Monday 23 April 2012
Thursday 19 April 2012
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Tuesday 17 April 2012
gradus :: returning to china
I am preparing to return to China. No, that does not mean I am packing a suitcase and booking a plane ticket. It means I am drawn to begin preparing for my proximate life which increasingly I feel will be in China. I do not yet know what I shall be doing, what career I shall follow. In great part that will be resolved after I have left this world. Just imagine. A peaceful passing. A period in the Gardens of Refreshment, when I shall still be able to communicate with those I have left behind in this world. And then the great examination, the weighing of the scales, the balancing of the books. The status I take with me from this life plus the accumulated experiences from my previous lives. That which has been accomplished. That which remains unfinished but with a desire to continue. That where the line may be drawn. That which I am fitted to do in the life to come. The great Halls of Learning are open and welcoming. What am I fitted to do? What would I most like to do? Which few families are most appropriate to receive me. I shall have, as I have had before, a choice. I shall choose my mother. The circumstances which offer the prospect of my completing what remains to be completed. Of beginning what needs to be begun. So shall it be.
I have lived in China before. When, in this life, I visited the city we westerners call Canton, I climbed a small way up the staircases of an ancient pagoda in a temple courtyard and I lived again myself as a boy serving that temple and climbing those steps.
A visit to the image of the bodhisattva in gallery 38 of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum is a staging post in the present part of my soul’s immortal journey. Soon I shall return to communicate with those whose hands created so much of beauty in the days of those who were then my distant ancestors.
I shall not travel alone.
francis cameron, oxford, 17 april 2012
he who would valiant be
My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage
and my courage and skill to him that can get it
My marks and scars I carry with me
* * *
So he passed over
and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side
* * *
1678
Monday 16 April 2012
john lewis click and collect
Sunday 15 April 2012
F1 Shanghai
Saturday 14 April 2012
looking at pictures from ten years ago
visual diary ten years ago
I think of my photographs as making a visual diary which tells me where I was and who I was with as time goes by. I decide to look back ten years. What was I doing in april 2002? Let’s have a look .. ..
· on the 4th I was in Brighton. I took some photos in the city centre. Looked at the Royal Pavilion. From the outside and in this particular light it looked as though cast in concrete. Then the famous Brighton beach. Speckled with visitors even though getting on for tea time. Talking of which, I wanted a cup of tea. No chance. It was closing time for the tea rooms. In the evening I was the visiting speaker for the local Pagans. I guess it was Francis Barrett, the Magus of Marylebone
· 15th at Sainsbury’s on the ring road and a photo as I emerged from the car wash
· 16th in Oxford’s city centre
· 17th picked up Amy and then to Avebury, the stones, the village, the churchyard, the church
· 22nd Dennis Pratley in his barber’s shop cut my hair and trimmed my beard
· 23rd to that part of North Oxford known as Summertown where I sat outside the Dew Drop Inn, drank a beer and played with memories of someone I’d met there long ago
· 24th out to the Baldons on the trail of a local section of the great Michael Line which has interesting nodes and leylines within easy driving distance
· 25th to the Oxford Union and then on to Rewley House where I demonstrated for the course building a mail order database with Access and Visual Basic
· and on the 27th a Pagan handfasting at Avebury. Caroline Marion Amy Charlie Uffer and Jan were all there.
I have just two candidates for ‘my photo of the month’. Presently I’ll choose one and post it separately.
francis cameron, oxford, 14 april 2012
Friday 13 April 2012
just thinking
gradus :: bare essentials
Professor Joad, id est Professor C. E. M. Joad, was a regular member of the Brains Trust, a programme broadcast by the BBC Home Service in the early part of the 1940s. He is chiefly remembered for quoting Confucius on air during a live broadcast. “What is the use of going to bed early to save candles if the result be twins?”
It’s very strange, but not at all unexpected, that this remark caused an explosion of outrage. (Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells there in the forefront.) We might be totally immersed in the greatest struggle for survival we had ever experienced, but certain matters must never be expressed in public.
Professor Joad had a phrase he tended to use when faced with a tangled question. “It depends what you mean by .. ..“ and this is something which has lingered in the recesses of my mind ever since. For decades it remained quietly dormant. It came to the surface in my Sydney years with the anthropologists as I began to come to terms with the scientific method and it became part of my teaching technique. My seminars might include thinking about “What is music?” or “What exactly do we mean by scherzo?”
