The Forest Dark

Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, Scotland, left one of the most fascinating and reasonable accounts of the unseen world in 1691. His work was much later discovered and published by novelist Sir Walter Scott. Kirk’s record describes in his account the fairies „they call Sleagh Maith or „The Good people“ as paradoxical beings inhabiting both the air and underground caves and he combines the banal with the surreal:  On one hand it is said that „they live in houses underground that are large and fair, lit with lamps and fires but without fuel to sustain them. They may abduct mortal women to nurse their children. Their clothing and speech is that of the country they live in (from Highland Folklore)“. On the other hand their pure nature and physics is completely alien to anything we know: „THERE Bodies of congealled Air are ƒome tymes caried aloft, other whiles grovell in different Schapes, and enter into any Cranie or Clift of the Earth where Air enters, to their ordinary Dwellings; the Earth being full of Cavities and Cells, and there being no Place nor Creature but is ƒuppoƒed to have other Animals (greater or leƒƒer) living in or upon it as Inhabitants; and no ƒuch thing as a pure Wilderneƒs in the whole Univerƒe (From Robert Kirk’s manuscript).“

This sounds pretty much like modern accounts of extra-terrestrial visitors or like „the separate evolution to that of humanity“.  The similarities between medieval accounts about demons and fairies and modern „close encounters“ have been mentioned a lot of times and Jacques Vallees emphasized this continuity in his accounts as “Passport to Magonia”. But what’s so interesting about Kirk’s account is the complex nature of these beings and the fact that they seem completely alien to us and exhibit very familiar behaviour at the same time. „Bodies of congealled air“ – this is a not like any life-form on earth but something close to the discoveries of modern scientists on a subatomic level.  The „human aspect“ of these entities doesn’t make really any sense. Maybe this is staged for us, since if we could see what these elemental spirits are we would loose our wits. Indeed there are many accounts about encounters with the „Sleagh Maith“ where people lost their sense or  – again like in modern Ufo-Folklore „lost time and orientation“. It’s not surprising that Robert Kirk’s dead became a mystery. It is said,  „he was taken“.

It seems like we have companions here on earth, we don’t know much about and who seem like tricksters, shape-changers and maybe some form of mediators between our world and the unknown. They must be here for a very long time, maybe much longer before man appeared on the face of earth and they are very close to us, a secret commonwealth playing a role in our destiny and we don’t know very much about them and their plans.

In my opinion they are part of the gateway to the otherworld, sometimes they might act as guardians, sometimes they are gatekeepers. And we do not know what they really are and should be aware about their reality-shifting abilities. Maybe somebody is creating realities for us, like the engineers of modern virtual-realities and from time to time at certain places we are allowed to get a glimpse about what’s really going on.

“There are other forms of life as well as ours whose sphere evolution impinges upon the earth”, DION FORTUNE, Psychic Self-Defense

Sometimes I wish she would be wrong, but she isn’t. The truth might be even more frightening. That’s what I’ve learned.

Legendary occultist Dion Fortune not only tells us about elemental forces and the background of demons but also about a scary idea which doesn’t sound so far away considering today’s speculation about parallel dimensions. In her classic “Psychic Self-Defense” she mentions the Deva-Evolution, which refers to entities or non-human souls, which emerged from a separate evolution to that of humanity. However there is no talk about humanoids with a different DNA as some sorts of alien-sightings suggest, but a whole cosmos of souls which are not really human but which could also incarnate in a human body. They could use human bodies as a hull, as humans not aware about their true origin and live among us undetected.

This triggered something when I thought more about it. It is indeed not a new idea, it was also mentioned by Algernoon Blackwood. My immediate thought was if there is a parallel evolution to that of humanity, there might be numerous species. There might be some entities, which are not friendly at all and some of them might have a plan. Some of them might even protect humanity as long as it fits their purposes. And we might be straight in the middle of a war of cosmic proportions.

