Eating Apples – and the Distillation of Memories

On November 21, 2021November 20, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn Alchemy and Kabbalah, Life Stories & Memoirs4 Comments

Epigram Nine, Atalanta Fugiens, by Michael Maier 1617

‘Lock the tree with the old man in a bedewed house, and by eating of its fruits he will become young.’

As we get older, in less cheerful moments we may feel that nothing new will happen to us again in this lifetime. But actually, I don’t hold with that idea, as I think there’s always scope for a surprise, or a new activity or friendship which blossoms even at a late stage. It’s true however that there is more behind us than ahead of us, and that our ability and energy become more limited. There’s a painting by Russian artist Vasily Maximov, from 1889, called ‘All in the Past’. In it, an elderly aristocrat and her aged female servant sit together outside their summer cottage – brooding, snoozing, knitting and remembering. But although distinction of rank scarcely matters any more, with a touching sense of kinship as their lives even out, there is also a depressing sense that there is nothing more to expect from the future.

However, that’s not the only aspect of growing old – or it needn’t be. Even for those who experience severe physical limitations, inner change can still occur as the threads spun over the years are gathered together. Maybe there’s a symbolic touch to the servant’s knitting?

I describe one instance of this in my book Everyday Alchemy, about something which happened with my mother. Before I include this extract, though, I’ll add a hasty rejoinder that this kind of change may not be possible for everyone, and a person’s state of being may hinder these gentle transformatory experiences. However, I write about them here in a spirit of optimism. Certainly Michael Maier’s emblem in Atlanta Fugiens holds the promise of this, embedded in a symbolic image of alchemical change.

After the extract from my book Everyday Alchemy below, I’ll follow with a further reflection on my mother’s love story.

Distillation and eating apples

First a preamble, also drawn from the text of Everyday Alchemy: an idea of what ‘distillation’ means in alchemy, during the process of changing base matter to gold.

In alchemical terms, this process of receiving sustenance from the higher world is called distillation. The vapours rise from the ‘cooking’ of the ‘earthly’ substance in the vessel; they ascend and then condense into purified drops, running down again to feed the matter that remains below.

And you may like to listen to the vocal ‘fugue’ which Michael Maier wrote to accompany this emblem; like certain other alchemists, he believed in a fusion of visual imagery, music and poetry to accompany his interpretation of each stage of alchemy.

Epigram Nine
In Wisdom’s garden grows an apple tree
With fruits of gold. Take it and our old man,
Enclose them in a glass house, wet with dew,
And let them stay there many days conjoin’d.
When he has eat his fill of fruit, behold!
The former old man is a youth again.

Contemplating Change
Here we have a somewhat bizarre image of an old man sitting in a glass house, eating apples in order to grow young again. Interpreting this in terms of everyday life, let’s not think of it as a literal turning back of the clock, but instead as the renewal of optimism, hope, and energy. We are at liberty with alchemy to wander between the worlds when we interpret its imagery, and to find a way of relating it to our own lives.

To take part in this process of renewal, one thing is essential, and that is the willingness to change. Sure, life is full of changes, and ageing brings change, but that’s the kind of change that seems to advance without our consent! In fact, the more we age, the more we tend to resist changes, building up habits of comfort and thought and lifestyle. And this is not exclusive to the elderly; if you are over the age of twenty or so, you can be sure that those habits are already setting in. They just become more pronounced with the passing of the years.

When we give up accepting change, we give up on life. And maybe this is inevitable in our closing years. My mother, in her last years, wanted to slow the world down, and make it a place of as little change as possible. She kept more and more to her room, and lost interest in what was happening outside. But at the same time, something else was happening. Her memories began to play a very important part in her life. Ironically, as is often the case with old people, her sense of time began to fail, and her short-term memory was poor. But old memories that had meaning for her resurfaced vividly. Verses of poetry she had learnt as a child came floating into her mind again. She relived her courtship and marriage, and told me the story of her first love affair, which she had never revealed before.

