fermature

borders closing

It’s sad to see a great store come to an end. We shall miss the amiable ambience of Borders bookshop in Oxford city centre. Gone are the comfortable arm chairs which encouraged customers to sit and browse. The aisles are crowded, the tills ringing away as they have never rung before. All stock is discounted by 20% or more.

I bought Robin Lane Fox on Alexander the Great, the Seamus Heaney Beowulf, and Charles Freeman on AD 381.

I’d tried the Lane Fox before and failed. Now the paperback edition looked less formidable than the immense volume of the hardback. And in the time that’s passed since my days in Lydney library I’ve become more familiar with the Lane Fox style and I do know rather more about the historical period. So when I cast my eyes over the first couple of paragraphs I found myself captivated by the sheer lucidity of the prose.

The Seamus Heaney is something I’ve looked at before among the Old English shelves in Blackwells. There was no special call for me to buy it then. Now I decided that, quite apart from the attraction of the translation, the pictures are worth the asking price. As I turned the pages I came across the Franks casket. A very evocative artefact.

AD 381 did not at first attract me. I skimmed through a couple of pages at random. Put it back on the shelf. Then picked it up again. I could have wished for AD 391 for that was the year the Roman Empire finally became officially Christian though not completely sure as to what brand of Christianity that was to be. Charles Freemen gives me lots of information I’ve been searching for for months. He covers the whole 4th century from Constantine’s military coup (though he doesn’t actually use those words) to the flood of laws promulgated by Theodosius and the repressive situations that followed. The chapter on Ambrose of Milan is especially informative. I have a feeling I shall be going in search of Freeman’s earlier book ‘The Closing of the Western Mind’. which has to do with the suppression of free thinking in the Greek Mode.

Freeman designates himself a freelance academic. When I’m in the mood I propose myself as an independent scholar. I admit the hubris but am considering adding it to my entry in the big red book which comes out each year. We’ll see if I’m still so minded some time after the Feast of the Circumcision.

There was a hard frost last night.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 december 2009

at the end of the day 28 woden

My local Borders often serves me well. My latest find is Bernard Cornwell’s most recent book The Burning Land now on sale at half the published price. It’s a bargain. It’s more than a bargain. It has that special touch about it which brings the story to life.

It’s an historical novel set in proto Englaland as King Alfred is growing old and the Danes are trying their luck in Mercia and in Wessex. The battle scenes are excellent. The first person narrative and dialogue thoroughly convincing. The paganism up front.

I had never read Bernard Cornwell before though I knew his name and something of his reputation. I shall go in search of his previously published Saxon stories.

francis cameron, oxford, 28 october 2009

this morning

tuesday 27 october 2009

I am reading Andrew Marr’s latest The Making of Modern Britain. It’s about our country in the years from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the end of the European war in 1945. It’s neatly divided into four chapters, which almost define themselves : 1901 to 1914; the Great War; 1918 to 1939; the War (cont’d).

My readings of Andrew Marr overlap with the writing of my own story. I am very much aware of influences on my formative years and how devastating was the impact of my fieldwork on the island called Aoba in the early 1970s and the burning necessity to engage with Anthropology as a consequence. It remains clear to me that many of the premises of my boyhood’s education were utterly and completely false. The Country and the Empire were simply not as they were presented to me in the late 1930s. We were fed the pap of false illusion.

The penalty I pay for this epiphany is to find myself out of step with the illusions still sprinkled on us from on high. Notice is taken only of events which it is convenient to notice. The lessons of history remain unlearnt, apparently because they are not being taught.

I had two uncles and a father-in-law who fought in the trenches on the Western Front while a generation was lost. What a terrible waste. And sometimes it seem too obvious that the mores of the 19th century still have too much influence in the wrong sort of quarters.

The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children even unto the third and fourth generations.

francis cameron, oxford

Dawkins 2009 greatest show on earth

I needed a change of air. For too long I had been immersed in the complexities of the 4th century. I needed a change of scene, an undemanding landscape. I had a few days to spare before the turning of the Equinox. I went in search of a book to read. A book on some subject not one of mine own. I found it in the front window of Borders in Oxford. The new, brand new, Dawkins. On display with a red sticker on each cover. Half Price. This week only. Resist I could not. The Greatest Show On Earth is there for the beholding.

In the gently undisturbed atmosphere of the Oxford Union Society’s Library – this is still the Long Vacation - I sat down to read. Disappointed? No, not a single jot or tittle! Dawkins writes with the consummate ease of one knowing his subject so well, the words flow effortlessly in crystal clear exposition. There is humour here too. ‘For reasons I won’t go into now, it is of the essence of sexual reproduction that you shouldn’t fertilize yourself.’ And tender beauty. ‘A meadow full of flowers is nature’s Times Square, nature’s Piccadilly Circus. A slow-motion neon sign, it changes from week to week as different flowers come into season, carefully prompted by cues from, for example, the changing length of days to synchronize with others of their own species. This floral extravaganza, splashed across the green canvas of a meadow .. .. ’ And there’s more of the same. From the hand of a scientist!

I learned so much from these 450 pages. At times it was slow reading and I won’t pretend it was realised without persistence. Doubtless there are passages which remain but partly absorbed but that doesn’t prevent me from recommending this publication to my friends, especially my Pagan friends. They will appreciate how and why the procession of the seasons is as it is, how life is as it is, how the world around us is constantly changing day by day, how we and our kin have come to be what we are.

© francis cameron

oxford, 19 september 2009

picking up cues

one thing leads to another

I was reading the only just published Richard Dawkins [1] because I wanted something different to read [2] because each book on the display had a bright red sticker ‘Half Price’ [3] because Dawkins might give me more insight to use when I’m incommoded by creationists on my way to the bus stop.

I’d not realised how much some of his remarks would make me laugh out loud. There’s Darwin, in 1838, reading Malthus On Population ‘for amusement’. And from Dawkins : “When you mate a male with a female, you expect to get a son or daughter, not a hermaphrodite” ; and a plangent reminder “For reasons I won’t go into, it is of the essence of sexual reproduction that you shouldn’t fertilize yourself.”

Finally, a pointer to an essay by Alfred Russel Wallace (whom I rather care for) : ‘On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type’. I stopped short. This was relevant to a problem which had been haunting me for the past couple of weeks. How come there are so many varieties of Wicca when it’s been going for so little time? I looked up the original Wallace article. It was in a book printed in 1870. The electronic catalogue showed me, in less than a minute, there was a copy in the stack of our library. I engaged the attention of our newly arrived Graduate Assistant. No more than three minutes later, the volume was handed to me. Though the essay was first published in 1858, it had a full explanation applicable to the current Wiccan situation : as each new coven or individual passes on experience to the next generation, the material passed on is slightly different from the material the coven or individual received from its parent. Brilliant.

