Instead, he just stood up and stumbled blindly out into the open field to the south of the churchyard.
We clearly had problems, which I had not bargained for.
Pain showed heavily on his contorted face, lit clearly by the pale moonlight.
He was fighting possession.
Somehow, I had to stop it. Remembering the large crucifix in my coat pocket, I yanked it out and placed it firmly into Bernard’s hand. I just hoped it would have some sort of positive effect.
Totally unaware of its presence, he merely stood there, engulfed in his own inner conflict.
50 & 51. Looking into the crevice beneath the fallen tree in Danbury churchyard the author saw a vile sight—a dagger impaled into a blood-soaked heart, pictured above and below.
Suddenly, his hands began shakily to rise with the crucifix, as if he was beginning to fight back against his uncontrollable actions. I watched cautiously as they gradually came to rest on his throat.
For a moment there was no movement. Then the large wooden crucifix and another small brass crucifix Bernard was wearing on a chain, were hurled simultaneously, with great force, into the long grass as he stood doubled in pain, his vacant face still gazing at the ground.
He was losing the will to fight, and I was now seriously worried. I wanted desperately to save him, stop this, but I knew I couldn’t just shake him out of it. Not only would it not work, but it could cause him to have a seizure, a stroke or even a heart attack.
Death could follow any unwise actions on my part. It had to be done ritually, using the forces of light, whatever I believed them to be.
Another banishment ritual now spewed forth from my mouth, but this too proved useless. I literally ran out of ideas.
‘Your Christ is nothing,’ a deep and mocking voice then unexpectedly exclaimed from Bernard’s mouth, as he still staggered around, gripped with torment.
Possession. This was all I needed.
Hoping that he was still trying to fight this barbaric intrusion, I told myself I knew I had to think fast. Picking up the crucifix, I forced it against his forehead and held it there with both hands.
‘Your crosses are worthless,’ the foul voice announced, with a nightmarish guttural laughter. ‘Fool.’
Obviously, this wasn’t working. A different tactic was needed. I had an idea. I would tell the intruder that if he had something to say, I would listen to him only if he stopped torturing Bernard’s body and mind. It could work, so I said it anyway.
Mercifully, it did seem to work. The contorted expression disappeared from Bernard’s vacant face, even though he still stood there, his shoulders stooped like a hunchback. All the while, his arms flailed about like they had a life of their own.
‘Darkness will always conquer light,’ the intruder now began, in a slow, decisive tone. ‘You will never stop our power. We are too strong for you.’
I heartily disagreed, in a friendly voice. Anyway, who says so?
‘Comarius,’ came the proud, but almost inaudible response. Who? Temarios, did he say?
‘COMARIUS.’ he bellowed at my insolence. ‘High priest, sage and prophet.’
I still didn’t get his name. Anyway, what did he want with Bernard?
‘His soul.’
Why his soul?
‘It is strong,’ he responded, quickly, as if relishing the sensation of being inside a human body. ‘I have it.’
Do you?
‘Red plus white equals black. The new child will come, and blackness will rise up and encircle it. Darkness will be his triumph and his dominion.’
I recognised these words. They were similar, if not the same, as the sickening automatic script Bernard had received from the ‘ancient priest’ the previous night. The two sources were obviously the same. But who was this man? Presumably one of Paphotia’s cronies.
Leaving the intruder to continue his rambling monologue, I took time to think again about the situation. Trying to banish the intruder using the same old ritual would almost certainly result in further torment for Bernard. I could let the entity continue until he departed of his own accord. But that didn’t seem the right thing to do.
Comarius continued his diatribe, reiterating the automatic script of the previous night with more references to the ‘new child’ who was to come. But I had heard enough. I had to get rid of him.
‘ … the path of darkness you will follow … ’
No we won’t. He was barking up the wrong tree with us. No way were we going to give in to him.
The forces of light would always conquer the powers of darkness, just as order will always emerge from chaos.
I suggested that if Comarius did not leave whilst the going was good, I would banish his soul essence forever.
‘ … the serpent will rise and great power will … ,’
He obviously was not listening and, at that moment, Bernard fell to his knees as if being compelled to do so. Almost inaudible words began to issue forth from his mouth. One I caught was ‘septemos’, whoever, or whatever, that meant.
Now I really had seen enough. I also had an idea. The Indian swordstick! That was the answer. Since the powerful imagery and symbols of the Christian faith were having no effect on this supernatural entity, I would use the primeval serpent energies inherent within the swordstick, just as Aaron had used his brother Moses’ staff to demonstrate to Pharaoh the power of the Hebrew god.
When given the swordstick by the ageing Indian mystic and his grandson, Bernard was told that it would one day be used to give ‘protection of the seven’. At the time we had not understood what this meant, or why it had been given to me. Now I knew. The ‘seven’ was a reference to the seven energy centres of the human body, the so-called chakras, as they are known in Hindu and Buddhist mysticism. They are positioned amid a vertical column of energy centres located along the length of the spine, each one regulating a different part of the physical and spiritual body. In cases of possession, it is these centres that an external entity takes control of in order to animate a human body
The swordstick, I realised, could be used to purge Bernard’s body of the uninvited intruder.
