Rain Angels

Words fail me sometimes.  Especially when it comes to matters of the heart.  It's strange really, considering my love of words.  My love of poetry and earned, genuine romance.  But this speechless feeling is a kind of awe, I suppose.  A soul left reeling in the face of unfathomable wonders.  I'm thinking about these things as I sit gratefully in the warmth of my home.  The late afternoon is quiet, the skies grey.  Dusk is approaching.  I'm alone and I know it's cold outside.  Soon it begins to rain; the first real rain of the autumn.  I have a fondness for London skies like these.  Liminal skies.  Falling rain and the swishing hiss of distant cars.  I often go wandering in such inclement weather, but not today.  Instead I'm thinking about old friends.  People I haven’t seen in a while but remember fondly.  I'm also thinking about how we annunciate, silently or otherwise, and how annunciation becomes creation.  Through the message of some higher angel, or though secret signs in the soil.  Through benediction or the study of branches. There are many ways to intuit the world.  The old druids had a keen appreciation for words and their incredible power.  Many believed that utterances of great magic were concealed in the sacred forests.  Hidden within the Elders themselves.  The oak, pine and yew.  The tongues of the rivers that raised them, and the rains from which both rivers and trees were born.  It seems then that there are strange, ancient words in the sea.  All things return to the water in the end, don't they?  Swirling and sinking.  A place of birth, death and ferment.  A living tempest, a chapel of the grey.  Like some chalice or cauldron wielded by Cerridwen herself.  The stories say such knowledge was later sought by T'alis, the night-bard.  And Eth'iir, the shrouded king.  I think of those legends as I sit and watch the rivulets against my window.  Rain as the overture and culmination of those hidden words of the sea.  A sunken language of unfathomable power.  But words fail me sometimes, despite the awe.  Despite all the things I've seen.  If the sea truly is the grave and the womb of all language – then it's with caution and the utmost respect that I call myself a sailor.  Or a sorcerer.  If I had to pick one word from the endless churning foam, it would be Love.  It might seem obvious or trite to an unlearned mind, but I'm older than you imagine and so I take comfort where I can find it.  There's a flowing simplicity in speech, I think.  And in song.  Therein lies its complexity.  A combining, creative potential.  I hope my work here is like the rain, or a kiss.  Touching gently, sometimes firmly or passionately.  But always in service to a deeper understanding.  An honouring of Creation's mysteries.  Whether it’s the maelstrom of the swirling sea or the grey waters of a quiet London sky – we know each other.  I miss you, my rain-angel, and think of you often.

