The Listening Voice The newsletter of the Equi-Phallic Alliance & Poetry Field Club Issue 6 / Messidor CCXIII “Neither Noddyland Nor Pogles Wood” LET’S RETURN TO THE OLD WAYS!

Modern antiquarians are not interested in fashioned to talk about it now. Some say stones arranged in circles or in racial or she didn’t die, but still waits patiently - This way to Utopia cultural stereotypes. They have gone into trapped in childhood - making up stories. the time before memory where they have The “mesh of narrative” - the sum total of Society’s body was never found. After the fun with the prehistory of the self! Come on all the stories told - is a psychic landscape. holidays the other children pretended not to children, this way... This ground is more real to us than geology miss her. They seemed to forget that Society and the surfaces it underpins. We walk this Antisocial Behaviour - the new had ever existed. In her place, goody-goody ground - trapped within the given meanings, Community was creeping around their lycanthropy the rules of this or that - or we break the parents and teachers, repeating all of her The concept of Society had been getting meanings down and go into the underworld, lessons as if they were true. We all know into trouble for some time, then late one beneath the roots of language. There are what antisocial behaviour is, but who can evening - as the shadows lengthened across caverns - there is the hidden machinery of describe social behaviour? Was it really the playing fields - Society vanished on her the story and how it might be told - and little more than obedience? way home. The police couldn’t find her, echoing spaces, an emptiness. Somewhere neither alive nor dead (but Society had If we try to compare yesterday with today in the distance we can hear Society screaming. always got on their nerves). we find only idealised representations of Any day now we will be setting her free. redundant manners. We become trapped Cheeky though she was, and she was The land is all around us. It is the perfect between two versions of the absurd. It can always answering back, Society was never propaganda delivery system, a medium for seem that we are viewing the world through really bad. It’s a long time since Society mass alienation. Each narrative - each yesterday’s technologies, only to be disappeared, it seems quaint and old obvious “truth”, each separate narrative consumed by a sense of nostalgia for the layer - is a machine, buried in what we past. We want to go there. We do not know perceive as “nature”. Power creates the the way. But the old way still exists. narrative fictions that validate power and This is the road to - not many there are flavours of the story to suit every people know this now - you turn left at political taste. Anyone who wants status and . Utopia isn’t a fantasy, the recognition that implies must negate it’s a memory of what we did when we were those who don’t behave. This is the sadism young. The only meaningful revolution of everyday life. It draws us into the would be one enacted by children, for only narrative vortex called “adulthood”. then could technology and its products Fear & Loathing in Camberwick Green embody - rather than represent - play. In 1966 Gordon Murray brought us The adults can’t get it right. They have Camberwick Green as part of BBC television’s ruined everything. The mass murder of “” series, then came adults is thus the ultimate expression of Trumpton in 1967 and in 1969. “Here Noddy says: don’t get angry children, childhood innocence. Let us arm the is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready get homicidal! children and loose them onto the streets! to play. But this box can hide a secret Great Goddess with her consort? They are inside. Can you guess what is in it today?” only Mum and Dad luvey. Now stop your nonsense and go to bed. And out of the box would rise the episode’s star character. The background would then The Trumpton Witch Trials appear and the story would begin. In November 1999 the UK press suddenly Camberwick Green was a small village near took an interest in the fate of all the Trumpton. As its name implies it was a green, Trumptonshire puppets, after Gordon surrounded by shops, including a fishmongers, Murray admitted that he had burned them bakers and post office. Nearby was Colley’s years ago. “I burnt them in a bonfire in my Mill, Pippin Fort and Jonathon Bell’s Farm. garden. I’d had them for some time after the Windy Miller lives at Colley’s Mill, which is transmissions had stopped. And various just outside Camberwick Green. The railway people had said “oh they’re old fashioned”, and they always were old fashioned actually. runs nearby. Windy makes home brew cider prehistory when he invented Wicca, his They were old fashioned from the word “go”. and whittles wood. When going into or out of “religion of the craft”. This is why Wicca is They had been used an awful lot you know so his windmill he amazingly always manages to such a childish religion and can only be I burnt them, together with the scenery.” miss the sails. Windy is rather old fashioned described using primary colours. It and very superstitious - he believes in institutionalises the childhood physical The Daily Telegraph of Wednesday 10th whistling for the wind, and touching a punishments, and associated sense of