On Saturday 22nd Novemeber 2025, John Constable / Crow is giving a talk/performance about Crossbones Graveyard to help launch Max Reeves’ book of Crossbones photographs. This is part of Ben Edge’s exhibition of paintings which runs from 6th to 26th November in the wondrous Fitzrovia Chapel
ALBION AWAKENS
FREE EVENT on SATURDAY 22ND NOVEMBER from 2PM – 4PM
Fitzrovia Chapel, Fitzroy Place, 2 Pearson Square, London W1T 3BF
Belles of London City Morris Dancing
Pearly Kings And Queens
Performance by John Constable/Crow of Crossbones Graveyard
Book launch (and book signing) of ‘Crossbones Graveyard’ by Max Crow Reeves, John Constable/Crow and Katy Nicholls/Kaos
FREE EVENT JUST TURN UP TO THE FITZROVIA CHAPEL by 2.30pm on Saturday 22nd November 2025 FITZROVIA CHAPEL INFO HERE: https://www.fitzroviachapel.org (it’s well worth a visit in itself!)
The day after that, Goose willing, JC will be conducting the Cross Bones Vigil at 7pm on 23rd November – which is also the 29th anniversary of Goose Night, when The Goose revealed ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ and the secret history of Crossbones to John Crow.
Samhain blessings. This evening I’ll be conducting the ‘Ancestor Souls’ invocation as part of the openng ritual for the Community celebration in The Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury. Arrive 7.30 to be sure to be in the room before the doors close for the ritual at 8pm. Doors will reopen half an hour later for latecomers who still wish to catch the performances. There’s another fantastic line-up including Chaired Bard Elliot Munro, Cat Lupton, Tor, Tara, Daygan, Jenny, Rob & Dave (Maythorne) and Crow Morris . I’ll be doing 2 short poems and a song for our ‘Top Bard’ Taliesin.
To get you in the zone, or if you can’t be with us and would still like to partake in some way, here’s Martin Scooby’s Samhain mix. It fuses edited highlights from the ritual I conducted on 31st October 2019 for Whitby’s Goth weekend with a spooky soundtrack by Ominous (Mark Arka) and Scooby’s own experimental AI animations. It draws on the Halloween of Cross Bones rituals performed every year from 1998 to 2010 (and again in 2015 and 2016) at Crossbones, the outcasts graveyard in south London, adapted for other settings.
When this Samhain ritual was filmed, I was about to complete my 23 years of active service to my spirit guide, The Goose, at Crossbones and this was my first outing with her after having decided to walk her around these isles. This walking pilgrimage was interrupted by lockdown but by the summer of 2020 had led us to Glastonbury, where we’ve lived fr the ast five years.
The 257th Cross Bones 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.
For more than 21 years, at 7pm on the 23rd of every month, we’ve gathered at the gates as incarnate spirits, sometimes ten or twenty, occasionally more than three hundred!
The Vigils are alos held ‘on the Astral’, with some of us tuning in from all over the world, creating our own altars and conducting the rituals in our homes. Jacqui ‘Bee’ Durban hosts a Zoom Vigil: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85624178240 Meeting ID: 856 2417 8240 Passcode: 377295
To help us all to fully participate, and commune on The Astral, with or without the livestream, here’s the ‘Order of Service’ for every Vigil:
>><<
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 close on 30 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.” (1)
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.
3 + Halloween Portal
At the 23rd October Vigils, we also say:
“Here, the veil between the worlds dissolves: the living, the dead share the brew, break the bread. Ancestor souls converse and commune, this samhain night, by the light of a bone- white moon.” (2)
This is followed by reading the names of the Cross Bones outcast dead and/or of our own lost loved ones. After the reading of the names , we say:
“Here where the bones are crossed be hallowed ground. Here let the names that were lost be found.
Shut out in days of old, the outcast dead… Here bring them in from the cold to be watered and fed.
Here let the ties that bind against forgetfulness light candles, build shrines in the wilderness.” (3)
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.” (4)
then:
“Goose may you never be hungry! Goose may you never be thirsty! Goose may your Spirit fly free!” (5)
And so she does… Open pathways!
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photo John Crow holds up the photo of Steve Ash at a 23rd October Vigil past Photo: Max Reeves
Tuesday 23rd September 2025 – gather at the gates / shrine in Redcross Way at 6.45 to begin on the stroke of 7pm
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. The Vigil is free and open to all – donations welcome.
On Tuesday 23rd September 2024, Jennifer and Shreya will be doing the honours. John Constable (Crow) plans to be there too offering a magical texts from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ and leading the ‘Unconditional Blessings’ which close the ritual.
