Peter - Chapter 8

Peter - Chapter 8
Titus Brock had arrived at Avebury in the dead of night. Having performed private rituals interacting with the stones and finally walking their circumference. Stopping at each one to lay on his hands and chant words he had learned from the elder Druids as a boy, feeling what was afoot, reading the situation, studying the vibe, humbly asking of the stones the path he should take, he then walked out the long extended line of stones suggested to him throughout his ceremony, pointing out which way he must walk. He could feel it already. 'Get away!' the stones warned him. "Waste no time, Titus. Evil is afoot. Be cautious." Like schizoid voices in his head screaming out to him to make haste. Indeed the very earth on which he stood was drawing him north and west. Through the stones he could feel the evil that had soaked in to the south east, it's spread on this land like a spilled flagon of ale on a tavern table top. His mind flooded with fungal connection with the earth. Twenty years of Druidic training had connected him so powerfully to the land his consciousness had long ago ceased to feel tightly attached to his body. Closing his eyes to engage with the spirits, his being flooded into the matter around, fusing with the immediate environment, blending into the soil as each moist dark particle stretched out its history, some from rock eroded by wind and rain over countless generations of Man, other fragments of long dead trees, their history from acorn through acrospire, to shoot and leaf, to twig and branch and trunk, drawing moisture through the tree form, transporting nutrients through the cambium layer, leaves kissed by the sun god, folding and forming, hydrating from the earth, time measured in centuries, witness to many lifetimes of people flitting past in their brief, violent lives, dying and buried, the roots feeding from the decomposition, extracting the meat rot nutrients, embracing their human spirits and holding them up through the branches, molecules within the sap, Brocks great grandfather, a mighty Druid was buried here before Brock was spunk in his fathers bollocks, but he could feel him, speaking to him down the time trails fluid within the oak sap, translated to the broader, expansive timescale of the tree, his force steering Titus, filling his heart with purpose, delivering direction beyond word or reason. In full flow, his Druidic perspective drawing on all the moist matter of life, growth, death and decay, feeding new birth, this cyclic resonance. Brock was an expression of the land around him. His, The last generation of English Man still one with the earth. The last British culture before losing touch with its planetary host. A people yet to take the hubristic Christian step away, rejecting the support of oneness that other animals still retain. The Druidic ways, the pagan perspective accepted the wonder of being of the cycle, inseparably intertwined with the universe, an aspect of the greater earth consciousness, born of its sumptuous primordial life force, thrown out in to existence, an expression of the beauty and sheer rapture of being, entrusted with a gift to bare witness, his life a particle of gaias self reflection.
But he could feel the confusion of the land around him. Winds tore up, looking fearfully around. The earth that is purity beyond deceit, beyond trickery, beyond grasping the poverty of mans arrogance. The land knew man had begun to rip free. The ground shuddered in the awareness the species were going astray. Chancing it alone. Proud in their consciousness. Mindlessly unaware of the doomed journey they were beginning. The Christian God created and shaped by man in utter disregard of Christs teaching. Jesus had stood up against the authority of pompous priests. Scoffed at their blind pride. God saw no hierarchy. Before his glory all men and women were equal. No church or priesthood held ownership or privileged access to the divine. But Christ never wrote down his teachings. Following his death, those of his followers who understood his message spread his word. But within days the squabbling of the apostles who had always jostled for Christs attention, were jealous that Mary Magdalen, a woman, a sex worker indeed, was first to be visited by the resurrected one. Gnostics were subject to spiritual insights, touched by mystical experience and knew the light of God could happen upon meek more readily than the rich. For them it was the private, first hand religious experience that was all important. Mary Magdalene, Christs favoured follower and lover saw the light. Gnostic Christians had no hierarchy and respected any who felt gods power from within. Meeting in secret they held their services, taking it in turns to lead proceedings, or by drawing of lots. Women equal to men, weak to strong, all were one, and the knowledge, gods love was for everyone.
