28 years ago this very night, 23rd November 1996, the writer and ritualist John Constable took ‘an heroic dose of liquid acid’ and embarked on an experimental writing quest with his shamanic persona John Crow. Here’s how he describes what happened nextin my as yet unpublished memoir:
‘Around 7pm. I feel it coming on, the tingle of electricity in the depths of my nervous system. I’m writing in my Red and Black notebook. Pages 1 to 57 are filled with my research and notes on the recent Mysteries Pilgrimage. I pick up at page 58, writing in my John Crow persona. It begins as a literary experiment, with John Crow writing memos to himself: his DIY shaman’s handbook. And John Constable watching from far away, detached, seeing the hand move, the fountain pen inking words on the page. It’s as if I’ve evoked this John Crow spirit, this character who seems to be taking on a life of his own. Then The Goose wafts in – and everything changes.
It’s coming up to midnight and this is the vision that will change my life and, in a small way, the history of my part of London. A vision, and a visitation. The Goose does her dance with John Crow and I just have to get out of the way and witness and then write it down as best I can, the spells and incantations, ballads and raps, nursery rhymes and twisty talking.
It’s not a conventional haunting: I don’t literally see a ghost or hear a voice; but there is an undeniable presence, the palpable sense that a spirit has entered my attic room and is putting words in my mind: complex verse fragments charged with esoteric meanings, riddles and enigmas, multiple histories and shadowy hinterlands. As a playwright, I’ve spent many years cultivating a state of mind that allows my characters to speak for themselves. But I’ve never come across anyone, or anything, like The Goose. I’m impressed by her prophetic assurance, the depth and detail of her ‘back story’. It’s as if she’s appeared, fully formed, to reveal her ‘Secret History’.
It’s a journey in Space and in Time, as The Goose shifts her shape through diverse female incarnations: from ‘whore’ and the most despised, brutalised, objectified images of women, she transforms into a kind of avatar, a mediatrix, a channel for the Divine Feminine. The verses cast an enchantment, leading my mind to places it isn’t sure it wants to go, ambushing it with scenes from the past lives of The Goose and her outcasts. In the middle of the night, she announces that we’re going to ‘walk it’. And so we do, physically walking the deserted south London streets and alleys. (We’re the scariest thing out here tonight. The other late night crazies cross the road to avoid us!) To the Tabard Inn, Mary Overie dock, the Clink prison, the bear-pits, The Globe – and, finally, completing the spiral to head back north, up that old straight track in Eternity, to the gates of that desolate wasteland adjoining Redcross Way.
It’s here that she makes my alter ego break into song and utter the prophesies in John Crow’s Riddle:
‘And well we know how the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Cross Bones Graveyard’.’
I woke the next morning to find I’d filled much of my notebook with fragments of visionary verse. I subsequently researched the contents (and was shocked to discover that I hadn’t made it up, that it was all deep rooted in the history of my neighbourhood) and shaped the fragments into a coherent poem: ‘The Book of The Goose’, the first ‘book’ of what would grow into my epic work ‘The Southwark Mysteries’. It also initiated me into a magical working with The Goose that was completed 23 years later, again this very night, on 23rd November 2019. So I think it’s fair to say that what happened, exactly 28 years ago today, changed my life and many other lives, forever.’
Here’s John Crow performing part of ‘The Book of the Goose’ from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ – with Michelle Watson at the 13th Halloween of Cross Bones (in the Drome under London Bridge) on 31st October 2010 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNyKK2HBq9o
Goose be with us! Open pathways! 
And here’s the Zoom Vigil, hosted by Crow Priestess Jacqui – (opening bell at 6.14 on video) – complete with the rituals, videos of me doing ‘Crow Medicine’ (Glastonbury 2024) and with Michelle performing ‘The Book of The Goose’ (London 2010) and Frank Turner singing ‘The Graveyard of The Outcast Dead’. The live offerings include Ruth reading an moving poem by John O’Donohue, Beth singing a Sea Shanty, Jacqui reciting a wondrous poem by Mary Oliver (sent in by Hilary) and then ‘By The Grace of Our Lady Mary Overie’ – followed by John reciting ‘Three Four’ and ‘The Goose’s Prophesy’, the climax of ‘The Book of The Goose’.
https://www.facebook.com/CrossbonesVigil/videos/1073892201191089
Meanwhile Jennifer and her so solid crew were braving the storm at the shrine to the outcast, dead and alive, the gates in Redcross Way – among them birthday girl and long -standing Friend of Crossbones. Jenn reports back from the front-line: ‘Sarah AND her 20 mates, 2 ladies from Chicago, Melissa Jo plus dog, several students and Shria who, when she comes back from India wants to help with the Vigil. Blessed, blessed Goose Night’ 