(The night before – 22nd September – John is giving a talk on ‘Cross Bones Graveyyard: Goose and Creow Magic’ for Stella Nova meet up. Upstairs at The Angel Pub, 73 City Road, London EC1Y 1BD – nearest tube Old Street. Meet from 7pm for 8pm talk £4 admission)
Vigils have also been held ‘on the Astral’ with people tuning in from all over the world, creating their own altars and conducting the rituals in their own homes.
Some of us connect online via the Zoom gathering hosted by Jacqui, with people linking up from all over the world. Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85624178240 Meeting ID: 856 2417 8240 Passcode: 377295
This Vigil marks the autumn equinox, a time for rebalancing, for clearing out our dead wood to make room for new life.
Once again, to help you participate fully, here’s our basic ‘order of service’ for every Vigil:
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 this act of mutual healing taking place within a single, undivided consciousness.
Crossbones is a pauper’s graveyard, the final resting place for the sex workers (Winchester Geese) who worked in brothels owned and licensed by the Bishop of Winchester in Southwark’s ‘Liberty of the Clink’. Thanks to our work 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. Lighting the pathways Hold the candle for one minute’s silence, as you imagine lighting the open pathways for all beings to make their individual journeys. 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.”
4. Bardic offerings. Perform a short poem/song/text from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ or offer a short poem/song/testimony inspired by or dedicated 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!
Photo by Max Crow Reeves: John and Jen at the August 2023 Vigil
a talk by John Constable aka John Crow for Nova Stella meet-up
Monday 22nd September 2025. Meet from 7pm. Talk starts at 8pm. Admission £4. Upstairs at The Angel Pub, 73 City Road, London EC1Y 1BD. (nearest tube Old Street)
‘… revealed by The Goose to John Crow at Cross Bones… on the night of 23rd November 1996.’ (from the preface to The Southwark Mysteries by John Constable, Oberon Books 1999)
“That night I commenced a 23-year magical work with The Goose, the spirit of a medieval sex worker. In verses channelled through my shamanic alter ego John Crow, she revealed a secret history and transforming vision of Cross Bones Graveyard. For centuries this had been a pauper’s burial ground – and according to legend the final resting place for the Winchester Geese who worked in brothels licensed by the Bishop of Winchester in the ‘Liberty of the Clink’ yet were denied Christian burial. It had been long forgotten when it was dug up during works on the Jubilee Line Extension and, independently, its mysteries resurfaced in John Crow’s visions of The Goose.
The Southwark Mysteries emerged as a cycle of mystical poems and a play performed in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southwark Cathedral. The Goose Spirit inspired The Halloween of Cross Bones ritual performed for a magical cycle of 13 years, and the Vigils held at the gates in Redcross Way at 7pm on the 23rd of every month since June 2004.
Goose and Crow magic is embodied in these works, a spiritual praxis which underpins an activist campaign to reclaim Cross Bones as sacred land. At its heart is a vision of sexual and spiritual healing, of revealing ‘the Spirit in the flesh, the Sacred in the profane, Eternity in time.’
In this talk I’ll briefly relate the story of the graveyard and our works there, before delving into the esoteric dimensions of Goose and Crow magic: how we work with the Ancestors and ‘the outcast dead’ to heal and to transform our own lives.”
(John Constable aka John Crow)
*
John Constable is a playwright, poet, performer and ritualist. He wrote the acclaimed stage adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, and The Southwark Mysteries (performed in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southwark Cathedral). Solo plays include I Was An Alien Sex God and Spare, inspired by the works of Austin Osman Spare. His books include Sha-Manic Plays, The Southwark Mysteries, Gormenghast, Secret Bankside and Spark In The Dark. His latest book Grail interweaves myths, spells, incantations and meditations with vignettes of contemporary life in Glastonbury.
As John Crow he conducted a 23-year cycle of magical works at south London’s Cross Bones Graveyard, hosting monthly rituals and creating a shrine and garden for sex workers and outcasts. Working with his spirit guide, The Goose, he has held ceremonies at festivals and sacred sites around the world. On his album Ancestor Souls he performs his work to music by Queen Space Baroque. Having lived more than 30 years in Southwark, he and his wife and co-practitioner Katy moved between lockdowns and have lived for the past 5 years in Glastonbury.
Nova Stella Meet-Up Group is a pagan talks forum and social group, meeting on the 4th Monday of each month…
It offers an excellent opportunity to meet fellow pagans (maybe for the first time..) and learn some stuff over a pint. We welcome those who have a genuine interest in paganism, especially newcomers seeking a path. Come and meet some people…. We are a relaxed and friendly bunch!
Upstairs at The Angel Pub, 73 City Road, London EC1Y 1BD. (nearest tube Old Street) People meet from 7pm. Talk starts at 8pm. Admission £4.
