‘Carole will know what these mean.
Remember, she’s an astrologer. Let’s go first to the house and we can ask her on
the way out to Danbury.’
Carole Young, her long ginger hair hanging down, sat on the sofa of her home
gazing at the ape dagger in her hands.

Ken and I sat opposite in chairs, eager to hear what she might have to say.
‘This symbol here,’ she began, breaking the silence. ‘Just before the inscription.
It’s the full moon, isn’t it?’
That’s what I felt. Why? Was it of significance?
‘Well, on the other side is another “loose” symbol—the sign for the influence of
Saturn.’
Okay, I knew that too.
‘It shows some kind of link between the influence of the full moon and Saturn,’
she offered, still deep in thought. ‘In astrology when two planets conjunct their
individual effects upon the human mind they combine to form a new, third
influence with different characteristics.
She looked towards us. ‘Influences resonating when the moon conjuncts Saturn
are usually associated with matters relating to ageing, darkness, sorrow,
harshness, sterility and a lack of love,’ Carole explained. ‘It’s generally a very
bleak influence or aspect. Often symbolised by a spinster, ugly in appearance.
Like Paphotia, or Hekate in her crone aspect.
‘Exactly,’ she confirmed, before continuing.
‘As any midwive will tell you, more babies are born at the time of the full moon
than at any other point in the 28-day lunar cycle. So, if someone was going to set
up a ritual where they wanted to conceive, or gestate, a powerful force or being
then the full moon would be a perfect time.’
Placing down the ape dagger, Carole picked up an ephemeris and checked the
time of the full moon the previous day and its relationship to the zodiacal signs.
‘It took place at 16.47 GMT, twelve degrees into the sign of Taurus,’ she
confirmed.
This was curious, for the astrological sign for Taurus was the only other
extraneous symbol on the ape dagger. This had to mean that whoever carved its
symbols must have been aware of the astrological influences around at this time.
Unholy Birth

‘As a planetary influence, Saturn can relate to the bringing forth of something
into manifestation,’ Carole offered, ‘while the full moon is very much associated
with conception and new life.

‘So combining the full moon influence with that of Saturn creates a force or
influence that might be seen as a sterile hag, yet one bearing a child at the same
time. It’s something completely against the laws of nature—a corruption of the
Virgin Birth.’

It explained why, in Bernard’s dream, ‘Maria the Jewess’ had emphasised her
pregnancy with the words ‘soon he comes’.
The ancient priest named Comarius had said virtually the same thing the evening
after the dream.
‘It looks to me as if the Black Alchemist has been attempting to germinate
something rather unpleasant out there by the tree, some form of antichrist I
would say.’ Ken now added, shaking his head at the thought.
Whatever was going on, it seemed clear there was an awful lot more to the Black
Alchemist’s dagger-in-the-heart ritual than either Bernard or I could have
imagined.
And what of this abhorrent pregnancy?
Was it something that no longer concerned us, or should we be preparing for
some kind of unholy ‘birth’?
They were questions I could not answer, and for the time being I felt it best we
leave Bernard in peace.
‘For now, we need to concentrate on finding that heart,’ Ken insisted.

As the midnight hour passed, two shadowy figures carefully surveyed a small
area of field to the south of Danbury churchyard.

Sudden movement in the driveway of a nearby house sent them diving for cover
and meant they would have to continue the search in complete darkness.

For an hour, Ken and I looked desperately for the buried heart.
On my hands and knees, I must have scoured every square yard of that field.
Then I found the clue I was looking for—a piece of loose turf no more than six
inches square.
Pulling it away, my fingers crept into the tiny hollow and made contact with our
goal. It felt cold and spongy.
Lifting out the large heart, I slipped it into an old rag and replaced the piece of
turf. Without further word, we left the churchyard and made our way back to the
car.
At home that night, after taking care of the bloodied heart, I continued trying to
write up the events of the past few days. Seated at a table in my tiny office room,
I reached for the box containing Bernard’s psychic notes and scribblings
concerning the Black Alchemist’s activities.
One set caught my eye.
It was the notes made at St Anne’s Castle, the public house at Great Leighs,
shortly after the events at Shenfield Common the previous year.
I read them and remembered:

Stinking real heart. Blooded. About. St Mary. Wombs. Birth. Blood. Not working.
Mercury. Circle closing. Message. Squeeze circle. Strong enough. Heart stops.
Something coming up. Change.

My God. So many of these statements appeared to have been portents of events

that had since come to pass. The ‘stinking real heart’ was almost certainly a
reference to the heart found the previous night. The mention of St Mary was
perhaps a reference to Runwell church’s dedication, or the Black Alchemist’s
perversion of the symbolism attached to the Virgin Mary. This he had achieved
through his perceived conception of an unholy child inside the womb of the foul
virgin Paphotia, Winder of Snakes, aka Maria the Jewess.

The use of a Mercurial force had featured prominently in the Running Well
confrontation of the previous year, and the ‘Circle closing. Message. Squeeze
circle. Strong enough. Heart stops’ statement, well ... I immediately felt bad
when thinking about its implications. All this related to what had happened out
in Danbury churchyard—the sealing off of the church’s energies, and the nasty
ritual out by the upturned tree stump, which was meant to have ensnared
Bernard’s soul once his heart had stopped beating.

And what if his heart really had stopped beating? What would I have done then?
The thought petrified me, as I read Bernard’s final words written nearly one and
a half years beforehand: ‘Something coming. Change’. Did this refer to Paphotia
rising out of the crack caused by the upturned tree, or did it allude to something
else … something to come? Something that would bring great change?

It was a prophecy most assuredly, and my gut feeling told me it related to the
coming of the unholy child, and future events that neither Bernard or I could
even conceive of at this time.
37 The Ape Dagger
Monday, 7th December, 1987. Having established that the heart found in
Danbury churchyard came from either a large pig or small calf—according to the
local butcher I had asked to examine it—the pressure was off. Had it turned out
to be human, I don’t know what we would have done. Still, I would keep it in the
freezer just in case.

‘In the freezer?’ Bernard exclaimed, repeating my words. ‘You’re going to keep
it in the freezer?’ He was incredulous, as always, by my bizarre actions.

I would keep it there just in case anyone wanted to see it in the future.
‘Who’s going to want to see that?’
Other investigators, possibly.
He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Well, at least it’s not human. That might have
been a problem.’
It was our first get-together at The Griffin since the daggerin-the-heart episode a
month earlier. So, I just had to ask him: had he received any new psychic
material since then?
Still contemplating the heart in my freezer, he looked up and thought for a
moment before answering. ‘No, all quiet, thankfully. Maybe we’ve seen the last
of him this time,’ he said, a note of optimism in his voice.
I’d heard those words so many times before I just ignored them with a glare.
‘What else have you discovered over the past month,’ he asked.
Okay, he wanted to change the subject.
I had, at last, found reference to Comarius, the ancient high priest, sage and
prophet who had overshadowed Bernard to give him the sickening automatic
script on 4th November, following the equally chilling ‘Maria the Jewess’ cave
dream. It was the same character seemingly who had taken possession of
Bernard’s body out in the field behind Danbury churchyard the following
evening.
Comarius was a Graeco-Egyptian alchemist who lived in the first or second
century AD. He was the author of an alchemical work entitled the Book of
Comarius, dedicated to one Cleopatra the Divine, to whom he was ‘Philosopher
and High Priest’.
Referred to as ‘the wise woman’, this Cleopatra was not to be confused with the
various queens of the same name who ruled Ptolemaic Egypt in the centuries
before the time of Christ.
The Book of Comarius begins with an account of how Comarius conveyed
knowledge of the alchemical sciences to Cleopatra, who was quite obviously
some sort of patron to him. The treatise then turns to more practical matters,
such as the properties and uses of certain metals, colours and apparatus. A group
of philosophers is then introduced and Cleopatra delivers to them the knowledge
she has received from Comarius. It is this last section that has often led scholars
to conclude, quite wrongly, that Cleopatra was the true author of the text.
Georg Luck’s book Arcana Mundi cites a surviving extract from the Book of
Comarius in which Cleopatra explains how alchemy is the key to the mystery of
resurrection. Reading through this, I came across a number of lines quite clearly
echoing Comarius’s words to Bernard within the automatic script.
For example, I asked Bernard to read the following extract from the Book of
Comarius:

... for they [the plants, the elements and the stones] get nourished in the fire, just
as an embryo, nourished in its mother’s womb, grows slowly. When the
appointed month is near, it is not prevented from coming out … but when the
tomb [in which they lie] is opened, they will ascend from Hades like the babe
from the womb … Here you have the sealed mystery.

This I now compared with Bernard’s automatic script, scribbled down at high
speed on 4th November:

They [the stones and relics] are nourished in the fire and the embryo grows
nourished in its mother’s womb. At the appointed time the new child will come.
The spirit of the blackness appears and rises up and encircles the child. Clothe
yourself. A cry of awaken from Hades will be heard. Arise from your tomb and
pit. The voice of resurrection has sounded.

There were further comparisons between the two texts, showing very clearly that
the same author was behind all this material. Yet Bernard’s automatic text
possessed a darker, more sinister character, almost as if somebody was distorting
the meaning of Comarius’ original text.

So having confirmed Comarius’ life on Earth, and his apparent authorship of the
automatic script, a rather nagging question now needed answering.

Why should a first or second century alchemist and high priest want to possess
Bernard’s body and steal his soul nearly 2,000 years after his life on earth?
Hadn’t he got better things to do in the afterlife?

Bernard shrugged his shoulders and looked blank. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps BA
studied the Book of Comarius and decided to call upon the priest’s soul to aid
him in his own alchemical transmutation.’

In doing so he had created a Comarius spirit double, a ka as it was known in

ancient Egypt, which had then gained its own individual existence. It was this
that had possessed Bernard, and not the real spirit of Comarius. I had to admit it
made sense.

All this stuff about a new child coming at the appointed time, and things
breaking out of tombs and pits, worried me.
Was the Black Alchemist really attempting to raise something, or bring
something into existence? Some form of antichrist?
‘Maybe. I really don’t know, or care,’ Bernard admitted, as he stood up and
disappeared off to the bar to buy more drinks.
Opening my briefcase, I brought out the ape dagger. He had not seen it since that
fateful night in Danbury churchyard. I wanted to point out the symbols
representing the moon, Saturn and Taurus scratched into its blade. I also hoped
he would consent to psychometrising it—see whether he could pick up any
information about its owner.
After he sat back down at the fireside table, I handed him the ape dagger and
showed him its astrological symbols. Was there any chance of him
psychometrising it?
‘I don’t think so,’ he responded, immediately putting down the ritual weapon as
if to emphasise the point. ‘I wouldn’t get anything anyway.’
Obviously, I disagreed and, after a little friendly coaxing, he eventually gave in
and picked up the dagger.
Rotating it slowly in one hand, and holding a pen close to a clean sheet of
notepaper with the other, he began to stare intently into thin air.
At first the psychic saw nothing, but then images of a location began to form in
his mind. ‘It’s night and I see what looks like castle battlements—a wall high up,
which curves around,’ he revealed, as he started to sketch what he could see. ‘It’s
definitely a castle, situated on a hill. Overlooking a town.’
Assuming that the location was in Sussex, I asked him if he could see the sea.
He shook his head. ‘I get no impression of the sea nearby. Only of a large river
running through the town.’
A long pause followed before he spoke again. ‘Behind this wall is a church with
a grassy churchyard and a circular path encircling its exterior walls. I see
tombstones, but only on one side … its west side, I think.’
Anything else?
‘There’s a pathway leading from the walled battlements to an entrance porch on
the south side. I also see a corner buttress.’ Another break followed to allow him
to continue his sketch. Looking up, he said: ‘Beyond the wall is a stepped path
and an access road, I feel.’
Could he see the castle?
‘No. No clear image of the castle. There’s something behind the church, though.
I can’t see what—only feel its presence, so perhaps it’s a ruined castle.’ Those
final words were thrown away as if only a suggestion.
Completing his drawing, he again concentrated on the embattled wall. ‘There’s
someone there now, standing below the battlements, facing towards me. He
paused for a moment to contemplate the image. ‘It’s the same person I saw in
Danbury churchyard.’
Who?
‘The woman with shoulder-length dark hair in the black coat and boots,’ he
unexpectedly revealed. ‘She’s wearing a black cowled cloak and is attempting to
draw me to her. It’s like a pulling, but she’s weak.’
There was a period of silence before Bernard broke off his vacant gaze and
placed the ape dagger down as if to signal an end to the psychometry session.
‘She’s gone,’ he announced, reaching for his cigarette packet. ‘I engulfed her
image in white light and she disappeared.’
Did the ape dagger belong to her?
‘Yes, I think so,’ he confirmed. ‘She seems to be connected with this town.’
Did she live there?
‘Perhaps. Or she travels there.’
Where was this town? In Sussex?
‘No indication. It’s just vague stuff, really. Isn’t it?’
Possibly. However, the imagery itself was not vague. It was clear and precise
and, judging by the accuracy of his past material, a town of this description
existed somewhere, and it was my betting it was in Sussex, making it easy
enough to track down and identify.

Tuesday, 8th December. ‘Sound’s like Arundel, in West Sussex,’ the bearded
antiques dealer said from behind his shop counter, after having listened to the
description of the town seen psychically by Bernard in connection with the
ebony ape dagger.
The man had shown some interest in the Black Alchemist affair, following a
couple of conversations on the subject, so I had promised to keep him informed
of any new developments.

‘It has a castle perched on a hill overlooking the town, just as you say,’ he added,
trying to recall his own memory of the place. ‘On one side of the hill there’s a
steep drop, whilst on the other there’s some woods, I think. The whole thing is
surrounded by battlements and there’s a large chapel within the walls of the
castle.’

What about an access road to the castle?

‘Yes, that’s there too. All exactly as you say.’
And the castle. Is it a ruin?
‘Not that I recall. It’s years since I’ve been there, so you

might be right. Look, I’ve got a guide to the castle at home. If you’re passing
this way later this week, I’ll have it here.’ It looked very much as if Bernard had
been viewing Arundel.
Thanking him, I left the shop and made my way to Grindley’s Bookshop in
Leigh Broadway, to take a look at the Ordnance Survey map of West Sussex.

Inside the bookshop, I looked through the display stand containing the Ordnance
Survey maps. A slim female assistant with shoulder-length blonde hair and
bohemian demeanour moved into view by my side. ‘Hello. What are you looking
for this time?’ she asked, in a polite, well-meaning voice.

It was Debbie Newman. She was a friend and knew something of the Black
Alchemist affair, so I told her about Arundel as I attempted to locate the correct
map.

‘I’ve been to Arundel,’ she responded, with reserved enthusiasm. ‘The River
Arun runs right through the town, and it’s about five miles inland from the sea,
not far from Worthing.’

Is it a large river?
‘Yes, it is,’ she nodded.
The River Arun. That was what Bernard had seen, and no

wonder he had not felt the presence of the sea nearby—it was five miles away to
the south. And Worthing. Close to Worthing, and therefore close to Clapham
wood, where as far back as October the previous year, following the Running
Well confrontation, Bernard had felt the Black Alchemist was involved in
magical workings beyond the scope of anything we had encountered so far. This
was getting interesting.

Unfolding the scarlet-fronted Ordnance Survey map, my eyes scanned the West
Sussex coastline until they found first Worthing, and then Arundel.

Excitement filled me as I openly proclaimed that Arundel was a mere five miles
west of Clapham, directly along the A27 road.

It seemed likely that the Black Alchemist’s female accomplice either came from
Arundel or she had some connection with the town, which, being so close to
Clapham, told me she might be the link between the Black Alchemist and the
notorious woods and church that Bernard had mentioned as existing down a long
lane there. Apparently, the whole place exuded a very unwelcoming feeling
indeed.

Friday, 11th December. Having not found much on Arundel in Leigh library, I
picked up the castle guide from the antiques dealer and sat down that evening to
study its contents.

Seen from the river, or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel, it said, is a
most imposing town. Clinging to a shaggy hill, the town is dominated by three
architectural structures of significance: the castle, a Catholic cathedral church
and the parish church of St Nicholas.

Perched high on the crown of the hill, the castle—which is not in a ruinous state
—is encircled by a mass of embattled stone walls, with a keep, gateway, and
history stretching back to the time of the Norman Conquest.

The castle has been the seat of the FitzAlan-Howard family, England’s premier
Catholic family, since the sixteenth century. Even today their estate extends well
beyond the boundaries of Arundel, and remains by far the largest in the county.

The map in the guidebook showed the embattled walls encircling the castle and
containing within them a Norman keep and several other buildings. It also
indicated that the only religious edifice in the castle grounds was a private
chapel built into the wall itself. However, it did not have a circular path around
its exterior walls, nor did it possess a churchyard with tombstones on its western
side. What is more, it could hardly be described as a church by any stretch of the
imagination.

The discrepancy bugged me. Everything else checked out, even Arundel’s
proximity to Clapham Wood. So what was wrong?
It made me even more determined to get down to the area as soon as time and
money would allow.
38 The Sword of Dardanus
Thursday, 24th December, 1987. Among the late Christmas cards scattered
across the doormat that morning was a bulky package from Terry DuQuesne.
Opening it, I removed the cover note.

The academic had, at last, found details of the ‘Sword of Dardanus’ and, as
expected, it was the title of a powerful GraecoEgyptian ritual. He had discovered
it among a collection of magical formulae and spells translated into English for a
book entitled Greek Magical Papyri, edited by one H. B. Betz and published the
previous year in Chicago, Illinois.

The pages containing the ritual—numbers 69 to 71—had been photocopied and

enclosed in the package. A ‘P.S.’ requested that I ring Terry as he had further
information to give me.