It’s still an essential part of my thought patterns though sometimes when I’m pondering a particular subject it takes the form “What is the one essential constituent of .. ..?” and I go on to pare away the unessentials until I am left with the one factor which stands at the heart of the matter. “What exactly do we mean by ‘religion’?” “What is meant by ‘worship’?” When asked the question “Do you believe in God?”, I have to stop myself replying “It depends what you mean by God”.
This morning I was thinking about the important steps in my life. Places I have been, people I’ve met, and the abiding influences some have left on me. “What was the one essential of Mercers’ School when you were there during the war?” And I think “the maintenance of tradition”.
And then I have another thought. I recall the lessons we had with our headmaster R. W. Jepson, M. A. He took us step by step through his book Clear Thinking. He got us literalising about some of the signs we see in public places. “Dogs must be led in this area.” So, if I have a dog, does this mean I must put him/her on a lead and take him/her into that area in order to be led there? Nonsense like this still comes to the surface now and then. On the entry door to a refreshment room was the notice “Guide Dogs only allowed”. As we went in I explained to the waitress “We’re not guide dogs but we’d still like to come in”. She met me with a blank look of sheer incomprehension. I shouldn’t have done it. I really shouldn’t. But I couldn’t resist.
francis cameron, oxford, 13 april 2012
back to visit ‘my’ bodhisattva again
It’s quite incredible. No it’s not really unbelievable. I know better than that. It’s really and truly quite credible. Even to be expected. If you are sensitive you just tune in. She’s there. Waiting.
I stand eight or ten feet away from her image. There were centuries of devotion before she was taken from her temple. Centuries when she absorbed the concentrated energy directed at her. Now it’s there. Just waiting – begging, almost – for believers to come and make contact.
The magnetic link is powerful. As powerful as you want. Here is a fountain of rejuvenation. A place of refreshment.
And the more you take in, the more there is for the taking.
francis cameron, oxford, 13 april 2012
Tuesday 10 April 2012
bodhisattva
Ashmolean gallery 38. China from AD 800. Takes me back to Cowper Street school when I taught 2nd year history to fill a gap in my timetable. According to Messrs Carter & Mears then, European History began on Christmas Day in the year 800 when the Pope in St Peter’s crowned Charlemagne (alias Carolus Magnus alias Karl der Gross) as Holy Roman Emperor.
And I look round at the exhibition and see what the Chinese were doing and I make comparisons. And I’m sad our history books didn’t have more to say about the world at the other end of the Silk Road.
I sit and gaze at the figtree wood statue of a seated bodhisattva. It’s still full of power. Evident as soon as I make contact. The silence which radiates is tangible and totally engulfing.
When my thoughts begin to wonder I leave my seat and move to stand beside a table of treasures. The electricity shoots through my body. My fingers curl up. It takes a conscious effort to choke away the tears. To move half a footstep away. The memories are overwhelming. It’s like that nowadays whenever I’m tuned to a sensitive channel. I hadn’t expected it to be so strong here in this space today.
I’m drawn back to that afternoon in Guangzhou (on the Pearl River) when I walked up to the second floor of an old pagoda and remembered my mother handing me over to the monastery when I was twelve years old. I used to take their tiny meals to the monks who were meditating there. It could take them 24 hours or 24 days to make all their devotions at each stage and gradually make their way up to the highest platform.
I leave the gallery and make my way down to the bookshop in the basement. They have reproductions of those very typical southeast asian statue heads. (To me they are Siamese but I’m sure that’s no longer ‘correct’.) There’s that unmistakeable penetrating twinge that pierces whenever something once so familiar shows up in an unexpected context. My sister and I were sacred dancers at the royal court. I can still feel the humidity. See the smooth wooden columns and the deep crimson silks stretched and gathered overhead.
Times Past merges into Times Present and I prepare for Times Yet to Come. Next time ..
francis cameron, oxford, 10 april 2012
vacation
Sunday 8 April 2012
gradus 1961 :: a soloist on the road to damascus
After the harrowing experience of Westminster Cathedral, I began to grow up as a professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Day by day, week by week, I reclaimed the soloist who was there when I first played in public when I was four years old. The soloist who revelled in the applause of his audiences when he performed on his first professional tour when he was sixteen.
/*
harrowing :: I once drove a Ferguson tractor pulling a harrow over a freshly ploughed field. An agricultural harrow is a large horizontal metal framework holding rows of downward pointing spikes, some six to nine inches apart. It is used to smooth out the furrows made by the plough. Smaller versions used in torture chambers are intended to dig in rather than smooth over.