Photo by Max Reeves: John Crow / Constable conducts the final Halloween of Crossbones on the graveyard, 2016
Saturday 23rd August 2025, New Moon gather 6.45 for 7pm in the street by the shrine on Redcross Way
The 255th consecutive Vigil held at Crossbones Graveyard to renew the shrine, to remember the outcast, dead and alive, and to reconnect with The Goose and Her Southwark Mysteries.
The Vigil will be conducted by Jennifer. Please come prepared to participate in the simple rituals, as established by John Crow under The Goose’s guidance and subtly evolving over 21 years. FREE! Donations welcome
If you’re in London on Sunday 27th July, you may like to come to Crossbones to honour the Outcast Dead. For the tenth successive year, the Southwark Cathedral clergy will conduct the ‘Act of Regret, Remembrance, Restoration’ on the graveyard itself. This blessing is traditionally conducted on 22nd July, the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene (or, as in this case, the nearest Sunday thereto). The Act was created by the previous Dean of Southwark, the Very Revd. Andrew Nunn, as the church’s response to our work there since 1996. This year the current Dean is unavailable, so the Revd. Kathryn Fleming is doing the honours. The Blessings will be followed by our Bardic Offerings, inaugurated by John Constable aka Crow in 2016. George Nigel Hoyle will MC – and there are rumours that John Crow plans to offer something from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’.
FREE ! – but please reserve a ticket to help Bankside Open Spaces Trust to manage numbers Please use QR code or visit: https://tinyurl.com/murm2p7s
Poster by Jennifer Cooper (Friends of Crossbones) and Mary from BOST
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.
The previous day, 22nd July, is Mary Magdalene’s Feast Day. At Crossbones we celebrate her both in her orthodox form as the ‘Apostle of the Apostles’ and in her Gnostic manifestations as the disciple to whom Jesus imparted his secret teachings. ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ places itself in an oral tradition of hermetic teachings transmitted by by Mary Magdalene and passed down by the actors and whores of the Southwark ‘Liberty’.
23rd July is traditionally our Isis-Magdalene Vigil. At this time in Ancient Egypt, the Goddess Isis was honoured, along with other members of the Divine pantheon. The rites of Isis, who literally ‘re-membered’ the body of her murdered and mutilated brother-husband Osiris, are reiterated in ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ and in the July Crossbones Vigil.
For those able to attend in the flesh, Jennifer will be doing the honours, calling on others to help hold the space.
Some of us connect online via the Zoom Vigil hosted by Jacqui, with people linking up from all over the world. Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85624178240 Meeting ID: 856 2417 8240 Passcode: 377295
If you’re conducting your own Vigil, you may like to perform parts of ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ that relate directly to Isis or Mary Magdalene, an appropriate text from the Nag Hammadi Gospels, or the New Testament scene where Mary encounters the risen Christ “supposing him to be the gardener” (John 20:15).
Once again, to help you participate fully, here’s our basic ‘order of service’ for every Vigil:
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 this act of mutual healing taking place within a single, undivided consciousness.
Crossbones is a pauper’s graveyard, the final resting place for the sex workers (Winchester Geese) who worked in brothels owned and licensed by the Bishop of Winchester in Southwark’s ‘Liberty of the Clink’. Thanks to our work 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. 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.”
4. Bardic offerings. Perform a short poem/song/text from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ inspired by and / or dedicated to Isis / Mary Magdalene. Or another text relevant to them and their festivals.
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!”
If you’re in London on Sunday 27th July, you may like to come to Crossbones to honour the Outcast Dead. For the tenth successive year, the Southwark Cathedral clergy will conduct the ‘Act of Regret, Remembrance, Restoration’ on the graveyard itself. This blessing is traditionally conducted on 22nd July, the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene (or, as in this case, the nearest Sunday thereto). The Act was created by the previous Dean of Southwark, the Very Revd. Andrew Nunn, as the church’s response to our work there since 1996. This year the current Dean is unavailable, so the Revd. Kathryn Fleming is doing the honours. The Blessings will be followed by our Bardic Offerings, inaugurated by John Constable aka Crow in 2016. George Nigel Hoyle will MC – and there are rumours that this old Crow plans to offer something from The Southwark Mysteries.
FREE but please reserve a ticket to help Bankside Open Spaces Trust to manage numbers.
Poster by Jennifer Cooper (Friends of Crossbones) and Mary from BOST
23rd June 2025, gather 6.45 at the gates in redcross way for 7pm portal.
23rd June is St John’s Eve, the traditional English midsummer festival, and this particular Vigil is attuned to the summer solstice, when light and dark are held in balance.