With renewed enthusiasm, I again approached the psychic, who remained in a kneeling position. Clasping the concealed swordstick with both hands, I began to visualise spinning bands of rainbow coloured light pouring down the length of the rod and shooting out from the sheath’s metal tip, like some kind of psychic laser beam.
Slowly, I brought it down on his neck and imagined radiant energies flowing down his spine, illuminating five of the seven chakras—the first one blue, the second green, the third yellow, the fourth orange and the fifth and lowest one, at the base of the spine, red. Only two remained, those in his head. These were now visualised—indigo within his cranium and, finally, the glow of violet, like a crown of light, above his head.
Each chakra shone brightly to illuminate his inner soul.
This was real serpent power, I told the intruder, not his writhing black snakes.
For what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only about five minutes, I continued the powerful visualisation. Eventually, the high priest fell silent.
Bernard began to flex first his hands, then his arms, and then his head.
But was it Bernard?
‘Yes … It’s me,’ he uttered in a low, tired voice. I removed the swordstick from his neck. He was back in the land of the living.
He just knelt for a while, staring around at the field, as if it was totally alien to him.
‘How did I get here?’ he asked, a slight note of amusement in his question.
Couldn’t he remember?
‘The last thing I recall was being somewhere up by the tree with these stabbing pains in my chest.’ Pushing himself off the ground, he took out and lit a cigarette.
A terrible thought suddenly crossed my mind. Pains? In what part of the chest?
‘About here,’ he replied, prodding the top of his rib cage. ‘Around my heart.’
On attuning to the tree, the effect of the dagger stuck into the heart had given him severe pains in his own heart. It was a very nasty trick.
One that was meant to have killed him.
I should have removed the dagger from the heart. It really was that simple.
If this had been done, he would not have suffered the pains in his chest or experienced the diabolic possession. It just went to show my own inadequacy in magical matters such as this. In many ways, I actually felt I had let Bernard down to the point where the opposition had been able to twist us around its little finger. Our protection rituals and banishments had failed, leaving us defenceless against any further attacks and confrontations.
Luckily, Bernard seemed to be unaffected by his horrific ordeal, so there was no cause to punish myself.
I then recalled that the psychic had still not seen what had been placed in the hollow by the tree stump.
So, leading the way back into the churchyard, I took him over to the grave in question. Pulling away the loose grass, I shone the torchlight on the dagger plunged into the heart.
With a worried smile, Bernard just shook his head in mild disbelief. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ he asked, intrigued by the possible answers.
Take them home.
His jaw dropped. ‘You can’t take that heart home. Bury it somewhere. Out in the field. Anywhere. But don’t take it home.’
Accepting his more sensible solution, I dug a shallow hole in the grassy earth, close to where Comarius had possessed Bernard, and dropped in the fleshy heart. Having replaced the turf, we made our way back to the pub.
35 The Perfect Master
After grabbing an available table in the crowded bar, Bernard and I scrutinised our latest psychically retrieved artefacts, beginning with the inscribed slate, which we passed back and forth, studying its symbols. The fat ouroboros (a Greek word meaning ‘tail devourer’) was a familiar image.
It features in a Greek alchemical manuscript of late medieval origin, but is in fact a copy of a design from Graeco-Roman Egypt.
52. The slate fixing marker found in Danbury
churchyard
showing its
inscribed
ouroboros and
updated Monas symbol.
We then moved onto the dagger itself, which I had washed thoroughly.
It was easy to see why this hand-carved ebony tribal knife of African origin had been chosen for use as a magical weapon. Its smooth dark finish made it a perfect black-hilted knife, an ‘athame’ like that employed by witches and occultists for their ceremonies. The crouching ape handle was also interesting, since it probably represented the cynocephalus, a species of sacred baboon said to menstruate during lunar eclipses. For this reason the ape had become sacred to Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of writing and the moon, whose Graeco-Egyptian counterpart, Hermes Trismegistus (‘thrice-great Hermes’), was patron of alchemy and the hermetic sciences.
Drawing the dagger a little closer, I looked at its inscription and symbols. On one side were the words:
All haile to the noble companie
A parfet master made them call
53. The ape dagger’s blade, showing, top, its alchemical message and, bottom, the symbols on its reverse side. The style of writing was, in my opinion, more likely the handiwork of a woman. It bore very little resemblance to the writing we had seen on earlier Black Alchemist artefacts, like the ‘TO TOUCH IS TO ENSLAVE’ warning on the inscribed stone found at Shenfield Common the previous year.
The flowing loops of its letters tended to suggest that the writer was creative, intelligent and most assuredly sensuous in her outlook to life. So it seemed certain that the ape dagger’s previous owner was a woman bearing those same qualities.
