Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

It got better – or worse, depending on your angle of approach.

Through the centuries, healing has been practised by folk healers who are guided by traditional wisdom that sees illness as a disorder of the whole person, involving not only the patient’s body but his mind, his self-image, his dependence on the physical and social environment, as well as his relation to …

Bloody hell.

… the cosmos. I would suggest that the whole impossible edifice of modern medicine, for all its breathtaking successes, is, like the tower of Pisa, slightly off-balance.

You could imagine some of Britain’s leading physicians having to leave, at this point, to check their own blood pressure. Especially if they looked closely at the Prince’s sources.

Merrily found an interview with Charles, which Dobbs, or someone, had marked down the side in what looked like felt pen.

It seemed that Charles – how had she avoided knowing about all this? – had become interested, apparently via the writings of Carl Jung, in the power of dreams, coincidence and what he called signposts .

In other words, the idea that individuals were open to guidance from … elsewhere – the collective unconscious. The cosmos. That they should be alert for psychic pointers.

One of which had apparently manifested while Charles was in his study attempting to draft his speech to the BMA. He was quoted as saying.

It was the most extraordinary thing. I was sitting at my desk at the time and I happened to look at my bookshelf and my eyes suddenly settled on a book about Paracelsus. So I took the book down and read it, and as a result I tried to make a speech around Paracelsus and perhaps a relook at what he was saying and the ideas he propounded. Wasn’t it time to think again about the relationship between mind and body, or body and spirit?

Paracelsus. Rennaissance physician and … herbalist?

Also, an occultist of the Renaissance period. A magician.

Deep waters.

‘AS ABOVE …’ Jane did the arm movements ‘… so below.’

At least she seemed happier, the sullen face replaced by the concentration face. It always paid to consult Jane. They’d built a log fire in the parlour and eaten from trays, and Jane had produced one of her paperbacks with planets and pentagrams on the front.

‘Paracelsus was just the name he adopted, OK? His real name was – this is interesting – Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, from which the word bombast is derived. Because that’s the kind of guy he was. Always throwing his weight about and losing his cool. Got up people’s noses.’

‘Can we get back to “As above, so below”?’

‘Paracelsus said the human body was like a microcosm of nature … or the universe. Whatever. It’s the basis of astrology. He had this theory that your main internal organs corresponded to individual planets? It made serious sense in the Renaissance. Still does, in a way.’

‘He was an occultist, though?’

‘Ah, see, that’s a typical Church attitude.’

‘Terribly sorry.’

‘He didn’t think of himself as an occultist – like, nobody did. It was science. Science and philosophy. It was like high learning. Cutting edge. Like, is Stephen Hawking an occultist? I can see where Chazza was coming from on this. Homeopathy operates on this microcosm basis, doesn’t it?’

‘I believe it does.’

‘So you could consider Paracelsus as the father of alternative medicine. Except it wasn’t alternative then, it was—’

‘Cutting edge. State of the art.’

‘Exactly. So does this mean the Duchy of Cornwall’s going to be setting up a centre for alternative healing at Garway?’

‘No, it … there’s probably no connection at all. I’m just interested in why the late Canon Dobbs was interested in the spiritual development of Prince Charles.’

‘Be a good place for it, though, Mum.’

‘Garway?’

‘With the Knights Templar. A lot of this started with them and their excavations of the Temple of Solomon. Most ritual magic, raising of spirits, all this, goes back to Solomon. And maybe the whole microcosm/macrocosm thing.’

‘Sometimes I wish you didn’t know all this,’ Merrily said, and Jane smiled.

Happy … ish. Down on the rug, arms around her knees, watching baby flames scurrying from log to log. She’d be happier still if she knew she’d been checked out by the Special Branch, but perhaps this wasn’t the time to enlighten her.

‘I was over in Coleman’s Meadow this afternoon,’ Jane said.

‘I thought it was all fenced off.’

‘It is, but Coops has a key to the temporary gate.’

Coops?

Jane turned from the fire, picked up Merrily’s look.

‘Neil Cooper – the guy from the County Archaeologist’s department?’

‘Oh.’

‘Actually, he’s pretty pissed off. Been trying to leave for a while – too young, obviously, to be tied to local government. He’d like to be a field archaeologist. But he’s afraid of what will happen at Coleman’s Meadow if he quits now.’

‘In what way?’

It had gone suspiciously quiet since the initial excitement over the discovery of the three long-buried megaliths in Coleman’s Meadow. Jane had been euphoric about the stones, because the field was bisected by what she – and the great visionary Alfred Watkins before her – had considered to be a seminal ley line linking Ledwardine Church with the Iron Age earthworks on the summit of Cole Hill, the village’s holy hill.

Hills again. Always hills.

‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘You know about rescue archaeology, right?’

‘This is where archaeologists are given a specific period of time to excavate an area scheduled for development?’

‘It’s what most archaeology is these days, thanks to the rampant overpopulation that’s suffocating Britain.’ Jane scowled. ‘Time we scrapped all family allowance if you’ve got more than two kids, so it’s like … three kids, no more benefits. Four kids, compulsory sterilization.’

‘That’s your personal concept, is it?’

Jane’s politics could veer from extreme left to extreme right and back again within seconds. Extreme being the only constant.

‘I don’t know. We’ve got to do something , haven’t we? Like I don’t care what colour people are or what they worship, as long as there are less of them.’

‘Fewer,’ Merrily said.

‘You clergy are just so pedantic.’

‘But to return to Coleman’s Meadow …’

‘Yeah, well, obviously it’s our beloved councillor, Lyndon Pierce. Gomer should’ve buried that bastard with the JCB while he had a chance.’

‘Gomer almost wound up in court, as it is.’

‘He wanted to go to court. He told me. He wanted his day in court, so he could stand up and publicly accuse Pierce of corruption and get it into the papers. If you say something in court, you’re like immune from getting sued for slander?’

‘Mmm.’ It was interesting, the way Pierce had declined to give evidence and the police inquiry had been dropped. ‘However—’

‘OK.’ Jane plopping down next to Merrily on the sofa. ‘The situation is that Pierce and some of his fascist friends in the council’s so-called cabinet want it confined to rescue archaeology. Which means Coops is allowed to get the site excavated and learn what he can from it and then they have to give it back . Like, take the stones away or something, and then give back the Meadow? So all that’s left is like maps and stuff in a report?’

‘And the housing estate goes ahead?’

‘Which would be crass, soulless and a total crime. As well as, obviously, destroying the ley.’