Sunday 23rd August – 7pm
To honour the Outcast, dead and alive; to renew the shrine; and to reclaim the Secret History as revealed by The Goose to John Crow.
During the past months, the Vigils have been held on ‘on the Astral’, with some of us tuning in from all over the world, creating our own altars and conducting the rituals in their our homes. For anyone who likes to tune in to a live online ritual, Mark, John and Jacqueline have livestreamed the Vigil from our own homes and altars, and encouraged other Friends of Crossbones to do likewise.
This month Autumn Stellar will be conducting the Vigil from her home altar, renewing the magical connections between Glastonbury and Crossbones. You’ll find her livestream on the facebook event page from just before 7pm on the 23rd August.
To help us all to fully participate, with or without the livestream, here’s our basic ‘order of service’ for every Vigil:
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1. Opening (on the stroke of 7pm)
Light a candle, incense. Ring seven chimes. Say:
‘Spirits of The Dead, Spirits of the Living, Kindred. Welcome!’
As you say these words, be aware that you are connected with all Spirits, incarnate and disincarnate, and with the transforming agency of The Goose, in an act of mutual healing taking place within a single, undivided consciousness.
Breathe deep, relax and connect… Remember the Secret History and Vision…
Crossbones is a pauper’s graveyard and the final resting place for the Winchester Geese, sex workers who worked in brothels owned and licensed by the Bishop of Winchester in Southwark’s ‘Liberty of the Clink’. Many skeletons were dug up here during work on the Jubilee Line Extension (1992-96). On 23rd November 1996 John Constable had a vision in which The Goose led John Crow to the site of the Crossbones Graveyard. Here she revealed The Southwark Mysteries, which in turn gave rise to The Halloween of Cross Bones and to these Vigils, held on the 23rd of every month since 23rd June 2004. Thanks to our collective magical and activist works over the past 23 years, this once despised, desolate site has become a holy place for pilgrims from all over the world – a shrine and a garden of remembrance ‘for the Outcast, dead and alive’.
2. Hold the candle for one minute’s silence, as you imagine lighting the open pathways for all beings to make their individual journeys in Time and Eternity. Remember the Outcast Dead of Crossbones Graveyard, and all who are shut out, along with your own ancestors and loved ones. For this act of remembrance, it helps to cultivate a state of “shining emptiness”, in which all sounds, sights and other sense impressions can arise and vanish, with nothing for anything to attach to.
3. “Binding and loosing”. Imagine tying a ribbon to Crossbones Gates. Invest the ribbon with all that you would wish for yourself, and as you tie it, release that blessing for others, saying five times:
“Here lay your hearts, your flowers,
Your Book of Hours,
Your fingers, your thumbs,
Your “Miss You Mums”.
Here hang your hopes, your dreams,
Your Might Have Beens,
Your locks, your keys,
Your Mysteries.”
When we’re together in the Vigils, one speaks and all echo the words in our own time. We can do this with the livestream, our whispering voices evoking our collective emanation.
4. Bardic offerings.
As a Goose Rhapsode, you can perform a poem, song or text from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’, or present your own offering to The Goose and her Outcast Dead.
5. Closing.
Close the ceremony with a libation of gin. Say:
“Life! Health! Happiness! Open Pathways!
Health in the Body.
Peace In the Spirit.
Love In The Heart.
It is this that we wish,
for ourselves,
for our friends and family,
for all our Brothers and Sisters,
for The Goose and The Crow,
and for all Humanity.
May it be so.”
then:
“Goose may you never be hungry!
Goose may you never be thirsty!
Goose may your Spirit fly free!”
And so she does…
Open pathways!