The earliest written record of Christ comes from Paul who never met Christ. Gospels were written by the descendants of the apostles two centuries after Christs execution. Most of the many gospels were rejected as they presented a spiritual, not a physical resurrection. Some would be found close to two millennia later by which time the approved versions of Christs biography were beyond reproach. The lost gnostic gospels of minor interest to mainstream Christianity. Many of the miracles were not magical at all, just demonstrations of how by sharing food, all could get a meal. The four most dynamic gospels were selected, full of magic tricks to excite the gullible and spiritually desperate. In gossip, tales of his acts had been embellished. Not only did he return in spirit but he survived death. Born of a virgin. His miracles were exaggerated by the Orthodox Church as it developed, finally around 600ad, gaining acceptance from the Roman emperor who converted to the new orthodox Christian Faith, combining to form a dictatorial control. The Gnostics held a real perspective of the great political philosopher who liberated spiritual authority from the Jewish priesthood and returned it to the people. They took nourishment from first hand religious experiences. The mystical had no respect of Man made authority but could touch an atheist drunk as likely as a devout priest. The Orthodox Church took its authority from connections to the apostles, arguing their superior familial association to the long dead followers of Jesus provided their legitimacy. The catholic church's pope to this day takes unique and unquestionable status directly from the line of Peter, this connection to a renowned disciple was used to explain how the passing from man to man ranked higher than having experienced mystical States, dismissing the very touch of the god they claimed to worship to favour a human elites control of religion. Many of the apostles never experienced the mystical. Less than half. This usurping of the power through the establishment of the one church whose claim for legitimacy was built on descendents from Christs followers. Unemployed homeless men who rejected work in the hope Jesus grace would rub off on them, all ready to grass him up to the Romans or deny they even knew him when the shit hit the fan. The Orthodox Church denied the validity of individuals who had truly seen the light, rejecting the random uncontrollable touch of the divine, calling their rivals heretics. The elevation of faith despite the silent emptiness of an apparently god free world, became the benchmark of orthodox Christianity. Life was to be suffered and salvation could only come from retaining belief despite gods absence, a test. This faith would be rewarded after death. The hierarchy of the priesthood Christ had tried so hard to destroy reformed anew, this time under his name. Growing stricter and more exclusive as the Christian hierarchy, a pyramid of power and wealth denied the purity of the poor, denied that women could be priests or have souls. All Christ stood for was inverted and used to support the powerful rich elite. Christs death had been in vain. Gnostic sects who preserved the true spirit of Jesus message were driven underground. Through the years that followed the evil of orthodox Christianity would grow. Hatred of women and homosexuals continued to be supported by the church until the late twentieth century. Only when an increasingly secular society could no longer tolerate their prejudices did the church, reluctantly accept women and gays. Of all its extensive intolerance and butchery, the church reached its most out and out murderous zenith during the Spanish inquisition that brought torture and murder to heretics, the mentally ill, any of pagan beliefs and pretty much anyone they didn't like. Any cruelty, any horror could now be inflicted on those deemed heretical as these murderers claimed to be carrying out gods work. Mystical enlightenment through gods hand could mark a person as in league with the devil. Such was the churches jealousy of any touched by transcendence, trial by burning, drowning or any manner of saddistic cruelty would be meted out on the unfortunate by the priesthood. Any conscience was absolved by belief in mans divine right. Strict suppression of natural sexual urges found Christian priesthood riddled with paedophilia. The systematic rape of children on an unimaginable scale has established itself as a Christian priesthood tradition that still lies at the heart of the hidden culture of the men of the cloth. Protected by bishops any paedophiles unable to terrify their victims into silence are whisked away to safety in new parishes where they begin there systematic buggery once more. These holy men need only repent in their final breathe to ensure their safe passage into heaven. Steeped in creationist superstition, man was no longer entwined with the environment, no longer shared the pagan respect for animals. Through Christianity and the transcendent soul, man came to believe he was more than animal, more than woman, other creatures were on gods earth for man to use as they wanted. Being spiritual beings, able to transcend death, man became closer to God than animals. Christian perspective has survived the age of reason and the event of science and despite Darwins observations our unique divine right has continued into atheist humanism. So deep has been the cultural imprint of Christianity on the human mind that our belief in being beyond the laws of nature continues in modern post religious Britain. The destruction of the planet through a belief that the environment is ours to do with as we please is the result of orthodox Christian thought. A genuine belief in our infallibility continues as the earth expires. Scientific hubris held on post Christian supposition of our seperation continues to not see the most simple of truths. All animals are expressions of the environment. Natural evolution by default delivered an infinitely complex interaction of biodiversity. We are animals, and as such we are subject to the same laws of nature. Gaia will self level. Any species that becomes over populated will find famine, disease or other factors swiftly return numbers to a manageable level.