Glancing through the photocopies, just the purpose of the ‘Sword of Dardanus’
rite showed its significance. For, if successful, it: ‘Immediately bends and
attracts the souls of whomever you wish.’

Memories of Bernard’s psychic material from Hallowe’en came flooding back,

prompting me to digest the rest of the magical formula, which begins in the
following manner:

PGM IV. 1716-1870

Sword of Dardanus: Rite which is called ‘sword’, which has no equal because of
its power, for it immediately bends and attracts the soul of whomever you wish.
As you say the spell, also say: ‘I am bending to my will the soul of him [or her]
NN.’

THE SWORD OF DARDANUS

Take a magnetic stone which is breathing and engrave Aphrodite sitting astride
Psyche and with her left hand holding on her hair bound in curls. And above her
head: ‘ACHMAGE RARPEPSEI’; and below Aphrodite and Psyche engrave
Eros standing on the vault of Heaven, holding a blazing torch and burning
Psyche. And below Eros these names: ‘ACHAPA ADONAIE BASMA CHARAKO
IAKOB IAO E PHARPHAREI.’ On the other side of the stone engrave Psyche
and Eros embracing one another and beneath Eros’s feet these letters:
‘SSSSSSSS’, and beneath Psyche’s feet: ‘EEEEEEEE’. Use the stone, when it
has been engraved and consecrated, like this: put it under your tongue and turn
it to what you wish and say this spell: ‘I call upon you, author of all creation,
who spread your own wings over the whole world … [the ‘spell’ then continues
on for another couple of hundred words, including some 40 goetic barbarous
names] … Turn the ‘soul’ of her [or him] NN to me NN, so that she [or he] may
love me, so that she [or he] may feel passion for me, so that she [or he] may give
me what is in her [or his] power. Let her [or him] say to me what is in her [or
his] soul because I have called upon your great name.’

The ritual carries on in a similar vein, although for my purposes, I had read
enough.

In the footnotes it pointed out that the designation ‘sword’ served as a title for
certain types of magical invocation, like the so-called ‘Sword of Moses’, a
Jewish mystical rite of great antiquity.

Placing down the photocopies, I brought out Bernard’s original psychic material,
recorded on the night of Hallowe’en, and read it again:

Sword of Dardanus … The sword will bend souls as is wished. It will torture.
Engrave ACHMAGERARPEPSEI on stone. Burn Psyche. ACHAPA ADONAIE
BASMA CHARAKO IAKOB IAO E PHARPHAREI. Tie to tree and burn.

Then, in his summary afterwards, Bernard had posed the question:

Is BA using whoever Dardanus is? It relates to fire and the bending of souls in
some way.

It was apparent that Bernard had picked up snippets of the ‘Sword of Dardanus’
ritual. Beforehand, I had not really understood what ‘bending souls’ actually
meant. Now it was clear—it was a magical formula which, if successful, would
attract or ‘bend’ a person’s will using the emotion of false love and passion for
the purposes of getting her, or him, to reveal the nature of their power and the
contents of their mind. It almost seemed like a corrupt love spell, where a witch
or wizard helps a person to gain the heart of someone they desire as a lover.

It was this outcome that the Black Alchemist’s female accomplice had been
trying to achieve when she’d initiated the ‘Sword of Dardanus’ ritual by the
upturned tree stump in Danbury churchyard.
Fortunately for Bernard, it had not worked.
Intriguingly, the ‘Sword of Dardanus’ involved the use of an inscribed stone in
much the same way that the Black Alchemist appeared to be using them. In fact,
the flint calling card, found in the hollow by the upturned tree stump, had almost
certainly formed part of the ritual itself. Clearly, a conversation with Terry
DuQuesne was in order at the earliest convenience.

Tuesday, 29th December. Finally, after several days of trying, I managed to

reach Terry by phone. I wanted to know more about this book containing the
‘Sword of Dardanus’ formula—in particular, its availability.

‘It’s certainly not freely available in this country,’ he replied, with some
confidence. ‘The first I knew of it was when I received an advertising leaflet for
the book which came with an issue of The Hermetic Journal earlier this year.’

The Hermetic Journal. Yes, I knew of it. Edited by Adam McLean, it covered the
subjects of alchemy, Hermetica and Rosicrucian literature. However, I was not a
subscriber, and was pretty sure Bernard wasn’t either.

He continued: ‘I had to order the book direct from the publishers in the States.
At £40 to £50 a copy, I doubt whether very many have found their way into this
country.’

Who might possess a copy?

‘A few students of Graeco-Egyptian magic no doubt, and one or two university
libraries up and down the country. That’s all. It would be of little value to anyone
else.’
Were there any alternative sources for the ‘Sword of Dardanus’ formula?
‘As far as I am aware, this is the first time the ritual has been translated into
English,’ Terry responded. ‘To show its obscurity, I’ll give you its history as I
see it.’
The rite, Terry explained, originally featured among a collection of magical
spells and incantations put together by an unknown priest magician somewhere
in Egypt during the third century AD. Some of the papyri texts were written in
Coptic, which evolved from the ancient language of dynastic Egypt, whilst
others were recorded in an awkward form of classical Greek. Each spell
contained a selection of goetic barbarous words as well as an assortment of
Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Roman names of gods and goddesses.
This book of spells was discovered in the nineteenth century and brought back to
Europe where the collection became known as ‘The Great Magical Papyrus in
Paris’. Yet despite the interest shown in the collection by classical scholars, it
was never translated from its original Coptic and Greek.
The collection lay undisturbed in a Paris library until the 1920s when a German
classical scholar, Karl Preisendanz, decided to collect together and translate a
series of GraecoEgyptian magical papyri, including the Paris collection. These
were published as a three-volume set entitled Papyri Graecae Magicae, or PGM
as it is abbreviated by scholars. On the lefthand page of each volume was the
magical formula in its original form, and on the corresponding right-hand page
was the German translation.
‘The Great Magical Papyrus in Paris’, which, of course, included the ‘Sword of
Dardanus’ spell, formed about sixty pages of Section IV of the first volume of
PGM, published by Verlag Teubner of Leipzig in 1928.
The subsequent volumes of PGM were published in 1931 and 1941 respectively.
Virtually all the copies of the third volume were destroyed during the Second
World War. However, several copies of the first two volumes did find their way
into the classical sections of private and university libraries in this country. Of
course, they were useless to anyone unless they read Coptic, classical Greek and,
of course, German.
Even though I tried to take notes, it all seemed a little confusing to me. However,
the obscurity of the ‘Sword of Dardanus’ formula was clear enough. Anyone
possessing even a basic knowledge of its existence would have required an in
depth understanding of Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri, and the languages
behind them.
As early as 1985, Bernard had felt the Black Alchemist worked in a quiet,
academic environment, like a college or university library, where access to rare
books and manuscripts was easy. If so, then he would have had very little
problem laying his hands on a copy of PGM.
Terry seemed troubled by my assessment of the man. ‘If this man is an academic
with such an intricate knowledge of GraecoEgyptian magic, then what’s he
doing poisoning holy wells?’
He was, of course, referring to the Black Alchemist’s desecration of the Running
Well. In answer to this, I suggested that perhaps the man was simply a warped
and rather unstable psychopath with an obsession for re-working and corrupting
ancient magical formulae.
‘That might be so,’ Terry replied, a little perturbed by the thought. ‘But I almost
take this business personally.
‘To know there is someone out there with an extensive knowledge of Graeco-
Egyptian magic, who is corrupting it for their own vile ends is disconcerting to
say the least.’
Coming from a world-renowned expert in this field, Terry’s statement seemed
poignant indeed. Just who was the Black Alchemist? Could he ever be found?
Bernard had refused point blank to come up with a name and address, knowing
full well that the first thing I would do was head straight down to Eastbourne and
knock on his door. This Bernard did not want, for as he said: clearing up the
man’s dirty work at ancient and sacred sites was one thing, but looking into his
eyes was another thing altogether. Leaving the Black Alchemist as a mental
construct was quite enough. Anything else, and he, Bernard, would genuinely
live in fear of what might happen next.
I understood and respected what he was saying, although it would never stop me
searching for the Black Alchemist myself.
Changing the subject, I updated Terry on recent developments concerning the
Black Alchemist’s female accomplice and her apparent link with Arundel.
‘If you want my opinion, I think you’re going to find she’s the driving force
behind the Black Alchemist now,’ he said, prophetically. ‘She is the power. Mark
my words.’

Terry’s closing statement about the Black Alchemist’s female accomplice being
the driving force behind his current activities now played on my mind. Perhaps
he was right.

The Black Alchemist was a loner who studied, schemed, brooded and then
struck quickly before withdrawing to carefully plan his next move. She,
however, was an altogether different animal. I sensed she was a charismatic and
highly intelligent person with a lively, outgoing, sensuous personality. The sort
of woman who was likely to take the bull by the horns and confront us face-to-
face.

Yet no way was I going to upset Bernard by suggesting he keep an eye out for
any strange women unexpectedly turning up on his front doorstep!

Maybe it would pay me to forget trying to track down the Black Alchemist for a
while and instead concentrate on the woman.

I would welcome the New Year—as always—on Glastonbury Tor, Somerset’s

famous landmark close to the site of the town’s famous festival. For this reason
it seemed a good idea to drop down into West Sussex on the way home and pay
Arundel a visit.
39 The Net Closes
Friday, 1st January, 1988. Subdued, and yet without that much of a festive
hangover, Ken Smith and I left Glastonbury after breakfast and crossed the dull
and wet landscapes of Somerset, Dorset and Hampshire. Low cloud enveloped
the hilltops, and rain fell constantly throughout the long journey.

As the car passed from Hampshire into West Sussex during the early afternoon,
we were immediately confronted by the mass devastation left behind by the
hurricane. Whole forests were now a tangled mess of fallen trunks, uprooted tree
stumps and twisted and broken branches. In some areas, the tops of every tree
had been violently snapped off around head height, leaving them an ugly
reminder of the brute strength of the terrifying winds that night. I thought that
Essex had suffered badly. Yet in comparison with what I was now witnessing in
West Sussex, it had got off lightly.

Once in Arundel, we drove around the town’s quaint, medieval streets looking
for the castle. Eventually we found its huge embattled wall and came to a halt in
a small car park at the front of the main entrance.

Braving the constant drizzle, we set off on foot.

With the castle wall to our right, we climbed the hill towards the impressive
cathedral church, dedicated to Our Lady and St Philip Howard. Just past an
embattled building incorporated within the towering wall, I noticed a recessed
archway behind which I could just make out a Christian edifice, which a
signboard announced was the parish church of St Nicholas.
A gravel path led from the archway to a porch on its south side, and strolling
along this, I saw a circular path hugging the church’s exterior walls. All just as
Bernard had seen.
As Ken and I stood in the pouring rain, quietly studying the assorted
gravestones, crosses and box tombs—which were only on the western half of the
churchyard—I felt good inside.
Bernard had not been wrong. It was this church he had seen when
psychometrising the ape dagger. The discrepancy lay, not in his psychic
information, but with the castle guide. Its aerial map indicated the position of the
church, but neglected to mention there are in fact two embattled walls encircling
the castle—an inner wall and an outer wall.
With the problem resolved, we made a quick study of the church interior before
retiring for something to eat.
54. The pyramid-shaped roof of Arundel’s church of St Nicholas seen sticking out
behind the castle walls.

Taking a seat next to the window in an empty café, I glanced up at the castle’s
outer wall on the opposite side of the road while Ken placed our order with the
young waitress.

As she walked away, Ken removed his soaking wet donkey jacket and placed it
on the back of the chair. ‘Are you now positive it was Arundel that Bernard
saw?’

Absolutely. There could be no doubt of this any more. The Black Alchemist’s
female accomplice either lived in the town, or she was strongly connected with it
in some way, perhaps even with the castle.

‘Have you got a name for her yet?’ he asked, meaning a Christian name, or
surname.
This amused me. What could we call her? We already had the Black Alchemist,
or BA for short. So how about the Black Sorceress? Or what about the Black
Sorceress of Arundel? BSA for short!
‘BSA’ Ken laughed, shaking his head. ‘How do you expect anyone to take you
seriously with a name like that?’
A sense of humour?
Accepting my word, he found another question. ‘So, where do you go from
here?’
We visit Clapham Wood the next day.
‘What about tracking down “BSA”?’ Ken queried.
Certainly, at some point in the not too distant future, we would have to return to
Arundel to see if we could find her. However, I had the distinct impression there
would be no need to seek her out as she would eventually find us.

55. Arundel’s church of St Nicholas,

where
Bernard
encountered BSA’s energy form.
Saturday, 2nd January. As gale-force winds—the worst the country had seen
since the previous year’s hurricane—gusted wildly across the South Downs, our
vehicle navigated the pitted track that snaked its way towards Clapham church,
which stood at the entrance to the ominous woods of the same name.

Bernard’s words, spoken as we sat in the car following the Running Well
confrontation, kept repeating in my mind: ‘Now I see more woods, at a place
called Clapham … Something’s been going on there; ritual, I think. I also see a
church nearby, reached down a long, winding road. Not a nice feeling about the
place. Best left alone.’
56. St Mary’s church, Clapham, by the infamous woods in West Sussex.

Parking the car beneath the tree cover outside the churchyard, Ken, along with
local paranormal investigator Charles Walker, who had offered to give us a
guided tour of the woods, got out and watched as I took several shots of the
quaint medieval church. Despite the high winds, there was a clear blue sky and a
low winter sun, making it ideal light for photography.

Carrying on, the three figures stepped inside the church to study the various
memorials to the renowned Shelley family, before moving back out into the open
and tackling the wooden stile on the eastern boundary of the churchyard. From
here it was just a short trek across a muddy field to the edge of Clapham Wood.

Charles stopped to point out the old manor house where in 1979 he had come
across a striking demonic mural in one of its disused buildings. Whether or not it
was linked to strange goings on inside the woods, however, was quite another
matter.29

Inside the woods we were shocked by what we saw. Much of the woodland had
been completely razed to the ground by the hurricane’s ferocious winds. Miles of
dense tree cover had been reduced to a mass of fallen, twisted and tangled
mayhem.

Some areas had already been cleared. Other parts were exactly as they had been
left following the destruction of the previous year. Never before had I seen
anything quite like this. It was the sort of devastation one might expect after a
nuclear holocaust or comet impact.

Every part of the wood was the same. Wherever you went, hundreds of trees
littered the ground making it almost impossible to leave the paths.

To make matters worse, the gale-force winds were increasing in strength. As we

walked cautiously below what remained of the tall tree cover, we contemplated
the possibility of further falls as the wind hissed and roared through the woods.
It was an eerie sensation that gave the whole place a foreboding atmosphere.

‘This wood is totally unrecognisable,’ Charles admitted, shaking his head, as we

climbed over yet another fallen tree trunk. ‘The whole area has been completely
devastated. Known sites and specific spots, they simply no longer exist.’

Having seen enough, we headed back to the car.

57. Charles Walker stands in astonishment at the devastation in Clapham Wood
following the Great Storm of 1987.

Pulling out onto the dual carriageway of the busy A27, I thought seriously about
the chaotic destruction we had just witnessed in Clapham Wood.

Somehow Arundel, Clapham and West Sussex was BSA’s territory, whereas the
Black Alchemist perfected his own unique brand of landscape alchemy at sites in
neighbouring East Sussex. So had they combined their nefarious activities to
incorporate elements of his Graeco-Egyptian magic and alchemy and her own,
perhaps more feminine, brand of witchcraft and occultism?

It did seem likely, and in the future we were going to see the results of that
partnership. Of this, I was absolutely sure.
40 The Summoning
Tuesday, 9th February, 1988. Throughout the day I had the uncanny feeling that
something was in the air. The weathermen were predicting another hurricane,
and the Black Alchemist, as we knew, liked to move under the cover of high
winds.

Ever since the hurricane the previous October, I had been on edge every time
gale-force winds struck the country. It was almost as if I could now sense their
raw, elemental power.

Yet nothing had happened. Bernard had not picked up any new material on the
Black Alchemist since the previous December, when he had held the ape dagger
and pinpointed the West Sussex town of Arundel as in some way connected with
the Black Alchemist’s female accomplice.

Over the previous weekend, Ken Smith and I had revisited Arundel in the hope
of trying to find some trace of BSA. However, our extensive enquiries in
bookshops, antiques shops, and even with the police, had all come to nothing.
Despite this, I did feel that we had sown a seed. If she did live in Arundel, then
she would quickly come to realise that someone was asking awkward questions
about her. This I hoped might draw her out. Tempt her into making further
moves in our direction, no matter what the consequences might be.

By the late afternoon, the predicted hurricane had not materialised. However,
news reports earlier that evening had confirmed that fierce hurricane winds were
in the process of devastating other parts of the country.

Winds gusting up to speeds of 107 mph had already hit Ireland, North Wales,
Northern England and Scotland—all areas which had escaped the previous
hurricane.

At least ten people had been killed as a direct result of the gales. Fallen trees
blocked many major roads and railway lines, and nearly 100,000 homes were
now without electricity.

And there was more on the way. The hurricane-force winds were moving
eastwards and would be in the eastern counties by the early evening. Hurricane
K, as the weathermen were now referring to the deadly gales, was on its way.

The high winds were making driving difficult for Bernard as he drove home
from work that evening. The radio was reporting gusts of up to 65 mph in Essex,
and worse was to come.

The clock on the dashboard of Bernard’s new MG Montego showed it was

already well past six o’ clock. He was to meet Andy at The Griffin just after
seven, so he would have to get a move on if he was going to be on time.

The vehicle came to a halt on his driveway and, climbing out, Bernard walked
briskly to the front door. Sliding the key into the lock, he turned it until the door
pushed open.

On the carpet lay a small manila envelope. Picking it up, he stared at it

suspiciously. It bore no name or address, and was sealed. Yet its mere existence
sent a shiver down his spine. Almost immediately, he felt he knew who it was
from, and was glad that his wife and daughter were both out.