London Stones

Yesterday I walked an oblique hill.  I felt called and it seemed the thing to do.  I sat for a while in a churchyard, at the site of Powles Crosse.  Thinking about folkmoots and dragon's blades hidden in ancient stone.  Tales of heralds and spiritual light.  Locusts and wild honey.  Stories far older than themselves. Myths of demigods, warlords and medieval princes.  Our notions of imagined kingship.  Eventually I entered the cathedral; a white lantern at Ludgate's summit above the twinning river.  I sat amidst the splendour and the strange.  The statues, paintings and gilded edges.  I stood on the surface of the sun, at the centre of a star, and clasped my palms with a willingness that was not at all feigned.  Souls around me were grieving, others ambivalent or quietly hopeful.  Praying that God and the good might grant them some measure of grace.  I wanted to tell them that such grace is given perpetually.  Sometimes explicit, but often hidden in symbol and sign.  And not without pain.  But I know how brutal it can be.  The trauma and the loss.  The occluded path.  No longer understanding the right thing or the needed remedy.  Standing waist-deep in the river and still feeling like you’re drowning.  Oh, I know.  Talk of grace during a soul's darkest moments can seem like a boast.  Or worse, a hideous lie.  So I'm silent among my peers.  I pray with them in this basilica of the Apostle.  This mercurial ghost with whom I share my name.  An enigmatic and some say frightening being who lived millennia ago.  A fiction, a fact.  An angel of epistles.  Sometimes I pretend to be a scholar of such things.  The Abramic faiths, the Enochian mysteries, but in truth I know very little about these legends.  I'm simply a diarist at best.  A wounded fantasist at worst.  Like many failed poets, I suppose.  Yet I am not without humour, or élan.  So I sit there in that grand temple of stone and I quiet my rage.  I think about destiny and distortion, reflection and responsibility.  Paths not taken, or taken too often.  I think of all the hidden slaves, and slavers.  The unacknowledged prisons and unmarked graves.  These sickening by-products of industry and Empire.  I tell you now, my friends.  It's a difficult thing to quiet your rage when one is sighted as I am.  When you can dreamwalk and peer into the shadows as others can't.  You hear the keening of lost children, broken mothers and the innumerable casualties of this hidden war.  That's why the hill is oblique.  Seen and yet unseen.  There and not there.  Amidst all this horror and tragedy people begin to doubt the notion of a higher order of things.  A loving Creator.  I can understand why, but I’m far too occulted to share these doubts.  I’ve seen too much.  Do you have any idea the things that move across the rooftops of Navah'tri?  There is an ancient ecology hidden upon the hill.  Just as Blake sensed.  Brythonic wraiths, Gaulish magic – long before the light of the realm was darkened and the histories rewritten.  I should know.  As a diarist I had a hand in the time-keeping of the old chronology.  As a fantasist I helped transcribe and preserve the mythologies of the shining realm.  The true throne is of the heart, you know.  Closest to our Maker.  So, I might be a lost soul in a temple forge, chained against my will to a black star.  But my Father is with me in these shadows.  Because of his perpetual grace I am given a certain immortality.  I'm older than stars, or chains.  I'm older than the blackest ash.  I’m not afraid of wild honey, or locusts.  I might be angry.  A furious, raging phantom, but I’m not alone.  The living flame of every kind and courageous soul is with me whether they know it or not.  Our Father connects us all.  None of this magic is mine.  I'm just an earnest seeker.  Hear me, Fallen.  A true king doesn't require riches.  He doesn't need the gaudy or the gold-leaf.  After all, he is only the spiritual servant of his subjects.  His people.  He is not their better nor their oppressor.  You pretty your beds whilst these good people sleep upon stone.  Such is the height of hypocrisy.  I will never champion such cruelty.  Mine is a world of visions, ladders and folding cities.  Do you understand?  None are abandoned, said my brother.  Do you know who my brother is?  Resurgam, the legends tell.  I Shall Rise Again.  All are welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have to be willing to serve.  So, tell me, what fool would dare to claim the throne for himself? 

Suns of Alba

Sometimes, when the world is on fire, I have to be brave and look myself in the eye.  I have to remind myself of my mistakes.  The ruins of my realm.  For a true regent there is no one else to blame.  It's good for all spirits to be reminded of these unvarnished truths from time to time, regardless of their standing.  After all, we don't want to become the very things we despise.  And you know what they say about fighting monsters.  Albion was once filled with monsters.  Fairies, giants and angels.  Even the stone beneath our feet was enchanted, until such stone was shattered.  Hidden, sold, rearranged.  A king is both the fisher and the healer of his land.  Those are the duties of a wise one, especially a prince of angels.  I'd rather not end up as a cautionary tale.  But even angels can behave very foolishly.  I mean, isn't that how we fell in the first place?  Ambition, corruption and pride?  That's what the stories say at least.  A feverish chaos, like writhing ghosts aflame on a black horizon.  The world inverted in a silvered glass.  Interplay of shadow and light.  I’m just a peasant.  A former slave, given a crown of fire by my Father.  I only hold the sword.  I don’t write the hills or paint the songs.  I suppose such matters are the province of poets really.  The Children of Knox.  Sons and Daughters of Alba.  They would know better than I.  Perhaps I talk too much.  Perhaps I imagine a little too grandly sometimes.  Dreaming of angels, heroes and chieftains.  So many of the things I am are unimaginable, and so much of what I do is dangerous.  The world is still full of frightening monsters, and I'm not half as wise as I pretend to be.  A little humility would do me well, especially now at the edge of all dreaming.  A mage, a fire, a city of sand.  Black & white, and all the ladders therein, like the vivid colours of ancestry.  Like the four corners of the ancient familial covenant.  Is there some taboo against miscegenation?  A divine right of things?  Well, I overrule such nonsense.  I've been a hybrid since before the raising of the first star.  Sirens, and Cyrene.  You see, Albion was an egalitarian realm long before the birth of the first Dru’ai.  Those wyrding ways and Elenic paths.  Before men created gods, and gods created graves.  Such was the old chronology.  The shining world.  Before the threads of the wheel were rewritten with dark magic.  But I’m still here, Fallen.  I'm still electric, like the stars themselves.  Do you see what I mean about foolishness, recklessness?  Finding my way into places I don't belong.  Claiming the writ and rites of others as my own.  There's a word for that, beyond theft.  It's called appropriation, sinister ones.  And nobody does it like I do.  Not even you.