All this was ahead. This Promethean project, the journey we took began in Britain with the Roman invasion. Titus Brock could feel the earth below him in discomfort. Tied through consciousness to the land as all native Britons of Druidic tutelage were the barbaric crudity of the linear Roman mind and its hubristic seperation from the earth that delivered love and every nourishment appeared both stupid and doomed. As a Druid, Titus was connected through consciousness and spirit to his surroundings inextricably. It was often he felt a sharp psychic cut as a woodsman axed a tree, felt the relief of rehydration as rain fell, felt the pain as a hunters arrow flew through the air like fingers through his hair before the sting as a rabbit or deer throat was punctured. So steeped into the land was Brock that small actions as these grazed his perception for a good mile an all directions from wherever he stood. This sensitivity is lost now to all but some few isolated Amazonian shamans. But in Brock and Blacks time, an adult Druid knew the detail and disturbances around them just as dogs can hear howling miles away, smell every other dog that is within a mile, how healthy they are, even have a fair idea of their different moods through the differing scents of adrenaline and other neurotransmitters dispensed intermittently as piss message markers. A vibrant and complex sensory environment we walk through oblivious as the dogs enjoy a world beyond our sensory perception. A parallel dimension. Worlds within worlds. So too the Druids consciousness embraced perceptions of activity and disturbances through wood, field and valley, his psychic feelers stretching a good mile in any direction. It was through this hypersensitivity that Titus Brock found himself distracted from his mission to meet fellow Druid Jack Black at Cley Hill.
He could feel the fear of his own people as heat up his spine. He could smell the despair. As a Druid his duty was to protect. More medicine man than police man but Druids were brought up to dismiss any personal discomfort in the service of the communities under their jurisdiction. He was far from his home and knew few of the locals round here. Technically this wasn't his responsibility. But he could feel their was female pain. And Brocks rage spread. ' I'm going to spike some Roman cunts tonight and take them to meet the darkest skull raping demons summon able within these isles.' The thought of Romans in despair, on a treble dose of mushrooms appealed to his Druidic sense of justice, bringing a smile to his lips.
The megaliths had drawn the Romans to build there straight roads up to both Avebury and Stonehenge. These places, even to the deadened senses of a Christian Roman, inspired awe. There uses Brock knew full well but in recent times, since the invasion, rites of the old religion seldom took place. You could hardly concentrate the mind on planetary alignments with drunken Italians who believed they could survive death through clasped hands and muttering to the ground in the hope their massive yet utterly silent and invisible God could hear, whilst wearing skirts and sandals, shouting insults and hurling stones your way. Besides, to be honest Brock felt disappointed by his people. As soon as the Romans were stomping about in orderly formations, flashing off their suntans, over half of the native britains thought they were cool. Girls flirted with them. Fucked them on sacred sites. Moaned 'Jesus Christ' at orgasm even. And the men weren't much better. Some stopped drinking ale and affected a worldly European outlook. Claiming to prefer the vinegar like grape juice that invariably left you with a bad head in the morning and never inspired the laughter, the tribal singing, the pissing contests ale did. Euro puffs, Brock thought. He'd heard that some of the young lads were refusing to take their mushrooms in the autumn. Because the Romans couldn't handle more than thirty Liberty caps, most dare not even touch the sacramental fungi knowing its capacity to strip a man of all self delusion, exposing him to his true, frightened self. Some juvenile trendies seemed to think they could reach manhood still blind folded. Give the self examination of the shrooms the slip. By thirteen a young lad should be relishing the autumn. As a lad Brock had done mushrooms at least twice a week throughout the season. Never less than a hundred. The Italian mind must be weak, Brock pondered. Two moons at the early fall, during the moist period before the winters first frost, in good years three moons of fresh mushrooms revealed the true reality, hidden till mushrooms strip the veil. The ritual hurdle a boy must take to discover the man he is to become. Then he'd always dry a few thousand so he'd have some all year, just for special occasions, weekends and that, birthdays. And then, if you weren't grounded in their use, how the hell were you supposed to control their power when you needed to? It was like not losing your virginity. Worse, in a way. Fucking kids today, Brock sighed in disgust at the changing times. Besides, it was the Druidic key to the mystical.