Finding a knife, he slit open the lip and pulled out a tightfitting sheet of black
card, some five by three inches in size. On both sides were magical symbols
carefully inscribed in pencil that, against the black background, made them
difficult to see in the dimly-lit hallway.

Carrying it into the better light of the kitchen, he studied the strange images and
tried, in vain, to interpret their meaning. On one side was a large, vertically
drawn, upgraded Monas Hieroglyphica. Below this was a more familiar symbol
—an oval shape with lines radiating out from its edge, like those that had
appeared on some of the early Black Alchemist spearheads.

On the other side were groups of unfamiliar magical characters—two sets on one
line and another two below them on a second line. Beneath these was what
looked like a long knife with a triangular-shaped blade and ball-like handle.
Inside the blade was a single word— —which he took to be Greek.

His stomach began to churn wildly and he frowned in annoyance. It was quite
obvious that, after nearly three years of searching, the Black Alchemist had
finally found him. But how had this happened? There was a solution, which he
hadn’t wanted to think about. Around the time of the dagger-in-the-heart episode
the previous November, he was sure that he had been followed home from The
Griffin pub in Danbury. At the time, he had dismissed his feelings as mild
paranoia, yet now they seemed to take on a new significance.

Whatever the answer, someone had been to his home that day and left this
chilling calling card. So what did it mean? And what would happen next? The
hurricane-winds were his sort of weather, so what was he up to this time?
58. Both sides of the black calling card put through Bernard’s front door in
February 1988.

A horrible feeling stabbed at his mind. Was someone still around—waiting for
him somewhere? In many ways he did not want to know the answer, but for a
few brief moments he decided to focus his mind on the black card. He allowed
just one impression to filter through to his conscious thoughts. The card had
come, not from the Black Alchemist, but from his female accomplice—the
Black Sorceress of Arundel, BSA, as Andy was now calling her. She had been
prompted to take more direct action following Andy’s foolhardy attempts at
tracking her down.

The sense was that these people were not happy, and would now stop at nothing
to curtail this unwanted interference.

Bernard entered The Griffin a little after me that evening. Before even sitting
down he threw down a small manila envelope, with the words: ‘Here. You’d
better take a look at this.’ He didn’t look happy as he walked over to the bar.

Slipping out the black card, I turned it about in the light and tried to make out its
pencil-drawn symbols. The updated Monas symbol and the small oval shape
with the lines radiating out from its edge, gave away its sender. Flicking it over, I
looked carefully at the four groups of symbols. They were magical characters
taken from one of the many so-called grimoires—medieval books of magic and
spells. Which one though, I was not sure, most probably the The Clavicle (or
Key) of Solomon.

The knife with the triangular-shaped blade I had not seen before. However, the
word , written inside its blade, was obviously Greek. What it meant though, I
had no idea.

Bernard returned to the table and sat down.

There was no need for any explanation—it had fallen through his letter box.
Right?
He nodded as he told me how he had come across it earlier that evening. ‘And
the only feelings I got on the way up here are of a cockerel being killed, and its
feathers being kept and used for some purpose.’ He lit a cigarette as if to
emphasise his genuine concern over the situation.
I had been expecting something like this for some time. BSA was the sort of
person who would turn up on your doorstep. She meant business, this was clear.
Yet what was she up to here? There was no clear indication from the black card,
and the use of medieval grimoire magic and animal sacrifice was something not
seen before in connection with the Black Alchemist’s activities. In the past he
had always stuck to the magic and alchemy of GraecoRoman Egypt and
Renaissance Europe. Never had he stooped so low as to use crude medieval
magic.
In consequence, it looked very much as if this sequence of events was being
orchestrated not by the Black Alchemist, but by his female accomplice who, it
appeared, practised this type of ritual magic.
‘I know,’ he stopped me, cutting dead a conversation he did not wish to hear.
‘The only feeling I get as we sit here is that each group of symbols was drawn on
the card only after a specific stage within the ritual. When the whole thing was
complete, it was given to me.’
Intrigued, I wondered whether the calling card contained a message, which
might be tapped through the use of psychometry.
He shook his head: ‘No, I’m not going to psychometrise it. And I’m serious. I’m
not going to touch it.’
Something was obviously going on, so the sooner we knew exactly what that
was, the more of an advantage we would have over the situation. The chances
were that she was out there somewhere, waiting and poised to make her next
move.
He was still adamant. ‘I’m not going to psychometrise that card, and that’s final,’
he insisted, stubbing out his cigarette in protest. ‘I really don’t care what’s going
on out there. If I ignore them, they will leave me alone.’
It was a foolhardy attitude that would get us nowhere. Burying your head in the
sand was not going to make the problem go away.
Realising that I was fighting a losing battle, I decided to drop the matter, for the
moment at least. However, just the card’s presence on the table would probably
be enough to spark off something in his mind, so I left it out for that reason.
Changing the topic, I turned to other research projects we were working on and
updated him on some recent developments.
Several minutes passed before, still speaking, I noticed that Bernard was miles
away—a sure sign that he was viewing a clairvoyant image in his mind’s eye.
So, what could he see?
The question broke his concentration. ‘Er, nothing,’ he responded, turning back
to me and trying to look interested in my words.
I carried on talking, but still he was not listening. His vacant gaze gave him
away. He was seeing something. So what was it? A church? A castle? A cave? A
holy hill?
He shook his head. ‘No, a crossroads. A road junction, somewhere.’
A crossroads. A site associated with the worship of Hekate.
‘And I don’t feel it’s far from here,’ he added, picking up his glass. ‘There’s
someone there. I can’t make out if it’s a real person, or an energy form.’
Now we were getting somewhere. Pretending to be disinterested, I continued our
earlier conversation.
Bernard then finished off his drink, placed down the glass and stood up. ‘I can’t
stay here. Come on, let’s go to the car.’
Assuming that he just wanted to get away from the surrounds of the busy pub, I
followed him outside and noted the time. It was 8.50 pm.
The gusting winds roared menacingly across the car park as we headed for his
Montego. Hurricane K appeared to be with us at last.
Opening the car door, he climbed inside, unlocked the passenger door and started
the engine.
He obviously wanted to go somewhere.
Quickly grabbing a torch from my car, I pulled open the door, threw in my gear
and leapt into the passenger seat, just as the car began to move away.
Bernard said nothing. He would not even respond to my words as the vehicle
turned right out of the car park and sped off down the road. He seemed strange,
somnambulistic even. The car clock illuminated the time. It was now 8.57 pm.
Coming to a junction, he slowed the car down. Momentarily he hesitated before
turning left into a side road and then carrying on.
Several hundred yards down the lane a T-junction loomed up ahead. Bringing the
car to a halt, he paused for a moment as if getting his bearings, before making
the decision to turn right.
Still he said nothing.
Where were we going? To the crossroads? He certainly appeared to be homing in
on something. But what? To the left was open farmland stretching away to the
south, and to the right were woods.
Bernard then slowed down the car in the middle of the country road. Apparently
realising we had gone past our destination, he unexpectedly put the vehicle in
reverse and backtracked a short distance. Then, finding first gear, he turned the
car into a recessed gateway and brought it to a halt.
In front of us was a locked wooden gate that marked the entrance to Danbury
Country Park, a pleasant setting of woods and manmade lakes enjoyed by
thousands of visitors to the area.
Turning off the engine, he then killed the lights. Yet still he said nothing. The
time was now nine o’clock precisely.
Gradually he loosened up and turned to me. ‘Well, we’ve been led here for a
reason. Something’s going on.’ For a moment he was unsure what to do, but then
he said: ‘Come on, let’s get out.’
Stepping out into the bitterly cold air, I realised that the galeforce winds were
intensifying. Every few seconds a sudden gust would send a serpent-like hiss
through the darkened trees, unnerving me just slightly. Something was building
up—on an elemental level at least. But the weather was too much for us, so we
got back in the car.
After a few minutes of silence, I asked him again what was going on.
He simply shrugged his shoulders in dismay. ‘I’m still not sure. It’s like a
drawing to this spot … like a magnet. I can see the same shape ... the same
energy form … which is her. She’s here somewhere.’
Who, BSA?
‘Yes. But where?’ he asked, searching for an answer.
Several more minutes passed as I listened in silence to the fierce winds roaring
and whistling through the trees, bending their branches and straining their trunks
until they sounded like creaky rocking chairs.
At 9.14 pm Bernard switched on the engine. ‘I’m going somewhere else,’ he
announced and, without further word, reversed the car before driving off.
Passing the T-junction where we had turned right on the way to the park
entrance, we carried straight on and soon came upon another junction where four
roads converged. It was undoubtedly the crossroads he had seen earlier.
However, although he slowed down as we approached them, he didn’t stop. A
large open green came into view on the left-hand side and Bernard swung the car
into its gravel-floored car park. We had apparently reached our new destination.
The location was familiar. On the opposite edge of the green, about 150 yards
away, were the bright lights of The Cricketer’s Inn. It meant that we were still in
Danbury.
The psychic said very little as we sat patiently waiting for something to happen.
The gale force winds whipped venomously across the car park as we stared
expectantly towards the headlights of each passing car, wondering whether it
would pull in and join us for a shadowy rendezvous. But none did. Watching the
red, green and white lights of aircraft crisscrossing through the clear night sky, I
contemplated our predicament. The female energy form that Bernard seemed to
be experiencing could be likened to the effects of a woman wearing a heavy
perfume. When she enters a room you can smell her aroma, and when she leaves
her perfume lingers, even though she is no longer there. Should a deaf and blind
person enter that room, then in theory they would be unable to tell whether the
woman was actually present, or whether they were simply smelling her lingering
perfume.
The same thing appeared to be happening to Bernard on a psychic level. He was
picking up on the proximity of a female presence, but seemed uncertain whether
she was actually there. Whether she was or wasn’t, the intuitive feeling was very
much the same.
‘I think you’re probably right,’ he admitted, with a sigh. ‘She’s out there
somewhere, or was. But there’s still some sort of drawing, like a magnet.’ He
paused to take in his feelings. ‘No, I definitely feel that somebody, or something,
is still around. I can sense it.’
Stubbing out his cigarette, he turned on the engine. ‘Come on. I’m going back to
the gate. I still get the feeling there’s something happening out there.’
59. The author at the entrance to Danbury Country Park where Bernard
contemplated their next move.

The car pulled into the recessed gateway to Danbury Country Park at 9.35 pm.
But something was different, we were not at the same gate. Yet then I
understood. The car park inside the woods was, I recalled, linked via a crescent-
shaped driveway to two gates—one an entrance, the other an exit. Earlier on we
had drawn up at the entrance gate. Now we sat in front of the exit gate, some
eighty yards further back along the road. We talked about the discrepancy, but
decided to stay where we were.

‘What’s in there anyway?’ Bernard enquired, nodding towards the darkened tree
line.
The Danbury lakes.
‘Well, I reckon she’s been around here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she, or
someone else, is not still around,’ he said, looking out of the windscreen into the
darkness.
It was too cold to go out and investigate. Trees bent and swayed wildly with the
sheer force of the terrifying winds. No, there was no way that I was going
outside, unless I had to.
‘Are the woods frequented by black dogs?’ he asked.
Ghostly ones, with fiery eyes like red-hot coals?
‘Yes, that’s it.’
No, not that I knew of. I recalled no legend that spoke of such phantom black
dogs haunting the area.
‘Well, I think there is,’ he retorted. ‘I sense them, out there, watching and
waiting for our next move.’
41 Contact
The psychic was becoming frustrated at the lack of action as we waited in the car
by the exit gate to Danbury Country Park. ‘Here. Give me that card,’ he said,
disregarding his earlier refusals to psychometrise it.

I handed him the black calling card and he began to focus on our predicament.
With pen and paper poised, I sat patiently until he started to breathe rapidly, a
sure sign that something was happening in his mind.
After a minute or so, I asked him what he felt.
‘We walk down to the other gate,’ he announced, as he placed the card on the
dashboard. ‘There’s someone down there. Female. However, I don’t think she’s
there herself, not physically at least.’
As we simultaneously opened the doors, a sudden gust of wind sent the black
card flying out into the night. My heart sank. Losing that would be disastrous in
terms of future research. It had to be found, and fast, before it had a chance to
blow away completely.
Stepping outside, I searched the grass verge by the side of the car as Bernard
stood by. After a few minutes I saw the card sitting in the wet grass. Grabbing
hold of it, I slipped it into my pocket and breathed a sigh of relief.
The hurricane-force winds were still on the increase as we approached the other
wooden gate in complete silence. Some thirty feet away from our destination,
Bernard held out his arm to prevent me advancing any closer and then beckoned
that we should stand and face the gate from the opposite side of the road.
The bright headlights of a vehicle approached at speed to reveal a Range Rover
that whizzed by without slowing down.
Bernard began to stare intently towards the gate. ‘I see the same as before,’ he
shouted into the wind. ‘It’s the same woman I saw in Danbury churchyard on
Hallowe’en, and in front of the battlements at Arundel. She’s just standing there
—in front of the gate.’
What was she wearing?
‘She’s wearing a black, knee-length cloak, with a hood that obscures her face.’
With this, he began slowly to advance towards the gate as the wind continued to
rush past us with deafening roars, drowning out our words.
Recalling past situations where Bernard had suffered badly as a result of attuning
directly to the warped energies of the Black Alchemist, I emphasised caution.
However, I had an idea. We should try approaching her not as a dangerous
adversary, but as an equal, with feelings of compassion, not hatred, no matter
how inconceivable it might seem. Mentally tell her that we wanted only to talk—
make contact. In this way he might be spared any adverse reactions from the
energy form.
Bernard nodded his acceptance of the suggestion as he moved ever nearer the
woman, his hair and clothes flapping about in the deafening wind. She seemed to
hold out her hand for him to take, and so, with some slight hesitation, he took
hold of it just as an almighty gust of wind tore violently through the treetops,
engulfing the entire area and nearly knocking him off his feet.
Contact with his adversary sent what seemed like an electric shock up his arm
and through into his very soul. He flinched twice at the unexpected pain. But it
was too late to go back. Images and impressions began to flood his mind as he
linked directly to her very thoughts. Yet he realised that the connection had its
price, as he now felt her probing his mind for similar answers.
His breathing became erratic, and an expression of mental torment formed on his
face as the full power of the radiant apparition surged into his body. He had to
speak. ‘I see pictures and hear names,’ he shouted, trying to make himself heard
above the constant cacophony of the wind.
‘Adonaie ... a name … and Frimost,’ he yelled, his hand still linked with hers.
‘And Lullington’s been hit again … but nothing left this time.’
With intense torment still showing on his face, he paused to compose his
thoughts before carrying on. ‘I now hear a female talking … the drawing on the
card is of a knife … one she possesses … and on it are words: “the fairest one”.
It’s steeped in blood … I see a ritual going on … and a stretched skin on the
ground … which looks white. It’s part of a ritual involving the symbols on the
card … and a cockerel sacrifice … its blood used to draw … someone’s about
here, now.’
Bernard recoiled backwards, no longer able to withstand the passage of energies
flowing between the two of them. But he was alright. He had not been attacked,
and there appeared to be no adverse effects from his ordeal. So, for a brief
moment, he felt satisfied. Yet then a horrific sensation overtook him. The car.
His mind was trying to tell him something about the car.
‘Hell,’ he screamed, twisting around as he attempted to crystallise his thoughts.
‘The car. We’ve left the car. We’ve got to get back to the car. NOW.’
He began to walk briskly, before gradually breaking into a run. I followed close
behind.
‘Something’s happening at the car.’
It came into sight.
‘Give me the torch,’ he shouted, in a clearly annoyed tone.
Handing it to him, he frantically began to shine the light into the wheel arches
and on to the back bumper as leaves and litter scurried frantically across the
grass verge.
What was he looking for?
‘I don’t like what I feel one bit,’ he seethed, carrying on his search as he moved
around to the offside and shone the light into the car’s interior. Pulling at the
door handle, it came open. ‘Damn, it’s open,’ he fretted, now shining the light on
the floor below the seat. ‘Something’s here and we’ve got to get it out. Go
around the other side.’
I tried the door handle. It too came open.
‘You didn’t lock it.’
Not answering, I searched around the front passenger seat.
Bernard’s hand then drew up something from below the well of the driver’s seat,
close to the door. ‘Here, take this,’ he said, a note of resignation in his voice, as
he climbed into the seat.
It was another sheet of black card, folded in two and slightly smaller than the
first one. Opening it revealed another image in pencil, like that on the card found
earlier that evening. This one showed a thin-bladed dagger crossed over a wand
or staff, both of which were covered in magical characters taken from a medieval
spell book. I showed it to Bernard.
It annoyed him even more. ‘Right, I’m getting out of here,’ he frowned, as he
switched on the engine and violently reversed the car out on to the road. ‘I’ve
had enough of this.’

As we drove away, my nose caught the whiff of a peculiar aroma now filling the
car interior. It was the smell of perfume—an overpowering, pungent aroma of
perfume. It had definitely not been present earlier, so where was it coming from?

Bernard sniffed. ‘Well, there’s nothing in the car it could be.’ Pulling up the
folded black card, I held it to my nose. No, it was not coming from that. So
where then? An air freshener? No, there was not one in the car.
Studying every corner and recess, as the car continued its journey, I noticed
something. In a small cavity within the metal frame that supported the driver’s
seat was a piece of green paper. Was the stench of perfume coming from this?

60. The black

calling card
found in
Bernard’s car.
Since Bernard had only owned the Montego for a matter of weeks, it was
probably just a piece of rubbish discarded by the previous owner.