Yet who were the ‘noble companie’? And who was the ‘parfet master’, with ‘parfet’ being a Middle English form of the word ‘perfect’. These expressions derive from the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, a collection of English alchemical essays, compiled by antiquarian and alchemist Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) and published in 1652 (facsimile editions appeared in 1928 and 1967).
The first of these, ‘All haile to the noble companie’ is to be found in a rhyming couplet included in a book entitled The Hunting of the Greene Lyon by an alchemist named Abraham Andrewes. It includes the lines:
All haile to the noble Companie
Of true Students in holy Alchemie
Whose noble practice doth men teach,
To vaile their secrets with mistie speach,
The ‘noble Companie’ would therefore imply students of alchemy. The second statement, ‘A parfet master made them call’, comes from the Ordinall of Alchemy by Thomas Norton of Bristol, an alchemist who died in 1477. It reads:
A parfet Master ye maie him call trowe,
Which knoweth his Heates high and lowe.
Nothing maie let more your desires,
Than ignorance of Heates and your Fiers.
Thus a ‘parfet Master’ implied an accomplished alchemist, like the Black Alchemist we must assume. The only other image on that side of the dagger’s blade was a crudely-scratched circle to the left of the inscription. This, I assumed, symbolised the full moon (which had taken place at 16.47 GMT, not long after Bernard had begun feeling that something untoward was happening in Danbury churchyard).
On the other side of the blade was a series of standard Black Alchemist-style sigils, beginning with the clear ‘CH’ monogram and ending with an updated Monas symbol, positioned on its side and close to the tip.
The only other out of place symbols it displayed were the astrological sign for Taurus, just before the Monas, and the planetary sign for Saturn, inscribed on the edge of the handle.
Why these should have been added to the normal line of undecipherable symbols would take some thought.
Concluding my scrutiny of the ape dagger, I asked Bernard whether a woman had owned it and, if so, whether it was the same person who had visited the churchyard on Hallowe’en.
He huffed and thought about the question for a few moments before picking up the dagger again. ‘Well, although it might have been placed in position by two men, I think it does belong to a woman.’
The same one?
‘Possibly, I don’t get any definite feelings,’ he said, still twiddling the ritual weapon around in his fingers.
I felt it was the same woman. If so, then big questions needed answering. Such as: where was BA? Why had he not visited Danbury himself? And who was this woman who seemed to be taking over the duties of the Black Alchemist? She was obviously trusted by him, so what was her role in all this?
I wasn’t sure. However, the one thing I did know was that leaving the ebony ape dagger for us to find was probably the biggest mistake the Black Alchemist had made.
In the past, the man had always left artefacts fashioned specifically for the ritual concerned. Never before had he left a working tool, which would almost certainly have been both consecrated and magically charged before being pushed into the fleshy heart found out by the tree.
The dagger could now be used as an effective tool to counteract or manipulate the very forces it was originally intended to wield. Not only this, but at some later date I would try and persuade Bernard to psychometrise it—see what he might pick up about its owner. Unlike the Black Alchemist who, we knew, could successfully block out any attempts to attune to him, this woman might not be so adept at doing the same. She might take risks, and this was always going to be to our advantage.
So, where were we to go from here?
‘I know where I’m going,’ Bernard responded, smiling. ‘Home! I’ve had enough for one night.’
I strongly suggested otherwise. We needed words o
f wisdom from his Elizabethan alchemist spirit guide as to what the Black Alchemist’s cronies had been up to out there in the churchyard. We also needed to know whether they would strike again in the near future.
Bernard was not keen on the idea. ‘I really don’t think you’ll get much else.’
But we could always try.
He frowned at the thought of more psychic work. ‘Alright then,’ he said, with some reluctance. ‘Let’s go to the car.’
Sitting in his Orion, Bernard closed his eyes and mentally contemplated the presence of his spirit guide. Moments passed as I waited patiently in the darkness.
A group of youths passed in front of Bernard’s car and walked up to their vehicle, parked on the opposite side of the pub car park. Suddenly, its engine burst into life as the headlights came on.
‘Right,’ he said, taking in a deep breath to open the proceedings. ‘The ritual here today. It had something to do with the tree in connection with alchemy, somehow.’
With its wheels spinning wildly, the other car tore out onto the main road and was lost from view.
‘The idea was to leave the ape dagger speared into the heart at that spot so that, with the church’s energies blocked, the potency of the ritual would be increased.’
Yet surely they expected us, or someone, to find it. Anyone looking into that hollow would have seen the dagger stuck into the heart.
The psychic did not answer. He was now onto other topics. ‘The high priest’s name. It’s Comarius,’ he offered. ‘He was high priest, sage and prophet to Maria the Jewess and denounced biblical assertions of the True Cross and the Virgin Birth.’
Bernard’s words were becoming lighter, slower and more monotone. His bodily movement had now ceased and, with his eyes still firmly closed, I realised that he had slipped into a light trance. He was being overshadowed, not this time by a malevolent intruder, but by our Elizabethan alchemist friend.
I just let him carry on as I attempted to scribble down the psychic communication in the pitch darkness.
The Black Alchemist: A Terrifying True Story Page 25