What really disturbed him was the cunts who would grass up their own. Normal folk were generally safe from overt persecution but he'd had a dozen Druid brothers killed already. Boys he'd grown up with. Grassed up and sold to the invading authorities for a goatskin of wine. The Roman fear of the Druid was deeper than words can tell. The Druid could undermine their reality. Destroy the fragile superstitious Roman mind. One on one no Roman dare challenge a Druid. But, together, in military units and the security of outnumbering the Druid five to one, at least, in any attack, the Roman thugs hunted down the Druid Mystics. Crucifixions and other inhuman exhibitions to display the broken captive men of the woods, displaying the corpses to the locals to discourage any underground resistance. Brock had come across many of these aftermath displays of murderous power. Taking the broken bodies of his Druid brethren down from such humiliating displays, Brock had grown toughened to the horror. He'd managed to eat most of their brains, mind. Their learning and powers hadn't gone to waste. But he'd rather stand with them, alive than feel their minds inside his own. Recently, with Jack he'd learned that he needn't consume the whole brain. If it was a single corpse, fair play, a meals a meal, but six dead Druids, six brains was a right belly full. No, on studying the brains, by splitting the hemispheres they had located the pineal gland. The third eye. Also the brain zone where the natural DMT was located. Dimethyltriptamine. The most powerfully psychedelic compound on the planet. The key to dimensions more real than our normal one. Found in many plants, toad skin, and in the human brain. Today scientists believe that at the point of death, the pineal gland dispenses its DMT, the white light of heaven frequently described by individuals that survive near death experiences. Black and Brock had found this gland heald all they required. If there was time, a proper respectful meal could be enjoyed, the two Druids often sharing them, a hemisphere each. Reminiscing over times spent with their now dead freinds. But if it was a quick night rade on a Roman execution site, with Italian bastards sleeping off their vinegar, Black and Brock would work with stealth. Swiftly cracking the skulls, splitting the brain, then surgically removing the pineal gland. If time was short, they'd pocket the glands and make off into the night. Romans couldn't follow their twisted paths, sculpted by natural footfall responding to the grounds contour, they chased in straight lines, never alone. Once away Brock and Black would carefully divide the sacred pineal gland along its length, ensuring halves were equal, then together take in to them the spirit of the dead Druid. As digestion took place, the thoughts and memories of their lost brothers mingled with their own. Each brain increased their power. Their were far less Druids now due to the Roman spiritual genocide, but Brock and Black each had the powers of nigh on ten Druids each. Making them, in all likelihood, the most bad assed, dark artist mother fuckers these islands had ever known.
Checking his travel bag was tightened, Brock felt its weight. "Heavy as three mans heads," Brock cursed. In a recent encounter with some dark browned sea faring traders he had bought twelve pints of a South American sacrament. The traders called themselves shamans, medicine men, spiritual guides. Brock recognised in their eyes a warmth, a knowledge, an ease they had with themselves as though nothing could worry them. Introducing himself to these like minded visitors from overseas, Brock welcomed them, courted their company, "Sit, my freinds. Take a drink with me."
The shamans sat recognising Brock as a Druid, a man not so different from them. "No ale, just water for us. Let us talk."