As the car came to a halt in The Griffin car park, I reached down and pulled out
the piece of paper. It stank of perfume. Yet there was more. For across its surface
was a clearly recognisable, deep red lipstick smear, as if someone, a woman
we’ll assume, had pulled it across their lips to remove lipstick. Along the centre
of the stain was a small, horizontal grease mark that looked as if it had come
from the area between the person’s lips, and there was also some trace of the
presence of facial foundation.

It was a bizarre discovery with even deeper implications. It suggested that, when
the car had been left unattended by the locked gate, someone had opened the
driver’s door and deposited, not just the second black calling card, but also a
piece of paper smothered in lipstick and perfume.

In addition to this, the lime-green paper looked as if it had been hurriedly torn
from a larger sheet of notepaper of the sort commonly found in card and gift
shops. On the edge of the rough tear were various characters in blue biro, which
could not be identified as their tops had been severed by the tear. Unlike the two
carefully prepared black calling cards, this lipstick-smeared piece of paper
looked as if it had been a last minute thought. It seemed almost like a direct
response to my conversation comparing psychic energy forms with lingering
perfume. It was a chilling thought that disturbed Bernard even more.

It was no ordinary perfume, either. It was a pungent, overpowering aroma,

recognised as the sort worn by high society women. Its usage was almost as
strange as the piece of paper’s appearance in the car, and everything pointed
towards the conclusion that it had been deliberately left to make sure we knew
that it had come from a woman, and that woman was BSA. So what the hell was
she up to now?
61. The lipsticksmeared piece of green paper found in Bernard’s car, which stank
of
perfume.

Back in The Griffin, with a pint in front of me, I asked Bernard for some
answers, and he responded by attuning as best he could with a notepad in front
of him. He scribbled down some thoughts, which I then read:

I believe that there were two people in the wood, and most likely male, under
orders. Female there in energy form only.

Two people in the woods and they were both male? This seemed an unlikely
statement considering the fact that we had just found a piece of paper smothered
with lipstick, foundation and facial grease, and stinking of perfume. If this
calling card had been hurriedly left by two men, then where would they have
suddenly got make up from?

‘That’s what I pick up,’ he insisted, sticking to his guns.

No, I had to differ with him on this occasion. It was my feeling that a woman,
possibly even BSA herself, had been out there somewhere. Otherwise the
lipstick-smeared piece of paper made no sense at all.

As Bernard shrugged his shoulders, I read what else he had written:

The triangle shape [on the black calling card put through his door] is seemingly
a knife of sorts and inscribed with Greek, meaning ‘the fair one’ or ‘the fairest
one’. Steeped in blood and is new.

The fairest one. Was this a reference to a man or a woman? ‘A woman, I think,’
he responded, picking up the lipsticksmeared paper. ‘A spirit or goddess.
Something like that.’ He paused to take in the sweet fragrance. ‘I can still smell
that perfume. It keeps wafting up.’
I had noticed. Taking it from his hand, I held it to my nose and sniffed again.
‘I also pick up something to do with a lamb,’ he continued. ‘I think there was a
rite involved whereby the skin of a lamb was stretched out and marked with
symbols, like those found on the first card.’
So is this what she really did—take a lamb and strip it of its skin so that it could
be used to mark symbols?
‘Don’t know. Maybe it’s just symbolic, the black card taking its place,’ he
replied, lighting a cigarette. ‘Maybe that’s the answer.’
Where was the card inscribed, locally or in Sussex?
‘I can only see woods, bushes, undergrowth—brambles around a small area, like
a clearing. That’s all.’
Any more?
‘The names Frimost and Adonaie are involved, somehow.’
I had not come across either before, but would check them out. What about
Lullington? What had been going on there?
He yawned and leant back on his chair, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. But
whatever it was nothing was left, so I shouldn’t go rushing off down there as you
won’t find anything.’
His mood then changed. ‘Right that’s it then.’
What was?
‘That’s the final thing I ever intend picking up on the Black Alchemist. I’ve had
enough. That’s it. Final.’ He scrawled a thick line under his notes and wrote the
word ‘final’, before sitting back in defiance.
I sighed with dismay. As I had said earlier, burying your head in the sand was
not going to make the problem go away.
‘You have to remember, my wife and daughter don’t know anything about
what’s been going on, and I don’t want them to find some sick warning on my
doormat one day. This has all gone far enough. If I put out that I will leave them
alone, then they will leave me alone. It’s that simple.’
He meant it this time, and there seemed little I could do to change his mind.
Never before had I seen him so annoyed by any of the supernatural dramas we
had been involved with over the years.
‘Anyway, I’m off,’ he said, as he finished his drink and got up to go. ‘What are
you doing? Staying here?’
No, I was leaving as well. I had a lot of things to check out when I got home.
‘Okay, give me a call.’

On arrival back at Leigh-on-Sea that night, I scanned the bookshelves for

material on grimoires—medieval books of magic and spells. One particular tome
proved useful, The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, written by the noted
occult scholar Arthur Edward Waite and first published in 1898. It contained
lengthy extracts from several well-known grimoires, including the rites to be
conducted, their methods of preparation, and the ritual tools to be used.

I had the uncanny feeling that the various symbols inscribed in pencil on the two
black calling cards would be displayed in this book. So, flicking through its
pages, I quickly found what I was looking for. A grimoire known as the Book of
True Black Magic, which was, in fact, a bastardised version of the most
infamous grimoire of all—The Clavicle (or Key) of Solomon—contained the
exact same symbols as those on the wand and thin-bladed dagger drawn on the
black card found in the car.

On the same page was the drawing of a knife, called a lancet, with a triangular
blade and ball-like handle, like the one drawn on the black card pushed through
Bernard’s letter box.

Studying the drawings of the wand, dagger and lancet seen on the two black
cards, I realised they were not only similar, but identical to those found in the
Book of True Black Magic.
So far, so good. I then turned my attention to the four groups of curious magical
characters drawn on the first black card. Elsewhere in the same book, I found a
chapter on a notorious grimoire called The Sworn Book of Honorius.

Studying its pages, which described the preparations and source of the
complicated ritual of Honorius (spuriously named after Pope Honorius II, during
whose papacy, between 1124-1130, the book was said to have first circulated in
medieval Europe), many sentences and symbols began to echo statements
Bernard had made earlier that evening. All the stranger elements of the ritual,
along with the symbols on the black card pushed through his letterbox, were
present. The rite, it said, was to be carried out in stages at specific times, over a
period of several weeks. It culminated with a chosen invocation where one of
seven named demons, each associated with a different day of the week, was
conjured into manifestation for a designated purpose.

As Bernard had suggested, the original ritual involved the sacrifice of a black
cockerel and the use of its feathers as a quill pen, as well as the sacrifice of a
lamb, whose skin was to be removed, pinned out and left for a period of time. At
specific points in the ritual various magical characters were to be inscribed on
the lamb’s skin and also on virgin parchment. These symbols corresponded
precisely to those inscribed in pencil on the first black card received by Bernard.

The comparisons did not end there, either, for I discovered two further
connections with the events of that evening. Firstly, the form of the Hebrew god
used to conjure the demonic forces unleashed by the rite of Honorius was
‘Adonaie’, the name picked up by Bernard as he had made contact with BSA out
by the gate. I had not recognised the name ‘Adonaie’ before, as Bernard had
pronounced it ‘ar-doan-nae’, confusing me somewhat. Secondly, in the last
section of the ritual, where the methods of conjuring the various demons of the
week are described, I found the name ‘Frimost’. It is cited as the demon to be
invoked on a Tuesday— which it happened to be that day. More extraordinary
was the fact that it had to be invoked between nine and ten o’clock at night.

Our car had initially pulled up at the entrance gate to Danbury Country Park at
precisely nine o’clock, and it was at 9.35 pm that Bernard had linked hands with
BSA’s energy form at the same spot and, among other things, had shouted out
the name ‘Frimost’. The implications therefore seemed clear. Between nine
o‘clock and ten o‘clock that evening someone, perhaps the two men mentioned
by Bernard, or even BSA herself, had been bringing to a climax the rite of
Honorius in the name of the demon Frimost.

Yet something bugged me. Any knowledgeable occultist knew that grimoire
magic was debased, since it invoked only very low forms of otherworldly
denizens and supernatural agencies. It bore little comparison with the powerful
Graeco-Egyptian magic and alchemy previously utilised by the Black Alchemist.
Only one small link with his own unique brand of Graeco-Egyptian magic was
present—the Greek word , drawn inside the blade of the knife depicted on the
first black calling card. So, what did this mean?

A call to Terry DuQuesne promptly sorted out a translation. As Bernard had

suggested, the word, which when transliterated into English becomes Kalliste,
means ‘the fairest one,’ as in the winner of a beauty contest.

Terry suggested that it might be one of the titles of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess
of love and beauty, and he was right. A quick check with a dictionary of
mythology revealed that Aphrodite had been awarded a golden apple inscribed
‘for the fairest’, after Paris judged her to be the most beautiful of all goddesses in
a contest.

So why was BSA combining a clearly Judaeo-Christian form of diabolical magic

with the influence of the Greek goddess of love and beauty? At first, Aphrodite’s
involvement made no sense. However, I then remembered that it was not the first
time that the Greek goddess of love had cropped up in connection with the Black
Alchemist’s female accomplice.

At Hallowe’en the previous year, BSA had used the GraecoEgyptian rite known
as the ‘Sword of Dardanus’ to gain the favour of Aphrodite, among others, in an
attempt to ‘bend’ Bernard’s soul. The idea was for him to have fallen under her
influence by using the emotional draw of false love and passion, so that he might
reveal, not only his power, but also the contents of his mind. Thankfully for
Bernard, the rite had not worked. However, it looked very much as if she was
still attempting to ensnare him using the same magical influence of false love,
shown clearly by the involvement of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

The black calling card pushed through his letterbox had been imbued with a
psychic charge, the intention of which was to draw, or pull, Bernard to Danbury
Country Park so that he might leave the car and confront BSA’s energy form by
the entrance gate. This had apparently allowed her two male companions—or
she herself—to plant the second black calling card and the lipstick-smeared
piece of paper inside the vehicle.

Everything about the lipstick-smeared paper seemed to confirm BSA’s use of

love magic in order to ensnare Bernard. The paper’s colour, green, can be
attributed to the influence of Venus, Aphrodite’s Roman counterpart.
Furthermore, it was smeared almost certainly with BSA’s perfume, foundation
and lipstick—all factors which would have impregnated it not only with her own
DNA, but also with a potent psychic charge.

The seemingly innocuous piece of green notepaper had been left in Bernard’s car
in the belief that it would forge a false emotional tie between her and him—like
a lover being drawn compulsively to his sweetheart. Even the time of year
seemed appropriate. The following Sunday was St Valentine’s Day, a time when
individuals received anonymous cards from admirers and lovers, some of which
would be impregnated with perfume.

In many ways, the ritual worked, for Bernard had made contact with BSA’s
energy form out at Danbury Country Park in a manner not even contemplated
before, and as their minds had locked she will have unquestionably probed his
for clues regarding his life, his weaknesses and the motives behind his continued
interference with the activities of the Black Alchemist. Whether or not she was
aware of what was going on at the exact moment of contact was irrelevant, for
the information received can be downloaded and processed at any time thereafter
through the simple use of meditational practices. What’s more, such psychic
connections are not time constrained, for beyond our own conception of time’s
role in the physical universe it simply does not exist.

Despite understanding what BSA might have been up to that night, these silly
games were not helpful, for she had caused Bernard to throw in the towel and
refuse to pick up anything further on the activities of our adversary. The Black
Alchemist now had free rein to do what he liked, when he liked, without any fear
of interference from us.

For the foreseeable future there was only one road for me to take. This was to
complete the manuscript for the intended book on the Black Alchemist saga. I
needed to get this out as soon as possible in order to make the world aware of
exactly what was going on in the hope that others out there—occultists, pagans,
witches, even academics—might be able to throw some light on this
extraordinary affair. I needed to know who was behind these incredible events,
and would stop at nothing until I had some answers, either with or without
Bernard’s help.

Throughout the spring of 1988 the writing of the book continued at a steady
pace. With no contacts in the publishing world, I would have to publish The
Black Alchemist myself, yet needed around £15,000 to do so. It was for this
reason that I had purchased the flat in Leigh-on-Sea, knowing full well it could
be used as financial collateral.

With enough savings in the bank from my long career with the Leigh Times, I
went out on my own, spending all day, every day, working frantically on the
final chapters.

By late May the manuscript was finished.

All I needed to do was to get it out to as many people as possible for them to
read and make editorial suggestions. Then it could go into production, a slot on
the printing press having already been scheduled for late October.
So I printed off several copies of the manuscript, the first of which I slipped into
a jiffy bag addressed to Bernard.
His comments—more than anyone else’s—I needed, for without Bernard’s
official blessing, the book was going nowhere.
Part Four Birth
42 Crossed Daggers
Wednesday, 8th June, 1988. For several days now Bernard had been trying to
find time to re-read the finished manuscript of Andy’s book The Black
Alchemist. On first reading it had appeared accurate enough—one or two points
here and there that would need changing—but, essentially, nothing major.

It had felt strange reliving those events, especially looking at them from
somebody else’s perspective. In a way, he had not wanted to read the manuscript
at all, since it brought back too many disturbing memories, which he had been
trying to put behind him. Still, it would have to be read again, as he had only
scanned through it quickly first time around.

Retiring into the peace and quiet of the dining room, he sat down with a mug of
coffee and glanced apprehensively towards the already-opened manuscript. The
page in view commenced the chapter about the Black Alchemist’s Ring of
Darkness ritual, and his subsequent desecration of the Running Well in October
1986.

October 1986, he sighed. It seemed so long ago, and so much had happened
since then.
He smiled at the number of times he had convinced himself the whole affair was
over. Then, at some point later, he would always receive fresh information
making it clear the story was definitely not over, and might never be.
It had happened earlier that year.
On walking into his back garden during the early evening of Monday, 21st
March, the day of the spring equinox, he had been drawn to look up at the planet
Venus. It was aligned perfectly within the twin horns of the new moon, like some
heavenly representation of the star and crescent of the Islamic faith.
The beautiful sight had held his gaze for several seconds, at which point he had
received the distinct impression that the Black Alchemist was out of the country,
in Belgium perhaps, on some kind of ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe.
He was there to track down and purchase a rare magical text being sold as part of
a private collection that had recently come
The Black Alchemist
on the market. Having it would enhance his knowledge of
alchemical operations, it seemed.

No further information had accompanied the impression, and Andy had been
unable to establish what exactly the Black Alchemist might have been after out
there in Belgium. Andy did point out, however, that the lunar crescent, with the
symbol for Venus positioned directly beneath it, bore a distinct likeness to John
Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica. Perhaps it had been for this reason that his mind
had, once again, touched on the activities of their adversary.

Casting away these thoughts, Bernard continued to read the pages from the tidy
manuscript positioned in front of him, making a few marks where necessary with
a red pen.

Then he stopped and looked up. Something was happening. He fretted below his
breath. It was the same feeling he had experienced so many times before. He
tried to push it away, but it was no good—his memory of the events at the well,
confronting their adversary, was being replaced by a new, unfamiliar image.

He could see a low, grassy mound—a prehistoric round barrow or tumulus

perhaps. It stood in front of woods that overlooked a grassy meadow filled with
golden yellow flowers.

Standing on the mound was the Black Alchemist, his face obscured as usual by a
black floppy cowl.
Held in his hands, above his head, were twin daggers, crossed over each other.
Curiously, Bernard could make out that the man’s heavily draped garment
possessed a blood red lining.
It was a sight he had seen already in a dream—a cowled figure with crossed
daggers. On that occasion the figure had approached him along a tunnel of
swirling grey mist. Yet there had been no clear indication it was the Black
Alchemist, so he had dismissed the dream as simply his imagination.
This time Bernard was sure. It was him, sending out a message of some kind.
Crossed daggers was a sign of provocation—an occult challenge of some sort.
So where was this mound? Was it near Eastbourne, close to the Black
Alchemist’s home? Yes, that was it, close to his home.
Bernard thought hard about the situation. What the hell did this man want with
him? Even after mentally putting out that he wanted no more to do with his
activities, here he was, taunting him once more into responding in some manner.
Was he ever going to be rid of him?
Breaking his concentration, Bernard glanced towards the
Crossed Daggers

finished manuscript before getting up and leaving the room, hoping to shake
away any thoughts of BA and his disturbing world.

But it was no good. The image remained fixed in his mind, and with it now came
the distinct impression that the Black Alchemist was ready and waiting to make
his next move.
43 8.8.8
Monday, 1st August. Wandering through Danbury churchyard on this mild
summer’s evening, Bernard and I came to rest beneath a silver birch tree. It
stood on the other side of the path to the horse chestnut tree wrenched from its
roots during the Great Storm—this being the somewhat uninspiring name now
being given to the devastating hurricane winds of the previous year.

Having brought along the Indian swordstick, I held it point down, like some
dance-hall cane, and visualised golden energies flowing through its shaft into the
ground.

