Monsters Indeed

This is to mark Imbolc and Candlemas, and the first anniversary of my leaving the C of E.

I also have a tradition of having a Scottish phase around Burns Night – the day I started this.

Once again, I am drawn, or rather, dragged, back to Loch Ness for an ever deeper dive…

Brace yourself, Nessies – this is as long as she is (100 words of me for a foot of her – max length).

It’s worth bearing to the end to read my bombshell statement.

There’s also pictures by me – only nice ones.

I’ve changed my view of Nessie in the days that I’ve written this, undulating and writhing as she does.

Despite my juvenile dinosaur interest and a TV cartoon in my teens which featured an Elspeth (Scots for ‘She Who Kicks Arse and Will Prevail with the help of God’), my first real Nessie phase didn’t start until I was fully adult. I was inspired by seeing the new children’s film The Water Horse, based on Dick King Smith’s book. I made my council raid their long forgotten library reserves for every book available on her. Loch Ness in northern Scotland wasn’t viable for a quick, impromptu trip but I discovered that I could monster meet closer to home: Cornwall has its own beastie – Morgawr, the sea giant. So I spent the night in Falmouth, in a hotel overlooking the sea, and as much time near water as my schedule allowed.

At one point, I thought I could see a long neck sticking out of the water. It was a long way out, but my horror was immediate. Swiftly I realised that this was only an inanimate post, but I noted how powerful even a temporary illusion was. I also point out that I was very quick to know the difference, even from afar, and even when I had come to Cornwall to serpent seek. So when I left without a sighting, I wondered if I should be more relieved than disappointed.

Melancholia and the Sea Monster by me, shown at the North Norfolk COAST festival 2011

I used to think that Nessie is a throwback of the dinosaur age. How exciting! How wonderful that she is one of many round the world: as well as over 20 more in Scotland, there’s been sightings at Cromer and Windermere in England; Ireland, Canada and the Congo; Turkey and Romania; in Scandinavian fjords; Massachusetts and Michigan…and pretty much every body of water, inland and marine.

I liked to think of Nessie and other water serpents as three children’s films portray them: a creature which a child can fearlessly befriend and defend. I note that in all these movies, and rather kindred E.T., the child is missing a parent, and into their world comes another misfit which unseeing adults either won’t believe in, or wish to demonise and destroy. The only adults who come aboard are those who are also aligned, or prepared to be, to the childlike vision needed to accept these rare beasts: the local shunned woman considered mad can commune with Mee-Shee, based on Ogopogo in Canada, who was forced to have a name change by the Native community. In these depictions, it’s the harsh humans who are outsiders: a German monster catcher in the Family Ness, an English martinet military leader commandeering a stately home on its shores during the war in The Water Horse; a dishonest greedy man (an oil merchant-come-bounty hunter posing as a Greenpeace activist) in Mee-Shee The Water Giant.

I liked that these creatures, which I refer to as orms or beasties or serpents, confound mainstream science – the stuffy and protective keepers of knowledge as much as dragons of old have guarded treasure. I love that something which questions the academic elite’s strange evolutionary timelines has continued to appear, whether or not they give it permission to exist. I love that nature wins over rationalism, although rationally, it seems obvious that these sightings – 1000 reported at Ness alone between 1933 and 1973 – must point to a genuine reality. I loved that God seemed to be protecting this family of vast but mysterious water giants against the vain plans of human technology and wishes to capture and control.

I didn’t like calling it a ‘monster’: not only did this degrade the existential reality of the creature, but it is derogatory as well as pejorative.

I began to wonder if this word – deriving from the Latin for ‘omen’ – isn’t apt.

One book out of many overlapping ones stuck out, so much so that I recalled it and bought it a decade later. Frederick William ‘Ted’ Holiday saw Nessie and her many cousins as something other than (crypto)zoological. So does library classification: as much as you’ll no’ see Nessie in the zoo, as per the theme tune of The Family Ness, you’ll not see sea monsters in the nature section. They are shelved at the start of the Dewey system, along with aliens, The Bermuda Triangle, ghosts and conspiracy theories. Quite rightly, I’m learning – but not for the reasons of the sceptics.

Do I believe in Nessie? Do I think she’s real? I used to say: yes, absolutely.