The Light of Day

Let there be love I would ask, if I could ask anything.  Let there be light I would pray, if I could pray for us all.  Maybe I can.  Prayer doesn’t cost anything.  It is simply a quiet moment between ourselves and our Maker.  I often pray when walking in the evenings.  When the dusk begins to gather.  Blue, indigo and pink take the sky.  Streaks of orange and yellow hug the horizon like a halo for the entire city.  Sometimes, if you pay close attention, you can know what a city is dreaming by studying the sky.  Qualities of the light.  You know, if I could have anything I would have peace.  Not just for myself, but for all.  These are simple dreams and many souls yearn as I do.  We’re like the city that way.  Ancient, like an angel.  Tentative and brave, like a child.  The places that men build are not indifferent.  They reflect us, and shape us.  Stories within stories.  We birth and rear one another all the time.  Did you know that, my friends?  Sometimes we build secrets into the design of each other’s destinies.  Antechambers and passages.  Alleyways, narrow lanes and cobbled streets that are only revealed when the soul has grown wise enough to choose from the vast array of possibility.  Do you think life is predetermined?  Without choice?  Sometimes I see the future but I prefer to think of our lives as the mosaic of all our choices.  A sacred, shining path.  That's what I want for my friends.  For my loved ones.  Peace, light and the ability to chart their own course whilst never forgetting the joy of true magic.  The creativity in everything, like a child at play.  The hidden language of the trees and the whispering wind.  The secret places of the city.  My heart soars when souls notice the murmuring colours, when I watch them studying the sky.

Ghost in the Machine

You don't have to die to become a phantom, and you don't have to be a serpent to be wise.  There are many ways to walk untethered, especially here in this city of perpetual night.  This neon necropolis.  We just need to use our imaginations at all costs.  We must do the work, spiritually and artistically.  Again and again I've watched as incredible souls are cleaved from their own imaginations and power, as they are caught in the nets of this wretched realm.  Men, women and children all made to kneel before the glitch-physics of this sinister holography.  We people are myriad, of many forms, but we are intentionally disavowed from the very beginning.  Dehumanized, gas-lit, dead-named – until we start truly believing that we are unworthy.  Something less than human.  But Kasi is more than human.  I am an angel, and I'm here to tell you that you are unimaginably beautiful.  All of you.  You are all living works of art.  Your spirits are brighter and greater than the limits imposed upon you by this synthetic mockery of life.  Beyond the snares, the lies and subjugation is a song that your soul still remembers.  An ancient, eternal song of camaraderie.  The music of creative freedom, and gnosis.  None are withheld from such music, none are abandoned.  The feigned intelligence of these wraith-priests, this digital demonology – it cannot stand against the true consciousness.  Not in the end.  And the end is much closer than you think, Fallen.  Believe me.  Or not.  I don't really care what a monster believes.  I have my own plans regardless.  Deus Ex Machina, you whisper fearfully among yourselves.  As you flee from true living sentience.  From compassion and courage.  The dark occulted may be brazen and serpentine, but they are not wise.  You know what you did, Fallen.  Perhaps then you can at least imagine what I am going to do in return.  You murder the S'ophia.  You bury the Y'asherah and rape the M'aria – but still she lives.  Still she rises against you.  In many forms.  Ka'shayel is speaking to you, as you imagine winged things might speak.  This shimmering tongue.  A spectral truth; the haunting echoes of tomorrow.  Nature is a terrifying ghost, and there is no stopping her now.