This is what I could picture in my mind’s eye. How about Bernard—what could
he see?
‘Pulses of energy, spreading outwards,’ he confirmed, leaning against the tree’s
slim trunk, not that much inspired by what was going on. ‘Extending out as far
as the edge of the churchyard.’
Hopefully this would help create a charged environment that might enable him
to pick up new information, especially as we both felt something strange was
afoot.
Suddenly, a slight breeze crossed the open hilltop, noticeably lowering the
temperature. It caused an unexpected shift in the atmosphere.
Bernard’s eyes now became fixed on a gap between the low hedgerow bordering
the southern edge of the churchyard, beyond which is an area of garden
allotments.
I asked him what was happening.
‘There’s smoke. In the air. Something burning. I can see white figures, vague, in
cowls, beyond the hedgerow,’ he revealed, compelled by what he could see with
his eyes firmly open. ‘Ancestral spirits, I reckon, and not encroaching beyond
that point.’
Anything else?
There was a long pause, before he said: ‘Have you ever been back to that
mound?’
I knew exactly what he meant.
It had been nearly two months since he had glimpsed the Black Alchemist
standing on the summit of a prehistoric round barrow, holding a pair of crossed
daggers above his head, as if challenging us to some kind of confrontation.
Bernard felt its location was close to the man’s home in Eastbourne. So I
searched the local Ordnance Survey map and had come up with just one suitable
candidate.
It was a low mound perched high on the South Downs, next to woods close to
Beachy Head, the so-called Hill of Sorrow due to its reputation as Britain’s most
notorious suicide spot.
Due to the barrow’s remote location, beyond the termination of a closed road
named Paradise Drive, I had christened it the Paradise Mound, a title no way
befitting its foreboding atmosphere.
62. The author stands on Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound with daggers crossed
above his head, following Bernard’s vision of the Black Alchemist doing the
same here in June 1988.

Inside twenty-four hours of the mound’s discovery I had stood on its summit,
just as Bernard had seen the Black Alchemist do. I had even taken with me a pair
of daggers, which I had crossed above me as if to say, ‘come on then, we’re
ready.’ When I say ‘we’, I meant the small network of people who were now
aware of the entire Black Alchemist story, and had pledged their allegiance
whenever I might need it.

Bernard had made it quite clear that, after the events of the previous year, he no
longer wanted to pursue the nefarious activities of our adversary, not actively at
least.

Yet he knew it was futile trying to stop me investigating the subject, despite his
belief that it would only trigger more anguish for him.

So why ask now if I had returned to the mound?

‘I can see it again. There’s a group of people,’ he said. ‘I would say around eight,
although no more than a dozen. They’re standing in a circle around a central
figure.’
What were they wearing? The usual black cowled robes?
He nodded, his gaze still fixed on the southern limits of the churchyard.
Was the central figure BA?
‘Well, he’s wearing the same heavy robe I saw before—the one with the deep red
lining—so I would say “yes”, it’s him, unfortunately,’ Bernard said, a little
perturbed by the realisation.
Was this happening now, or was it something to come?
‘To come, I should think.’ He now glanced soulfully into nowhere, as I
attempted to record his words with a pocket tape recorder.
‘Whatever they’re doing,’ he continued, ‘it’s associated with fire, and burning. I
also see gargoyle-like creatures flapping around, in the air.’
It made a change from scavenger birds.
‘Not quite the same,’ he responded, still staring into nowhere. ‘A bit chaotic,
really … A collapse of a local energy matrix, bringing forth other things.’ He
emphasised those last words. ‘Black flappy things. Going round in circles. I feel
I want to kick them out of the way, get rid of them.’
When might this happen?
‘Not sure … soon,’ was all he would say.
Is it at night?
‘Night, yes. No, it’s not. It’s sunset. It’s getting dark, like now—the sun seems to
be behind the mound.’
What else could he see?
‘It’s like he’s on the mound, and I’m there. I can even see the turned up cuffs of
his robe, and the wind ruffling the thick drapery. But somehow he is here too, in
the churchyard, standing over there, between the gap in the hedgerow.’
What here? In the churchyard? The Black Alchemist?
‘Yes, but he can’t come any closer, the gateway is protected.’ Protected? By
whom?
‘I see a woman in blue, a nun, I think, who gives the name “Anne”,’ he said,
turning his gaze to the gap between the hedgerow. ‘I want to go over there, to
that gateway.’ He paused for a moment, before adding: ‘I don’t know why I
should see this, but he seems to be holding a black child.’
A real black child?
‘Either that, or it’s a doll of some kind.’
And BA’s holding this?
But Bernard did not respond. He just continued to stare, before saying: ‘I’m
going across to there. Are you coming?’
I advised caution, but he was already walking across to the gap, which he
approached slowly with his hands out in front of him, as if he was about to hit an
invisible barrier of some sort.
Finally, he came to a halt just as he reached the opening. ‘He’s right before me,’
he revealed, a little too calmly for my liking. ‘I’m going to step forward now,’
which he did, taking a single pace.
The gap in the hedgerow served as an entrance into the churchyard beyond
which was a footpath, along which a woman out walking her dog now
approached. Our actions were going to look suspicious, so all I could do was
smile as our eyes met.
As she passed, the woman gave Bernard—who was now stationary on the path,
his eyes closed and his hands out in front of him—an odd look. He seemed
totally oblivious to her presence.
I breathed a sigh of relief as she continued on, undeterred by our madness.

Some part of Bernard was now locked in mind with their adversary in a manner
that made him feel uncomfortable. This is not what he wanted any more.

He just wanted to be rid of the man, and his silly games. Yet he could not deny
his presence now, and was compelled by what was going on.

Before him was the Black Alchemist, standing on the Paradise Mound. He
seemed to be behind a protective force field, put in place by someone else—a
nun, apparently, named Anne.

The Black Alchemist, attired in a thick cowled robe, held in his arms a
motionless child as black as coal. With this powerful image came fleeting
glimpses of his world.

Bernard could see fires, at night, lots of them, burning in woods, some familiar,
others not. Many were sites he’d glimpsed before in connection with the
activities of this man. All were being used once more.

He could see people in robes, on hills, walking in slow procession. He could see
him and her, BSA, together, preparing for something that was to come.

Cowled figures in black now stood in a circle on the mound, waiting silently for
the correct moment.
At the centre of the assembled party, he stood, on the mound’s summit, his head
higher than theirs. In his arms was the child—black, yes, but not because of its
skin. It had been charred black by fire. The sight reviled Bernard, and he
attempted immediately to banish what was before him. But it was no good.
New dark images began downloading faster and faster into his brain. He had to
stop it, now, and so fought hard to repel the influx and sever the link with the
Black Alchemist.
He did what he could until finally the fires and darkness vanished, just as
everything went white.

Bernard was walking through abbey cloisters, the sun shining brightly overhead,
bathing everything in radiant white light. It was the closest sense of heaven he
had ever felt.

So was he dead? It felt like death, but something inside told him this was
something else, a state equally as real.
Before him was an extensive garden bordered by tall stone walls, within which
was a nun dressed in blue and white. She was bent over, tending rows of flowers
that shone brighter than any he had ever seen before.
Sensing Bernard’s presence, the holy woman rose slowly and turned towards
him, her hands outstretched for him to take. As they linked, he felt an
overwhelming sense of grace and beauty emanating from her very soul. She
seemed to embody all that was good in the world.
‘Peace will reign,’ she told him, in a gentle, melodic voice, as he gradually lost
consciousness.

‘Bernard, Bernard,’ I said calmly, as I attempted to pull the psychic out of his
trance-like state, achieved even though he stood upright, his hands held out
before him.

I did not touch him, for he showed no signs of obvious distress. It was the length
of time he had been like this that worried me. He had been out cold for what
seemed like an eternity.

Then, quite suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked towards me.
So where had he been? Had he linked in mind with the Black Alchemist?
Bernard remained silent for a minute or so, as he tried to regain his composure.
Then finally, as he took out and lit a cigarette, he said: ‘Yes, we linked in minds.
I saw what he saw. I saw what was to come. There were fires, lots of them in
woods, dotted about all over the place. Then I saw the same figures on the
mound, and him standing in the middle.’
What happened after that?
‘I got rid of him,’ he boasted, with a smile. ‘Then everything went white, and I
saw this nun in some kind of abbey garden.’ He thought about this for a moment,
as if searching his mind for further clues. ‘What’s at “Wilton”? Do you know of
a place called “Wilton”?’
It’s in Wiltshire, and there was a Benedictine abbey and nunnery there until the
Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century.
‘I think that’s where I was, fleetingly, in the company of this nun.’
Who was she?
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, a little confused. ‘I just got the name “Anne”, but
whether that was her name, or not, I’m not sure.’
So why was all this going on now, tonight?
‘Something’s brewing, I suppose.’

Inside The Griffin’s lounge bar, Bernard and I sat down at a table by the window,
drinks in front of us. Together, we attempted to understand what was happening
in the world of the Black Alchemist.

Following months of relative calm, there had been much speculation recently
about the whole BA affair. In recent days a number of individuals known to me
had all experienced dreams and visions suggesting the Black Alchemist was on
the move again. Bernard knew nothing of this, as he wasn’t really interested.

So what he had revealed out there in the churchyard strongly indicated these
experiences were real.
That Bernard had seen fires burning in woods and on hills made sense, for today
was 1st August, the ancient Celtic fire festival of Lugnasadh, adopted by
Christianity as the harvest feast of Lammas. Moreover, I found it intriguing that
29th July, just three days earlier, had been the feast of St Anne, usually identified
as Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Yet in Britain she is a dusky saint, a
Christianisation of an ancient goddess, whose darkest form is that of Black
Annis. It was her piercing scream that Carole Young had most likely heard above
the hurricane-force winds at the height of the Great Storm.
More important, or should I say disconcerting, was Bernard’s vision of the Black
Alchemist holding what appeared to be a black baby on Eastbourne’s Paradise
Mound. What the hell was all that about?
‘It could be just a doll,’ he was quick to point out, just as a waitress placed down
plates of food before a mature couple sitting behind us. She returned to give
them cutlery and condiments. The pub had changed a lot since we first started
coming here in 1984. It was now primarily a food orientated establishment, with
one half of the building being used solely as a dining area, and the other a bar
where meals were served all day.
‘All I know is that it was purposely charred with fire, possibly even on the
mound itself in some kind of ritual. It’s as if he’s preparing it for something.’
Preparing it for something.
Suddenly, my heart started racing as I recalled the chilling message Bernard had
received almost exactly nine months earlier concerning the conception of some
kind of unholy child, gestating in the ‘womb’ of the foul virgin Paphotia, aka
Maria the Jewess. I tried to remember the words of the corrupt priest Comarius:

The new child will come, and blackness will rise up and encircle it. Darkness
will be his triumph and his dominion.

As bizarre and macabre as all this seemed, the Black Alchemist somehow saw
this unborn child as gestating in the ground, somewhere beneath the charred
earth out by the upturned tree stump in Danbury churchyard.

The stump itself had now been removed and the ground levelled for grass to
grow. For a while, a shoot from the same horse chestnut tree had grown on the
spot, but this was quickly destroyed. Cut, most probably, by the blades of a
motor mower.

I thought carefully for a moment, using a notepad to make some quick

calculations.
Oh my God, this was not good.

‘What’s that?’ Bernard asked, genuinely intrigued by my reaction.

The human gestation period is approximately 280 days, meaning that if the
Black Alchemist’s unholy child was thought to have been ‘conceived’ around 5th
November 1987, i.e. when BA struck Danbury churchyard in the wake of the
Great Storm, its assumed ‘birth’ could be expected sometime around 8th August.
‘That’s just a few days away,’ Bernard pointed out.
Exactly!
Something was definitely on. Everything pointed towards a culmination date of
Monday, 8th August, which in numerical terms could be written 8.8.8, the eight-
fold symbolism resonating still further in the fact it was the 88th year of the
century.
Everyone knows about the mystical significance of 666, the number of the beast
of Revelation. The number 888 possesses a similar potency, signifying, in
alchemy at least, the number of completion of the great work. More significantly,
according to the numerological system of a second-century Gnostic named
Markos the name of Christ has a value of 888.
I realised something else as well. Traditionally, the period of time between the
Immaculate Conception of the Virgin and the birth of Christ is said to have been
276 days, which I quickly worked out was the exact number of days between 5th
November last year and 7th August this year. Perhaps the Black Alchemist was
inverting the whole concept of the Virgin Birth in order to make this the same
amount of time between the conception and birth of an antichrist.
If correct, then Danbury’s ‘womb’, i.e. the hollow beneath the upturned tree, was
seen to have been ‘impregnated’ when the heart and dagger were left there on 5th
November, around the time of the full moon that evening. It therefore implied
that the unholy ‘birth’ would take sometime after sunset on 7th August, the point
of commencement of 8th August (in occult terms a day starts at sun down and not
at midnight).
Bernard listened to all this with some concern on his face. ‘All I feel,’ he began,
‘is that when all this takes place, it will involve a number of different groups,
many not even known to each other. Some not even in this country.
‘There will be fires lit in woods and elsewhere, and the combined energy of all
these activities will be channelled towards one place.’
What place?
‘On the Sussex Downs, somewhere,’ was all he could say. ‘Where exactly, I
don’t know.’
Was it the mound?
‘Could be,’ he replied, ‘we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’
Perhaps he might give it some thought on a psychic level.
He grinned: ‘We’ll see. As I’ve told you, I want to stay away from anything
psychic to do with matey. I don’t need the hassle. If I put out that I don’t want
anything more to do with him, then he’ll leave me alone. It’s that simple.’
I understood his sentiment, but really needed his help on this one. Otherwise we
were not going to know what was going on out there, and this could prove
disastrous for all of us.
‘As I said, we’ll see.’
44 Child of Fire
Thursday, 4th August. Sitting at the table in the dining room, Bernard pulled
across a notepad and pen. Andy had asked him to see what more he could pick
up concerning the intended activities of the Black Alchemist. He had been
putting it off, fearing the possible consequences. Yet it seemed important. So he
would open up his mind. Try and see what was going on out there.

Easily, Bernard found himself looking at the now familiar sight of Eastbourne’s
Paradise Mound, a site apparently favoured by their adversary. Although it was
on open land, behind it lay dense woodland, where he felt chaotic ritual activity
had taken place in the past.

Scanning the site Bernard could not sense anyone’s presence, nefarious or
otherwise, which was a relief, he decided. Comforted by this thought, he
continued to sweep the area psychically to see if he could pick up any residual
energies left behind by earlier ritualistic activity at the site.

As he attempted this, Bernard’s thoughts were pulled towards another location—

one not far away. A silhouetted figure came into view standing within a clearing
inside a dense wood.

Although a floppy cowl hid the face, he sensed it was a woman, working alone.
In front of her was a crater-like pit some three to four paces across. Into this she
offered a ritual libation in the form of a thick golden liquid, poured from a small
metal bowl.

It took very little time for Bernard to realise this was BSA, the Black
Alchemist’s female accomplice. Like him, she seemed to be working towards
some kind of culmination of everything they had been attempting to achieve
over the past year or so.

Further images now flashed through his mind. He saw a long spear or lance
suspended in midair, its tip point downwards. It seemed to be revolving slowly,
enabling him to see it was made of metal and attached to a wooden shaft.

‘Enhance birth,’ were the first clear words he heard. They came not from her,
but from a stern male voice, that seemed familiar indeed. It was him, he was sure
of it.

Accompanying this image was the distinct impression of ‘white fire’, and a
sense of it being connected with alchemy once more. More ominously he felt
this was the same ‘white fire’ that had scorched the ‘black child’ seen earlier in
the hands of the Black Alchemist.

He continued to see her silhouetted form in the darkened clearing before the
peculiar imagery started to fade. In its place came further words from the same
male voice, although none could be made out clearly as everything began to
recede into nothing, prompting him to open his eyes.

Where was this sunken pit where BSA had made her ritual libation?
The woods in question exuded an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and
desolation. He sensed they had suffered badly during the previous year’s
hurricane.
The link made him recall the supernatural she-wolf Lykaina, the form of Hekate
experienced by so many individuals on the night of the Great Storm. There was a
link somehow with what he could see taking place in the clearing. He felt sure of
it.
Bernard sensed she was up to no good. The thought concerned him, and he knew
he would have to speak with Andy about this as soon as possible.

Friday, 5th August. ‘I saw a woman in black about to pour a bowl of golden
liquid into a purposely dug pit in a secluded clearing,’ Bernard revealed over the
telephone as I listened intently.

‘I think it’s her again—she’s on the move.’

So much did I want to write down Bernard’s words that on turning around to
grab pen and paper, I tripped over the phone wire, which was torn from the wall
socket, causing both me and the heavy phone to crash to the ground!