Bonus. The Wallace collection of essays includes ‘The Philosophy of Birds’ Nests’. Now there’s a thought to distract attention from the news of the day.

francis cameron

© oxford, 16 september 2009

ten years on

A Day for Doreen

at London’s Conway Hall

on Sunday 13 September 2009

History passed before our eyes, came centre stage and spoke to us. Marian Green bringing to life with her eloquence days spent with Doreen on the Sussex Hills. Maxine Sanders sitting quite still, a stillness which grew as she spoke until the stillness in that spellbound hall was so tangible you could touch it. Mary Rands, on her 70th birthday, with a tiny hint of mischief and a sparkle in her eye. Janet, playful and supple as a ballerina, speaking of great wonders with assured conviction.

And at the end of the day there was Doreen herself – on the big screen. Captivating.

These are the women of the witchcraft generation, the weavers of magic who still dominate and inspire as does the Goddess with her consort the Horned God.

The men too played their part. Ronald Hutton leading in with the keynote address disguising erudition with beguiling fluency. Brian Botham and John Belham-Payne carrying the day forward from step to step. The past the present and times yet to come. Gavin. And Fred. Steadfast.

When I think back it suddenly strikes me. There was no sense of them and us. We all took part as is the custom of the Craft. And in the moments of transition there were the meetings again of friends from near and far.

Every ticket had been sold. In advance.

Next year, in the same place, on the 19th of September, there is A Day for Gerald. Now is the time to make plans.

© francis cameron

oxford, 15 september 2009

9th month, '9' years

in september

It’s the first of september in the year 2009. This day, ten years ago, I came back from my little room between Sabrina and the Forest. It had been a wild adventure. An ephemeral objective. Always hovering. But never in the same place for long enough to be achieved. It was a short-lived episode. Three months short of three inconsequential years. There’s little enough to recall. The little local branch library where I read the best-sellers to find out how they ticked. On alternate Wednesdays the Junior Room housed the Dean Writers’ Circle where I found I could write poetry as well as imaginative prose. There was even an erotic ghost story for a Halloween Party in an old haunted house deep in the Forest. There was more. But the curtain came firmly down long before the first interval.

Today the news bulletins are full of September 1st, 1939. My brother and I were on holiday with Auntie Lilla and Uncle Harry in Caerphilly. Return to school was too far away to encroach on consciousness. September 1st. It must have been a Friday. Then came Sunday. 11 o’clock on the morning of the 3rd. We two, we blessed two. (Ugh! Why must you do this?) We sat in the dining room and listened to the wireless. It was the voice of Neville Chamberlain, our Prime Minister, the Man from Munich. Not now did he speak of peace in our time. Now he spoke of an ultimatum to which no reply had been received. We were at war with Germany. Somewhere an air raid siren sounded. The BBC went off the air. Temporarily. It was a false alarm.

1947 – and I was ready to respond to my call-up papers. My army paybook had its first entry on September 5th.

1949. September – and my time of grandeur et servitude militaire is ended and on the day of my demobilisation I had held that fateful conversation with myself. I would not return to the Royal Academy of Music. Realistically, for once, I did not see myself practising the piano for six hours a day to achieve my objective of being a world-class concert pianist. It was time to do something else. I did. I prepared to go up to Oxford.

’59. I had achieved one of my boyhood ambitions. I was a cathedral organist. That was the job though the title had changed. I was Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. Bricks without straw .. .. But on the day my appointment was noticed on the Court Page of The Times, Tommy Armstrong rang me from the RAM. I was invited to join his professional staff. The money was pitiable. The prestige enormous. I did well by the RAM. And the RAM did well by me.

’69. September. I am nearing the end of my first year as Assistant Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, in Sydney.

’79. September. Time to start packing my bags, ready to fly away.

2009, September 1st. The years ending in 9 often mark a turning point in my life.

I sum the numerals of my birth date. 5 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 2 + 7 = 2 + 7 = 9.

The incipit of the 9th month of a ‘9’ year.

quo vadis amice meus

The curfew tolls .. .. not yet .. .. not yet.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 september 2009

stranger in a strange land

I’ve read this book at least twice before. I decided I’d like to read it again. I’m glad I did.

Robert Anson Heinlein began to write this story back in the 1950s. When he finished, in 1960, it was something like 220,000 words long. Too long for his publisher and too forward-looking in some of its ideas. It had to be cut down before it could appear in print. It took several months for this to be done. When it did come out, in 1961, it contained 160,087 words. That is the version that went into circulation. The original version came out in 1991. In the meantime Heinlein had died and the USA copyright law had been changed. His widow, Virginia, saw to it that his original dream came true.

My first impression, on this reading, is how funny the book is. Lots of subtle digs at the silly way some of us live. Lots of lighthearted jokes at the expense of ‘rules of conduct’ which make life worse rather than better. This is how a wise visitor from another planet might see us. Come to think of it, it’s the way some of us raise an eyebrow at conventions that needlessly cause problems for those raised on the idea that there is only one monolithic truth and any deviation – even the slightest – is to be highlighted condemned and ostracised.

I was lucky enough to live in Sydney, Australia, during the 1970s. That was a time of relaxation. Portnoy’s Complaint raised a storm. Then the right people said the book was OK. The storm subsided. That kind of censorship quietly evaporated. Hair went on stage in downtown Sydney. The entire cast was naked at the end of the first half and, no, the police did not close down the show. An out-of-the-way beach began to attract nudists. (That’s really the most enjoyable swimsuit there is.) A case went to court. The magistrate ruled there was no obscenity. The once lonely beach became quite crowded at weekends. Despite what the churchmen said, many young people discovered a freedom and ecstatic joy in their love life which they shared, and shared rightly, as often and as widely as the opportunity offered. It was like an extended summer of love.

But it couldn’t last. The black fear of an eternity roasting in hell gradually swamped the scintillating brightness of love and freedom. The urge to control – and the majority desire to be told what to do and what not to do – gradually tightened the bonds that had been loosened. Alas! we being it on ourselves. We allow it to happen.

francis cameron, oxford, 10 august 2009

margaret murray #2

While I was browsing the internet looking for something else, I came across the suggestion that some of her writings may have encouraged the making of new covens in the 1920s and 1930s, covens such as the one into which Gerald Gardner was initiated in September 1939.

This reminded me of a certain number of times during my recent re-reading of God of the Witches when I paused long enough to observe that the example she had just cited, or something very much like it, is still to be found either as an ideal to be sought after or as something actually incorporated into current practice.

There is, for example, the proposition that the ideal number of witches in a coven is twelve; or twelve plus the Master; or twelve plus the High Priestess. From time to time I find the same information appearing in introductory manuals.