November carried an article: “The bonfire sweep’s collar for luck. He keeps a cow for powerlessness, endured by Gardner as a that did for Trumpton Fire Brigade”. The milk and free range chickens for eggs. He is boy. This was particularly intense because article carried a picture of Trumptonshire’s referred to as “Mr. Miller” on several Gardner never went to school and - the third Windy Miller, and a picture of Gordon occasions. On Sundays he burns witches. of five boys - he never really had a proper Murray with the caption “no regrets”. The Windy Miller, Windy Miller sharper than go on a nipple. smouldering corpse of a witch can be seen in the background, still attached to its stake. a thorn, Gardner’s claims about a New Forest witch Like a mouse he’s spry and nimble when coven are not only implausible, but they The following day, the Daily Telegraph he grinds the corn. make him implausible too. As a character he carried a follow up article: “Soldier escaped Like a bird he’ll watch the wind and is less realistic than the figures that emerged Camberwick Green bonfire”. It told how listen for the sound from the Trumpton clock tower. They are Gordon Murray’s daughter, Emma, gave one Which says he has the wind he needs to sacred - or “double” - puppets: they are of the Pippin Fort soldiers to a friend, Steve make the sails go round. “unreal” - being puppet representations of Fletcher, as a birthday present in 1986. This The circular imagery present in automatons - as opposed to the puppets of puppet, which now lives in a shoe box in Camberwick Green - firstly of the rotating “real” characters such as Windy Miller or Stamford (Lincs), may therefore be the only platform of the musical box, but also of the Gardner himself. In recent years the surviving citizen of Trumptonshire. mill - implies the cyclical pattern of the development of “eclectic paganism” has Gordon Murray created an alignment seasons. It is clear from the archetypal made worship of arbitrary authorities into an between the mythical “burning times” of the characters associated with Trumpton that the easy lifestyle option or “the pagan way of past and those of the future - As above, so inhabitants of Britain’s most hermetic life”. Children know this as “pretend”. It is a below? As before, so after! - and a neat way county were worshippers of both a Goddess very powerful magical tool and it is called for children to participate in a traditional and a God, each balanced in harmony as if “sympathetic magic” by the intellectual elite. community activity. Burning witches brings reminiscent of “the Old Religion”. Gardner recovered or pretended an early people of different generations together. The years hermeticism, a repressed tantrum. old ways are clearly the best. Every morning, the people of Trumpton take Calling it “the craft” he cast it like a spell, in their milk, open their shops and set out unleashing its power in a series of novels Yet more familiar symbols their wares. They do this with one eye on the and theatrical poses that impressed young The September 14th 1999 issue of the Daily town hall clock, and one ear too, for they and inexperienced “High Priestesses”. know that dead on the hour a slight rumble Mail included a letter by Gordon Murray, the from the recesses of the tower will announce During rituals Wiccans still mimic the Great Architect of Trumptonshire. A debate that pagan worship is about to begin. clunky movements of the automatons in the had developed in the letters page about the Trumpton clock tower. We played mummies True Location of Trumpton. He said: With a loud clonk the two doors on either and daddies in the woods when the moon “Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley side of the clock face slide open. To the was full. But it all got very Freudian. The regular rhythm of a gay mechanical tune, are representative of real locations which the gilt figures of Sir Rufus and Lady de are one-and-a-half miles from each other in Trompe emerge and solemnly strike the an equidistant triangle. But their exact hour on a bell. Not until the automatons position must remain a mystery as have returned to the tower and the doors disclosure could lead to the actual places have shut do the townspeople resume their being inundated with tourists, something I mundane activities. couldn’t bear to see happen.” Let’s return to the old ways The existence of the Trumpton Triangle has long been denied by many in the earth These automatons - often referred to as “the mysteries and neo-pagan milieus. Efforts by Lord and the Lady” - embody echoes of the neo-pagans to get others to take them stories told to Gerald Gardner by his seriously have varied from group to group. beloved Irish nurse “Com” (Josephine In the case of the Pagan Federation these McCombie). He looked back into his own activities have centred on the development of a banal bureaucracy with a pseudo He disappeared in a sticky frock, not in a “Hippie social workers burnt corporate style. They favour: cloud of light. alive, their mouths stopped up (1) the development of Public Relations The triangle is the form that is fixed and not with playdough, will herald the publications, such as Pagan Dawn magazine fixed, it is both stable and dynamic. In its return to paradise...” (2) a determined effort to be included in normal position, with