There discussion revealed a similar belief system. Details, words differed but in essence the shamans were operating within the same reality framework as Brock and his brother Druids. Both were elected by their communities for their natural aptitude to study the plants, oils, roots, leaves and natural fluid extracts that formed the basis of their medicine. Spiritual aptitude recognised in a young boy would see him taken under the wing of an elder shaman where he would learn the many diverse secrets of the rain forest plants and the mystical uses for the abundant flora. Britains cooler, damp climate meant the spectrum of medicinal plants available to the Druids was less diverse and often more subtle meaning the use of seaweeds and fish derivatives played a greater role. Rare lichens and fungi that fruited in short seasons of delicate conditions, many available for but a day or two a year. The shamans, however enjoyed an abundance of natural remedies. They discussed treatments for conditions Brock had always considered way beyond any treatment. In awe of the medicinal reach of these wise visitors he listened humble and attentive. The tumourous lumps, for example, that grew within the unfortunate if visible, on occasion could be cut out but he had never heard of remedies to destroy the growths. As the night wore on Brock came to accept these shamans were of a class every bit the equal of British druidry. "Any reason you do not take the fermented barley water? I find it delivers deep joy and enables the observant to accept the absurdity of existence." The shamans explained. There primary plant had a serious reverence attached, as though it were a god. Something not to offend. They informed Brock of the strict dietary restrictions and fasting a shaman must undergo to take the powerful vine and its leaf partner. Baanisteria Caapi must be brewed for many hours. Alone it had a powerful effect and delivers great health benefits, but when taken in combination with psychotria viridis leaf, boiled together, the doors to other dimensions were revealed to the experienced shaman. They had ritual work planned in the coming days, otherwise they'd have loved to down a few bevvies. Indeed, they too enjoyed the absurd existential truth beer could reveal.
From what Brock could gather from the two travellers, the ayuashka experience compared to the native British sacrament, the Liberty cap. The night being young and exhilarated by this meeting that must have deep importance in the Druids desperate situation. The Roman Christian slaughter had all but destroyed British druidry. As far as Brock knew less than three score Druids of significance still lived. Driven to remote corners where Roman metabolisms were incapable of functioning, less than sixty Druids split into hidden communities in the Orkneys, Cornwall, Ireland, Welsh English border valleys and others in deeper Wales, preserved the knowledge. Keeping no inter community contact, the Druids hoped if one group were rooted out, even under the inevitable torture they would be unable to give up the other villages, ensuring the greatest possibility of preserving the knowledge. Native Britons would suffer with no medicine men left to treat their ailments. Disease would spread. Women would die in childbirth. Life expectancy would reduce. But the crucial connection between the human and the earth could be preserved, ready to restore this vitality once the accursed Roman occupation was over.
Brock had witnessed the ignorance of Roman doctors. When their superstitious rituals failed he had seen them pray. Looking to the ground, to the skies, to the horizon Titus had not once seen a prayer answered. He discussed this Roman invisible and utterly silent singular, all powerful but highly unhelpful God with his new freinds. The shamans were as dumbfounded as Brock. Both Druids and shamans had no time for superstition. The concept of faith appeared, to all their minds, utterly stupid. All Druidic and shamanic techniques were clear and practical. Why believe when all evidence suggests the other? The shamanic medicines were far more varied due to the abundant Amazonian biodiversity but a treatments worth was simply measured by results. Medicine either worked or did not. To mess with sick people's heads by trying to get them to wish themselves better struck both Druid and shaman as the actions not worthy of any self respecting man. Any Druid would be likely killed for soiling the name of the craft. Any shaman shunned, forced to live out the remainder of his days in isolation. Both Druidism and shamanism are fully functional. The skilled practitioner of either craft can guarantee through the use of their sacraments, full mystical experience. They did not need faith, they knew. The access to the differing multiple dimensions which one must enter to find the knowledge required for any specific spiritual problem is a trained skill but once the years of study under an elder in either craft is completed, the enlightened one is able to apply their skill as definitively as a brick layer. To the Druidic/shamanic mind the concept of 'faith', the wishing on a prayer, is delusional.
The shamans had been allowed passage by the Romans who gave them the odd look but lacked any curiosity. Brock described the genocide his people had endured. The two shamans looked concerned and spoke in serious tones to each other in a tongue beyond the ear of Titus. "Take us to your home. We wish to help you. Ayuashka will explain what you must do. Trust our sacrament. If there is anything to be done to hinder this cull, ayuashka will steer you to the path you must take."
Titus Brock looked inter the depths of their eyes. He saw a deep concern for his predicament and a deeper wisdom. Nodding slowly Titus agreed to take the shamans back to where he had camped up. "And gentlemen, have you partaken of the sacrament of Albion? The Liberty Cap?" Both looked curious. Their cultural differences were trivial, their psychedelic spiritual prowess a shared bond, transcending the language barrier.