It was soul-work. She was contemplating her life, ordering it, and distilling it. Even at that stage of her life, transformation was still in progress, and she ate of the apples in Wisdom’s garden. It was also work that lasted for a particular time span of about eighteen months, and when that was done, it really did seem as though there was nothing else that she had to do except to cope with the increasingly difficult routines of simply staying alive, until the body itself gave out. On the last day of her life, I arrived too late to see her still alive. But instead of the gloom and despair I expected when I entered the house, I felt an overwhelming sense of joy and release. It was a beautiful spring day, with flowers bursting into bloom. In some curious way, I felt that she was at last free to be a part of that. The same day, I went to see the priest about the funeral service, and told him that I couldn’t only feel grief, because there was such a powerful, joyful energy which accompanied her passing. We composed a service which included poems about nature, which she loved.

Alchemy draws its secrets from nature, and from our natural range of experience in life, it but works with them at a higher level. So the natural process which my mother went through is one that we can actively choose to use in our own lives now, without waiting for old age to bring it. The whole principle of taking a process that happens naturally, but using it in a distilled form, means that its potency will be greater, just as in homeopathy the highest potency remedies are those with the least substance in them. (Incidentally, alchemy was responsible for perfecting the art of distillation and inventing brandy!)

Pps 118-119, Everyday Alchemy

The Love Affair

What my mother revealed during that visit, when she showed me the picture of her first lover, stayed with me. It was a kind of strange mother-to-daughter gift, and I do believe that a mother’s gift can be a mixed blessing, even a curse sometimes, as fairy tales and personal experiences readily show. But perhaps that’s a theme for another time! At any rate, it has percolated through my mind since, shedding a little light on my parents’ own relationship, and the hidden emotions that must have remained in my mother’s mind during my own early childhood. Such a close-up insight into our parents’ emotions can come as a shock.

So here’s how this went, in more detail.

On one of my visits to my mother during the last years of her life, she drew a portrait out of her photo box. It wasn’t actually a photograph, but a sketch of a handsome young man.

This was the man, she told me, who had broken her heart.

‘He was my first serious boyfriend.’

Kathleen Owen was a first year student at Homerton Teacher Training College in Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate in another college, and they fell passionately in love. Although my mother – a pretty, slim redhead – was used to going out with boys in her village, this was an affair of the heart of a different order. She pinned all her hopes on him. They exchanged love letters, he gave her his picture, and maybe they were even planning a life together.

‘Then we went home for the summer holidays, and that was it. I never heard from him again.’

Mum may have been a minister’s daughter from a country background, but she was not unworldly. She also had plenty of common sense. So I think her perception that this man was genuinely in love with her was true, not a naive illusion.

‘What happened? Did you ever find out?’

I was caught up in this story, which had been kept hidden for sixty years.

She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t know why he did it.’

Was he too cowardly to pursue a real commitment? Did his parents object? I imagine my mother waiting after she’d returned to the family home in Soham, where her father was a Baptist Minister. Did her glow of joy gradually drain away day by day, as she waited for a letter in vain? Did she have to hide her anguish from the family? I wanted to ask her more, but I sensed that it was a fragile moment, and more than she’d ever revealed to me before.

*My mother Kathleen, 2nd from left, with some of her* college friends

After she came back to college, the news percolated through that her boyfriend had died, of a burst appendix. But this had happened months after they parted from each other, and wasn’t the reason for his withdrawal. So plainly now there could be no way back – no explanation, and no possible reconciliation. She was heartbroken.

‘And the strange thing was,’ she said, ‘that his surname was Phillips.’

My father’s name, the man she was later to meet and marry, was also Phillips. And thus it was my maiden name too. ‘Joscelyn Phillips, he was.’

She gave me the portrait to keep, plus a photo of him. It seemed to put something to rest after all these years. But there was something more: ‘I kept his love letters until we were living in Sandwich,’ she admitted. This was some twenty years later, in the town where I spent the first part of my childhood. ‘Then, one day, I decided there was no point in keeping them, and threw them into the stove.’