*/
At this moment I don’t want to dwell on my time at the RAM. Just let’s say that I kept on noticing spectacular changes in the world around me. And my own self-confidence grew as I began to match – and even surpass – the professional standards which came at first from my colleagues then developed into standards I demanded of myself. Every time I walked on to the concert platform, every time I stood up to adjudicate at competitive music festivals, every time I sat on the examiners’ side of the table, I knew it at the end of the day when I had done well. It was always pleasant to be congratulated. But deep down I needed no comment. I always knew when I had performed well; when my performance was professional but nothing exceptional; and when I marked myself not good enough and added the rider : must do better next time.
No. Instead of writing about being at the RAM in the Swinging Sixties, I want to go on. I want to tell you about the big steps – the really crucial steps – which changed the direction of my whole life.
Let me sketch the outlines. Details are for later.
It is the autumn term of 1967. We are doing rather well. We live in a large victorian semi with a separate garage and 100 foot of garden on the edge of Knighton Woods, Buckhurst Hill. We have three glorious daughters. The future’s bright.
I am coming up to my 40th birthday. It seems that every paper, every magazine, has an article telling me 40 is the age to be realistic. I might have climbed two or three steps up the ladder, but I’m never going to get to the top. I might as well accept that I’m going to go on doing the same old thing day after day and week after week until I retire. Eventually this got to me. An insidious little thought wormed its way into a more insistent thought. Did I really want to go on doing the same sort of thing until the day I retired? No. I did not. Perhaps I sent out a potential thought. I’m not even sure I did that.
Christmas was on its way. Professional duties took precedence. The new year brought with it its own particular sets of opportunities.
* * * * * * *
march 1968
It’s a sunny Sunday morning in Golden Square. The choir has sung well at morning mass. I pick up the Sunday Times and the Observer. Drop them on the back seat of the car. And drive off towards Hereford where I am due to begin a music examiner’s tour. Tewkesbury is a station on my John Bull road. I shall spend the night at an inn. After dinner I scan the sunday papers. In both of them there is a display advertisement. There is a new post as Assistant Director at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music. Suitable candidates please apply.
At that point I’m not quite sold. I want to hear what the Chancellor has to say when he presents his budget later on in the week. It makes up my mind. I set the ball rolling.
I couldn’t do it if I lived away from London. The NSW state office is in the Strand. Australia House stands bold at the Aldwych. I remember the advice I used to give to school parties about to go on exchange visits to other countries. I read the tourist literature. I read the government publications. Books about Australia. Books about New South Wales. Sydney. The Conservatorium. And Joseph Post. The man I would be working with.
The last question of my second interview clinches the deal. The State Director of Education looks me straight in the eye and asks : Where will you live if you are appointed? (I’ve been studying The Realtor for weeks. My answer is ready.) If you’d asked me that two weeks ago I would have said I could buy a nice rancher up on the Peninsular, looking over Pittwater on one side and the Pacific on the other. But that would be a long drive home after rehearsals late at night. So I’m looking for somewhere in the region of French’s Forest.
Back home, even though there’s no word from Sydney, I prepare as though we are leaving before the end of the year. When the letter eventually comes I am ready to go. Our local GP drives us to Tilbury. We set sail on the old Iberia which was built for Suez but now has to go round the Cape.
* * * * * * *
It is Christmas Day 1971. I am with Peter Crowe at Lolowai, the Anglican Mission Station on the island of Aoba in the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides. We are here to make tape recordings of all the music we hear during our visit and to observe the grade-taking ceremonies of Na Hunggwe.
It is a fairly short visit. Just the weeks between the end of one academic year in November and the start of another late in February. And I’m soon aware that the stories we were told in school - the benefits of English civilisation graciously bestowed upon natives in distant parts of the world - are utterly and completely misleading. The local people here have a highly-developed social structure, quite different from anything an English public schoolboy might impose. And their slit drum ensembles play elaborate rhythms to guide each ritual action of Na Hunggwe.
There are questions I ought to be asking but I don’t know what those questions are. When we get back to Sydney I must sign on at the University and work for a qualification in Anthropology.
* * * * * * *
It is 1974. I am a part time, second year, postgraduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. (I delayed for twelve months to give my undivided assistance to our new Director who arrived at the beginning of 1972.)
Rozelle is one of the older suburbs of Sydney. I’m there visiting a friend. The man from the next house comes in for a chat and a drink. He introduces himself as a witch. A follower of the Old Religion. A witch in a line of descent from those who came over in the First Fleet of convict ships. 200 years ago. Give or take.