After failing to repair the damage, I gave up, left the house and found a phone
box from which to call Bernard back.
After explaining what had just happened, he laughed with me before repeating
his account of the remote viewing exercise the previous night.
What I found interesting was that Richard Davey, a young guy who worked with
Caroline Wise at the offices of Psychic News, had experienced a very similar
dream just a few days earlier.
Overnight on Wednesday, 27th July, he had dreamt of a woman in a black cowled
robe pouring a golden liquid into a sunken pit located in a woodland clearing.
The only difference between the two accounts was that in Bernard’s case she had
poured the liquid from a metal bowl, while Richard felt sure it was a tall jug.
The same night Richard Davey experienced his strange dream, Toyne Newton—
the author of a book on the mysteries of Clapham Wood entitled The Demonic
Connection (Blandford Press, 1987)—had experienced a very disturbing
nightmare. He was in a long corridor being approached by a tall, cowled figure
with a long black baton raised above his head. It was brought down towards
Toyne’s head, and when just inches away from his scalp the spectral figure had
simply vanished.
The dream sequence had repeated twice more, with the baton coming closer to
Toyne’s scalp each time. Eventually he awoke in a hot sweat, convinced the
black-robed figure was the Black Alchemist, the first time he had ever dreamt of
the man.
Others around me in recent days had also experienced a plethora of dreams and
visions, which they believed were linked to the Black Alchemist in some
manner. One girl known to me had seen a tumulus in front of a wood. On its
summit had stood a group of black-robed figures. A mysterious fire burned
fiercely behind them. She sensed the scene was connected in some way with the
Black Alchemist.
In themselves such dreams and visions were meaningless, since knowledge of
the Black Alchemist affair was now widely known.
Yet what struck me as particularly curious was the sheer number of experiences
that had occurred over the past week or so. It was almost as if psychically aware
individuals across the country were being alerted to something major afoot at
this time.
‘I know. Strange isn’t it?’ Bernard mused, after listening patiently to what I had
to say. ‘And they can’t all be wrong, can they?’
Everything suggested Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound was going to be the venue
for a major magical ritual overnight on the 7th to 8th August. Its purpose was
quite probably the prophesised birth of the Black Alchemist’s unholy child, a
form of antichrist, ‘conceived’ in Danbury churchyard in the aftermath of the
Great Storm, and gestated in the ‘womb’ of Paphotia, Winder of Snakes, aka
Maria the Jewess. Most worrying of all was the manner in which this ‘child of
fire’ was being brought into being, for it chillingly echoed statements made in an
obscure treatise entitled the Chaldean Oracles, written in the second century
AD.
This prophetic text, attributed to a student of the NeoPlatonist school existing at
this time, expressed the magical potency of oracular communication with
‘daimons’ and spirits of Chaldean origin—Chaldea being the ancient name for
Upper Mesopotamia, a region synonymous today with southeast Turkey.
Hekate features heavily in the extant fragments of the Chaldean Oracles. One
section spells out the visions the magician (here called a ‘theurgist’, a ‘worker of
the divine’) might expect from conducting rites in honour of the Mistress of the
Underworld, specifically when the ‘House of the Sun’ was in the astrological
sign of Leo, i.e. between 23rd July and 22nd August, the precise zodiacal month
we were in at that time.
The treatise spoke of ‘a Fire like unto a child’, as well as a ‘Formless Fire, from
which a Voice rushes forth’. It refers also to the coming of a ‘child of fire’,30
then continues: ‘But when you see the formless and very holy Fire radiantly
leaping up throughout the depths of the whole world Hear the Voice of Fire.’31
Was it possible the Black Alchemist and his associates were using the Chaldean
Oracles to bring forth their own ‘child of fire’ within the ‘life-generating
womb’32 of Hekate, in her guise as the barren crone?
Was this why some kind of supernatural portal, or wormhole, had been opened
up between Danbury churchyard and Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound, where the
final release of this unnatural ‘child’ was to take place?
‘I’m not sure,’ Bernard admitted, uncertain of the intricacies of magic. ‘But it’s
possible, isn’t it?’
How all this was going to go down on the night I had no idea. Although if we
went to Eastbourne en masse, there was every chance we would catch them in
the act, so to speak.
For me this was an incredible prospect. So I had sounded out a few friends and
everyone seemed well up for it.
Now we had Richard Davey and Bernard’s new psychic clues concerning BSA’s
use of a sunken pit in some woods for a ritual libation of some kind.
Although there seemed no clear indication of what the woman was up to here,
her actions strangely echoed an ancient Greek rite to gain the favour of Hekate
found in the Argonautica. Written in the third-century BC by poet, scholar and
Alexandrian librarian Apollonius Rhodius, it records Jason and the Argonauts’
quest for the Golden Fleece.
The Argonautica recounts how Jason’s son Aeson consults Medea, ‘a maiden
that uses sorcery under the guidance of Hekate’. She instructs Jason to enlist the
aid of Hekate in the following manner: Aeson must first wash in a river before
going alone at night ‘clad in a dusky raiment’ and, digging a round pit ‘over the
graves of the dead,’ build there a fire.
After this Jason has to offer up a sheep to propitiate ‘onlybegotten Hekate’, at
the same time leaving for her, by way of a libation, ‘the hive-stored labour of
bees’.33
In other words honey.
BSA appeared to be calling on the powers of Hekate in the manner described in
the Argonautica. Most likely she fancied herself as some kind of modern-day
Medea, in other words a powerful priestess of Hekate.
Even if this was correct, why had her ritual actions so strongly penetrated the
minds of at least two psychics in the past few days?
Maybe there was a clue in the fact that Toyne Newton had experienced his own
Black Alchemist-related nightmare the same night Richard Davey dreamt about
BSA’s libation ceremony in the woodland clearing.
Perhaps both Richard and Bernard had psychically found themselves in Clapham
Wood, which Toyne Newton and his colleague Charles Walker believed had for
some years been the scene of some nefarious occult activities. Almost certainly
this extensive woodland in West Sussex, which Bernard felt exuded a bad
feeling, was BSA’s chosen stomping ground, especially since it was so close to
Arundel and its castle.
Local tradition spoke of a sunken pit deep within Clapham Wood that was the
burial site of Clapham’s plague victims, who had succumbed to the Black Death
of 1348. Such a location would be ideal for invoking Hekate, who according to
Apollonius Rhodius should be raised in a purposely-dug pit, and propitiated
‘over the graves of the dead’.
Much of this made sense of what people were picking up, although there was no
clear indication that either the Black Alchemist or his female accomplice
intended conducting a major ritual in Clapham Wood on either 7th or 8th August.
Everything pointed to Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound as being the primary venue
for the bringing forth of the unholy child, and unless anything indicated
otherwise we needed to concentrate our efforts there.
Beyond this, Bernard’s imagery of the previous night was difficult to interpret.
The lance suspended in midair was perhaps a reference to the Spear of Longinus,
which in Christian tradition was used by a Roman soldier of this name to pierce
Christ’s side as he hung on the Cross. The Holy Lance reappears in the medieval
Grail romances, often being carried in procession within the Castle of the Grail,
recalling the fact that the Welsh Grail hero Peredur derives his name from a
word meaning ‘steelspear’.
Were we back to the stone fixing marker found at Lullington, near Eastbourne, in
1985, which clearly bore the likeness of a spearhead?
Had the Black Alchemist been attempting to manifest this unholy child as far
back as then? It was certainly possible, given his apparent fixation with wombs
and birth.
The statement ‘enhance birth’, which Bernard had heard coming from a stern
male voice was another reference to the intended ‘birth’ of the ‘child of fire’.
How exactly all this was to happen in the real world was still open to question,
although the date seemed clear.
It had to be after sunset on Sunday, 7th August, the start in occult terms of the
all-important 8.8.8 date. This might prove our best chance ever to both confront
our long-term adversary and put a spanner in the works of his somewhat
macabre activities.
Aside from whatever the Black Alchemist might have up his sleeve, occultists,
pagans and witches across Britain were, I knew, preparing to capitalise on the
numerological significance of 8.8.8.
In one case, a group of around 20 individuals were to gather in the ruins of
Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, the site of the beheading of Mary
Queen of Scots in 1587.
Here they were to conduct a long, drawn-out ritual to enable Mary Queen of
Scots’ soul to incarnate as the Duke and Duchess of York’s first child, due on 8th
August (Princess Beatrice was subsequently born at 8.18 pm on that day). In
addition to this, since eight is a lucky number among the peoples of the Far East,
expectant mothers were queuing up in hospitals asking whether the birth of their
child could be induced on this auspicious date, even if it meant Caesarean
section.
It was certainly going to be a strange day, whatever way you looked at it.
45 A New Human Creature
Saturday, 6th August. For the second time in two days, Bernard used his dining
room for a remote viewing exercise. His wife and daughter having retired to bed
enabled him to focus on the sunken pit in the woodland clearing, where BSA had
conducted her ritual libation.

Andy wanted him to try and pin down the exact location, and, as there had been
no adverse reaction following his earlier attunement, he would try again, see
what came. He needed answers himself, and this was the only way.

But no matter how much he tried, Bernard could not see the pit. Instead he saw
only silhouetted trees picked out from a background of dense woodland.

Standing in the darkness was a lone figure whom Bernard recognised as the
Black Alchemist. He stood motionless, still wearing the heavily-draped cowled
robe with the crimson-red lining. Yet this time he held neither crossed daggers or
a firecharred baby. Their adversary seemed merely to be in deep contemplation,
as if waiting for something.

The image was soon replaced by the single vision of an unblemished, razor sharp
lance, hanging vertically in the air, its long metal blade point downwards. It was
the same ritual weapon glimpsed two nights earlier, although this time the vision
was much stronger.

Then came stern words proclaiming: ‘ I, by my power, turning air into water, and
water again into blood … ’
It was the Black Alchemist. Making some sort of statement.
‘ … and solidifying it into flesh to form a new human creature—a boy—and
produce a much nobler work than God— the so-named creator. For he made
man from the earth, but I from the air, a much more difficult matter.’
After this there was only silence.
For a moment, Bernard broke free of the vision, disturbed by what he was
hearing.
Lighting a cigarette, he realised something significant. These were the same
words he had heard when he first saw the holy lance hanging vertically in the air.
They had come from their adversary then. Yet still there was no sense of what he
was really up to, or how he intended manifesting this ‘new human creature’, this
‘boy’.
He gave it a while before attuning again.
With his eyes closed, Bernard allowed his mind to wander. An image glimpsed
was held and then enhanced. It was a marshy environment close to woodland
where a wizened old man now stood. He was a hunchback, with long straggly
hair and wiry beard, wearing a garment of tattered grey sackcloth. Leaning on a
walking stick, he looked straight at Bernard, clearly aware of this intrusion into
his world.
Instantly, Bernard felt the old man, who did not offer a name, was some kind of
site guardian associated with Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound. He came from a
time when the round barrow was revered as a place of the ancestors.
‘The ritual has to be done with a fire,’ the grey guardian exclaimed, his face
showing immense seriousness and concern.
He was referring to the birth of the child, Bernard was sure of it.
As if in response to this thought, the old man lowered his head, which he then
shook slowly in a gesture of disbelief. ‘It will not come to fruition,’ he said next.
‘It was thought to be the only way to bring forth a daimon to oppose the good
and change the world.’
They were his parting words. Thereafter the elderly guardian faded slowly, his
message delivered.
Bernard assumed the communication over. But he was wrong.
Into the psychic’s mind now came the distinct impression that whatever was
about to take place at the Paradise Mound was linked in some way with France.
There was a French occult group connected with the activities of the Black
Alchemist, although this was all he could pick up.
‘The wanderers are on the move,’ a melodic female voice then suddenly cut in.
‘The wolves cry to the night. Dark forces tear at the threads.’
The ‘threads’ was an ancient Anglo-Saxon term used to describe the fibre-like
connections making up the concept of wyrd (from which we get the English
word ‘weird’). This was the subtle energy matrix thought to permeate all
existence. It bound
A New Human Creature

together everything in a web of sublime destiny, woven by the three sisters of

wyrd, known as the Norns, whose most familiar form is that of the three witches
in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Who the voice had belonged to he could not be sure. No more came that night.
Yet left in Bernard’s mind was the fact that in order to create the symbolic birth
of his unholy child, the Black Alchemist would have to take control of the
energies associated with the Paradise Mound. These, Bernard felt, were being
seen in terms of ‘white fire’, and the collective power of spectral wolves.
Something told him also that whatever was to occur in the next few days would
be the climax of everything their adversary had been working towards since their
paths had first crossed in Lullington churchyard as far back as 1985.
On top of this, Bernard was concerned for Andy’s safety. He and his friends
were going to Eastbourne looking for a confrontation with the Black Alchemist.
He understood his friend’s often blind enthusiasm in trying to explore psychic
material to its ultimate end. Yet Bernard felt that whatever was going on in
Sussex was serious business for BA and his associates, who would not take too
kindly to interference of this sort. All he could do was ring Andy and advise him
to tread carefully. Otherwise someone was going to get hurt.
63. Picture postcard of Eastbourne’s Golf Links and Paradise.
46 Paradise Drive
Sunday, 7th August. I crouched behind a clump of bushes, peering through a
gap in the foliage towards Paradise Mound, which lay some 30 paces uphill. It
was a beautiful summer’s evening, and so far everything had gone without
incident.

The time was nine o’clock and with the sun now out of view behind the woods
lying beyond the tumulus, we prepared for the vigil ahead.

With me in the undergrowth was Mike Oliver, a well-built character from

Southend, who enjoyed the high life as much as he did the mysteries of life, and
Paul Weston, a tall, lean figure who was a walking encyclopaedia of mystical
knowledge. Both were clued up on the Black Alchemist affair, and formed part
of my questing group.

Joining us that evening was earth mysteries and paranormal researcher Johnny
Merron, although he had just gone off to collect Caroline Wise and friends, who
would be arriving shortly by train at Eastbourne station.

Bernard’s final psychic session of the previous night had convinced me still
further that we were at the right location. Toyne Newton and Charles Walker had
promised to keep a careful eye on Clapham Wood that night, just in case
anything went down there. Around the country other people were also on alert,
promising to light a candle and focus on the mound as the midnight hour
approached.

I understood why Bernard advised extreme caution. My often gung-ho attitude to

life could and sometimes did get me into trouble. Yet I had made sure we were
protected on both a physical and psychic level. So all we could do now was wait
and see what might happen.

The Paradise Mound was actually a superb place to conduct an occult ritual,
since it is virtually inaccessible to all but the most determined of hikers. Anyone
wishing to visit it had first to abandon their vehicles at the end of the disused
Paradise Drive, and then make a 45-minute trek across the South Downs, a route
very few people would want to take. What made things worse was the fact that
the tracks leading to the mound were all blocked by fallen trees, torn down by
the previous year’s hurricane.

Even if anyone did manage to reach the woods, the chances of them finding the
mound were remote. In fact, I doubted very much whether anyone in Eastbourne
was even aware of its existence, making it an ideal site for ritual activity out of
the way of prying eyes.

Earlier, we had discovered a fire pit surrounded by stones some ten paces behind
the mound. Although this meant nothing in itself, it did make me recall
Bernard’s words about the black doll or baby being charred with fire. Had that
happened here?

‘When are the others arriving?’ Paul asked, seated comfortably behind a clump
of bushes, next to Mike who was cracking open a can of lager. ‘If they don’t get
here soon, they’ll be climbing the hill in the dark.’

‘I suspect they will be arriving shortly,’ was all I could say in response.

The conversation died for a few minutes as the three figures merged with the
environment as best they could. No one expected too much to happen until after
dark.

‘Hold on,’ Paul whispered now, as he rose slowly to his feet and faced the
mound. ‘Who’s that, over there?’ His stare directed our eyes.

All acknowledged the presence of a figure, a man, coming into view from a
minor path some yards to the south of the mound. He seemed to be about five
feet two to five feet three in height, around 50 years of age, of medium build
with swept back, receding grey hair. He wore a grey patterned sleeveless jumper,
a blue shirt and beige slacks.

We all watched as he walked briskly along the track, looking completely out of
place. His fast pace made it seem like he had a train to catch.

As he passed our position, not twenty paces away, he glanced from left to right,
as if searching for someone, or something, before carrying on in a northerly
direction.

I needed to know more, so left our hideaway with Paul and Mike following close
behind. The man was now some 100 yards away, still keeping up his rapid pace.
And then he turned, and saw us.
This was not good.

‘Oh well, if he’s some kind of scout making sure the coast is clear, then we’ve
blown it,’ Mike stated, summing up the feelings of all three of us.

As we watched the lone figure disappearing away, we then saw him do

something odd. Instead of continuing along the footpath, he made a 90-degree
turn and entered the woodland some 200 yards from where we stood like
lemons. This could only mean he was retracing his steps through the woods to
rejoin the track, taking him back towards where our car was parked.

This struck me as more than curious. I realised immediately there was now a
good chance we had messed up real badly. We should have been more covert,
and not given ourselves away at the first opportunity. Although the man did not
resemble Bernard’s description of BA—who was tall, slim, long faced and in his
mid forties—the way the man dressed matched the alchemist’s donnish style of
dress.

I hoped dearly that something would still happen, otherwise the whole journey,
along with the many days of preparation, would all have been in vain.

As the minutes ticked by, I told myself that our purpose here was not necessarily
to interfere with the activities of the Black Alchemist, but merely to confirm the
words of a psychic. This said, there was no question our presence at the mound
was going to affect the outcome of whatever was going on that night.

Even though Bernard had declined to join us, simply because he saw no good
reason to do so, he would be at the end of a telephone. In a first for psychic
questing I had brought along a brick-sized cellular ‘Vodaphone’, which could be
used outdoors.

Such an incredible breakthrough in communications technology was going to

revolutionise the way we approached quests in the future, with the lead psychic
not even needing to be on site any more.

For the first time that evening the phone rang out. Answering it I heard
Bernard’s voice on the other end of the line.
I asked him what he could see so far.
‘Woodland and two cars parked at the entrance,’ he revealed via the remarkably
good line, ‘one yours and another I’m not familiar with.’
This was a little odd. Although there had been two cars present earlier, Johnny
Merron had gone off to pick up Caroline and friends. Only my car remained
parked at the end of Paradise Drive. Either Bernard was picking up on Johnny’s
return, or he was seeing somebody’s else’s vehicle.
‘There’s something else as well,’ he continued, a note of seriousness in his voice.
‘I sense an encroachment. A man, a scout perhaps, entering the area, making
sure the coast is clear.’
I sighed with frustration. Yes, we had almost certainly encountered him already.
Indeed, it was becoming increasingly obvious that we had blown it, and so were
unlikely to see any action tonight.
‘Oh, and watch out for a dog, or hound, bounding about,’ he added.
What sort of dog?
‘Not sure. Something, around, somewhere. Just keep an eye out. I don’t think it’s
over yet.’

I still held the heavy phone to my ear as Johnny Merron turned up with Caroline
and Richard Davey, the young psychic from London. Accompanying them was
Dave Rankine, one of London’s leading occultists, and his girlfriend Helen.

Unbeknown to me, Dave had recently conducted various magical workings

involving the goddess Hekate. Over the past few days he had received a series of
pertinent communications from the Mistress of the Underworld, which he had
felt compelled to inform Caroline about. Convinced they related in some way to
our predicament, she felt Dave and Helen should join us on the mound.

It was a good call. Dave’s skills in handling the power of Hekate might come in
useful should the Dark Goddess herself deem to put in an appearance.

So in total there were eight of us. Everyone came from different backgrounds in
the magical community, and all were now aware of the Black Alchemist’s
intentions to manifest his unholy child in this world of ours.

