He stood, bowing to what I took to be the four quarters of the compass, each time he did so he poured liquid onto the floor, carefully always slightly to his side. I noticed for the first time he was walking round the inside of a magic circle, and the liquid was poured onto the outside. As he came back to what I took to be the south he bowed again and threw the cup out of the circle.
This was the end of the ceremony and I retired back to my own room to think about it.
It was after two glasses of whiskey and an uncertain number of cigarettes I came to a conclusion.
The ancient Egyptians raised the idea of truthfulness to divinity. They had a goddess they called Ma’at. This much I knew, but little more. I resolved to seek the help of the Goddess.
It seemed Morton had used High Magic to cast a spell of suggestion that the world should only know and only think what he wanted it to think. For me this was the most diabolic of all deceits. It made concrete the worst of all possible fears, that nothing I knew, possibly nothing I’d ever known, was true. Morton had falsified the whole of my life, possibly the whole of everybody’s lives, from the moment he completed that spell.
I turned to the Goddess appalled and still in a state of shock.
Knowing no ritual, or offering, or the correct form of address, I presented myself, in a vast chamber, the wall made of huge unmortared slabs of rock, the whole space lit by high windows through which light streamed; here there was no need of candles. Before me was a seated figure with guardians on either side.
I bowed deeply. With no offering to give, I offered my mind, into a softness and silence. I could offer no ritual; any I could make up would be cheap and shoddy in such a place.
After a time there was a word,
“When?”
And I simply knew Morton had cast his spell at dawn on the 13th June 1483, barely two hours after my conversation with Lord Hastings.
“And What?”
Again I simply knew, Morton’s spell affected all the changes to reality he made, or thought he made; it applied to that, and only that.
There was more silence, and then there were more words,
“Truth is water that soaks into the cloth of your life. Where it is lies cannot be.”
It had seemed, as the Goddess spoke, I was covered in a fine spray of cool water.
And that was the end of my meditation.
On my return it seemed my skin was itchy and dry. I took a cold shower, but it didn’t hit me as evenly or softly as it had in the presence of Ma’at.
What had happened? What would happen?
All I could do was guess and hope; that such truth as I discovered about the Princes would spread from this book, clearing the sight and understanding of my fellow dwellers in this reality. It seems to me important. John Morton, Bishop of Ely, was not the first to bring deceit into our world, but I fervently prayed to the Goddess, that the heavy blanket of lies, which so weigh on all of us, might gently be washed away.
The problem was my skin was still dry and itchy.
It was necessary to go back to the nature of Ma’at, and to the nature of reality.
Ma’at, you see, is not only truth. The fact is not you, not I, none of us could really stand to look at the plain, unvarnished actuality of who we are; it would destroy us. We justify ourselves, we find external excuses for how we live and what we believe: this is not just a result of Morton’s lies, we’ve always done it; if it were not so Morton’s lies would never have been able to take hold and he would never himself have fallen into such great error.
Ma’at is also the concept of balance, order, law, morality, and justice. If you take all these together and mix them thoroughly enough you will find the mixture only coheres in the form of compassion, understanding and forgiveness. In short the truth is not enough; people will not be able to take it without those other elements.
As I sat in the garden, fiddling with another cigarette, seemingly random thoughts crossed my mind:
Thinking of my meditation in the temple of Ma’at, I was reminded of the fine spray of water, Edward IV had been surrounded by the water of the Thames when the conjuration against him first took hold, and water is the medium of life,
After more than five centuries so little of the world before 1483 survives, everything has changed, for good as well as bad; I would not want to undo all that came out of Tudor England, for one thing, the wrench would be too great,
Finally, what was wrong with what Morton did, worse than the lies; it was utterly empty of love and compassion: he’d substituted blood-sacrifice, selfishness, fear and hate for order, law, morality and justice; it’s these poisons from which our world is still reeling.
These poisons were always there of course, but in my meditation I had only asked for the lies to be taken away. I had yet to ask for the removal of the associated poisons; it’s these ‘booby-traps’ over which I’d ridden rough shod, and which might catch me yet if the poisons were not taken away. It isn’t enough to chastise historians for not telling the truth, they have to be forgiven for following Morton’s suggestion before they can be free of it. And that is only the start of putting right this world of ours.