Now I qualify both: again, not from a rationalist perspective, but one of definitions and another ‘d’.

When I tried to look up famous finder and photographer Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels online, the library computers forebade me enter the site. Was it his wizardry, or something else about this colourful character who alone took a good photo of her in colour? Holiday’s second book bears ‘occult’ on its cover as a shelving hint: not helpful if you consider this word synonymous with the worship of evil and particularly, the father of it. But ‘occult’ means hidden, and perhaps those who lift the veil. It is apt for Tony and Ted’s view of Nessie; it is applied, in both senses, to another name attached to Loch Ness, the 24 mile long, mile wide lake across the Great Glen that divides Scotland in two. The largest area of water in Britain, and the second deepest, is deep in other senses – and dark. There’s a particular point where this darkness is manifest: Boleskine – the former home of infamous Aleister Crowley. I was uncomfortable researching, although I like to be fair, as well as curious. He seemed to be up to something, not good. And he chose this spot on the shores of Loch Ness to do it. He allegedly incanted the beastie with a rite from Elizabeth I’s astrologer, John Dee. After Crowley’s 1946 death, a tapestry with a serpent on was found in the nearby C17 graveyard. Was the new owner trying to do the same? Or are we being steered in our view of Boleskine’s inhabitants as much as we are the monster itself, and so much more?

The area is also one of army experimentation, and they’ve guarded it, insisting that a rare creature corpse be destroyed without pictures. It was apparently so malodorous it was hard to be near, but the structure had flexible qualities unlike any other large being. Another dead dinosaur in the last century was left to rot when caught in a culvert, but it seemed to ‘melt away’ and left no trace.

It’s often been written that Nessie news and hunting got a break once another kind of monster came into view – that of Nazism. I now wonder if there is a link. I note that her rise came as Hitler’s did, and that he was also interested in the occult and the energy of particular places.

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After my first period of intense research which resulted in three pieces of creative writing and my first art show, I felt that there is something otherworldly about her.

I was aware of being slightly out of the real world; as an imaginative person who is often researching and writing, this is not an unusual state for me, but there was something different about the quality of this phase, as opposed to novel writing, boarding the Titanic (my next novel/play) or timetravelling to the 16^th century. I could feel it living in a city, far from a stretch of water that could contain kelpies… although I learned that the water doesn’t have to be very big or deep, and nor does it have to have an obvious link to greater water. Nessie has swum into Inverness and into Irish ponds. I felt surreal, and actually for a split moment hallucinated at least once although I had taken no substances to aid that.

I am thinking about the dread some of us have of snakes and lizards. I note that these are often depicted at their worst: the boa family gouging humans and pets, which they actually do rarely; evil eyes, fangs in open mouths. Are we thus encouraged to fear and dislike reptiles? Contrast these to other potentially dangerous beasts whom are mascots for wildlife charities. I’d been determined that these are God’s creation as much as any other animal, and that all critters are neutral at worst. Perhaps our Bible background is so entrenched into our ancestral collective that many of us react adversely because of the Garden of Eden and the other scriptural serpents. Now I’m wondering something else.

So what do I think Nessie et al are?

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It’s often quoted that Nessie’s first recorded appearance was in 565. This story was recorded by a man living almost a century after that date about Columba, or Columcille, the Irish missionary saint who settled in Western Scotland and founded Iona abbey. I note how much the story resembled the earlier one about George, another saint who battled a beastie. Whilst George killed, Columba rebuked with the power of his voice and a gesture of the cross. But the message to Pagans was the same: The Pagan community have a problem. The Saint to Be, already a convert to Christ, assists and has power over the large creature. The Pagans then turn to Christ, for this holy man and victor must worship the true God. However, it’s not much of a step from: we worship our deliverer, who points us on to the source of his power. It’s sort of a proxy/power relay, a pay off – much like Elijah and the prophets of Baal. You now owe this man and his God your allegiance.

A similar tale of Loch Ness involves a close cousin, the kelpie. When ‘lazy’ disciples – note that both Celtic holy men require groupies/lackeys – won’t till the land to create what would become Fort Augustus abbey, the mythical beastie does it, putting them to shame and showing that even the forces of darkness turn and assist God’s work. God’s work of course is monastery making and mission. God likes physical labour. The kelpie then claims the life of the chief mutinous monk. How like the biblical story of Korah being swallowed by the ground for questioning Moses in Numbers 16.