the apex uppermost, it “multi-faith” activities symbolises fire and the aspiration of all things symbolism intended to inspire obedience - (3) worshipping the media in the hope this towards the higher unity. This is a graphical reversed traditional polarities. In constructing will be reciprocated representation of “the urge to escape Wicca as “High Magic’s Aid” Gardner (4) an unhealthily close relationship with mediocrity”. It is a return to the origin, but exploited this, applying it to “the Maiden, State centres of sadism such as prisons, also a journey to the Irradiating Point. As a Mother and Crone construct” first channelled hospitals and schools. The interest in symbol of fire the Trumpton Triangle predicts by the White Goddess poet, Robert Graves. schools is particularly daft. and explains the eventual ritual burning of the inhabitants of Trumptonshire. Trumptonshire, then, is the mythical “place Children, it seems, already know where of the Goddess”: It is one indivisible unity Trumpton is - they don’t need telling - and In the “Olde relygyon” witches were meant and “three places at once” or the three- they know that neo-pagans have to die. to be burnt, it was an essential part of the cornered square of the Occidental Tradition. Imagine my satisfaction when I heard a process of attaining personal transformation. Trumptonshire both echoes and embodies small girl cry, “It’s time to return to the Old Common people were playing an important (controls) the goddess principal. The Ways - so start burning witches!” “Good role, ascribed by the goddess, when they original Trumptonshire story cycle was both girl,” I thought, climbing the hill to Colley’s burnt a witch. Afterwards, witches were oral and symbolic. The later stories, written Mill as the children dragged the hippie from pleased they had been burnt as they got to into stillness, contain all of the elements of her Volvo into the bonfire field. Traditions feel even more self-important. In a spiritual the original British Pagan Tradition. are important. sense, the witch had taken the fast track to “the higher unity” that ordinary people just High Magic’s Aid (or Domestic Magic The Goddess: best served for Girls) don’t understand. with mint sauce The woman with a wand is a central figure A triangle inverted, with the apex pointing Murray’s “Trumptonshire construct” in Gardner’s version of this tradition. For down, represents water - this also implies a embodies a spatial arrangement based on him, the ideal and eroticised figure of his sacred ritual, that of “dunking”, which is the (holy) trinity. This places the entire Irish nurse is rendered in memory as still recalled in our workaday break times. Trumptonshire project in the same category “milky”. She squared his triangle. Gardner’s When we plop a biccy in our tea we are as the lately demolished Tricorn Centre, infantilism was a feature of his life and his unconsciously acting out our natural urge to Paganism and Christianity. It owes much to literary works, in both of which his lob witches - tied to heavy objects - into a the Pythagorean conceit peddled by the masculinity is divided into personas - stern nearby river or lake. troubadours. Like a deity manifestation chaps in charge on the one hand and from an early medieval romance - such as Whatever the associated religious simpering goddess worshippers on the other. “the Tranny of the Lake” - the Lamb of God behaviours, triform symbolism conforms to In Hampshire his needs were satisfied by likes mincing about in women’s clothing the general symbolism of ternary forms, in “Old Dorothy” - called by Crowley “Old pretending to be divine. Mary its depiction of power as holiness, Mother Clutterbuck” - a conflation of Magdalene - called on science and armed might, McCombie and a large-arsed Highcliffe the street “all muses which in turn clearly Camberwick Green Tory. Dorothy Clutterbuck, a magistrate in one” - merely corresponds to the who called for the return of corporal helped him spirit, the punishment, reignited his passion for with his intellect and spanking. She had a liking for the birch and make-up. vitality. The Gardner honoured this in High Magic’s Aid: Father, the Son and “The tree was not only living and dancing, the Holy but it sang as it danced, as an act of Ghost - a worship, obeying a law and performing a version ritual that was ancient even when the world of the saw its first dawn. Drawn to the silver birch, Colley's Mill Pippin Fort Morven paced a wide circle in which she began to dance. . . her young body bent and swayed in rhythm with that of the tree. . . as if she wove a spell about the Dryad of the Birch.” At this point Gardner knows he will be forced to say sorry for being so bossy earlier, when he had his trousers on. In High Magic’s Aid, the division of the hero into three male characters enables Gardner to maintain his fantasy of control over women whilst also indulging his desire Chigley Trumpton to be “initiated” by them. One hero segment is the boss who gives it to her regular - the other two submit to the bitch with the birch. Play this game at work To Gardner, ever the ex-colonial, women during your tea break! Start Here Join the Poetry Field Club p o e t r y p f c putting landscape in its place f i e l d c l u b