Another example is the evidence from one of her witnesses of the new witch kneeling before the Master, then placing one of their hands on their head, their other hand beneath the soles of their feet, and dedicating everything in between. In a modern context, I have been present at first degree initiations when the postulant kneels before the initiator, the initiator places one hand on the candidate’s head, the other hand under the candidate’s feet, and all between is then willed into witchcraft.

(It is important to add that because some of Murray’s instances are also present in Wicca, this does not necessarily imply that the latter results from the former.)

I recall that when I first met a practising witch and he talked about his craft, I recognised a substantial amount of his exposition as derived, directly or indirectly, from the works of Margaret Murray. This was more than thirty years ago and both he and the other witches I was in touch with at that time were practising a form of coven-based witchcraft that made no reference to Wicca. For them it was simply witchcraft.

© francis cameron, oxford, 10 july 2009

God of the Witches

god of the witches (1931) margaret murray

Margaret Murray wrote three books which are required reading for the proper study of witchcraft : The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921); The God of the Witches (1931); The Divine King in England (1954).

In times past I have become familiar with all three of them : first of all in conjunction with the standard anthropological texts focussing on witchcraft; and, much later, while preparing an essay on the emergence of Gardnerian Wica [so spelt] in the mid-20th century.

In the past few days I have once again taken up The God of the Witches as part of my personal enquiry into the essential nature of Wicca and possibilities for its extension beyond the information so freely available in the public domain.

As an aside, I recall my first attendance at a Pagan Federation district convention. Ronald Hutton was the principal speaker. It was there, from him, I first became aware of academic objections to Murray’s thesis. It now seems to me that the generality of these objections have their origins in that portion of 18th century opinion which came to categorise ‘any belief in witchcraft’ as a falsehood deserving to be punished by the strictures of the 1735 Witchcraft Act.

It may also be the case that Murray, unwittingly, compounded the situation when she wrote her ‘Introduction’ to Gerald B. Gardner’s Witchcraft Today (1954).

As once again I make my way through her 1931 essay, I become aware that her technique, her method of presentation, is no longer fashionable. Her studies had led her to the conclusion that Pagan beliefs and practices – those of the Old Religion, as she has it – were never so completely eradicated or superseded by those of the Christian hierarchy as was once asserted to be the case. What did happen was that ‘the Church’ condemned any such manifestations as the machinations of its enemy the Devil and all his works. Hence the accusations and executions which are part of the historical record.

Rather than argue her corner, as a later generation of students has been taught to do, Murray simply sets out page after page of examples to back up her point. I am reminded of similar procedures by writers and speakers on country customs, their history, their variants, and their survival. She presents statements and restatements on the theme of : this is what people said or are alleged to have said; this is what people did or are alleged to have done. Much of what Murray offers us, I find quite convincing.

I do take issue with her on some of the conclusions she draws from preliterate illustrations. It is all very well to look at a display of figurines in a museum cabinet and accept that these are indeed miniatures of named gods and goddesses, because there is literary evidence to back up these attributions. But there comes a point when to extrapolate too far backwards in time leads us into an area of unprovable hypotheses tinged with wishful thinking.

To include an illustration of the Trois Freres ‘Masked Man with Stag’s Antlers’ among paragraphs concerned with the Horned God is going too far and her use of the ‘Masked Dancer’ (with musical bow) from the Fourneau de Diable is plain wrong. But then Murray is but one of a number of scholars misled by a figure wrenched out of context. I doubt any of them had actually seen prints showing the crowded state of the depictions on that particular wall. Look at any space where flyers have been posted one on top of the other, and you will see a modern example of a paleolithic practice.

For all that, Murray’s writing remains a valuable indicator of a particular ethos of the preWar days of the 1920s and 1930s. It is a part of the cultural atmosphere of a Southern England so very different from the present; part of the surroundings which nurtured the embryonic (was it really embryonic?) Craft of the Wise which eventually blossomed into the full flower of the Wicca.

© francis cameron, oxford, 9 july 2009

it's different down under

‘What Witches Do’ became a very useful source of inspiration, a stimulus to exploration and discovery, a prompting for more reading, deeper study and practical work. So we stepped into the Tarot. Trial and error eventually resulted in packs that suited each of us. At first there was much turning of pages when, after more trial and error, we came across books which were the right ones for us. Then we met with Dion Fortune’s ‘Mystical Qabalah’ and linked the two systems together, which has tended to influence my readings ever since. (These days, in my teaching of divination, I begin with psychometry and the resulting build up of images which deliberately excludes the use of books or other printed prompts.)

Stewart Farrar’s text set us off in the right direction. It was a brilliant starting point.

It was the observation of the seasonal feasts which first caused me to be aware of the difference between England and the Southern Hemisphere. I’d grown up in London with a full awareness of the power of Spring in the poetry painting song dance and instrumental music of our northern world. It was the great re‑awakening of life and new growth after the dark dormition of Winter. In all my time in Australia, I never once saw any sign of Spring. It just did not happen. Only the state government’s calendar contained the rubric that September 1st was the first day of Spring.

I was prepared to find December 25th celebrated with a turkey lunch on a suitable beach while the surf rolled in from across the Pacific. It never quite worked out like that. Christmas Day was a time to invite friends to a full Christmas lunch, a swim and much partying. Only as time went by did I feel it quite incongruous to be singing ‘See amid the winter’s snow’ when the temperature outdoors was up in the 80s Fahrenheit with humidity to match. Easter was similarly out of joint. Easter is the great festival of rebirth after the drama of death. How could you really celebrate Easter when the deciduous trees in the Botanical Garden were dropping their richly coloured leaves as they moved to the end of yet another annual cycle? (The ubiquitous indigenous gum trees celebrated no cycle at all. Their leaves always turned edgeways on to the rays of the sun.)

In time I recognised that we lived with the equivalent of just two seasons a year. Summer was hot and often tropically wet. Winter was cool and dry. ‘Cool’ meant about 15º Celsius, though indoors and at night it felt colder than that.

The phases of the Moon we could appreciate and celebrate. The daily round of the Sun was a different matter. Yes, we could turn to the eastern horizon for the sunrise but the transition from complete darkness to full light was accomplished quite suddenly. (So different from standing with Bobcat and her Druids on the ramparts of Avebury while I grew to understand why our forebears had lit fires to inform the stations down the line that something really was happening.) In Australia I observed many a brilliant sunset on the western horizon even though twilight was quite absent. Nightfall was like the dropping of the Safety Curtain in a theatre.

But the Sun at Noon stood in the North. And there was the problem. Should we dance and circle clockwise, as the books said? or should we go with an Australian deosil : East North West and South?