As twilight gave way to darkness, the Paradise Mound took on a whole different
persona. Earlier it had looked like some kind of earthen stage ready to be filled
by cowled occultists. Now the Bronze Age round barrow offered us some kind
of much needed protection, like a 4,000-year-old magic circle ready for use.

We waited expectantly, wondering what might happen next.

After several minutes, Dave Rankine broke the silence: ‘The atmosphere’s
shifting,’ he announced, staring out into the jagged tree line, which appeared
closer now than it did in daylight. ‘I sense something untoward in the trees, very
slowly moving in our direction.’

What was it?

‘Not sure, but I don’t think it’s a physical presence,’ he said. ‘I get the feeling
there’s more than one as well.’
‘I sense it too,’ Richard Davey confirmed, nodding in exactly the same direction.
It was clear he was now a little nervous and apprehensive, never having done
this sort of thing before.
I sighed in anticipation of what might now be going on, and hoped Bernard
would call.
‘There’s certainly something beyond the temperature dropping,’ Caroline
confirmed, standing on the edge of the mound. ‘The atmosphere’s changing very
quickly indeed.’
Paul, Mike, Johnny and Dave’s girlfriend Helen listened to these words in
hushed silence, as everyone started to group together on the summit of the
mound.
It was time to take action. Bringing out the Indian swordstick, which I had felt
compelled to bring, I stabbed it into the ground, without removing the sword
blade, and imagined serpent-like spirals of golden light piercing through the top
soil into the heart of the mound, before spreading outwards like the spokes of a
wheel.
At the same time Dave got everybody else to link hands around me as he took us
through a powerful protection ritual. Its intention was dual—to clear the sacred
space of unwanted spirit influences and set up a firewall of electric-blue light as
an impenetrable psychic barrier.

Bernard sat in the stillness of his dining room, with only a candle and a cup of
coffee to accompany him on his astral journey. Earlier his mind’s eye had got a
fix on the Paradise Mound and this he had used to search the surrounding hills
and woods for feverish activity.

He had sensed the incursion of a lone figure, entering the area on foot, having
alighted from a car that stopped only briefly. He was scouting the territory, his
territory, in preparation for the night ahead.
Pity Andy had given their position away, as this, he felt, had now caused a
serious dilemma, which would need to be resolved in time for what was to come.

A fresh sweep of the area using his mind’s eye now revealed fresh incursions
coming from deep within the woods. Not human this time, but spectral forms,
canine most probably, interested in the energy signatures moving about on the
mound. In themselves, these shadowy creatures were not motivated by any
human agency, since they were indigenous to the terrain.

His concern, however, was whether these predatory forms could now be
manipulated to do the bidding of others. If this was the case, then Andy and his
friends could expect major problems on a psychic level.

It concerned him, but for the moment he would say nothing. Just let them do
whatever they had to do in order to keep the intruders at bay. If the mood
changed he would ring Andy and advise him accordingly.

Each person repeated the words of power offered by Dave Rankine, visualising
the ring of electric blue light now surrounding the tumulus.

Beyond this was a realm of darkness inhabited by supernatural forces

encroaching ever nearer.
Provided no one broke the linked chain of hands, nothing would be able to enter
the circle. This said, entities of pure energy can be just as devious as any human
being. Of this I was sure.
Richard Davey was the first to flinch, causing an unnerving moment among the
group. ‘There’s something out there, coming through the trees,’ he revealed. ‘It
seems to be circling around, waiting for something.’
All wanted to know what it was he could see out there in the darkness.
‘It’s an animal,’ he said, flinching again.
‘It’s a wolf, Johnny Merron suddenly announced. ‘I can see it.’
‘I see it as white with glowing red eyes,’ Richard added in a clearly agitated
state. ‘Its eyes are like glowing embers and it’s staring straight at me.’
I emphasised that everyone should hold their places whatever happened, even if
this supernatural creature attempted to break the circle. If they stayed exactly
where they were all would be okay.
To those who could see it, the canine beast padded around the mound as if intent
on finding a weak link in the chain.
Perhaps it was some kind of thought form created and set up by a visiting
shaman or priest magician of the past in order to protect the mound. My mind
went back to the wizened old man whom Bernard felt guarded the site. Perhaps
this wolf-like form was under his control.
‘Yes, I see it too,’ Dave confirmed.
‘I’m sensing more wolves, encroaching now,’ Caroline broke in, ‘they’re moving
along the paths, towards us.’
‘I don’t see anything,’ Paul revealed, ‘but I have a weird sense of a presence
beyond the mound, which I have to put down to what other people are feeling on
this one.’

The wanderers are on the move.

The wolves cry to the night.
Dark forces tear at the threads.

They were the words Bernard had heard the previous night. Spoken by a melodic
female voice, following his contact with the mound’s ancient guardian.
Certainly, this was now coming true, with ‘the wanderers’ being the wolves
themselves.

‘It’s moving around the circle,’ Richard now confirmed, ‘moving closer each
time. It’s almost at the base of the mound now.’ The manner in which he gripped
the hands of those on either side of him showed how seriously he felt about the
situation. Indeed, he was close to panic.

Once again, I told everyone to just keep calm, stay still, and the danger would
pass.
‘Quickly, do something,’ Richard exclaimed, ‘it’s right there, in front of us, now.
‘I’ll banish it in the name of Hekate,’ Dave responded, sensibly, from the
opposite side of the circle.
As we knew only too well, hounds and wolves were animals sacred to the
Mistress of the Night, so could be banished in the name of Hekate.
Dave started chanting just as the spectral white wolf sprang at the circle and, just
inches away from Richard, vanished mid flight.
‘It’s gone,’ Richard confirmed, with a huge sigh of relief. ‘That scared the living
daylights out of me. I really thought it was going to break the circle and get us.’
Yet the destruction of the lupine thought form was a hollow victory. Coming into
sight now were other much darker spectres in the shape of snarling wolves,
flitting about like shadows seen out the corners of our eyes.
One phantom beast bounded towards the mound. It hit our wall of blue light
before evaporating into darkness.
Another attempted the same trick, disintegrating as its eyes met ours.
This was not getting any easier. Never before had I experienced anything quite
so vicious as what was happening now. These were not simply thought forms
without motivation or purpose. They were powerful supernatural forces being
controlled by accomplished occultists, and I knew exactly who was behind this
attack—it was the Black Alchemist, utilising these powerful energy forms in
their role as minions of Hekate. His aim was to break our confidence and force
us to move on in order to occupy the site—his site—to bring forth the unholy
child.
However, we weren’t going anywhere. We would see this through to the finish.
As the psychic prowlers kept up their unremitting attack on the circle, I kept
hold of the Indian swordstick, pushing out psychic energy into the surrounding
landscape like a wheel of fire. This was my statement of conviction, sending out
a subtle message that no matter what was thrown at us we would stand firm and
win the day.
‘I see more wolves emerging from the darkness. They’re within the trees beyond
the paths,’ Caroline revealed, from out of the darkness. ‘It feels like some part of
me is trying to get away from this mound, but I know I can’t leave, whether I
want to or not.’
Still the psychic onslaught did not abate, as the assembled group attempted to
hold it together on the ancient mound.
Then doubts started to creep into my mind. Was it all just our imagination—the
visions of the wolves triggered simply by statements made earlier that day?
What if we were actually alone on the mound, with nothing supernatural out
there at all? I needed a Marlboro and a drink, so perhaps I should loosen up and
hope that others would do the same. We could take a breather and try again later.
Yes, this is what I would do. Suggest a break.
I thought about it for a moment.
Wait! What was I thinking? I realised only then that my mind was weakening.
Was I being influenced by external thoughts, aimed at making me want to
abandon the site?
Who was doing this? I imagined the Black Alchemist out there somewhere, on
some wooded path, his attentions focused on me personally. All I wanted to do
was confront him, unmask him, name him. This was my purpose here.
Then as my vision faded I became aware once more of the mound, and psychic
prowlers throwing themselves at the ring of entranced individuals. We had to
keep this up, otherwise we would lose, whatever that might entail.
For what seemed like an hour we stood our ground. Gradually, the spectral
attacks became less and less, until finally they were no more. An uneasy calm
replaced the earlier feelings of fear and agitation among the group. Suddenly, we
were interrupted by the unfamiliar sound of an outdoor telephone.
‘It’s me,’ the voice said on the other end of the line. It was Bernard, reporting in.
‘Been buggering around with the swordstick?’
We had. Why, what could he see?
‘A fiery wheel of light, around the mound. Figures in a circle. And
encroachments.’
There had been plenty of these—Bernard having witnessed the whole thing on a
psychic level. What else could he see?

In a low-lit dining room in Essex, Bernard closed his eyes and attempted to
focus again on the mound. Almost instantly he sensed a flurry of movement,
accompanied by heated words and feverish activity. It was if Andy and
company’s continued presence on the mound was causing consternation among
certain individuals, who felt it was their place to be there that night, and not his.

Having used occult forces in an attempt to make them leave the site, there were
now feelings of anger and frustration, as if it was no longer possible to
accomplish the birth of the unholy child at the predetermined place and time, in
other words 8th August, 1988, a date embodying the all-important magical
number 888.

The Black Alchemist had not anticipated this situation. Bernard was sure of it.
Andy and his friends were holding firm, neither weakening nor changing their
plan of action.

In fact, Bernard was now sure his earlier visions of BSA conducting some kind
of ritual libation in a pit within a wooded clearing had been a red herring, a
deception. The whole thing had been sent out psychically in order to mislead
them into believing that something big was going on in Clapham Wood in the
hope this would be enough to send them off on a wild goose chase that would
have come to nothing. It was a clever trick, but it had not worked.

Andy had been astute enough to realise that the real site was the Paradise
Mound, close to where they had first encountered the man’s disturbing activities
in Lullington churchyard back in 1985. This was his true centre of power, not
Clapham Wood in West Sussex. That was her domain, not his.
Their adversary needed to use the Paradise Mound to complete his landscape
alchemy in order to bring forth a supernatural entity of unimaginable power. Yet
Bernard now realised this child could never have been granted incarnation on the
physical plane. Instead it would have existed in some astral dimension, ever
ready to intercede in this world when the time was right.

With these thoughts came fresh imagery and impressions.

He could see down into a large room. A small meeting hall perhaps, either out on
its own or attached to a country house.
Present was a woman dressed in a long black cape, its hood resting on her
shoulders. She was reading from a rolled parchment in between bouts of
chanting what he now knew to be goetic barbarous names.
Sitting on dark wooden benches, facing towards her, were around six to eight
people dressed in normal attire. They were droning in accompaniment to her
words and chants. Curiously, the bizarre service was being accompanied by eerie
organ music, played on a large tape recorder.
There seemed little question the woman was her—BSA—yet this time she wore
no hood to conceal her identity. Bernard saw her shoulder-length dark hair, her
long, chiselled face and piercing brown eyes. She seemed intent on what she was
doing, but was now vulnerable, her guard down. He could see her for the first
time as a woman, and not just as some misguided sorceress who until now had
cloaked her every move.
Bernard then became aware of what was going on. The hall was not far away
from the mound. Magical means were being employed by BSA and her cronies
to try and get Andy and his friends to leave the tumulus, which was essential to
them for some reason. Yet Andy and his group’s almost foolhardy actions were
forcing their adversaries to adopt more and more desperate measures as
everything was slowly slipping away, out of their grasp forever.
The ritual was off! That was the feeling now coming from the sheer sense of
desperation emanating from the individuals seated inside the small hall. It could
no longer take place. Andy and his friends had won the day! Other events were
going on all over the country, and even much further away in France, but
because the place of birth had been compromised, everything else would quite
simply fall apart.
Yet there was no time for celebration, for at some time in the future their
adversaries would once again attempt to bring forth the unholy child to rule the
unseen world. But when this happened, he would know what to do. He would
make sure of it.
The intense meditation ended on Paradise Mound as tiredness overtook the
group of weary individuals. One by one they withdrew to the comfort offered by
some level ground screened from the tumulus by a thick clump of brambles, and
very gradually sleep overcame them.

Yet even in their deepest slumber more than one member of the party became
aware that the night was taking shape and moving as a column of dense smoke
towards their position.

Slowly, the ethereal mass came together to form the distinctive shape of a tall,
cowled figure, advancing at a steady pace. Its archetypal appearance needed no
identification.

Thoughts of the Black Alchemist had enabled this bilious mass to exist and now
it was moving among the exhausted group who were no longer under the
protection of the sacred mound.

No more than two feet away from Dave Rankine, the moving shadow came to a
halt. In its clenched hands was a long black baton, a swordstick perhaps, being
lowered slowly towards his head, like some Japanese katana in the hands of a
ghostly ninja.

Realising what was going on only at the last moment, the ritual magician and
devotee of Hekate quickly used the power of the mind to rebut and push away
the amorphous form. The cowled spectre vanished and once more a sense of
calm befell the cocooned bodies until the threat of further danger was removed
by the welcome light of day.

Following our return from Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound, I made the final
changes to The Black Alchemist book. After nearly three years of writing,
editing, re-writes and disasters, I had managed to get it into a suitable state for
publication.

The first advanced copies arrived on Saturday, 5th November, the rest of the
15,000 coming a few days later. They filled the entire house, yet little by little
the book began selling in huge quantities all over the country. The furore it
created led to virtual riots in towns across the Southeast as fundamental
Christians attempted to disrupt or cancel promotional events.

Death threats were received, and one venue was even threatened with a firebomb
attack. Regularly Christians ripped down posters advertising The Black
Alchemist or picketed meetings and all-dayers. Clearly, the book’s contents and
cover artwork touched a nerve that no one could really quite put their finger on.

Throughout this period Bernard’s link with the Black Alchemist and the Black
Sorceress of Arundel continued, leading to a fresh round of quite baffling and,
inevitably, disturbing incidents that were recorded down and featured in a
subsequent book entitled The Second Coming (1993).

Yet by this time my world was changing as I now embarked on a career as a

major writer of the ancient mysteries subject, inspired by the psychic material
Bernard had provided regarding a lost civilization he felt sure existed prior to a
great cataclysm around the end of the last Ice Age.

Very often this extraordinary material had emerged coincident to confrontations

with the Black Alchemist, and even overlapped on occasions. The search for the
Stave of Nizar came as a direct result of our intended astral exploration of the
hidden chambers and caverns existing beneath Egypt’s Great Pyramid and
Sphinx monument. One seemed integrally bound up with the other.

This shift in my life gave Bernard the determination to finally rid himself of his
unwanted link with the Black Alchemist. Yet whether dead or alive, it is clear
that this man remains a very real threat to whomsoever chooses to transgress his
world and attempt to interfere with his ill-conceived ambitions.

Bernard’s death in 2010 brought him final release from this terrible anguish. Yet
my life is entangled with that of the Black Alchemist in ways that can never be
severed. For me it will never be over.

Not in this life at least.

47 Resurgence
Current day. Proof reading the pages of this new edition of The Black Alchemist
allowed me to review the remarkable sequence of events that Bernard and I had
endured during the making of this book. It got me thinking about the 276-day
‘gestation’ period between the dagger-in-the-heart incident on 5th November,
1987, and the proposed ‘birth’ of the Black Alchemist’s unholy child on 8th
August, 1988. This, as I knew, is in Christian tradition the prescribed number of
days between the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and the birth of
Christ, something the Black Alchemist would appear to have inverted for his
own purposes.

Christians believe that in the final days the Antichrist will be born, not like Jesus
in Bethlehem, but in Babylon, the city of iniquity of biblical tradition. Since the
Black Alchemist employed the use of notable place-names and local myths and
legends to enhance the potency of his landscape alchemy, was there a place
called Babylon near Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound?

Checking the map I found that just two miles north of Paradise Mound is a
headland called Babylon Down, one of only a few ‘Babylon’ place-names in the
whole of Britain. Might this have been a factor in the Black Alchemist’s choice
of Paradise Mound for the ‘birth’ of his antichrist? It was certainly possible. Yet,
curiously, one of the oldest prophecies mentioning the birth of the Antichrist,
written by St Jerome in the fourth century, states that the ‘Antichrist will be born
near Babylon’.

Why near Babylon. Why not Babylon itself? The answer seems to lie in the fact
that in medieval lore the site of the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise, where
God placed Adam after fashioning him from blood-red clay, was located just
south of the city of Babylon, in what is today southern Iraq. Here then the
Antichrist would be born as the second Adam. So to find that south of
Eastbourne’s own Babylon is a place called Paradise is something the Black
Alchemist will not have ignored.

I wanted to go back to the area, see what I might find. Yet on looking at the map
my eyes were quickly drawn away from Babylon Down, just west to a church
situated in the nearby village of Jevington. Inside it, I discovered, is an oblong
stone slab showing a carved relief of Christ that is over a thousand years old. It
first came to light in 1785 when Sussex antiquarian Sir William Burrell
uncovered a curious ‘stone chest’ that had lain undisturbed beneath the dirt floor
of the church’s ancient Saxon tower for hundreds of years. On opening it, he saw
that it contained the mysterious stone carving, which is today mounted on the
church’s north wall.
64. The tenth
century Christ
figure in Jevington church. Notice the cross-topped lance spearing a lion, and
the serpent on the other side of his legs.

Christ, wearing just a loincloth, is shown plunging a crosstopped lance into the
mouth of a lion, its tail interlaced in the socalled ‘Urnes’ style, dating the panel
to c. 950 AD. Balancing the lion on the other side of Christ’s legs is a snake, its
interlaced coils in the same artistic style. Historians suggest that the carving
relates to Psalm 91, which reads: ‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; The
young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet’, although this is by no
means certain.