*A photo of Joscelyn Phillips – not quite so handsome as the portrait!*

I remember that cantankerous old coke boiler in the passage by the back door. My father would carry up the coke from the cellar, grumbling, and prise open the dangerously hot metal lid in order to shoot it into the flames below. A dangerous monster, to which I gave a wide berth. Now I also see it as one which devoured my mother’s young hopes and dreams.

*My brother Richard, myself and the dog Russ sitting outside the backdoor of no.12 Upper Strand Street, Sandwich*

It was over twenty years ago that my mother told me all this, and although I remembered the story, I didn’t take it any further until recently. And I had forgotten the name of her boyfriend, even the Phillips bit. But luckily, I discovered that I had written it down at the time, and surely I could trace this guy on the internet, with the new powerful search tools not available when I first heard the tale? Family history research is my thing; I know the ropes. Birth, death? College records? Newspaper reports? Should be no problem.

But I got nowhere. Phillips is commonplace, of course, as a surname. And although his first name was more unusual, I discovered that there are many ways to spell Josselin or Joscelyn. I found nothing that matched. His identity thus remains a mystery.

My parents also met at Cambridge, in the early 1930s, where my father-to-be, Ormonde Phillips – from various accounts – was a tall, shy and handsome young man. He was also badly in need of some pleasant female company after an upbringing by a shrewish mother and an elderly, gentle but weak-willed father. He fell for Kathleen, and cemented the relationship. My mother told me that when she heard how badly his somewhat crazy mother had treated him, she determined to make it up to him through her love. I think this became a lifelong promise which helped them to stick together through the rough patches. Dad, unsurprisingly, was not an easy man.

My parents at Cambridge and my father’s graduation day

Their marriage plans, however, were disrupted by the outbreak of war. The preparations for a white wedding with all the trimmings, and a honeymoon in the Peak District, had to be cancelled. Like many couples in a similar situation, a hasty registry office ceremony was arranged before my father was sent off to Salisbury with his call-up papers. I found a newspaper report of the event, held on Thursday September 7th, 1939:

Although Miss Kathleen Florence Owen should have been married in Mansfield-Road Baptist Church, Nottingham yesterday, the ceremony did not take place there. Instead she was married at Gosport, on the South coast. The reason for the sudden change in her plans was that her bridegroom – 2nd Lieut. Charles Ormonde Reynolds Phillips – was unable to get to Nottingham. For the same reason the honeymoon, which should have been spent in Derbyshire, will now be spent at Gosport. Three bridesmaids should have been in attendance, but owing to the change of plans only one could be present – Miss Maisie Owen, sister of the bride. She carried a bouquet of bronze chrysanthemums.

My father’s stay in the army was short-lived, as he was invalided out with pleurisy, and so their regular married life together began not too long afterwards.

*My mother as a young married woman, with her favourite dog Judy*

And despite some tensions in the marriage, they were loyal, and supported each other in old age. After Mum’s death, I found a card in which Dad had written a poem to her on their 55th anniversary.

This card to all your loving cares
Of me for five and fifty years
Attests, and speaks my love to you.

As time approaches our three score,
Our love must surely grow yet more
And burn as brightly as when new.

So, as we eat our apples, youth does come back in another guise. Memories resurface; hidden love stories can be revealed. Is this a kind of renewal? I think that indeed it may be. Perhaps the title ‘All in the Past’ can actually be a key to transformation, and development of the soul; it points us to the riches which we already have, if we can just recognise and re-live them.