I also take in the detail that when the mourning Pagans don’t know how to recover the boat of the loved one Nessie took, Columba doesn’t swim into the loch himself, he asks a side kick to risk his life in the cold waters, who has a close encounter with the Beiste (Scottish Gaelic spelling).

It’s noted that this is the last time that the Beiste made a sound, for the roar – the only part of Columcille’s story in Gaelic that I understood at the museum of him in Derry – has not been heard since. Aristotle also writes of beasts which attack in the sea; but despite nasty drawings, I’ve not come across accounts of attack, only encounters which can be profound.

Columba’s biographer calls Nessie ‘Water Beast’ in Latin, and doesn’t describe her. I can hear the questions that a modern researcher would want to know: how big, what colour, how far away, what time, what was the weather like, how did it move, how long was she sighted for? Have you seen her eat? (curiously, not); how did she disappear? Did she have teeth? (I don’t think so). Was she alone? (I’ve only heard of one sighting where there were two of different sizes). If recording equipment were used, what were the technical specifications? Camera, binoculars, sonar, exact GPS location? Bo—ring. And missing the point.

So much about Nessie – she has become synecdoche for water monsters everywhere – is about cool observation and technicality. Perhaps it is in order to be taken seriously by the keepers of science who want to ignore and ridicule this whole subject, or perhaps it is because several researchers are engineering or military trained.

The approach is a form of science or oral history: the rational, analytical approach. The chart of questions. The interviewer who’s less interested in the story, in listening, than his own list.

But that’s not what I want at all.

My question to a serpent-seer – being sensitive of their secrecy and reluctance to share a dramatic if not traumatic experience – would be: ‘how did you feel?’

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FW Holiday, who can recall the first public reports of Nessie in his 12^th year, at first tries to categorise Nessie as a creature. The assumption was that this is a prehistoric throwback, a form of plesiosaur, whose fossils we’ve found. So we have a record we can be satisfied about there: what we’re not satisfied about is how one – if not hundreds – manage to continue to exist when we wrote their corporate death certificate at some random unfathomable time ago. Plesiosaurs are part of a family that we call ‘terrible’, but are sort of cool, especially if you’re a child, and you can go to museums and theme parks and see their bones or models of them, and colour them in and wear sanitised version of them on your pyjamas or arm plaster.

It may be ironic that this motif is seen as reassuring to children.

Cynics say: what would such a creature eat? If the loch doesn’t have sufficient food, if it’s not the right kind of water, then it can’t be your dinosaur. Thus, it’s a vegetable mat, an otter, a stag, a log. Most of you wouldn’t know the difference and you can’t guess size and distance. Ergo, no Nessie.

But there are other possibilities. FW Holiday saw that Nessie might be another kind of creature. What of the families of worms, pinnipeds, gastropods? Is Nessie spineless? He concludes that an invertebrae called tullimonstrum might grow to large sizes, for its model fits the descriptions and pictures of Nessie, and he himself had observed the slug-like quality to her skin and movements.

Perhaps this explains the horror that many report: we are often afraid of reptiles but have at least got familiar with their largeness thanks to dinosaurs. But the thought of a 20-60 ft slug or worm? A featureless creature – for she’s often, like her moo cow cousins, got no eyes – with funny hair and even funnier movements, and which can come out of the water… A dragon is scary enough, but interesting… But a wormy thing? That’s just foul. (Who says we have to hate worms and slugs?)

Is that all? Size, strangeness, a throwback to times so long ago that we can barely imagine them?

Or is there more?

____________________________

Two other factors before the really strange begins.

One is to note the vehemence with which mainstream media and science have decried Nessie. Maurice Burton, a zoologist, took an initial interest, and then wrote the book on vegetable mats.

I am told that in the 1930s, people who claimed to have seen a monster were given sanity tests. Doctors could lose licences. Academics could lose kudos and funding. The very papers who had conjured the moniker ‘monster’ could likely ridicule you. And then those trying to investigate – disparagingly known as ‘monster hunters’ – would come after you forevermore, wanting to print your name, age, occupation and address, along with making you go over a brief but stirring event.

So there was an impetus not to share; to renege your story.