It seems I broke Morton’s self-willed conjuration against Richard and his family in Thomas’ reality. Could Morton’s stranglehold over us be broken? By returning to the lawful magic of supplication to deity Ma’at could restore the truth to all of us.
An image arose unbidden to my mind, I saw Morton’s magic circle at Ely Palace penetrated by shafts of light. I saw a great body of water with a circular hole in it; the water round the hole began to fall into it, rushing with irresistible force, the greatest waterfall in the world. The process has already started.
It had been raining for days, and my lovely, sensitive, spirit medium wife lay, unaccustomedly, ill in bed as I walked up and down in the garden. But now the sky had cleared and the sun started to dry the water from the ground and the benches.
I undertook another meditation.
This time I went with a prayer,
“Let John Morton’s lies have no power over human minds, let all believe that which is True, let all deny that which is untrue, let all forget that which is untrue, let all remember that which is True.
Let the demand to control all minds be sucked back into the mind that would control. Let the poison of Morton’s error return to its source. Let Truth, Balance, Order, Law, Morality, and Justice grow ever stronger.
Let Love, Compassion, Harmony, Balance, Justice, Order, Understanding and Forgiveness come back into the World.
So Mote It Be.”
The temple of Ma’at was as I’d left it, but this time I did not just offer myself; with my outstretched hands I offered not only my prayer but also my love; even for Morton, Margaret Beaufort and King Louis.
The light in the Temple became astonishingly bright; and for all my wish to stay in that light, I found myself back in the garden. My skin no longer itched and I had the feeling of the closing at last of all Morton’s manipulations.
Maybe, in all this story nothing has happened in the real world. I hope and I watch, believe me, with the greatest possible interest, to see how the World’s understanding, and how reality shall change.
***
On completion of The Necromancer, I’m due to return to Stansted; really with no idea what if anything will happen next.
List of Hyperlinks
Part I
Prologue
Edward – Interactive
Margaret Beaufort
King Henry VII
King Richard III
Introduction
Sir James Tyrell
Chapter 1 – The Reverend Doctor Thomas Nandyke
Stansted Hall
Great Saint Mary’s Church
Bishop John Morton of Ely (1)
Wikipedia (Necromancy 1)
Wikipedia (Necromancy 2)
The Odyssey
Chapter 2 – John Morton, bishop of
Ely
John Morton (2)
Wikipedia (Archbishop Bourchier)
Chapter 3 – A Further Meeting and a Mystery
apports
Sai Baba
Chapter 4 – The Workings of a School of Mysteries
scrying
Chapter 5 – In Meditation
YouTube (Olivier’s film, ‘Richard III’)
Bramall Hall
Mistress Shore
Chapter 8 – On Eavesdropping
Dogma and Ritual of High Magic (Eliphas Levi)
Liber Juratus
Chapter 10 – Hatfield Palace
Etheldreda
Chapter 12 – London and the Great Council
Ely Palace
Robert Stillington (1)
The Queen (Elizabeth Woodville)
Henry of Buckingham
Anthony Woodville
And the Princes
Chapter 13 – The Conspiracy against Hastings
Edmund Tudor
Catherine de Valois
William Hastings
Chapter 15 – Placing the Princes
Guide to the Tower of London
Chapter 18 – Of Thomas’ Comings and Goings
grimiores
Chapter 28 - History
The History of King Richard the Third by Sir Thomas More
The history of the life and reigne of Richard the Third by Sir George Buck .
Donald MacLachlan (Richard III Society)
Helen Maurer (Richard III Society)
Richard III: His Life & Character
Chapter 29 – Magic and Other Issues
The Disenchantment of Magic
here (extract of above)
Wikipedia (Louis XI)
Picquigny
Chapter 30 – Morton’s Final Coupe
Edward – Interactive
Part II
Chapter 35 – Return to Thomas
Saint Zenobius
The Death of Louis XI of France
End Notes
After Word on Magic
Tales of the Virgin
miracle at Fatima
Wikipedia (on the same)
Emanuel Swedenborg
‘The Emerald Tablet of Thoth’
Wikipedia (Emerald Tablet)
After Word on Truth
Ma’at (1)
Ma’at (2)
Ma’at (3) ***
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