*My parents on their Golden Wedding Day in 1989*

Haunted Dartmoor

On November 7, 2021November 6, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn Myth and Landscape

*The strange shapes of some of the granite tors on Dartmoor lend themselves to ghostly legends – we’ll meet this petrified hunter later on*

It’s still the Spooky Month, so I’ll continue on this theme by braving the spirits of Dartmoor. In Topsham, our local town, ghosts seem few and select. On Dartmoor, however, you can encounter one at practically every bend in the road or on each granite tor. In fact there are many, many different types of ghosts on Dartmoor, from black dogs to ghostly hunters, from hairy hands to phantom monks and invisible drivers (who run you over). So I will just pick out a few stories to share with you here.

Kitty Jay

I became intrigued by Kitty Jay years ago, when I heard her story on a TV feature about Dartmoor. Kitty, we were told, was a young girl who died tragically after being crossed in love. The grave where her unquiet spirit hovers lies beyond parish boundaries, but it is always tended by unknown hands. Offerings of fresh flowers, and sometimes food or trinkets are placed there regularly. Could this really be so?

Then, when we moved to this area, I finally managed to visit Kitty Jay’s Grave, and to check out the story for myself.

*The grave* of Kitty Jay, near Houndtor on Dartmoor

Kitty Jay, according to the tale, was a farm girl of humble origins who fell in love with a young man of higher class. He professed to love her in return, seduced her, and then abandoned her. Kitty committed suicide in despair. And because she took her own life- it was considered both a crime and a sin – she could not be interred in a churchyard, and so was buried here, at an old crossroads near Hound Tor.

For thousands of years, crossroads have been considered magical, liminal places, associated with restless spirits. In Greek times they were ruled by the god Hermes, who, as one of the old texts says: ‘I Hermes stand here at the crossroads by the wind beaten orchard, near the hoary grey coast; and I keep a resting place for weary men.’ But as time went on, crossroads seemed to lose the sense of sanctuary and their protective deity, and became places for the outcasts of society, including those who would not find rest after death. In medieval and later times, gallows were often erected at crossroads, considered suitable places for the wicked and the ungodly to end their lives. Here they would be bereft of protection from gods or men, with the four winds blowing over them, condemned to lie forever between this world and the next. Hence crossroads are not only considered to be haunted, but they are also places where spirits can be conjured up.

*The grave lies at an old crossroads – the road which runs from left to right (just out of shot) is now metalled, but this one coming up through the woods is still an old bridle path or green lane*

However, in all versions of the story, our Kitty was a good and gentle girl, wronged by the cruelty of a man and the harsh code of society. And she continues to be commemorated thus. The strange thing about Jay’s Grave (as it is labelled on the map) is that it is truly almost always covered with offerings. Passing it many times now, I can vouch for the fact that it is nearly always adorned with flowers, trinkets, coins and the like. Some people say these are brought each night by the pixies, but that if you stay up in the dark to see them at work, you will be terrorised by a huge hooded figure, who rises up to drive you away.

Whatever the truth about a sad farm girl who was abandoned by her lover – there seems to be good evidence that a skeleton was indeed found here – it is still a kind of mysterious shrine, as the offerings show. The story still touches our hearts. It also touched that of the writer John Galsworthy, who wrote a novel called The Apple Tree based on the tale of Kitty Jay. Galsworthy loved Dartmoor, and spent much time in the area. More of that later…

And likewise, local bard Seth Lakeman has written a song about her:

Poor Kitty Jay
Such a beauty cast away
This silent prayer
It should paint some peace
On her grave
Something broke her sleep
Poor Kitty Jay
Such a beauty thrown away
So young and fair
Now she's turned to dust
And clay
Terror broke her sleep
Never guessed unto her cold end
Called the Devil her only friend
Never guessed it with his bare hands
Called the Devil the mark of man

You can listen to it here, as recorded in the magical setting of the outdoor Minack Theatre in Cornwall.

Could there be a link between the popularity of this song and the increase in daily offerings? No, surely not – it is the pixies are competing to show their concern, of course!