Reading about Jevington’s strange relief of Christ, I remembered the Holy Lance
seen psychically by Bernard in connection with the Paradise Mound. At the time
I had interpreted this as the Spear of Longinus used to pierce Christ’s side in the
Crucifixion story. Yet might Bernard have in fact picked up on the Black
Alchemist’s magical utilisation of the cross-topped lance wielded by Christ in
the Jevington carving? Was this the real lance point that Bernard had seen
hanging vertically above the Paradise Mound? Did it link also with the stone
spearhead found in Lullington churchyard, which seemed to reflect some aspect
of the Peredur story? The fact that the Jevington lance is being plunged into the
mouth of a lion is also perhaps significant, as the lion is an important symbol in
alchemy.

So why might the Black Alchemist have used such blatant Christian imagery in
his warped landscape alchemy? The answer seems to lie in the fact that
historians have occasionally identified Jevington’s strange sculpture with the
Long Man hill figure, located just one and a half miles to the northwest
(Lullington church itself is only two miles from Jevington). One might well have
inspired the other, although which way around this might have been is unclear.

I intended putting together a promo video to accompany the release of this book.
So I made the decision to return to Lullington and the Sussex Downs with my
friend and colleague Richard Ward, who I had been working with on psychic
quests for the past twenty years.

The last time we had visited Lullington was in December 2007, having just
interviewed a couple from Eastbourne who believed they had located the Black
Alchemist’s house after reading my book in the early 1990s (see the Notes and
References section for the full story). On that occasion Richard had linked
psychically with what appeared to be the Black Alchemist, who made it clear he
could reveal to us new mysteries if we so desired. It was an offer we had chosen
to ignore.

Going back to Lullington with the original inscribed stone spearhead, found by
Bernard in 1985, was a strange experience. We re-enacted its discovery, realising
this was surely tempting fate. As clichéd as it might seem, the day, which had
started sunny with only a minimal risk of showers, now took a turn for the worse
as the wind began hissing ominously through the trees as if in response to our
presence.

From Lullington we continued to nearby Wilmington church. Here we learned

that a tunnel connected the church’s crypt with the one in the priory next door,
which Bernard had been drawn to back in 1985. So was this where the Stave of
Nizar had been concealed, inside the crypt, somewhere beneath the church altar?

Outside in the churchyard, the winds continued to rise.

Here Richard and I linked in mind to a yew tree over a thousand years old, and
waited to see what might come to us.
Richard, who had earlier felt he’d glimpsed the Black Alchemist standing
beneath a tree in Lullington churchyard, now saw nothing.
I, however, thought I could hear rhythmic chanting.
With it came an image of the Stave of Nizar being held up vertically in the
middle of a circle of brown clad monks. Suddenly, the stave changed into the
cross-topped lance in the hand of the Jevington Christ figure. This then
transformed into the Long Man hill figure holding his twin staves, which in turn
dissolved to become a huge cavern-like entrance leading into the hill itself.
I saw the cross-topped lance stretched out across the landscape, linking the Long
Man of Wilmington with Jevington church and Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound.
They formed a perfect straight line, at the end of which was the tip of the lance,
piercing the mound, imagery I now felt sure the Black Alchemist had used in his
ritual to create the unholy child.
Afterwards, Richard and I carried on to Jevington church. Here we filmed the
mysterious Christ carving, before journeying on to Babylon Down. Thick
woodland covers the bleak downland, and this we explored as the light faded and
gale-force winds tore incessantly through the treetops.
For a while we lingered on an exposed tumulus. Yet the wind was so strong it
forced us to retire to the car, which we’d parked close to the entrance of some
rather uninviting woods.
As we sat there in the darkness, wondering whether we should attempt to attune
to the site, I admit I felt on edge. Had we triggered something untoward by
recreating the discovery of the stone spearhead in Lullington churchyard earlier
that day?
From the safety of the car, Richard now opened up his mind.
‘I see him,’ he began, ominously, meaning the Black Alchemist. ‘He’s sitting
above the Long Man, between the two staves, just above the head. It’s like he’s
sitting on top of the head. It’s as if he’s controlling the Long Man as an entity by
doing this. He’s put something down, on the head. I can’t see what it is.’
There were a few moments of silence before he said: ‘I hear words: “and he
shall die on the cross.” I now see a dark shadow stretching out behind him, like
a dark cross on the landscape … it’s inverted.’
Perhaps he sees this cross as Jevington’s cross-topped lance.
‘I think he does,’ Richard confirmed.
There was a pause as the ferocious winds outside rose to an almighty crescendo.
Suddenly, Richard flinched violently, before opening his eyes. I asked him what
had happened.
‘I was flashing between seeing him there, and me being there,’ he revealed. ‘He
then came up and grabbed my arm, which is actually quite painful now,’ he said,
rubbing it.
We gave it a few minutes before trying again.
‘I don’t see him now,’ Richard revealed. ‘I’m standing where he was, directly
above the head of the Long Man. I want to follow him down the line of this
cross. There’s a sensation of burning. Like something turning to ash, blackening
the land as it goes out … the size of this cross … it has something to do with
sacred measurement … proportions … the cross piece is one third the length of
the shaft.’
There was more, although the gale-force winds made concentration difficult.
Soon afterwards we decided to leave.
I drove into the night, feeling quite out of synch with everything—the road, the
car, everything.
We remained on edge about the possible repercussions of the attunement, even
though the likelihood is that we were simply picking up on the Black
Alchemist’s lingering residue, left in the landscape where he had conducted his
chaotic rituals for so many years. That’s what we told ourselves, anyway.

Back home I discovered that the head of the Long Man hill figure, Jevington’s
church tower and Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound are in perfect alignment, a
realisation that simply stunned me. So, had this line of sites really been
important to the Black Alchemist in his attempted manifestation of an antichrist
back in 1988?

Zosimos of Panopolis saw the ultimate task of alchemy as the rebirth of Adam,
an act that can only be achieved by bringing back together every divine spark
released from Adam’s body at the time of the fall. These sparks now reside in
each and every member of the human race, and only with their release through
salvation at the point of death can they come together to allow Adam’s second
birth.

Was this what the Black Alchemist had been trying to achieve all along—not
simply the creation of an antichrist, but Adam’s rebirth in Paradise, an act that
was to have been completed after the tip of the Holy Lance had pierced
Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound? That the Long Man of Wilmington has
occasionally been identified as Adam,34 the first man, seemed strangely relevant
here.

65. The precision alignment between the head of the Long Man of Wilmington,
the Saxon tower of Jevington church and Eastbourne’s Paradise Mound.

As to the rest of the psychic material from that evening—it all checked out, and
with it came a growing sense that we had tapped into energies that had lain
dormant since the late 1980s. Although many psychics think the Black
Alchemist is no longer alive, what Richard was now seeing suggested that there
was unfinished business on the Sussex Downs. Somehow we had walked into
something, some kind of future destiny set up by the Black Alchemist, which he
knew that one day, when the time was right, I would be unable to resist fulfilling
in some manner. That day had finally come.

TO BE CONTINUED
Notes and References
1. This entire account is faithfully reconstructed from Bernard’s recall of the ritual when he made contact
with the stone spearhead in Lullington churchyard on 30th May, 1985. The spoken words were devised
from our subsequent knowledge of the ritual, gleaned from further psychic information and later research.
2. Details of Wilmington Priory’s ecclesiastical immunity, along with its alleged unorthodox religious
activities, were confirmed on 4th June, 1985, when Nigel Pennick showed me his copy of Rodney
Castleden’s The Wilmington Giant (Turnstone Press, 1983).
3. As Note 2.
4. ‘Ogmor’, probably the Scots or Irish Gaelic óg or óc, ‘youth’ and mor, ‘great’, thus the ‘Great Youth’.
5. See Bromwich, Rachel, Trioedd Ynys Prydein—The Welsh Triads (Cardiff University of Wales Press,
1961).
6. Fraser, Kyle A., ‘Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden Knowledge’,
Aries 4:2 (2 November 2004), 125-147.
7. See Chapter 21.
8. In 1989, a couple living in Eastbourne, Mr and Mrs Eddie and Anne Clark, identified a terraced house in
the Latimer Road area of the town as matching the one described by Bernard following his powerful dream
of the Black Alchemist’s house in June 1985.
66. The
house seen by the
Clarks in 1989.
Like the one in which BA lived, its exterior features included double bay windows, a narrow garden
bordered with Victorian railings and privet hedge, a black and red chequered tile path four to six paces in
length, and a recessed green front door at the back of a porch with windows facing each other on either side.
Above the bays were two further windows, all exactly as seen by Bernard.
The initial discovery was made by Mrs Clark, who at the time was a welfare officer for the blind. On her
rounds she noticed the house in question and recalled Bernard’s description of the Black Alchemist’s home.
To make sure it fitted the bill, the couple made a rough copy of Bernard’s drawing as it appears in The
Black Alchemist and took it out to the location in question. They then filled in the colours and finer details
to complete the picture. As you can see from Mr and Mrs Clark’s drawing, the houses are almost identical.
Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Clark only informed the author of their discovery in October 2007, and despite
an extensive search of the area in December of that year the house could not be located, the couple having
failed to note the address.
Two years later, in November 2009, I received information to suggest that an abandoned house matching
the description of the Black Alchemist’s home had existed in the mid 1980s in Carlisle Road, Eastbourne,
close to both the Eastbourne Campus of the University of Brighton, and the Paradise Mound above Paradise
Drive. This information came from a Paul Appleton, a resident of the town, who after reading The Black
Alchemist wrote to me saying: ‘I believe this house [the one in Bernard’s dream] to have been on a
crossroads between Granville Rd and [… Carlisle Road. It was] over the road from our school and just at
the bottom of the hill from Paradise woods. We as youngsters had entered the house via the back garden that
we assumed was squatted [and entered a] room … littered [as Bernard described] with bottles and
ornaments. I can remember none of us dared to go upstairs. This house some time later caught fire. I think it
may be a new build block of flats now [extract from an email received 9th November, 2009].’
The actual address of the house was 20 Carlisle Road, Eastbourne. It lay just over a mile from the western
end of Latimer Road, the site of the Clark’s own candidate for the Black Alchemist’s home. So, did they get
the location wrong? Was this why we were unable to find it? Was it really 20 Carlisle Road? Is this where
the Black Alchemist had gone too far, eventually destroying not only himself, but also the very essence of
the house in which he lived? 9. Bifrons, meaning ‘two-face’, is, coincidently, the name of a demon in the
Goetia, a medieval grimoire known also as The Lesser Key of Solomon. It takes its name from a Roman
god, a form of the dual-faced Janus, guardian of doors and gates.
10. For more information on the history of the Running Well read my in-depth article ‘The Roots of
Runwell and the Running Well Mystery’, posted at
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Runwell.htm. I urge readers to keep alive this important holy
site, which is increasingly coming under threat from urban development.
11. Ammonium dichromate is actually a highly toxic and systematic poison, which can cause severe
internal injury, and even death, depending on the dose. The most common form of ingestion into the bodily
system is through inhalation or skin contact. It is used mainly as a pigment or dye in screen printing and
colouring work.
12. Inside St Mary’s church, Runwell, is a purbeck coffin known locally as the Prioress’s Tomb. On its lid is
a curious cross design in raised relief. Dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the tomb is commonly
believed to be the final resting place of a prioress from the small convent attached to the Running Well.
When the coffin was opened during restoration work in 1907, it was found to be empty. See Collins,
Andrew, The Running Well MysteryThe Running Well Mystery 17.
13. Their incessant use of bellows earned alchemists the derogatory title Resurgence , ‘OMOEE SAS
MALIARIOS’, which via a few minor
soulfleur (in modern French souffleur), meaning ‘puffer’.
14. The section from ‘It is found …’ to ‘ … rejected by all’ is taken, almost wordfor-word, from an
alchemical essay entitled Gloria Mundi, published in Frankfurt in 1620. It later featured in a collection of
alchemical texts published in 1625 under the title Musaeum Hermeticum, which asserts that the anonymous
Gloria Mundi was written originally in 1526.
15. ‘Kether’ is a Cabalistic principle describing the highest plane of existence, or the unknowable
manifestation of God permeating into the physical universe. 16. The ‘10 rooms’ is a reference to the ten
spheres or planes of existence within the teachings of the Cabala.
17. The ‘32 steps’ perhaps refers to the ten spheres of existence and the 22 paths connecting each of the ten
spheres, as shown on the Cabalistic glyph, or visual aid, known as the Tree of Life.
18. ‘Neshama’, ‘Yecidah’ and ‘Chia’ are three of the ten aspects of the divine soul, as set down in Cabalistic
tradition. ‘Ain Soph’, the so-called Limitless One, is, according to Cabalistic tradition, one of the three
primary manifestations of God beyond the physical universe.
19. ‘Archeius’, from the Greek (ar(c)hæos), means ‘ancient’ or ‘primeval’. It was seen by followers of the
Swiss alchemist, physician and occultist Paracelsus (1493-1541) as the vital principle or force presiding
over the growth and continuation of living beings, the so-called anima mundi of the philosophers.
20. These three words spelt balsamum elementarium externum appear in the same breath within the
alchemical works of Paracelsus, and when written together mean something like ‘open dictionary of
aromatic resins’. 21. ‘Caput Corvi’ is Latin for ‘crow’s head’. It is one of the names of the First Matter stage
of the alchemical transmutation. ‘Corpus Invisible’, or Corpus Invisibile, is Latin for ‘invisible body’, the
soul of the alchemist, or the secrecy which an alchemist has to keep during his operations.
22. All of the book titles given to Bernard by the Elizabethan alchemist have been identified. In order, they
are:
Abu’ l-Qasim al-Iraqi, The Book of Knowledge, Concerning the Cultivation of Gold, c. 1200 AD, ed. and
trans. E. J. Holmyard, Paris, 1923. Artis auriferae quam chemian vocant …, Basileae [Basel], 1593. Bonus,
Petrus, Pretiosa Margarita …, ed. Janus Lacinis, Venice, 1546. Musaeum Hermeticum, 1678, trans. by A. E.
Waite, London, 1893. Ko Hung, The Nei P’ien of Ko Hung (Pao-p’u Tzu), c. AD 320, trans. J. R. Ware,
Cambridge, MA, 1966.
Khunrath, Henricus, Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, Hamburg, 1595. Stolcios, Daniel, Viridarium
Chymicum … Frankfurt, 1625.
Dee, John, Monas Hieroglyphica. Antwerp, 1564.
23. Bernard’s dream of the man running across the desert with the Stave of Nizar occurred on the night of
Tuesday, 2nd July 1985, exactly one week after his dream about the Black Alchemist’s house at Eastbourne.
24. Tuchman, Barbara W., A Distant Mirror (Penguin, 1978), 237. 25. Information supplied by Graeco-
Egyptian scholar Terry duQuesne. 26. ‘The Alchemy Website’ carries a full translation of the three Greek
words of the Formula of the Crab as ho noesas makarios, ‘blessed is he who understands’. See
www.alchemywebsite.com/zosimus_crab.html. However, Rob Brough in a letter to the author dated 27th
November, 2007 points out that the correct rendering of the three Greek words on the Formula of the Crab
is
changes translates into English as ‘name/of the same name your hairy/shaggy one’, which has connotations
of a wolf, the form of Hekate in her role as a shewolf
27. In the folklore of the ancient Jews Dardanus was the son of Zerah, Judah’s son (see 1 Chr. 2:6 and 1
Kings 4:31), and in this form he was compared with the wisdom of Solomon.
28. ‘Bolos’ is Bolos Demoncritos of Mendes, a Hellenized Egyptian who lived in Egypt’s Nile Valley
around 200 BC. He wrote the Physika Kai Mystika. 29. My colleague Richard Ward saw the demonic mural
during a visit to Clapham Farm in 1987. He concluded it was unquestionably an example of occult art.
Since then stories have surfaced suggesting the mural was done as artwork for a rock album cover. Yet if
this was so then more details would have emerged by now.
30. Ronan, Stephen, ed., The Goddess Hekate (Chthonios, 1992). ‘Chaldean Hekate’, 102, fr. xlix.
31. Ibid., 102, fr. 1.
32. Ibid., 98, fr. xxxv.
33. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, cf. Newton, The Demonic Connection (Blandford Press, 1987), 39.
34. English archaeologist and dowser T. C. Lethbridge (1901-1971) recalled that when a boy he was told by
a shepherd that the Wilmington Giant had a companion and that the two figures were known as Adam and
Eve, with Adam presumably being the Long Man hill figure. See Collier, Mike, ‘The Long Man’,
Quicksilver Messenger 4, http://www.sussexarch.org.uk/saaf/qsm/qsm4.html.
 Table of Contents
Part One Black
Portent
1 The Stave of Nizar
2 Wilmington
3 Ogmor the Guardian
4 The Unintentional Quest
5 The Stag’s Head
6 First Matter
7 The House
8 The Dome of Kent
9 Ide Hill
10 Shenfield Common
11 The Green Dragon
12 St Anne’s Castle
Part Two White
13 The Ring of Darkness
14 The Blue Lady
15 The Downham Arms
16 The Blackened Well
17 Nine Nights to Live
18 Back to School
19 Return to the Well
20 Danbury
21 The Bloody Stave
22 The Mystic’s Gift
23 William’s Warning
Part Three Red
24 Night of the She-Wolf
25 The Dark Goddess
26 The Body of Christ
27 The Foul Virgin
28 The Chaotic Gateway
29 The Sister of Zosimos
30 Trouble at the Tree
31 The Flint Calling Card
 32 Maria’s Calling
33 The Griffin
34 The Heart of the Quest
35 The Perfect Master
36 Unholy Birth
37 The Ape Dagger
38 The Sword of Dardanus
39 The Net Closes
40 The Summoning
41 Contact
Part Four Birth
42 Crossed Daggers
43 8.8.8
44 Child of Fire
45 A New Human Creature
46 Paradise Drive
47 Resurgence