I have long noted the ‘canon of knowledge’, the accepted beliefs of the time by the dominant group. Nessie has never really been part of this, although sometimes universities and mainstream news have been interested. I also note that an alternative canon was formed, including Constance Whyte, author of among the earliest books about Nessie which is well regarded, oft mentioned, and sold second hand for much money. The Drumnadrochit Hotel, close to many Nessie sightings, and home of the first recorded one, became the HQ of the official Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, then Project. This latter guise included Adrian Shine as one of its prominent members. In the early 1970s, he was keen and open, but admits in the short guidebook published by his project that an experience at Loch Morar changed his view. After an unexplained misidentification incident, he ‘grew up’ and implies that the rest of us monster believers should too. He seems quite cynical, focussing more on the properties of the Loch rather than her famous denizen. He seems intent on overturning hitherto accepted proof, such as returning well known watcher Tim Dinsdale’s cinefilm to RAF-related JARIC for a second analysis and gaining a negative pronouncement this time. He claims that several famous photos are now proven hoaxes. Yet, he has continued to devote his energies for nearly five more decades at least to the phenomenon, becoming a Dawkins-like reverse evangelist.

One wonders why such a passionate backlash?

As I write, the coronavirus event comes close to its first birthday. One would think that the loss of intrinsic freedoms or the terrible disease – however you see it – would preclude Nessie news. But in mid January 2021, there were two stories, which contradict. One: mystery solved (definitively, it was implied) – Nessie is a sea turtle. So nothing to see and talk about now. Two: Nessie is dead. Here is her carcass – bit gory. (But not a turtle. No shell, too long a neck.) Either way, she’s over.

Of course, she won’t be. But why, in the middle of this worldwide unprecedented ‘pandemic’ were the fearmongering press bothering to stop and say this?

One starts to see correlations between the control of health, the ‘expert’ as the ruling class of elite and keepers of knowledge, and the papers telling us what to think and what is true.

A 15^th century tale from County Durham involves a lockdown: The Lambton Worm escapes from the place containing it and terrorises everyone, growing ever more voracious. No strata of society is safe from the loathely serpent, for even the lord of the manor is voluntarily self isolating in fear. New stories of carnage keep them in check, lest they grow brave or cynical. Who or what can release them? Only the lord’s son, a noble and war hero. It was he who unwittingly unleashed the wyrd worm. If he had followed the rules, this would not have happened! If hacked, the serpent can mutate and carry on. Proudly coiled on its favourite rock (a place of refuge associated with Jesus), it seems impossible to stop. So Lord Lambton jnr consults what fundamentalists call a pharmacist. (Note how this is the reverse of the Columba and Fort Augustus abbey stories). He is told that the only remedy is to fashion a sharp spike (following this?) and pierce skin so that the actions of the Great Pest will be its own undoing. Give it some of its own medicine. But there’s a drawback: the lord enters into a contract with the pharmacist. He has given his power away and he must now suffer a sacrifice. Lambton won’t complete the contract when he realises he jeopardises the life of a loved one, and so he is made to live – him and his for generations after – with a terrible countercontract that he apparently didn’t know how to refuse. Note the uses of land and water in this – interesting when you know about the fictitious law of the sea and the meaning of that domain.

The second point is the effect that seeing Nessie et al has on the observer. As hinted at already, it can be profound, and disturbing. Mrs Aldie Mackay, the owner of Drumnadrochit Hotel, is considered the first witness and birther of the modern legend. (Of course, Nessie’s story is much older than 1933). But the video I saw in the 3D experience was 50 years later. And Mrs Mackay had a look about her that you couldn’t fake. She remembered that day. So did Father Gregory Brusey – the second witness of Fort Augustus abbey, another holy man to add gravitas to the tale. When Mrs Greta Finlay had It by her caravan in 1952, she was stunned silent, and then ran amok with her son, who wouldn’t touch his new fishing tackle, 12 years on. She was clear, as was the mysterious Mary F who photographed Morgawr in 1976: she didn’t want to go nearer and she didn’t want to see it again. She’d not forget the face… In Connemara, Ruth Carberry had nightmares about her meeting with Nessie’s Irish smaller cousin, the Pieste (or Pest). The Spicers, perhaps the second modern recorded sighting of Nessie, were also terrified. Certainly the only all on land sighting I’ve heard of would have been disconcerting. The odd movements, the fact it was not in its element, and the fact that the Lairdly Worm of Loch Ness wasn’t really known yet…all this would have affected the Spicers greatly. But when it doesn’t harm or even attempt an attack, doesn’t come right near humans, or animals; and other than a 1975 Morgawr sighting, the Family Ness hasn’t been seen with anything in its mouth… why would this creature cause alarm? They don’t charge at you or your dog (although the sound of barking, as with slams and explosions, seems to distress them). And after mid 1933, a monster at Loch Ness is hardly totally unexpected, to anyone. And yet have often heard descriptions such as ‘loathsome’, ‘abomination’. Is this squeamish observers, or spin?