Offerings placed by unknown hands on Kitty Jay’s grave when I first visited

The Curious Custom of ‘Singing the Body’, and the tradition of The Old Lych Way

Meldon Pool is a flooded limestone quarry on Dartmoor near Okehampton. Here a tragic death occurred in 1936, when someone fell into its murky waters and drowned. (Swimming is prohibited here today.) But when his body could not be found, the mourners became desperate to recover their loved one and give him a Christian burial. Tim Sandles, of Legendary Dartmoor, tells us that the eerie custom of ‘singing the body’ was therefore employed:
‘This was where prayers and hymns were sung at the edge of any water where a body had gone missing. The old custom of singing the dead involved assembling at the place of a drowning, and singing hymns and psalms near the water in the hope that the body would emerge for burial.’ Thus, it was hoped that ‘the sacred words would be attracted by the lost soul who was thus released from limbo. ‘Accordingly, a choir from nearby Okehampton assembled at the pool and duly chanted hymns and offered prayers. Although there was no immediate result, within the week the body was found floating in the pool. This occasion is the last officially recorded instance of this tradition on Dartmoor.’

Another old custom associated with death on Dartmoor was the carrying of the coffin many miles along ‘the old Lych Way’ to Lydford in order to comply with parish regulations.Those who had died in remote parts of Dartmoor had There is a sinister pathway that winds its sombre way across the northern wastes of Dartmoor, it is known as the ‘Way of the Dead’, the ‘Corpse Way‘, or the Lych Way. Its roots are firmly set deep in the days when every person on the moor was expected to attend their church for services and burials. That may not seem any different to the rest of the country in medieval times, except for some of them it involved a trudge of about 12 miles and in bad weather this would increase to roughly 17 miles. Legendary Dartmoor has the full explanation.

This song about The Old Lych Way, performed by our local folk heroes ‘Show of Hands’, was written by our talented Topsham neighbour Chris Hoban.

The Restless Ghost of Manaton

And now to a more personal account. I was asked by an old friend, who does not wish to be identified, whether I could find out anything about Wingstone Manor Farm in Manaton on Dartmoor, to discover if it might be haunted? She had lived there as a child, and was regularly spooked by a shadow of a man which would pass through her bedroom at night.

*The attractive village o*f *Manaton, on the eastern side of Dartmoor*

I searched what records I could find, chiefly from the newspapers of the day, and accounts of Dartmoor legends. And I found this one:

FATAL ACCIDENT TO A MANATON FARMER.

On Wednesday evening, fatal accident, the details of which have yet to explained, occurred to Mr Endacott, of Wingstone Farm, Manaton. It appears that on Wednesday he drove into Newton Market as usual, and late in the afternoon started to return home… A short distance out of Newton on the Bovey Road, Mr Endacott by some means collided with a trap driven by Miss Kerslake, of Teigngrace. Both were thrown out, though, apparently, without being injured. After some delay Miss Kerslake re-started, little the worse for the adventure. The shafts of his trap having snapped off, Mr Endacott borrowed a saddle and bridle, and started to ride home, leaving his trap in a field adjoining the scene of the accident. On reaching Bovey he made a short stay at one of the hotels. When he left Bovey it was dark, and not long after he was discovered lying in the road between Bovey and Manaton, having either been thrown or fallen off his horse. He was conveyed home at once. Medical was called in, but he died from his injuries early on Thursday. PC. Ashby took Mr Endacott’s name and address after the accident, with the intention of summoning him for furious riding …An inquest will held. (East & South Devon Advertiser – 5th December 1896)

*A path leading into Manaton, of the kind which Farmer Endacott would have ridden.*

So could the troubling shadow be that of Farmer Endacott, never quite able to leave his former home after coming to an abrupt and inebriated end? But then, on delving a little further, I wondered about another former and more famous occupant of the farmhouse…

Above – Galsworthy and his favoured retreat of Wingstone Manor

From the Western Morning News, 25th October 1929, when as it seems, the Endacott family itself was still in residence:
As Devonians are well aware, Mr. John Galsworthy lived at Manaton, on the edge of Dartmoor, for a considerable number of years, occupying two rooms in a pleasant farmhouse, and playing cricket in his hours of leisure with the village team. Last Saturday, when a small party of us visited Wingstone Farm, his landlady, Mrs. Endacott, very proudly showed us his sitting-room, pointing out with particular reverence his favourite chair which he always sat when writing. “That’s the one on the left of the fireside,” she almost whispered, indicating a roomy, black basket work armchair with a low seat, high back, and plentiful cushions. Seventeen years he lived here, and still comes back for visits. He used to say that he liked the view.”

