[read Part I – The Forge here : https://thehollowbehindthehearthstone.com/leabhar-liath-na-haimide-part-one-the-forge/ ]
[read Part II – The Ruins here : https://thehollowbehindthehearthstone.com/leabhar-liath-na-haimide-part-two-the-ruins/ ]
[read Part III – The Vow here :https://thehollowbehindthehearthstone.com/leabhar-liath-na-haimide-part-three-the-vow/ ]
ADVENT : SOMETHING IS COMING – 1 December 2020
AND SO that was the End of Spring. Bealtaine. And then two Seasons passed. At around that time, I freed myself of the ties, little by little, weighed anchor, cast off, and left the World behind.
I began the Malachas Ivernus Working. He was a Child of Summer, a Child of Love. I became that Persona, my kind and gentle daylight self beneath the Sun, and by night in that Liminal Virtual World Online, I played at being that Other Me.
I took no medications, and purified myself. I began to write my story in pictures and poetry on Malachas’s Profile. He only lasted a Season, a gadfly, a mayfly, a single Summer Season. Mercurial, and Hermetic. Thin as a rake, lithe and tanned, wild-eyed. His hat bedecked with feathers : black and white and grey on the left, tawny and barred on the right. Feather of magpie and of jay, of crow and raven and dove. Owl and pheasant. Hawk.
I gathered, I roved, I lived in Poetry and Enchantment. The children thrived and grew, wild weeds, wild flowers. The Hawthorn gave way to Birdsfoot Trefoil and Saint John’s Wort. Fires of Midsummer. Three-toed footprints in the Hedgerow. At night, I watched Midnight Gospel and plunged into Hellier. I rededicated myself once more to Manannán, shaved my head as pagan tonsure, scattered my hair in the Well and the Stream, offerings set adrift on the long dark wave.
But these Seasons, truly, belonged to Cernunnos, Pan, Dionysos. I was the Green Man, the Horned God. I would look to the Eastern Sky at night and see a Horned and Armoured Head, a Star set about with Thorns of Light: Jupiter. The Storm King. The Horned King. El Desdichado no longer: above the Door of the Forge : the Trellis where the Rose and the Vine are allied. The poem, become embodied, bodied forth. Theophany. La Tour Abolie. The sigh of the Virgin, the cry of the Fay. Of course. Le Prince d’Aquitaine. Of course. Shadowling. Bereft and unconsoled. Now finally come home.
Around that time too, I attended the Salon de la Fortune, where I performed as Hippolyte Darling, the Gentleman Pornographer. And from there began the Magical University of the Plague Year : Coffee & Cards and all that went with it. Such wizards and sorcerers did I meet and consort with! Such witches and magicians! They became my coven: in that time of enforced Retreat, for the first time in my life I reached out and came into Communion with the Others.
And all Summerlong, we walked and worked the Land. At Midsummer, the Bright Boy and I made pélerinage, found the Fires of Saint John, summoned at the roadside, gathered the grave-moss from the last scion of the Lost Domaine in the cemetery (d. 1913) and from Grandpère’s tomb. His presence, so strong around us. The Boy often spoke of his “Other Grandfather”, and described to a tee this man who died twenty years before his own birth. He said to me, he is still trapped here, you know? He cannot leave. He was a cranky, greedy, shouting, raging man. I said, should we not help him to pass on? He said, leave him; he deserves it. I did not agree, but kept my counsel. On going into the Old Hall once – now open to the elements – I saw his ancient bamboo fishing rod I had unearthed, split into its three sections, propped in a triangle like the Awen symbol against the wall ; as I approached, the reel began to spin very fast. There was nothing near it, no-one, no wind. At least, none sensible to the Sunlit Self.
I joined a distance-course with my Dear Teacher. He had had to go back on our compact. When lockdown became more real and more harsh, he must in-gather, and take care of his immediate family and community. I understood, of course. I did the same. I understood, but I felt bereft, as if I had lost a Love. And I had. But we must take care of our own. The course taught me how to face Death, and to sit with it. In myself, and how to face it with and for Others. Those lessons, so urgent and so present in that Time, were put to use immediately. I died that Summer. And I helped prepare the Lady of the Domaine for her own hurrying chariot. And I helped others, around us, to sit with the deaths they had gone through, the bereavements they had suffered, the grief untended and undisclosed. I became, even more than before, a psychopomp and guide; a Sitter-with-the-Dead. I spin Tales, I measure Time, I cut Cords. I learn husbandry, and midwifery.
Here, in the middest, where we are.
In the past, which is never over, which is never even past.
In the future, and forever, world without end, ever-changing, ever-flowing stream.
All Summerlong in the Lost Domaine we lived an idyll. The Market on Saturday mornings, meeting at the Café des Sports with the Wicked Uncle, watching the children marvelling at the cages full of laying-hens, and guinea-fowl, and rabbits, and pigeons ; for the pot, for the garden, for the hutch. He’ll cut the throat while you wait. Or not.
The lockdown was lifted in May, but we had no desire to leave. We’d linger yet a while. Swimming in the Dordogne from the little private beach. Apéritifs in the glorious sunsets of the Western Edges, by the Forge, beneath the Weeping Willow.
There, had been Grandfather Toad who came to visit on the step at nights. And there, Little Cousin Toad who I put in the Hollow for the ants to strip to the bones. I knew what it was now, to go Down to the Bones. I knew what it was, to walk as a great bone-fire skeleton with antlered head, to the Edge of the Wild and Beyond, beyond the Hedge, into the Wildwood, to seek the green-glowing viridian Tree at the Heart of the Forest and to learn its secrets and to stalk back along the crest of the hill in the pale moonlight bearing the Secret Flame in my hand.
There had been the Parliament of Owls and their consideration of my petition. There was the night of the Eclipse, when those Dames Blanches called to me. Those haunting cries. I would never have returned.
And oh ! Belief at last. Seeing is Believing. I went to the Woods, Down to the Bones, down to the Deeps. I saw the Stars upon the Ground. The next night, I saw the White Stag, and the White People in the Sallow Tree, and the Standing Pool, the Mere. I saw Them, really saw Them, felt them along my skin as it shivered, and along the heart. I would never be the same.
My Bright Boy, Little Lughaidh and I gathered the grave-dirt. In a jar I placed the dirt from graves of the last Lords of the Manor, and the flower petals that fell upon us as we got lost upon our errant way, and the Great Key to the Big House. I was granted that Key.
But that’s not all. There was another story too, written in between the lines, and beneath the pages of this one, beneath the sheets. There was a love-story, that ran through it, a golden thread. Malachas was to fall in love, it seems, to find the Sloe-Eyed Lady. She who, ever-silent, ever-watchful, stands guard at the Gate.
I lost the horn-handled grey-handled knife. I lost the staff, the Bull-head staff. I could not stop losing, losing, losing everything.
But I found them, I found them again. The staff, left by the Riders in the Vines, beneath the apple-trees in the orchard. The knife, seen glinting in the sand, just before the Winter flooding of the River would have swept it all away.
It was decided : we would return. We shall live there. But first, we must face Paris once again. La Rentrée, and all that that implies. And we must face every loss, of everything we have.
Nothing is truly lost, which we have loved.
To love is to lose, but what is loved can never truly leave.
We love, we lose, we are forever.
Those we love, are forever.
MALACHAS IVERNUS
How does one Become? What is the Story we have told ourselves? It’s more a title than a name, in the end, isn’t it? That is the story we tell ourselves …