Why is it often upsetting to see, long after?

Sailing on the Norwegian fjords, an exorcist priest experienced their famous sea monster. The captain had seen them before, and said not to follow it: sufficient unto the day was the evil… He implied literally, being aware of the long traditions accompanying such creatures. Although they never hurt, he said that sightings cause psychological distress; it was part of the serpent’s ruse to do no indirect harm but to incite you to do it. The priest then exorcised Loch Ness and a site in Sweden.

Kelpies or water horses are known for subterfuge: coming as a man, or a pleasant horse to ride, they ensnare an innocent and carry them into the loch, like the mutinous monk at Fort Augustus.

Although the babe in jaws of the Pitkin guide by Picknett isn’t even something I’ve heard of in lore (deliberate fake news?), is there a sense that like in Isla St Clare’s TV series A Song and a Story, we will be carried off in other ways – such as psychiatry? (This has been implied).

Are we unwittingly contracting with forces of darkness when we encounter a kelpie?

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Now we have to come to the strangest part.

What do we know about such creatures, even just by myths?

Serpents, orms, dragons are well known motifs across the globe. So is killing one, although I hope – that despite several schemes to capture one, or take tissue samples – that they are protected, from labs and game hunters. Even if…

It’s oft opined that dragon slaying is about dealing with demons: your own, and those in the world. It’s the victory and power of the Christian God and his religion over evil and other faiths: Paganism and perhaps even Islam are implied. It can seem divisive and dualistic.

We often think of the many dragon depictions as of a mythic motif, but I do wonder if some sort of dragon needed to have existed for this motif to have come into use. Whereas hybrid beasts can be symbolic of the qualities associated with its different parts, or a cipher for deities or dominions which use them, I think that a dragon is very possible. (I note that I am open to Nessies, but not to other cryptozoological specimens being real, such as those which disturb me). I am also aware that chimera – mixed species – at least in genetic principle, really exist.

I also point to the fossil record: however long ago we think these critters lived, we do have proof of these terrible lizards being here, and apparently dying out on mass at a cataclysmic event. This I have always taken to be the Flood of Noah, which is present in so many other ancient cultures. Again, could such a tale exist so widely without some literal corresponding reality? I think not. And I think that they’re related.

Why could God have needed to destroy his world and only 6 chapters after making it? Was God less merciful then? Is He truly good? Or was the Flood sent by someone else? I’ve wrestled with the 2 or more undergods theory, and I’m also open to the Flood being caused by human destructiveness, in ways that are very analogous to now. I have also heard a very odd theory but it does have biblical textual underpinning, and it would make sense of a god (deserving of a capital G or not) intervening. What could the wickedness of the pre-diluvian world have been, and that of Sodom and Gomorrah, both in the same book of the Bible? Who are these sons of God who mated with daughters of men, the non human giants called Nephilim, the ‘fallen ones’? Fell from where? In what ways did they fall?

I’ve long been a querier of the age of the Earth, but if we do accept the current canon’s estimate – often sounding as daft as all the other postulations mentioned here – then dinosaurs had a very long time to evolve from the thick lumbering lizards of my youthful dinosaur books into more intelligent life forms. What if size of skull doesn’t dictate the size of our capacity for intelligence and consciousness? What if they earned the ‘terrible’ part of their name, and Tyrannosaurs were truly tyrant kings, beyond nature’s red tooth and claw?

A kiddie question: were dinosaurs on the ark? Fundamentalists will answer ‘yes’ but that the changes to the Earth’s atmosphere wrought by the top and bottom deluge meant that the curated couples died out swiftly after. The water canopy of the creation story fostered the great reptiles, but today’s firmament does not. Was that an attempt of animal genocide, or just a by product?