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When performing the rituals and channelling The Goose spirit, the trick is to “get out of the way” so as not to obstruct with our own psychological or emotional states. There are various ways to achieve this: e.g. by reminding ourselves that “I am nothing” that it’s The Goose who does the magic, not “I”. Practitioners are welcome to use the trick revealed by The Goose when she spoke through the mediumship of John Crow. Over the years John Crow has become strongly identified with John Constable, but anyone who chooses to can work with John Crow as an autonomous spirit, a channel for The Goose to do her healing work. In The Southwark Mysteries, The Goose makes clear that she and John Crow have been working together for centuries! So in this sense, irrespective of gender, anyone who uses the invocations and ritual forms to serve The Goose IS “the John Crow”. If it works for you, feel free to use it. If not, may you find your own way to get yourself out of the way. 😉
The Goose Is Loose.
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It’s rumoured that, even during lockdown, some rogue spirits have been informally gathering “in body” to hold Vigils at the gates in Redcross Way. We’re grateful that they have upheld the unbroken tradition going back more than 16 years. However, the Crossbones website isn’t involved in this, and at present we don’t encourage crowds to gather at the gates. If you feel you need to be there physically on the night, remember you’re responsible for your own health – and for others. Please practice social distancing and take sensible precautions.
In shining emptiness.
JC
photo: the little yew tree and The Shard cunningly captured in the Cross Bones tantric pool. Photo by Katy Kaos
A celebration of the women of Whitechapel, honouring them not merely as sex workers and victims of The Ripper, but as daughters, lovers, wives, mothers, bright spirits – in storytelling, song, poetry and ritual.
At 7pm on the 23rd of every month since 23rd June 2004, we’ve conducted the Crossbones Vigil – to honour the Outcast, dead and alive; to renew the shrine; and to reclaim the Secret History as revealed by The Goose to John Crow on 23rd November 1996.
In 2016, Vanessa Woolf (London Dreamtime) and John Constable / John Crow (Southwark Mysteries / Crossbones) devised ‘UNRIPPED’
Vanessa tells the story of Catherine Eddowes, an orphan girl and free spirit. We set the lives of the murdered women in the context of the hypocrisy surrounding our attitudes towards sex work, whereby the whore becomes the recipient of all the contrary desire and disgust in a sexually repressed society.
The Vigils grew out of The Halloween of Crossbones, a ritual drama to honour The Goose and her Outcast Dead, conducted every 31st October from 1998 to 2010. This was itself an expression of ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ by John Constable, an epic work of poetry, songs and ritual dramas of healing and transformation.
23rd June is St John’s Eve, the traditional English midsummer festival, a time when people used to jump over bonfires, both literally and symbolic act of purification. At this Vigil we’re sensitive to the summer solstice, when light and dark are held in balance. 
For the last three months of lockdown, people from all over the world have participated in Spirit, creating their own altars and conducting the rituals in their own homes, co-creating and reiterating the spiritual identity of The Goose and the Crossbones Vigil on The Astral. You’re invited to do so again on 23rd June.
23rd May 2020 marks 16 years of monthly Crossbones Vigils. At 7pm on the 23rd of every single month since 23rd June 2004, we’ve gathered in the street by the Crossbones shrine in Redcross Way – to honour the Outcast, dead and alive; to renew the shrine; and to reclaim the Secret History as revealed by The Goose to John Crow on 23rd November 1996.
At 7pm on the 23rd of every month since June 2004, we’ve gathered in the street by the Crossbones shrine in Redcross Way – to honour the Outcast, dead and alive; to renew the shrine; and to reclaim the Secret History as revealed by The Goose to John Crow on 23rd November 1996. Our St George’s Day Vigil is traditionally one of our best attended Vigils, in which we honour George as an international patron, a healing energy and a protector of spiritual works..
All are invited to the 190th Crossbones Vigil, held at the gates to the graveyard in Redcross Way. Starting on the dot of 7pm.
Mark (in photo, to right of speaker Jules) is one of the ‘John Crows’ who’ve taken on conducting the Vigils . He writes: 
The 188th consecutive Vigil for the Outcast, dead and alive, held in the stereet by the shrine in Redcross Way, London SE1, at 7pm on the 23rd of every month.