Now we’d just reached this essential topic in our anthropology lectures. I’d been a good student. Read the compulsory textbooks. Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande. The usual stuff. Making out witchcraft was a social function. Not a scrap of the supernatural. But then, I’d also just read the three books of Margaret Murray. And I admit to feeling just a tiny bit smug when I recognise the source of those parts of his spiel. But there are other parts that resonate. This course in anthropology has scraped away all my previous convictions about one true religion. One set of beliefs and practices. One social rule for all. I gave up all my Spiritualist ideas when I signed on for Our Holy Mother the Church. Now they are beginning to come to life again. In short, I am hooked. I am back on track. Past and future go hand in hand. Seamless.
* * * * * * *
Oh yes. The Damascus bit. Sorry about that. Just couldn’t resist.
The story is in the book called The Acts of the Apostles. It’s about Saul, a Romanised Jew, who’s part of the secret police hunting down the Jesus People making a nuisance of themselves in Jerusalem. “We crucified their leader just a week or two ago. Now they’re spreading rumours that he’s risen from the dead.” And then Saul finds another nest to smoke out. He sets out on the road that leads to Damascus. Before he gets there, he’s struck down. Has a vision. Hears a disembodied voice. Goes blind. Falls down in a faint. When he recovers he’s a different man. Changes his name to Paul. Starts a new religion. Sets out to convert the goyim to his Christos.
My Damascus is different. A welcome restoration. Coming at precisely the right moment. I am properly prepared. I cast away the imperial baggage of Britain and Rome. I meet again the spirits and powers of the Other Side. Arm in arm we walk. As we did before.
francis cameron, oxford, 08 april 2012
bishop gregory’s fact and fable
I think I may have found a solution to a problem which has vexed me for more than forty years.
In the mid 1970s, when I was involved with Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney, I read an English translation of a classical text dating from the 6th century of our era. It is usually called History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. It is a long compendious book. Most of it appears to be reliable history. So reliable that parts of it have been repeated ad infinitum by successive generations of history writers. But other parts are so far removed from everyday credibility that I’ve continually wondered why they are there.
They set me a problem. If most of the account is good factual history, are these supernatural episodes to be regarded as equally factual? On the other hand, if some of the episodes are no more than products of the imagination, how much reliance can I place on the rest of the content?
With my own background, I’m quite prepared to accept that Gregory is writing of a time when the veil between the worlds was so intangible, sensitive people on this earth walked hand in hand with those from the Other Side. But this proposition simply won’t wash in the academic world. So I must look for an alternative explanation.
It struck me only last night. For the most part Gregory sets down the actual physical facts as he is aware of them. But now and then he moves into parable. Those who perused copies of his manuscript would know the difference. They would know how to peel away the surface layers and reveal the messages hidden from unenlightened eyes.
Then my thoughts took me a step further. Of course! Every day at mass, there were readings from the Gospels of the New Testament. They record how parables were used to provoke public curiosity. Then, in private séances, the Inner Circle, the ‘Twelve’ of tradition, were taken over the border into the realities of the esoteric.
Really, it’s no surprise to find a similar technique used in History of the Franks. Why didn’t I think of it before? More to the point. Why did all those I questioned fail to come up with any explanation at all?
francis cameron, oxford, eostre 8 april 2012
Friday 6 April 2012
05 december 1927 :: here beginneth
gradus defined ..
Gradus, a word from the latin fourth declension. It can mean just one step and it can mean more than one step. For my present purposes I use gradus in the sense of a series of steps. Whether these are footsteps or whether like the treads of a staircase is for the moment of little concern. It can be taken as either – or both.
I’d like to begin at the beginning. But there is no beginning. The steps I describe in my present journey are but part of a much greater series. If all goes well, and in their proper place, I may recall former steps. For now, let me begin with a statement that makes a good deal of sense to me – and to many others who share awarenesses – though it may ring strange to those as yet unconvinced of the reality of existing as an immortal soul linked but temporarily with a mortal physical body, that physical body being the instrument through which the soul gains experience of external life.
I chose to be born in London to parents who were both practising Christian Spiritualists. They were psychics. Clairvoyants. Healers. My mother moved into deep trance, a medium for words of uttermost wisdom conveyed by spirits from far distant planes of understanding. My father, a fine speaker, initiated our séances. My parents were also lovers of music. And that is an important thread in my story.
francis cameron, oxford, 11 september 2011
with minimal revisions, 06 april 2012
writing is magic <> music is witchcraft
writing is magic <> music is witchcraft
francis cameron, oxford, 06 april 2012
Thursday 5 April 2012
gradus :: westminster 1959 to 1961
I expected it to be a terminus. I was mistaken. It was only a wayside halt.