Perhaps Mr Galsworthy continued his visits, even after his death in 1933?

The Witches and the Hunter – the story of Bowerman’s Nose

Anyone who visits the strange granite outcrop known as Bowerman’s Nose cannot fail to be impressed by the huge ‘head’ which seems to loom up above the hillside. (That’s the one at the top of this blog.) Locals know that this is Bowerman the Hunter, who was turned into stone along with his pack of dogs – the loose stones around him – when he tried to defy a local pack of witches. The story goes that there were many witches on Dartmoor, and that covens were rife. Bowerman chose to defy their power, but in the end, one witch was able to turn herself into a hare to lure him to his doom. Bowerman hunted the hare until it ran straight into the assembled coven, a trap set by the witches to ensnare him and put him under their spell forever. You can read full and imaginative versions of the tale at Legendary Dartmoor. and Dartmoor – Learning.

Here I am, demonstrating the size of the mighty Bowerman and his Nose

But I wonder about this story? Who is really the villain, who the victim? Whose side are you actually on? That of Bowerman a mighty man of power and status, hunting the defenceless hare, or the witches who may have been local ‘wise women’ and healers? Women’s secret gatherings were often feared for no good reason, and their knowledge of natural magic reviled. Of course, the witches could have been malevolent hags, ready to curse and enslave, and Bowerman could be a brave protector of the people. Well, it’s only a story….Maybe the ambivalence is part of the fascination of old legends, told in different ways at different times. I’ll leave you to choose!

The Fearsome Pig and the Phantom Piglets

This *fearsome phantom pig* is from Swedish folklore, but legends of spirit pigs are found widely across Northern Europe, harking to the times when wild boars roamed the landscape, as indeed they did on Dartmoor. The boar was a creature of awe and worship, and sometimes associated with the gods of the land

To finish, I return to the story of the Phantom Piglets, who I first wrote about in ‘Us Wants to go to Widecombe Fair’. This is truly a Dartmoor special. Here’s the tale again:

‘From Merripit Hill, near Warren House Inn, a phantom sow may sometimes be seen setting out with her littler of hungry little phantom piglets on a journey to Cator Gate near Widecombe. Here, it is rumoured, there lies a succulent dead horse. The procession trots over the mist-enshrouded moor – the little pigs squeak ‘Starvin’, starvin’, starvin’.’ To which the old sow grunts encouragingly: ‘Dead ‘oss, Cator Gate; dead ‘oss, Cator Gate.’ They arrive too late – there’s nothing left. Sadly, they trek homewards, the piglets wailing disconsolately: ‘Skin and bones, skin and bones.’ to which their mother philosophically replies, ‘Let ‘un lie, let ‘un lie.’ By this time they have become so thin after their long trek that they dissolve into mist-wraiths, never getting back to their home ground. Nevertheless, there they all are, ready to set out again from Merripit Hill on the next occasion.’
(as told to Ruth E. St Leger-Gordon by Miss Theo Brown)

My husband and I shall soon be spending an autumnal weekend on Dartmoor in this area, and I will of course be out searching the hills and horizon for any signs of the Ghostly Pigs. The wild and lonely countryside around the places mentioned lends itself to legends of frightful fiends, so who knows what other spectral beasts I might encounter? Don’t forget the Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sherlock Holmes, based on real stories of a giant phantom hound – and of course there is the Old Grey Mare herself, who we also met in the Widecombe Fair blog.

Cherry's Cache

Month: November 2021