However there are much more troubling questions if we dig further: if there are life forms, which exist on a kind of “higher frequency” our usual limitations of space and time means nothing to them. They could keep a hidden influence on our lives. Maybe there would be no need to communicate with humans in an ordinary sense. What if somebody could have access to our mind or to our conscious, manipulating us in secret ways?

Dion Fortune’s ideas can’t be explored in an ordinary sense. We can speculate and we can make up our fantasies about countless parallel universes and their various inhabitants. We might feel their presence in certain places but the only chance to understand would be to remember. It might be not them but us who came originally from another place. And are you really sure that you don’t belong to a separate evolution to that you always thought you would belong?

It is often said walking in the woods is good for you. Sometimes we can experience many different things there and learn about long kept secrets. There are bright places there but also some places, which are very special. There might be even dark corners there, where something can take us by surprise. We might think sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts. However do we really know where certain thoughts come from? Stroll around for a long time and maybe you will meet somebody in the dark corners of the woods. It has always been there, maybe waiting for somebody who will come like Maupassant’s legendary “L’Horla”. In a certain state of mind we might even get a glimpse of what it is and learn about forbidden things, which happen sometimes in the woods in a certain place.

 There are many gates to the Otherworld and it is not only the question if men can enter the other side but also what could come through the gates from the other side and intrude into our world.

The idea of keeping a watch and try to protect us from whatever is lurking deep in the forest is a very old one.

One of the most fascinating aspects in HBO’s outstanding series “Games Of Thrones” (Fire and Ice) is the concept of the “Night’s ‘Watch, “a military order which holds and guards the wall” (wikipedia). The order consists of black clothed men who swore an oath and have no normal life. On their wall of ice high up in the North they protect the kingdoms from something, which is outside. We imagine demons and we learn soon about the zombie-like white walkers outside.

This sounds like a great concept maybe loosely inspired by the great real walls in human history, the Hadrian’s Wall and of course the Chinese Wall. We could easily imagine everyday life, (Roman) civilization and safety on one side of the wall and outside the land of the unknown. Therefore the idea of the “Night’s Watch” has an archetypical quality because through history we are familiar with the concept: a wall separating civilisation on one side and terra incognita on the other side.

I believe this could also be a great metaphor in a different sense:

We don’t build any walls in our days and more. And we don’t have a “Night’s Watch”, which would protect us from whatever is roaming the forests and the mountains. But most of all we have abandoned the idea of a terra incognita.

However, maybe we have build other walls in our very rational world where there are no longer any dragons. It’s really astonishing how many people can live a whole life without ever question their idea of reality. The walls in these days are in our heads. But is somebody out there, standing on top of the wall and keeping watch, what’s going on outside?

There are always a few people who feel a strong need to probe the unknown. We know the dedicated writers, filmmakers, artists and researchers who teach us that we might have forgotten that there is another world not far from here.

There are people who make big sacrifices and seem to play a certain part in the great cosmic game. Writers of the supernatural like Algernoon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft which in their best stories, like “The Willows”, give us the creeping feeling that they have seen something out there which is very real. Then there are the men like Charles Fort who documented the endless accounts of the unexplainable in his famous “Book Of The Damned” and desperately tried to find some sense in the endless manifestations of a daemonic reality.

Aren’t they the real “Night’s Watch, the men who seem to have a strange relationship to whatever is outside the wall? There is something “otherworldly” about them, it’s like they came too close to some kind of radiation from the other side. In reality they are often outsiders because in our days our protection wall is simply to forget what we don’t know or what we don’t want to know. Any word of a terra incognita might endanger the status quo of our so-rational capitalistic world order. But part of the job of this real “Night’s Watch” is to remind us from time to time, that we live our lives on a tiny island in the midst of the “black seas of infinity” and that we should “watch the skies”.  The job isn’t easy since there are always people around us who defend the status quo of pure ignorance. The agents of darkness are already here for a long time and keep trying to transform humans in soulless robots.