Clearly some lived to feature in Job – an early book chronologically in the canon of Judeo-Christian scripture: the land and sea lords, bohemoth and leviathan. Nessie isn’t quite like either beast, although the cedar tree tail, huge sinews and mighty mouth are unlike any creatures that we’ve known. This story seems to say that these vast animals co-existed with humans, which is at variance with accepted science. FW Holiday points out that scientists ignored tracks of humans and dinosaurs together: we don’t believe it’s possible, so it isn’t true. One set of footprints were erased from the record. Why so vehement? What could this really signify?

FW Holiday thought: not only might Nessie be wormy, but that she’s related to UFOs. In The Dragon and The Disc (1973) he postulates the ever present serpent motif found in English churches and caves of ancient cultures with what he believes to be the Flying Saucer motif. He scoffs at sun and moon worship as the reason for the disc – I don’t – but claims that the craft he himself has seen have been coming a long time and that our forebears, who we often patronise, were building sites to speak to them. Pyramids and barrows and henges alike. This is not being said by him alone now and it made sense – in part.

He speaks of the ziggurats and how these stepped pyramids were Tree of Life related – once sporting actual trees – with colour coded layers. The top was the holy part and the part for receiving these godlike extraterrestrial visitors. At the bottom was the dragon area; serpents were, he says, on priestly robes and portals in this zone. Were there actual dragons? Dragons often guard treasure. Literally? Which physical resources are of value? Or is the treasure the same as the Eden trees: life and knowledge? And who wants it prohibited to humans? Is this truly the real God, or some lesser deity posing as him? Who are these visitors from elsewhere, and why does the government send men in black if you claim to see them to scare you out of your story?

Could both these phenomena be known to the ancients, and also – connected still? What would aliens want with dragons? What could we want with both? They are equally banned from sensible science, equally persecuted, and yet equally fascinating. We have all these ancient sites around the world that the official keepers of knowledge hog and seem mystified by. How are they linked – literally by leylines of energy which again, the mainstream decries?

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Tony Doc Shiels, self proclaimed wizard of the Western World, said Nessie et al are other worldly; in many ways, FW Holiday agrees. Even in 2008, I was open to this, for I’d read enough to sense something was amiss… the lack of remains, shit, babies, eating (or fodder to eat), and sometimes size of the water they’re in, the size of them for their body type… the weirdness of cameras going wrong or being unavailable… They’ve confounded detection and capture for almost a century. So yes, you’d wonder. Can this be real? Or is it real in another way?

Tony Shiels said that Nessies live in multiple realms and are part psychic phenomena. His psychic approach to raising her – involving nude witches – seemed to be more successful than any other.

I noted a question on an other wordly forum: Is the Loch Ness Monster a higher density entity? Alas, the thread is no longer there, but it’s a fascinating question. But what is meant by ‘entity’? This can be New Age speak for not so good or barnacle spirits.

Are they neutral beings? They do seem to be only semi corporeal, able to switch between worlds. The ancients claimed that still water was a reflective portal. Nessies like to appear on still calm days and sink in an odd way. Does this support their use of portals, although they disturb water when they move and can hear and have hit a boat and an oar – and the impact was felt as solid.

What I’m wondering is: who do these creatures work for?

I’m now cautiously open to the reptile alien theory, which states (deep breath, I’m aware of how this sounds if it’s new to you): Long ago, beings from other planets or realms came to Earth. They have been secretly running it for millennia, denying their existence whilst controlling us and our resources. They pretend to propound rationalism and realism whilst doing the reverse – it was discovered that the CIA used power of mind as weaponry, as The Men Who Stare At Goats portrayed. I have also heard that there are recent disclosures over the truth of aliens and the military. Strange, I know… but possible? It’s said in the New Age community – who are the chief proponents of this – that more sightings are happening as we come into the Age of Aquarius. There have been many in these last 2 years. These aliens are shapeshifters with underground bases… getting odder, I know, but again – does odd and uncomfortable preclude truth? Remember those dual dinosaur prints?