My two years at Westminster Cathedral were not the happiest of my life. I made mistakes. And that was only partly because I was such a tender new Catholic.
My most crashingly awful mistake was to forget how good I was. I’d been appointed because of my demonstrable ability and experience. When I was asked – ‘commanded’ would be a better word - to conform to my predecessor’s methods I was too overawed to do anything but try my best to obey. It was a pretty hopeless task. My predecessor insisted his way with boys’ voices was set out in the standard textbooks. It wasn’t. So I struggled by trial and error until I discovered his method was the very opposite of traditional English practice. Nevertheless I persisted. Foolishly.
And then there were times when I sat in my office and lamented. ‘Bricks without straw.’ There was money to pay for the interior walls to be lined with marble up to gallery level. When the engines of the west end Grand Organ blew up, a cheque was ready to pay for repairs almost before the contract was signed. Money to pay for desperately needed additional choirmen? No way. The best that could be done was to allow for ad hoc hirings only when absolutely necessary. More practice time for the boys? Can’t be done. Their timetable is already full. I tried to work within those limits. I should have remonstrated. Resigned. Walked out and left them to it. I didn’t even think of it.
Those were musical matters. But the very nature of Catholicism countermanded my better judgement. I was on the verge of sacking a member of my staff for gross misconduct. Then at the morning mass I heard the words of the gospel for the day. It was the story of the disciple who asked how many times he should forgive his brother. Seven times? And the response came. Yea. And seventy times seven. How then could I sack the man? Perhaps that sowed a tiny seed of doubt in my mind. Were the teachings in the books of instruction compatible with real life in the outside world? In real life was it really possible to live by the precepts?
But it wasn’t all like that. We did make some glorious music together. Christopher Tye and Thomas Tallis and William Byrd as well as the obligatory Lassus and Palestrina. And I sang two complete annual cycles of the Gradualia and the Vesperale and few laymen outside the choristers of Westminster can claim that.
Old Self smiles indulgently. Little did Young Self know about the preChristian kalendar with its fixed point of the birth of the god at the Winter Solstice and the ever-moveable days and nights of the dance of the Equinoctial Sun with the Lady of the brilliant Full Moon. The Mystery of Reincarnation in the Springtime of the Year.
Finally. And it needs to be said kindly and generously. My time at Westminster was a catalyst. The cathedral didn’t change. It changed me. And my future.
And on the morning when the notice of my appointment appeared in The Times, the Principal of the Royal Academy of Music invited me to go and see him. Why should Sir Thomas Armstrong do that? Because I had been in his classes at Oxford University’s Faculty of Music.
/* Oh, alright, inner voices. Yes. I’ll write it down. Something about wheels grinding slowly. */
francis cameron, oxford, 05 april 2012
gradus :: london 1952 to 1959
It is the summer of 1952. I am 24 years old. I have a brand new Honours degree in Music from the University of Oxford. I am married. I am unemployed.
It is the summer of 1959. I am 31 years old. I have just been appointed to succeed George Malcolm as the Master of Music at Westminster (Roman Catholic) Cathedral.
If this were an examination question I would add one word. Discuss. It is more instructive to say Explain. And that’s what I am going to try to do. As much for my own satisfaction as for anyone else’s.
/* my inner voices keep on and on. Oh what a tangled web we weave! Now. I’ve written it down. Perhaps the voices will turn their attention elsewhere. To what really matters. To the main threads */
How did I get from ‘over qualified and unemployed in Harcourt Street’ to ‘the Master of Music’s rostrum in Westminster Cathedral’’?
And the first part of the answer to that is the thought that came to my mind in those very early days at Paddington Chapel. As I express it again now the wording may be slightly different but the import is the same. Sundays are special. We put on our Sunday Best and we go to church.
There was another thought that went with it – and I remember actually saying it my parents. Religion shouldn’t be something we put on with our best clothes and put aside when we take them off.
Old Self contributes another vital factor. Musically I was well prepared.
And another. That the religion I experienced in the family circle was often more perceptive than the religion I heard from the pulpit. Not always the most comfortable position to be in.
