Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

'It is my belief – no, my certainty, grounded in experience as well as logic, that we can use their teaching as stepping-stones, as stairs to a height from which, looking back whence we have come, we shall see exposed the gigantic fallacy on which our philosophy and morality were built – namely the transformation of facts into essences, of historical into metaphysical conditions. The weakness and despondency of man, the inequality of power and wealth, injustice and suffering are attributed by the Church and its thinkers to some transcendental crime and guilt. Rebellion, disobedience against God, became the original sin that tainted us all. and the striving for gratification which is life was stained with the sin of concupiscence.

'This departure into metaphysical realms culminated in the deification of time: because everything in the empirical world is passing, man in his very essence becomes a finite being, and death is in the very essence of life. Madness preached, "All things pass away, therefore all things deserve to pass away! And this is justice itself, this law of Time, that it must devour its children."

'And again this madness pronounced as doctrine that only the higher values are eternal, and therefore real: faith and a love which does not ask and does not desire became the goals to which we should all aspire. And why? By these means the Church seeks to pacify, justify, compensate the underprivileged of the earth, and to protect those who made and left them underprivileged. These doctrines have enveloped the masters and the slaves, the rulers and the ruled, in an upsurge of repression which has caused the increasing degeneration of the life instincts and the decline of man.

'Traditional forms of reason, as exemplified in the real thought of Aristotle, the peripatetics and the empiricists of ancient times, are rejected, and experience of being-as-end-in-itself- as joy, lust (I use the Teutonic word, which combines desire with joy), and enjoyment were thrown out with them. To return to the path we have been led from, to descend on the other side of the mountain not into the Valley of the Shadow of Death but into the land of milk and honey, to come to ourselves in a world which is truly our own, we must struggle against the dominion of time, against the tyranny of becoming over being. As long as there is the uncomprehended and unconquered flux of time – senseless loss, the painful 'it was' that will never come again – being will continue to contain the seed of destruction that perverts good to evil and vice versa. Man comes to himself only when transcendence has been conquered, when eternity has become present in the here and now.

'Before I came here to speak to you I took a turn about our garden. The cherry tree is in blossom, our cherry tree, the only cherry tree in the whole of creation to be just as it is at this very moment. Next to it the lilac tree our brothers in Anatolia sent us is in bud, just about to open buds already white at the tips, and in its branches a bullfinch sang, its black cap burnished so blackness shone almost like the sun and its red breast glowed like fire. No other bullfinch in the world but this one graced this morning a lilac tree like ours.

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin. At this time of Easter, of blossom on the cherry tree, of the scarlet and black bullfinch in the lilac tree, of birth and resurrection, let us remember that if all things pass, all things return; what goes round comes round; eternally turns the wheel of Being. All things die, all things blossom again, eternal is the year of Being. All things break, all things are joined anew; eternally the house of Being builds itself anew. All things part, all things welcome each other again.

'Eternity, long since the ultimate consolation of an alienated existence, was made into an instrument of oppression by its relegation to a transcendental world – unreal reward for real suffering. Now, here, at Easter, eternity is reclaimed for the fair earth – as the eternal return of its children, of the water-lily and the rose, of the lover and the beloved… The earth has all too long been a madhouse. We must reverse the sense of guilt; we must learn anew to associate guilt not with the affirmation but the denial of life, not with rebellion but with the acceptance of the repressive ideal.

'It is no sad truth, but rather.I grand and glorious one that this earth should be our home. Were it but to give us simple shelter, simple clothing, simple food it would be enough. Add the water-lily and the rose, the apple and the pear, it is a fit home for mortal or immortal Man. Woman. Persons,'

'What did you think of that, Ali?' 'Uplifting, though a touch confused.'

'It's not easy to turn back the tide of a thousand years in a few pithy paragraphs.'

'I can do it in one sentence." 'You can?'

'As the Old Man in the Mountain said, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."'

'That is the black side of my discourse, the far side of the moon.'

'If you say so.'

Brother Peter paused by the pond and looked at me, his pale-blue eyes suddenly sad, his posture briefly tired, perhaps from the strain of giving his sermon, perhaps because he had decided our separation was inevitable.

'There is a small college of people,' he said, 'who have taken these thoughts towards a dark conclusion. They live in the north but to avoid persecution move about.'

'The Brothers of the Free Spirit?'

'I believe that's what they call themselves."

'Just where are they?"

'Try Macclesfield Forest.'

But before I left I prevailed upon him to seek out the coded details of Roger Bacon's last experiments with gunpowder, and thereby. I think, did more to save the empire of Vijayanagara from imminent destruction than any of the rest of us.

Having found all this talk of Occam and Wycliffc deeply confusing,

not to say boring and irrelevant, but with my mind concentrated

again by Ali's last statement regarding gunpowder, I attempted

to bring him back to what was germane.

'But what,' I asked him, after a short silence had grown between us,

of the Prince and Anish during this time? Were they still locked away

in the Tower?'

'I'm glad you asked. For, like you, I am now tired of my own voice. And, anyway, we have reached a point in our story where it is not out of place to return to the Prince's correspondence with the Emperor.'

And he pushed a small pile of papers across the table. While I read, he slept.

Dear Cousin

We are still incarcerated, after several months, well, weeks anyway, in this monumental prison and, of course, I still have no way of knowing whether or not you have received my letters and, if you have, what steps you are able to take to arrange our release. I suppose, even though we have languished here for so long, it is unreasonable to expect an answer from you in less than twice the time it took for us to get here, so I must continue to be patient.

Materially speaking things have not been as bad here as they might have been. Anish and I were given three small rooms to share in the central block or keep of this castle, which is known as the Tower of London, though it is in fact many towers linked by walls, or, like the central block in which we are living, free-standing. Everything is made of stone – either blocks of pale grey limestone or flint cores bonded with mortar – and roofed in lead or slate. The floors also are slate or limestone. There is almost no decoration apart from occasional tapestry hangings and only one of our rooms has a fireplace. Yet in spite of the primitive nature of our surroundings we are pestered to show gratitude for the comforts we have – and indeed, I have to say, our guardians fare no better than we do.