Then there were the Guardians of the Four Quarters and their associations. I began to understand that what suits one location may not suit another. To our East, hardly more than a few steps away, were the endless rollers of the Pacific Ocean. Surely this must be the home of the Watchtower of Water? And out to the West, beyond the city, the high landscape of the Blue Mountains. Earth. Surely? And in the South, that Summer phenomenon known as the Southerly Buster, a harsh wind which could sweep up direct from the Antarctic with a drop in temperature of 15 Celsius or more. A powerful dominating demonstration of Air. And so, leaving us with the Sun at Noon in the North : Fire, to complete the tetrad.

It’s only in more recent years, sitting here in a gentler clime, within walking distance of Carfax, where the Four Ways meet, that I came to appreciate how much the Pagan components of Wicca depend on local landscapes. The changing angles of the Sun observed as it swings on its pendulum from solstice to solstice and back again. The eagerly sought for first signs of the green shoots of Spring troping the bare branches of Winter. The delightful chromaticisms of the Fall of the Leaf as a prelude to hibernation. And all that goes betwixt and between.

Magic. Sheer magic.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 july 2009

it's different down under

‘What Witches Do’ became a very useful source of inspiration, a stimulus to exploration and discovery, a prompting for more reading, deeper study and practical work. So we stepped into the Tarot. Trial and error eventually resulted in packs that suited each of us. At first there was much turning of pages when, after more trial and error, we came across books which were the right ones for us. Then we met with Dion Fortune’s ‘Mystical Qabalah’ and linked the two systems together, which has tended to influence my readings ever since. (These days, in my teaching of divination, I begin with psychometry and the resulting build up of images which deliberately excludes the use of books or other printed prompts.)

Stewart Farrar’s text set us off in the right direction. It was a brilliant starting point.

It was the observation of the seasonal feasts which first caused me to be aware of the difference between England and the Southern Hemisphere. I’d grown up in London with a full awareness of the power of Spring in the poetry painting song dance and instrumental music of our northern world. It was the great re‑awakening of life and new growth after the dark dormition of Winter. In all my time in Australia, I never once saw any sign of Spring. It just did not happen. Only the state government’s calendar contained the rubric that September 1st was the first day of Spring.

I was prepared to find December 25th celebrated with a turkey lunch on a suitable beach while the surf rolled in from across the Pacific. It never quite worked out like that. Christmas Day was a time to invite friends to a full Christmas lunch, a swim and much partying. Only as time went by did I feel it quite incongruous to be singing ‘See amid the winter’s snow’ when the temperature outdoors was up in the 80s Fahrenheit with humidity to match. Easter was similarly out of joint. Easter is the great festival of rebirth after the drama of death. How could you really celebrate Easter when the deciduous trees in the Botanical Garden were dropping their richly coloured leaves as they moved to the end of yet another annual cycle? (The ubiquitous indigenous gum trees celebrated no cycle at all. Their leaves always turned edgeways on to the rays of the sun.)

In time I recognised that we lived with the equivalent of just two seasons a year. Summer was hot and often tropically wet. Winter was cool and dry. ‘Cool’ meant about 15º Celsius, though indoors and at night it felt colder than that.

The phases of the Moon we could appreciate and celebrate. The daily round of the Sun was a different matter. Yes, we could turn to the eastern horizon for the sunrise but the transition from complete darkness to full light was accomplished quite suddenly. (So different from standing with Bobcat and her Druids on the ramparts of Avebury while I grew to understand why our forebears had lit fires to inform the stations down the line that something really was happening.) In Australia I observed many a brilliant sunset on the western horizon even though twilight was quite absent. Nightfall was like the dropping of the Safety Curtain in a theatre.

But the Sun at Noon stood in the North. And there was the problem. Should we dance and circle clockwise, as the books said? or should we go with an Australian deosil : East North West and South?

Then there were the Guardians of the Four Quarters and their associations. I began to understand that what suits one location may not suit another. To our East, hardly more than a few steps away, were the endless rollers of the Pacific Ocean. Surely this must be the home of the Watchtower of Water? And out to the West, beyond the city, the high landscape of the Blue Mountains. Earth. Surely? And in the South, that Summer phenomenon known as the Southerly Buster, a harsh wind which could sweep up direct from the Antarctic with a drop in temperature of 15 Celsius or more. A powerful dominating demonstration of Air. And so, leaving us with the Sun at Noon in the North : Fire, to complete the tetrad.

It’s only in more recent years, sitting here in a gentler clime, within walking distance of Carfax, where the Four Ways meet, that I came to appreciate how much the Pagan components of Wicca depend on local landscapes. The changing angles of the Sun observed as it swings on its pendulum from solstice to solstice and back again. The eagerly sought for first signs of the green shoots of Spring troping the bare branches of Winter. The delightful chromaticisms of the Fall of the Leaf as a prelude to hibernation. And all that goes betwixt and between.

Magic. Sheer magic.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 july 2009

body and soul

As I sat across the street I heard a familiar chord sequence and then I put together the fragments of melody. He was playing ‘Body and Soul’. He was just a mendicant guitarist in Cornmarket Street, but he played ‘Body and Soul’ and I haven’t heard that since it became almost my signature tune.

I don’t expect the name to mean anything to you. You might have sung along while he was playing ‘As Time Goes By’, but that’s been in a film. A black and white classic.

‘Body and Soul’ never was in no film. Just the tinkle of its tune brings back such poignant memories, the memories of my first professional tour. I was ‘the 16 year old boy wonder pianist’ with an ENSA concert party. The Solid Eight. The year was 1944. Flying bombs were dropping on London. V2 rockets were just appearing. The great battle for Europe had yet to be won. We played to Canadian troops in camps all over England. They were ready for action wherever they were needed.

That tour did so much for me. I had to learn to play unfamiliar idioms : boogie-woogie, rumba, the special kind of accompaniment that goes (went?) with an Old Tyme comic’s patter. A life changing experience. The thrill of playing to packed houses in Garrison Theatres and NAAFI canteens. The camaraderie of our tiny touring company.

Olive was a dancer. Wrapped up in her work. Introvert, almost. ‘Body and Soul’ was her point number.

Pamela Cundell was another of the Eight. She’s still around. Must be that much older than me! It’s not so long since I saw her on television one evening. Still as inimitable as ever.

Then there was Teddy Driver, the Top of the Bill star of our little troupe. He was part of Music Hall. I saw him, once, in a film. An Ealing Comedy. And once, when I was working for the LCC, there he was. Teddy Driver standing watching one of our concert parties in the parks. In those few short years before television put an end to all that.

And the years fall away.

I can never again be the boy I was when I was 16 but often it feels to me that dates on birth certificates are not to be taken too seriously. I’ve not yet reached the stage where I feel I really ought to act my age.

© francis cameron, oxford, 3 july 2009

the witch next door

Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked how I first became involved with the Wicca. It’s never happened quite like that before. Perhaps it’s because my pentacle is now all too visible on an area of shirtfront not obscured by the long white beard. (I was called ‘Gandalf’ in the pub last night. It was a friendly greeting. They were a very welcoming little crowd.)