* * * * * * *
From the first time I played the harmonium for the Children’s Church in the basement of Paddington Chapel, I was no longer simply someone who put on their best clothes and went to church on Sunday. I was part of church music. Often out of sight. But always part of the platform. Singing on the Decani side of St Mary’s church choir was still part of that pattern. Playing the harmonium for Spiritualist services picked up the thread. The vivid anglo-catholicism of St Peter in Fulham made me aware of theatre. By contrast, morning assembly at Mercers’ was mundane. St Barnabas in Pimlico was the Oxford Movement in glorious preRaphaelite setting. We made good music together. The organ contributed to my Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists. The choir made possible my Choirmaster’s Diploma. St Mark in Marylebone eventually turned my feet toward the authority of Rome. And it was music for the Catholic liturgy that sang with each footstep.
But another pattern still ran alongside. This was the spirituality that came from my parents. The certainty of the reality of the Other Side. From the organ loft it seemed to me this certainty was by no means present in some of the services I played for. In others, the words of their prayers were offered up to a distant God scarcely apprehended. Anglo-Catholic churches tended to have a different feeling. The Real Presence was on the altar.
Old Self leans over with a reminder. The immortal soul experiences life through the intermediary of the physical body. We are both public persona and private insight. We are in the workaday world created around us and the world we create with our own inner senses. They cleave together like the strands of a double helix. Interdependent.
* * * * * * *
I go back and re-read the paragraphs I’ve just written. How did I get from there to here? I’d almost forgotten to mention the key in the ignition. It really was one of those significant moments. When I recall it I see myself sitting in a boy’s desk in a classroom – though the reality was nothing like that. The mental image is there to remind me that Young Self’s inner consideration took place on the premises of the Central Foundation (Boys’) Grammar School in Cowper Street.
>> IF you are going to stay in teaching THEN it’s time to start looking for a job as Director of Music in a comfortable Public School. IF you are NOT going to stay in teaching THEN it’s time to move on to something else. <<
It wasn’t by any means the sending out of a thought to achieve a desire. It was simply recognising a situation.
Be that as it may. Within days rather than weeks I opened my copy of The Times to see a display advertisement inviting applications to fill the impending vacancy of Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. This was a job I could do. From then on it was up to me to pick up my cues. I did. Forwards and backwards. Backwards and forwards. And then one day there was the announcement of my appointment. On the Court Page of The Times. I had achieved an ambition I expressed when Sir Stanley Marchant interviewed me for admission as a student to the Royal Academy of Music. That was 1944.
francis cameron, oxford, 05 april 2012
Tuesday 3 April 2012
slow down
norreys avenue, tuesday 3 may 2012
.. .. I have to keep reminding myself. This is supposed to be a week off while I complete the process of recharging my batteries. But I can’t help it. The autobiography has reached a very intriguing stage. I mentally explore possibilities. Should I expand on this? And what about that? Then there are some incidents which were nothing to write home about at the time but which had enormous consequences in the long run. The exercise of setting out the bare data of my employment in the years from 1952 to 1959 has shown me how complicated life could get when I had four part-time jobs with timetables which sometimes overlapped. Going into the details leaves me with the need to pick out the most significant threads. And it’s at that point I realise how some of the threads began life in earlier chapters, stayed dormant for a bit, and then came to the surface again years later. I begin to make a distinction between the jobs I did out of necessity and those which I did entirely by my own choice. And there’s plenty of food for thought there. More than one way of going forward.
francis cameron, oxford
Sunday 1 April 2012
GBG
friday 30 march 2012
.. .. to the Atlantis Bookshop in London’s Museum Street for the launching of Philip Heselton’s long-awaited WITCHFATHER, a life of Gerald Gardner.
It’s now more than ten years since I first met Philip. We shared a platform in Boscastle at an annual meeting of the Friends of the Witchcraft Museum. I was a last minute replacement for someone else. Philip was already an established author and authority on Gerald Gardner and the roots of Wicca. I spoke much more generally on fifty years of legal witchcraft in England.
In the years since then we’ve often been at the same Pagan events in London and elsewhere. Both of us excited at finding new fragments of evidence to fill in some of the gaps in the story. Gaps which are there because some of the most vital witnesses were constrained to keep secret those things which are to be kept secret.
Philip has now gone a long long way to filling in many of those gaps. He is an assiduous researcher : visiting key sites; talking with those still alive who remember; and pouring over page after page of archival material. And when he writes there is an easy clarity of communication between him and his readers.
Wicca has developed grown and changed – sometimes almost beyond recognition – since that wonderful evening in September 1939 when GBG was carried off to Old Dorothy’s Mill House and there initiated into secrets of the religion he had thought long dead.
Thank you, Philip, for once again carrying the past into the future.
francis cameron
oxford