Just as in evolution of any environment, by the very existence of interactive biodiversity and food chains, an animal, a human will find the food stuffs necessary to survive as his ancestors evolved in parallel to other flora and fauna. The nutrients particular to survival in a specific climate will always be found in the surrounding area. Today we see inappropriate, out of season foods, flown over to entertain our pallets yet the plants and animals that come to fruition at specific times of the year provide the most appropriate sustenance. So too the mystical sacraments occurring in all country's of the world provide the most accurate relevance to the mystical topography of the differing local multi dimensions. A spiritual harmony follows from ingesting the liberty cap in England and Wales. On my first trip I understood the fairy tales and hedgerow mysticism of this land. My mind opened to the logic of the history of the use of colour in the history of British painting, its relevance to the light. The sensibility and auditory reason to the music peculiar to the Arcadian consciousness. The lifting of the veil through the natural sacramental psychoactive plants of any country deliver revelatory understanding of the mystical, spiritual, mythological and cultural idiosyncratic beauties and aesthetic logics that have developed there. By no other means is any land so fully understood. Indeed, without psychedelics, the individual is doomed to a life lived within a culture never fully understood. The chaotic malaise of a miriad confusion of natural, mythological, artistic and cultural symbolism the nonmysticised mind could never hope to make proper sense of. Cursed to schizoid confusion in a world never fully intelligible.
Brock knew this and felt a pride in initiating these psychedelic masters to his humble native mysticism. He knew also from tales of older Druids that ayuashka is a serious, life changing journey that requires a knowledgable shaman guide. The potency of mushrooms delivers deep spiritual enlightenment, often as the trip rides past its peak and the chaos becomes coherent. But the tryptamine, psylocibin, induces mainly pseudo hallucinations. The tripper sees things that aren't there but is aware they are fabrications of his mind. The dimethyltyptamine in ayuashka induces full hallucinations. The subject is placed in a different reality wholly as convincing as his regular state. Common shamanic illusions involve the tripper to become other animals. Each have different spiritual significance but the two most frequently experienced physical transformations are that of becoming a panther and becoming an eagle. This is not an experience of feeling like or imagining what it might be like to be a panther, the subject 'is' a panther. Because of the totality of the new reality entered it is essential to have an experienced shaman guide. There are an entire catalogue of different specific demons, all known and recognised by the shaman, all having differing powers and motivations. Through drumming and chanting ritual songs, through the wafting of tobacco smoke, the skilled shaman is able to encourage benevolent spirits and cast out the nastier demons that, on occasion can enter reality from otherwise sealed dimensions. A full working knowledge of demonology specific to ayuashka is essential to the shaman.
Regarding britains own sacrament, Brock had an equally deep knowledge of the wide variety of transdimensional beings native to his homeland. Albion, the mystical parallel Britain, exists and is accessible through liberty caps. To have been born in a country with such a significant naturally occurring psychedelic had, throughout Brocks life, felt a spiritual honour. Once tasted, everything falls into place. The peculiar inventiveness and eccentricity of the people of these isles is a direct result of the unrecorded history of the higher consciousness the liberty cap has delivered throughout our history to the minority of shamanic ally inclined of all eras stretching back into prehistory that coloured the collective subconscious of the British. There is little written history of magic mushroom use in Britain but a single dose illuminates the subject to Albions mystical, aesthetic and mythological landscape. Whilst only a small percentage of each generation are drawn toward the mystical experiences of magic mushrooms, the effect on our character and all aspects of British self understanding is reflective of the underlying spiritual consciousness that defines our national character. Only through the lens of psylocibin is a true understanding of British culture possible.
Titus Brock considered the chances of meeting two men of such deep mystical knowledge and carrying ayuaska, the shamanic sacrament, the most powerful hallucinogen known to man, was no fluke. Druidism needed intervention of powers beyond their common access. What drew these Peruvians to travel here, Brock knew not. But he knew deep magic was afoot as he drank deeply of the foul tasting concoction.




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