So let’s answer the question. How?

The year was 1974. My professional career had taken me to Australia. On the evening in question I’d gone to visit a friend who lived in one of the older parts of Sydney. Down alongside the working harbour. A terrace of single story houses with rust-coloured corrugated iron roofs. Not uncommon in those pars. We were sitting in the kitchen. The front doorbell rang. It was the man from the house next door. He was expected. He came and joined us. Introduced himself as a witch. And began to talk about the Craft.

Now it happened that, although my headquarters were at the Conservatorium of Music, I’d recently felt the need to study anthropology. I’d been welcomed with open arms by the Faculty at the University. (Anthropologists are like that. Music is part of their remit but they are convinced that special attributes are needed to study music. I’ve never even tried to disturb that illusion.) Studying witchcraft – or, rather, studying books about witchcraft – is an obligatory part of the course in any anthropology department I’ve ever come across.

As I sat listening to our visiting witch, more and more of his words were familiar. They were straight out of Margaret Murray. I’d read all three of her witchcraft books only a few weeks before. But then he went on to other things which were not from Margaret Murray. Some of them I could compare with my experience of Spiritualist séances in my parents’ home. Other parts were quite new to me. Importantly, they all made sense, including his explanation that when the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay on 22 January 1787, there were witches among the convicts on board. The Craft had been handed down from them through the generations and was now flourishing quietly and discretely even as we spoke.

That was not the only time he came to visit. I was hooked right from the start. At this very crucial time of my own life, the teacher had made himself known. We began the practical work.

Looking back at it from what I’ve learned since, I guess there was a good deal of the hereditary still present, plus knowledge and practices with a Gardnerian flavour brought in from contacts with witches from England.

Eventually the witch from the house next door moved away with his Priestess partner. We continued working. Always skyclad. Always standing skyclad out at the back on the nights of the Full Moon. At certain times it seemed very near. Large and softly glowing. Low on the skyline.

We found ourselves alone. Just the two of us. We needed to consolidate and to move on. I found the Craftsman Bookshop in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The book I bought was ‘What Witches Do’ by Stewart Farrar, which had been published in 1971, only a few years before. It’s a book I still use from time to time. Its two hundred or so pages contain so much of the essence of the old witchcraft religion. It was a splendid foundation.

I may have moved on quite a long way since then, but every step along the path has been worth it.

francis cameron

oxford, 30 june 2009

turning points

When we look back at the past, those of us who are occupied with the writing and teaching of history find it useful to pick out certain significant events as markers separating before from after.

In my early schooldays, the first such event I learned about was 1066, the Norman Conquest, which conveyed the idea that this was when English history began. (And I well remember the cigarette cards issued in 1937 to mark the coronation of King George V and Queen Elizabeth. The set of ‘Kings and Queens of England’ began with William the Conqueror!)

At the Mercers’ School, I took in the date 1453, when Constantinople was finally conquered by the Turks, the scholars picked up their precious manuscripts, tucked them under their arms, moved to Italy, and the Renaissance began.

All good scholarly stuff, serving a (temporarily) useful purpose, but a bit far-fetched so far as implications go. (No one so much as mentioned Gutenberg and his printing press : the great revolutionary invention of that mid-century.)

In the past week or so, I find the date 1951 popping up here and there in various books I’ve been reading. !951. I remember it well. It was the year of the Festival of Britain, originally proposed as a centenary celebration of the Great Exhibition of 1851, but more specifically as an antidote to the postwar years of drab austerity, an indicator that Britain was on its feet again, standing on the brink of another brilliant future. A Dome of Discovery and a Skylon were erected on the South Bank of the Thames and a Heath Robinson pleasure gardens transformed Battersea Park.

Yes, 1951 also proved to be a significant turning point for the government. Labour lost the General Election in October and remained in opposition until 1964.

I’ve begun to consider the possibility of 1951’s having rather deeper implications. When I was lecturing on the history of the Arts, especially classical music, the years round about 1900 seemed to be crucial. The great works of 19th century Romanticism were coming to an end. A new generation was exploring – even desperately searching for – new ideas. Then came The War (1914 to 1918, that is) followed by the reaction of the 1920s, the very arid 1930s, and the renewal of The War (1939 to 1945). The first part of The War took out a whole generation of young men. The second part was widespread devastation. Twice in a handful of decades artistic impetus were shattered.

Perhaps, then, 1951 did mark a re-start, a fresh imperative, though it was more than a little infected by the attractive delusion that we remained the Great Nation of the days when the genial Edward VII was our monarch. (1951 was not the last time British troops were to engage in Suez.)

For tens of thousands of us, 1951 has a special significance, for that was the year when Parliament passed the Fraudulent Mediums Act to regularise the position of Spiritualists still smarting from the effects of the Witchcraft Trial of 1944 which had sent one of their leading mediums to prison. The first clause of the 1951 Act repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Spiritualists would no longer be subject to prosecution. And there it might all have ended, a chapter closed, save that a single alert individual saw his chance and seized it.

For Gerald Gardner this was the liminal moment. He stood on the threshold. Behind him was more than a decade of enthusiastic personal involvement in the Wica (his spelling). Out there in front was a whole wide world where he could spread his eager word. And so it was. He stepped forward. He went public, spreading the news of a surviving and renewed pagan religion whose roots were flourishing even in the days ‘Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode’.

francis cameron

oxford, 28 june 2009

legendary

In the mid-1970s as part of my studies in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, I read in translation The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. It’s quite a fat little volume in the series of Penguin Classics. A long and complex tale. I admit it required no little persistence on my part to complete my scrutiny from cover to cover. And right away the text bothered me.

Gregory writes in a sequence of episodes neatly ruled off from each other. I find myself reminded of Herodotus. Many – indeed, most – of Gregory’s episodes come across as reliable accounts of genuine historical events. This, after all, is Gregory’s prime purpose. By showing how the genealogy of the Frankish people fits smoothly and auspiciously into the patterns of the past – from the moment of Creation onwards - Gregory validates the authenticity of the Merovingian royal line which, in his own portion of linear time (Gregory died in the year 594 of our era), asserted its authority over the former Roman province of Gaul.

So much for the histories. But Gregory includes episodes belonging to a more intense perception : a perception where miracles and the interventions of the Holy Saints are as normal and expected as human mortality ; a perception where the sacred and the profane exist side by side in the same ambience, but where the sacred is to be regarded and approached with a special reverence and respect. I found myself asking : if we regard the mundane episodes as historically true, are we thereby to regard the miraculous episodes as historically true? On the other hand : if we regard the miraculous episodes simply as products of the imagination, what reliance can we place on the remainder of the material?