sacrifice to the birch of Old Dorothy. Times Stakeholder Field Trip were changing for the worst, the post-war Labour government - Socialism, with its Preliminary Meeting of the promise of economic transfers from nice Campaign for Real Old Ways people to rather grubby ones - meant the (CROWS) magic of the world was fading. But not to Saturday 16th July 2005 at 12pm worry children, Uncle Gerald made time go The Bunch of Grapes, St. Peters St. sideways into a fairy tale. Bishop’s Waltham (Hants) That which Gerald Gardner felt compelled We will gather at the Bunch of Grapes & to invent - and which radical American prepare for the work to be done. We will liberals turned into a consumable product - leave the Bunch of Grapes at 12.30pm & was encoded in the three Trumptonshire proceed to Dundridge Woods where we series. The Goddess is the ground, all moist will burn a witch. We will then continue on and passive, and the God is a complicated our way to The Hampshire Bowman in fellow made of a trinity of selves. The the centre of Dundridge, arriving there at Father is Camberwick Green; the Son is about 1.30pm for a Parliament of Crows. Rupert the Bear: more than Trumpton and the Holy Spirit is Chigley. We will drink beer, eat lunch, sing just a communist! Gerald Gardner is thus little more than a communist ballads & gambol on the sod. rather twee home counties suburban Returning by a different route, we will were exotic. Their magic was low and development. A sprawl of three Bishop’s have covered about 5 miles on foot. perhaps not a little dirty. Such unstable Walthams. This is about as unbroken as the elements needed to be domesticated. pagan tradition gets. You can pretend Public Transport granny was a witch all you like missy, no- At best their naked magic could apply a From Southampton: a No. 7 leaves from one is impressed. polish to that of the intellectual elite. Bargate Street at 11.10am and arrives at Gardner, who pretended to have a PhD. and It is time to end the profession of idiocy and Bishop’s Waltham Square at 11.57am. sometimes wore a robe to hide his hard on, to replace it with the profession of comedy. To Southampton: No. 7s leave the Square needed women to play a role familiar to The goddess is for real and not just April at 18 minutes past the hour until 17.18pm. colonial wives during the closing phases of Fool’s Day! Gordon Murray, a great big The next bus is a 7A at 18.20pm and the the Empire. Women were there to reinforce camp transvestite, had the secret of the last bus is a 7A at 20.20pm. his fantasies of superiority. His anxieties goddess well hidden in his scripts, just like reflected with neurotic intensity the anxieties the frillies he wore under his corduroys. It’s Solent Blue Line: 023 8061 8233 of his social class about “the common time to expose the goddess, her mummsy people”, who were demanding a better life wise old crone maidenly phallic self and all. Atlantico at the Palace after they had saved western civilisation Let’s heave her from the ditch where she Atlantico (nee Mambo Jambo) play in the from fascism. Snobbery is natural. This is has lain since 1966. grounds of the Bishop’s Palace on why the neo-pagan dinner party is more Saturday 16th July at 7.30pm. Bar by important than the circle casting. It also Listen with Mother! Watch with Mother! This lone parent needs to get herself off Oakleaf Brewery. Tickets: £10, £8 explains why there are two kinds of concessions and £5 for children under 16. neo-pagan politics - Tory and Whig. tranquillisers and start telling the pagans where to go. This is what Society needs. [email protected] Boys and girls come out to play . . . Even given the slurred speech of http://www.bishopswalthamfestival.com Reactionaries of Gardner’s class were symbolism, it seems clear from a careful having fundamentalist fantasies everywhere reading of the Trumpton Mysteries that it’s GODDESS time to return to the Old Ways! (the rabid anti-Semite Lord Lymington was PANTIES! scripting “organic farming” at around this In the name of the True Goddess of these time). Gardner’s “return” to an old religion Worn for weeks by Pagan Dawn! Islands, lets have a traditional Sunday roast! Specify an aspect: Choose a style: Select a path: was one old colonialist inventing his own We must encourage the “anti-social Maiden Thong Ásatrú opium. It must have seemed very cosy; his behaviour” of children and build our social Mother Eclectic Heavily soiled two traditions - high and low magic - utopia out of the ashes of a faked and Crone Tanga With Wings mimicking the class system. A truly cunning re-enacted past! Let’s start burning witches! Return your coupon with a £500 cheque payable to the ‘PFC’to: Pagan Dawn, BM Box 5896, London WC1N 3XX man, he redeployed the white man’s burden nb. With Wings is not available in Crone as a wank fantasy. It didn’t so much make The Pagan Federation are invited to state Panties worn by the Goddess! him blind as make him into a visionary. their position on “the Burning Times” - did And, as ever, in the making of Wicca, a they happen or not? For further information about religion is being deployed to ensure Given the published evidence a further obedience. That of women generally, but The Listening Voice question might be, why did neo-pagans need also of himself in a continuing act of contact: to make it up? www.nonism.org.uk

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