I also hear – and this is the least woo woo but most disconcerting – that these secretive elite, hidden in organisations we know, power themselves through fear, and specifically, the energy of abuse. Child abuse most of all. I don’t want to give details here, but I wonder that as I publish this and soon after, that these things will be better known. Does this explain the missing persons, the legends of being carried off, and those warnings: never go with strangers? (Their source is ironic).

I have also heard the testimonies of those who have been affected. I offer no conclusion, just openness and regrettably, that the possibility is not unlikely.

Is this the evil that precipitated the Flood? Are these manifestations of the battle of good and evil?

The one that Light and Good is about to definitively and publicly win?

Alot [sic] to take in, and it makes me fuzzy too. So: I’m wondering, when we see a Nessie, what are we really looking at? Might they may not be on the side of light, but part of the controlling Babylon-based otherworld which has enslaved us for millennia? Or is it the clandestine controllers who want us to fear these creatures because they aren’t theirs?

Are orms keepers of secrets? If the magi are the keepers of secrets of heavens, are these also – ie that we’re connected to other planets and realms? Secrets are being shown now. Whatever they hide – resources, or are they meant to be another form of fear to keep us away from refreshing natural beauty, or are they water bailies of some kind to protect such spots from our pollution, urban growth and greed? There are those who believe in gatekeeper spirits to energy portals which occur in natural places. I used to think them messengers who like Yoda in Star Wars subvert all that we expect about how a wise messengers should be. Was I right first time?

Whatever they are – diabolic dragons, abominable avatars, or perhaps something neutral, or even what I hoped – friend of those tuned in enough to listen:

These are nothing to fear.

Fear comes from ideas – we can choose how we react, even if we need to recondition ourselves.

We can have the power that suspiciously Christlike Columba did – if it is needed against Nessies.

I’m reminded by my spiritual sisters that dragons have a feminine quality to them which has deliberately been demonised, and that they are also mystical.

Although I enjoy some mystique, I think we’re about to find out much of what has been hitherto hidden and seems incredulous. We’ll use intuition more and we’ll stop slamming non logical theories. I think that the true history of our planet, which we will shortly know, may incorporate both serpents and saucers. Anything that does not serve our highest good will be swept away and transformed or banished. Perhaps Nessies are cursed, like Grendel in Beowulf (at least, the Xena version), and so many fairy stories. Then they will be released from bonds and so will we – from fear, powerlessness (or the illusion of it) and control. And the media and academia will stop telling us what to think, and pests and pestilence will no longer have dominion. Or perhaps they too need transforming and releasing – loving out of their loathliness and into loveliness.

The bombshell is, which I hesitate over slightly, is the dragon in Revelation which is often seen as the Catholic church. I equally see it as the Anglican one. During the year since I left, I have not only seen appalling lack of care in the face of the pandemic period, but conformity and perpetuation of what I and many others consider is a false narrative via online prayers and reflections. Some of these are shocking in their rhetoric and also the irony of enforcing rules whilst ministers publicly admit to breaking them, clearly with no idea about how these months of lockdown and other restrictions have been like for others. But worst is that paragraph above, that Hooded Claw factor which I’ve mentioned before: that those meant to protect us are doing the reverse, and that it’s organised, not incidental. Safeguarding is subterfuge for its horrific opposite. I also believe that their ceremonies are not what they seem and that candidates are ritually inducted to this wealthy corporation in a way that energetically claims and alters them. This is why I cannot with integrity associate with the church [sic] of England at this time, nor the Catholic one. I’ve not entered their portals in a year, even for private prayer, and until this all comes out and is dealt with, I will not. (I set up my own church Between The Stools instead).

Finally, I think that how we react to Nessie and her dragon daughters tell us much about ourselves. Morgawr is our mirror. Are we disbeliever, captor, chaser, esoteric, fearful, embracer, symbol-seer, cipher-linker, exorcist or environmentalist? Can we too juggle multiple hats and realities? Are we open to transformation and release?

I’m praying for the latter, very much.

Please note that I do not currently endorse all New Age views (or any other) mentioned in this blog and I am still researching and making my own opinion. I invite you to make yours.

We’ll be thinking more about evil and its possible transformation in Between the Stools next month, when we’ll have a Satanic soliloquy on 14^th Feb – just words this time.

We’ll also ‘meet’ on 31^st March and over Easter that weekend (will we be able to gather?)

There will be a service on 25^th July, but there will be at least two inbetween