After more than three decades, I begin to see a possible resolution : a resolution which requires an exchange of categories, a setting aside of a current orthodoxy of historiography in favour of allowing an equal validity to legendary history for, in the middle of the first western millennium, the past was re-invented in ways which allowed, even ‘required’, genuine historical figures to be clothed in the raiment of legend : real mortal people enhanced with the attributes of immortality.

I am reminded of Tintagel where the tangible artefacts of history are subtly interpenetrated by the intangibles of legend. I am also reminded of Brocéliande where Merlin and Morgana still hold sway and where ‘the once and future king’ is worshipped as a saint and portrayed in the stained glass of sacred fenestration.

francis cameron

oxford, 25 june 2009

academic expositions of 'the burning times'

Barry, Hester & Roberts (eds)

Witchcraft in early modern Europe : studies in culture and belief

ISBN 0-521-55224-9

Once again I have been re-reading this study. It’s a collection of thirteen essays originating from a 1991 conference held at the University of Exeter on the cultural contexts of the European witch hunts. It’s admirable academic stuff. Full of details and bountifully provided with footnotes showing where the writers unearthed their material. And that material comes from the books on the shelves they were surrounded with as they read and as they wrote.

As the subtitle indicates : this is a book about historical attitudes towards witchcraft rather than a book about witchcraft itself. ‘Early Modern Europe’, in this context, means mostly the 1500s and the 1600s, though Ian Bostridge on ‘Witchcraft repealed’ is actually about the events leading up to and surrounding the passing of the Witchcraft Act of 1735 (which he treats as belonging to March 1736 without explaining why). Only in his very last footnote does he mention ‘14 and 15 Geo. 6. ch. 33. Fraudulent Mediums Act, 1951. (An Act to repeal the Witchcraft Act, 1735, and to make in substitution .. .. )’. That, and leads to a handful of 1990 newspaper articles of the more sensational persuasion. Not a word about Gerald Gardner and the witchcraft revival. But that could be par for the course in certain academic surroundings even so recently as a score of years ago. I can remember being advised that my own department actively avoided contact with 20th-century witches (unless they were in a distant part of the world and, preferably, pre-literate).

So there we have it. A useful collection of detailed information about ‘the burning times’ by a respectable table of academics paying due homage to Keith Thomas and his ‘Religion and the Decline of Magic’, a classic work of the genre.

francis cameron

oxford, 24 june 2009

cultural changes observed in late 1950s London

From 1956 to 1959 I was teaching at the Central Foundation Boys’ Grammar School in London. Half the boys were Jewish (such was the admissions policy) and the other half were ‘non-Jewish’ (which has prejudiced me against ‘non’ classifications right through to the present day).

 

I’d been appointed to set up a Music Department where none had existed before. I found an excellent series of course books at the Oxford University Press. These were provided, along with music, LPs, and instruments by an ever-generous London County Council.

 

In my first year at the school there were not enough music classes to provide me with a full timetable so I had three pleasurable terms teaching history to the 2nd Forms. Apparently, at least according to Messrs Carter & Mears, European History began on Christmas Day in the Year of Our Lord 800. An interesting thought.

 

It soon became apparent to me that the music I was to teach was quite an alien species to my boys. Yet it was the only kind of music that really counted as ‘Music’ in those days. I reckoned that if the pupils could cope with Algebra, they could cope with Music and I ploughed on regardless in the hope they might some day return to Chopin’s nocturnes, Bizet’s Carmen, and the other snippets we shared. Their own music came to the surface in the one lesson period each year when they were encouraged to bring their own records. They turned up with their well-used 45s. That was the year I first heard Little Richard.

 

Meanwhile, outside the school and the BBC Third Programme, ‘popular’ (demotic) music was undergoing a quiet revolution. On some summer evenings, in one or other of the LCC’s parks, there was a semi-professional dance band playing from the standard Boosey & Hawkes arrangements of big band hits. A few couples valiantly breathed last gasps into foxtrot waltz or quickstep while one or two pairs of two girls jived in a corner.

 

There were, by contrast, full-house audiences for George Melly and Humphrey Littleton on the stage of the open air theatre in Battersea Pleasure Gardens. Jazz, real Jazz, was there for the aficionados. Something to listen to. Seriously.

 

The semi-professional members of the Musicians Union who played in the dance bands grew fewer and fewer with each public appearance. In their place, young people were creating their own thing. Any boy who could make a bass line with a tea chest a broomstick and a length of thick string, needed only a friend with a side drum and another with an acoustic guitar and there was a skiffle group ready to reach out to an eager young audience. The Six Five Special was there on the telly to highlight the trend and Lonnie Donegan with Rock Island Line and My Old Man’s a Dustman was there to show what a pro could do.

 

They were great days, part of the Soho basement café scene with the new Gaggia machines imported from Italy burbling away in the background with the insouciance of new arrivals in a new found land. London was not yet ‘Swinging London’ but it was well on the way.

 

© francis cameron

oxford, 7 may 2009

 

MAGICAL ANGLICANS

In 1801 a remarkable book was published in London. Its author is Francis Barrett, F.R.C. Professor of Chemistry, natural and occult Philosophy, the Cabala, &c. &c. He called it ‘The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; a complete system of Occult Philosophy.’ It is a textbook of magical information. There is a copy in Bodley’s Library. It was not new when Bodley acquired it. Its pages bear signs of significant use, still strong enough to provoke images for the delectation of an unwary psychomatrist. I made great use of it when I was preparing my article on Francis Barrett, the Magus of Marylebone.

I was reminded of it this morning when I was once again re-reading ‘High Magic’s Aid’ by Scire (G. B. Gardner IVº O.T.O.) I was at the point where Thur and Morven are about to embark on their first working together.

>> And he stripped, and washed himself thoroughly, bidding Morven to do likewise. She obeyed him, and he poured water over himself and then her, saying : “Purge me, O Lord, with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” <<

/* Words which, even in my own lifetime, once signalled the beginning of the Latin Mass while all those present were asperged with holy water. */

When the triple circle is drawn and clouds of incense rise from the brazier, Thur stands facing east and begins to recite Psalm cii ‘Hear my prayer, O Lord : and let my cry come unto Thee’ an invocation presently familiar to Prayer Book Anglicans and before that resounding amid the echoes of monastic Latin. He takes salt. “Tzabaoth .. Elohim .. Yod, He, Vou, He! O God, who art the Truth, and the Light, deign to bless and sanctify this creature of salt .. .. “

 

In his introduction, Francis Barrett writes : ‘see thy first care be to know thyself; and then in humility direct thy prayer as follows .. .. Almighty and most merciful God, we thy servants approach with fear and trembling before thee, and in all humility do most heartily beseech thee to pardon our manifold and blind transgressions .. .. Grant us, Lord, power and strength of intellect to carry on this work, for the honour and glory of thy holy name, and to the comfort of our neighbour; and without design of hurt or detriment to any .. .. ‘

 

Someone once remarked to me how some of the great Golden Dawn names were, without incongruity, actively practising High Church Anglicans. I am not surprised. Candles, many brilliant candles. Incense, dense clouds of incense. Gorgeous robes, changed and coloured according to the season of the year. Ritual choreography and a Master of Ceremonies to make sure everyone follows the prescribed steps. The re-enactment of the myth, as observed by those with the inner perception. There are clues here for those who wish to engage with them.

© francis cameron

oxford, 18 april 2009

 

completed .. ..

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (London, 2005)

This is a story from the author’s imagination. The creepy thing about it is : it might just have been true.

I’m not going to say anything about the plot because even a few hints here and there could spoil the suspense for future readers. All I will say is that this novel, this first person narrative covering the first thirty-one years of a woman’s life, has something of the air of science fiction about it. It is a story conveyed so well, a story threaded through with uncertainties and possibilities, it just might have been. It just might.

© francis cameron
oxford, 4 march 2009

midnight's 3 levels of perception

This is my 9th consecutive month with Books on the Broad.
· now our title is Midnight's Children
· written by SALMAN RUSHDIE
· originally published in 1981
· by Jonathan Cape

introduction

This is splendid story-telling : a vast narrative of epic proportions. There is enough material here to justify a full scale doctoral dissertation. I do not propose to go that far. Instead, I offer just three perspectives : 3 levels of perception.

1st perception : everyday reality

This is the story told by Saleem Sinai, born in Bombay at the stroke of midnight on August 15th 1947, that same terrible midnight which sounded the final knell of British rule in India; and the consequences which followed. It is a gargantuan subject, a dimension well-matched by the expansiveness of the telling and the writing.
The conversations are so convincing, so realistic. I feel myself right there, ever-present among the listeners.
The descriptions have something special about them. They conjure up the crowded alleyways, the hustle and bustle of children at play, the menacing forests of the Sundarbans, the comfortable squalor of the magicians' ghetto.
Rushdie does not spare the strokes of his pen. Objects are often viewed from several different angles. Full attention to the nose on a man's face occupies most of a page and then spills over onto the next. That nose is so important to the story. It's a constantly recurring theme, a persistent leitmotif.
I find myself comfortably at home in Saleem's company listening to his tale. It is all so relaxed and integrated. Even words which I associate specifically with India blend into the general ambit so subtlety I pass them by without a second thought until, suddenly, I return to myself and ask : How come this book is written in English? And to answer that I have to seek help elsewhere. That help is very enlightening. Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay – not exactly on August 15th 1947, but near enough - on June 19th of that same year. He came to England, to Rugby public school. At Cambridge he read History and was part of the Footlights theatre company, which leaves me wondering how much the make-believe and transformed reality of the theatre influenced Rushdie’s later writing.

2nd perception : reality transformed

In the midst of all this reality, Midnight’s Children has two very obvious fingerprints of lo real maravilloso, magical reality. Something happens to our hero. His life is transformed. He finds himself able, at will, to inhabit the minds of other people, friends and strangers. He even sets out to make things happen by these means. Evie Burns, the American girl, has a splendid new silver bicycle. Saleem desires so much to ride this gorgeous machine. He exerts his newfound powers. He has his way. And at midnight, in his favourite hideaway place, he gathers to himself the five hundred and eighty-one surviving ten-year olds who share the magic of that fateful midnight birthing. Midnight’s Children’s Conference materialises into vivacity.
Much later, and against the very sinews of his being, he is taken into hospital for an operation. When he comes to, his gift has gone for ever. In its place he has an extraordinary nose. For the first time in his life, he is assailed by the aromas of his surroundings, the pungent smells of people. He can sniff out emotions hopes desires. During the Emergency he is a sniffer dog conscripted to hound out terrorists intellectuals and other subversives.

3rd perception : deep structure

I had been enjoying the opening chapters of Midnight’s Children. It was a rollicking good yarn. Then, once again, I was brought up short. There was another boy, Shiva by name, born in the selfsame Bombay nursing home, on that selfsame sensational midnight in 1947. When Mary Pereira, the young Christian midwife, was alone with the two boys, as a private revolutionary act for her very own Joseph, she exchanged the name tags of the two infants. I stop and say to myself ‘Creation Myth’. I recall the terrible images of the Gandhi film, the slaughter and destruction that followed partition. And at that moment this was for me no longer just a rattling good yarn, not even just a literary production to be pursued for signs of lo real maravilloso. I begin to think on those awful consequences of partition. The midnight bell tolled in Bombay. British India was dead. Others were left to pick up the pieces. Would we never learn? Ireland? Cyprus? The Balfour Declaration?
I resume my reading, but my vision of this novel is irreparably changed. And it does not stop there. Now, whenever I start to read a novel, I find myself alert for deep structure, for myths, and for vital messages concealed beneath surface imagery.
There is a point at which Rushdie, the sniffer dog, changes the pace of his narrative. It is slower and more condensed. A welcome contrast to the allegro giocoso of the first movement and to the finale which follows. I begin to share the anguish the anger the despair of Rushdie’s text. I begin to understand how writers can become enemies of the state, how they may attract the fatwa which condemns them to death.
I cannot answer the question : Is this story of Saleem Sinai an external camouflage designed to conceal a message otherwise standing stark and bare in these pages?
I recall another leitmotif, the image of ‘the perfumed sheet’, the large white bedsheet with a roughly circular hole some seven inches in diameter cut into the centre, the sheet held up between the newly-qualified young doctor and the young woman patient. He is permitted to view only the small portion of her anatomy which she places against the aperture. Is this also a symbolic representation? A partition which admits inspection of only a minuscule portion of the situation on the other side? Is this also a warning, a sinister dropped hint? I suspect so.
And when Saleem’s sister, the Brass Monkey, is grown up, metamorphosed into Jamila the famous Singer, she performs in public behind a curtain, a partition, into which a small circular aperture has been insinuated, the better for her charming voice to be heard. When she walks abroad, the burqa – another partition – hides all but her eyes.

coda

Saleem in the city of his birth with Padma demanding more and more of his story. And the setting? A pickle factory. Should I positively seek beneath the surface of that ‘pickle’? Does that ‘pickle’ intentionally summarise all that has gone before? A single word signifying a pungent tangible reality? A single word transformed into a pejorative situation? A simple surface with a disturbing deep structure?

Words when spoken are potential magic. Words when written are symbols of enchantment.

© francis cameron
oxford, 1 march 2009

a train of thought arrives at a station

At last I come to a conclusion that satisfies me, though many others have already reached this conclusion long before I began to think about it and to examine the evidence.

The evidence is this .. ..

For at least 65 years I have read, on average, at least one novel each month. That’s an awful lot of novels. More than enough to constitute a body of evidence from which to draw conclusions.

My conclusions are these .. ..

Novels are products of the imagination. They are, in very simple terms, story books – the likes of Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland, Westwood Ho!, and The Last Days of Pompeii – all of which I had read and cherished long before I was ten years old. In general practice, novels are long stories. Sometimes they are very long stories. How long is up to the author, though the publisher and the buyer may impose their own limits. That said, the writer is free to roam at will in the very real realms of the imagination. And the degree to which we, the readers, are able to share the same paths, meet the same people, experience the same sights sounds tastes smells and bodily contacts will depend partly on the skill of the writer and partly on our own willingness to travel through the words on the page to the surroundings which exist because the writer has created them for us. And when the imagination of the writer is ill-nourished or too little exercised, our own contribution may need to be all the more energetic and persistent. That is not the whole of the story. There are other considerations to take into account. But these will do for starters.

A set of points ..

I have beside me as I write, the 647 pages into which the typographer has transposed, tantalisingly metamorphosed, the vast expansive imagination words of Salman Rushdie in his 1981 novel : Midnight’s Children. I have been compelled to read it slowly, chew over every sentence, masticate every phrase, every  alternative specification, until the full flavour of this pudding, this intoxicating dessert, this feast for the nose the eyes the ears, the ready-to-receive palate, the anticipating gullet, the floreat resonances of inconsequentiality, convey in harmonic intervallic sequences of immeasurable sensation, the love and kisses, the wholeness, the totality, the enormity of my inner and outer beings combined into one great chromatic experiencing of the author's intentions, his recollections, his amalgamations, his swoopings into realms beyond the tabulations of mundane reality.

© francis cameron, oxford, 14 february 2009

 

 

PAUL WATERS

Books on the Broad with Paul Waters, 3 November 2008

We now have two novels by PAUL WATERS. Of Merchants and Heroes, which came out in 2008, was his first. Cast not the Day has just arrived (6 February 2009). Rome looms large in both of them.

In the first we stand on the hinges of change as the Republic’s long war with Carthage draws to its close only to give way to threats from Macedonia. On a more personal level, the gentle mystical influence of Greece is beginning to transform the daily lives of young cultured Romans.

In the second we are faced with the Empire’s tumultuous 4th century as experienced on the islands of Britannia where, into the void created by the withdrawal of the legions seeking glory nearer home, surge the stormtroops of the bishops eager to destroy the temples and the fellowship of the Old Gods who have served the people so long and so well.

If love and the creation of beauty are the keynotes of the first novel, then hate and tearing apart are the whirlpools of the second.

Paul Waters writes with knowledge and understanding. Times which now are distant come alive for us with his words on the page. We look forward to his next novel – and the next and the next.

© francis cameron
oxford, 1 february 2009

something to tell you

ROCOCO & SPARKLING

This is my 8th consecutive month of reading for Books on the Broad. Three of the books have ‘murder’ on the first page. I wonder why?

I follow my usual rules. Go straight to the author’s text. Avoid introductions, ignore reviews, bypass publishers’ puffs. Go straight to the author’s text! and carry with you the whole of your previous experience. And in this case I admit to prior knowledge of Hanif Kureishi. I have twice seen the film My Beautiful Laundrette when it was shown on the television. And I have a distant memory of picking up a copy of The Buddha of Suburbia, reading a line or two here and there, and returning it unpurchased to the bookshelf. (Not to my taste at the time or Not satisfying a transitory need. It doesn’t matter now but I can’t completely subdue the impression.)

Something to tell you is an easy-going conversational autobiography. ‘The Life and Times of Jamal Kahn’ as set down by a complaisant amanuensis.

Words are magic. I am drawn into the nub of the story. I am the invisible reticent bystander in the taxi ; in the half-light of the Kama Sutra Club ; alongside the naked sunbathers in their secret hidden corner of the garden ; chuntering away on an old golfball typewriter.

Then there’s the external world. Of dreams, of thoughts, of wisdom shared. Of Wittgenstein, André Breton, and great slabs of Freud. Of Schopenhauer. “Sexual passion is the most perfect manifestation of the will to live.” Even Mick Jagger has a walk-on part.

I’ve heard it all before. I’m back with Charlotte Bingham. Swinging London in the 60s. Basement cafés in Soho. Bubbling Gaggia machines. Night on a Bare Mountain as number one of the jukebox. But it’s different. Now it’s Shepherds Bush market, not the Kings Road. Not the Mods and Rockers. And certainly no Vespas or Lambrettas. This is a new generation showing indulgent delight in their cultured hippy freedom. They are all larger than life. Their ancestors may have grown up among far flung shreds of Empire. Now they revel in their own street theatre. Some of the script remains the same but the characters and the settings belong to their own richly hued panorama.

It’s flamboyant. It’s exhilarating. It’s hilarious.

It’s fun.


© francis cameron
oxford, 28 january 2009

CANDLE MASS

thoughts on candlemas
OE Candelmæsse

In churches of the Western Catholic tradition, the celebration of Mass on February 2nd includes the Blessing of Candles for use during the following year.

While the candles are being blessed, the choir sings the canticle
nunc dimittis servum tuum domine

Lord, now lettest thou they servant depart in peace
According to thy word
My mine eyes have seen thy salvation
Which thou has prepared before the face of all people
To be a light to lighten the gentiles
And to be the glory of thy people Israel

These are the words attributed to Simeon, the elderly priest of the Jerusalem Temple, before whom stood Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus.

Mary is there to fulfil the requirements of the ancient Jewish Law. She had given birth 40 days before. Now she comes to the Temple to be ritually purified and to present her first-born son to the priest. Hence the official name for the festival on February 2nd is either The Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. I am told that the former focuses on the status of Mary Theotokos (Mary the Mother of God) while the latter focuses on the masculinity of the infant Jesus.

I understand that this intention was first introduced – into the Greek-speaking Orthodox liturgy – during the eventful 4th century of the Common Era when Christianity was moved from ruthless persecution during the first decade of the 300s to the status of the one and only permitted religion in the final decade and, in the meantime, Christianity officially defined itself, by order of the Emperor Constantine, at the Council of Nikea in 325; and the Canon of the New Testament, sacred writings of the Orthodox faith, was finally specified.

There’s a rather interesting exposition attributed to Pope Innocent XII in the concluding years of the 1600s. The story goes that, in pagan Roman times, it was the custom for women to go about with lighted candles in imitation of the goddess Ceres seeking for her lost daughter Prosepine (who had been kidnapped by her uncle Pluto and held captive in the Underworld). [In the Greek version, it is Demeter the Earth Mother seeking for her lost daughter Persephone.]

There is also an association with the pagan practice of farm animals being moved out of the hayfield with the first signs of Spring.

© francis cameron
oxford, 27 january 2009