The Vigils were initated by John Constable (aka John Crow) on 23rd June 2004. In 2019, having completed 23 years of magical works at Crossbones, John conducted his last official Vigil. Since then, a Magical Collective of Friends of Crossbones, led by Jennifer Cooper, has carried on holding the Vigils every 23rd. This will be the 253rd consecutive monthly vigil in an unbroken line.
Having moved to Glastonbury, John has conducted many rituals to reactivate the London-Glastonbury connection and current intuited by Dion Fortune. Here is an excerpt from his book ‘GRAIL’ describing a ritual held in the garden of his new home on 23rd June 2001:
‘St John’s Eve derives from the time when Christian folk religion sought to accommodate older pagan practices. This traditional British midsummer festival is celebrated on 23rd June. In Celtic Britain and Ireland it was a time for bonfires. The farmers would jump over them, or drive their cattle between two fires – a symbolic blessing and a literal act of purification, fumigation. There’d be music and mischief and merry-making, with young lovers slipping away for illicit liaisons in the cornfields – and, doubtless, new lives conceived.
It’s the night before the feast day of St John the Baptist, the voice in the wilderness, the desert prophet who baptised Jesus in the River Jordan. When Salome danced for Herod, for her reward she claimed John’s decapitated head. As the early Church assimilated pre-Christian solar festivals, it placed St John at midsummer and Christ at the contrary Winter Solstice. In The Gospel of John, The Baptist tells us:
I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him… He must increase, but I must decrease.
The image of Christ supplanting John subtly connects them with the solar cycle – the sun decreasing from midsummer, to rekindle at the Winter Solstice.
I’ve recently been reading The High History of the Holy Grail in which one of the many holy relics to be won is the sword that beheaded John the Baptist. When drawn from its scabbard it is still wet with blood.
23rd June is the night of the 205th consecutive monthly Cross Bones Vigil. To honour it, and St John’s Eve, Katy and I invite five friends who have a loose connection with the south London graveyard to celebrate with us in our Glastonbury garden.
It’s a beautiful evening with a single hieroglyphic wisp of cirrus cloud high in the sky, a winged spine stretched out in the blue. We follow the ritual forms, freely adapting to happen-stance. I’m about to open the ceremony with seven chimes when the bell of St John the Baptist, whose tower we see from the garden, strikes the hour.
In the Bardic Offerings, James talks about John the Baptist, the Water Man, and how water is the agent of rebirth and psychic transformation. And of the resonance between John and Orpheus, both poets and prophets, water men, decapitated by women, their heads taking on a kind of immortality, the talking heads of a living myth.
I’m listening entranced, and think of the head of Bran the Blessed, the legend recorded in the second branch of the Mabinogi. Bran is Old Welsh for ‘Crow’, and the story has always resonated with me. Fatally wounded during the doomed Welsh raid on Ireland, Bran asks his companions to cut off his head. The head continues to speak, consoling, inspiring and generally entertaining Taliesin and the rest of the seven survivors. They eventually bury the head, on Bran’s orders, on the White Hill guarding the Thames estuary at the gateway to London, to protect these islands from invasion.
Annabelle does her own dark/light and lovely poem. Steve sings The Water Song by the Incredible String Band. Sally tells of an old relative in Ireland who could remember when they used to drive the cattle between the rows of fire, how the fiddlers and dancers would carouse at the cross-roads until the priest came to remind them they were doing the Devil’s Work. Everyone would stop, suitably shamefaced and repentant, to strike up as soon as the Father was gone.
I sing my song for St John’s Eve, Spark In The Dark, a song of the love between the Earth and Sky, their separation and ultimate reunion. Many cultures conceive of a Sky God and Earth Goddess but these gendered roles are by no means absolute. The ancient Egyptians envisioned the cosmic pairing as Geb, the Earth God, and Nut, the Sky Goddess who gives birth not only to life on Earth but to all orders of being in the Universe.
Spark In The Dark
Hark! Hark! A Spark in the Dark In the Dance of Death and Rebirth, The Son of the Sky look down from on high In Love with The Daughter of the Earth.
Son steal a horse from his Father’s house. Seven long nights he ride. Until he come to the Earth Woman tent And she open and she led him inside.
Hark! Hark! A Spark in the Dark In the Dance of Death and Rebirth, The Son of the Sky is come down from on high In Love with The Daughter of the Earth.
Then the Men of the Law come a knockin’ at the door And they say that The Son must die, To atone for the shame to his Father’s Name, And they hang him on a tree to dry.
Hark! Hark! A Spark in the Dark In the Dance of Death and Rebirth, The Son of the Sky is condemned to die For Love of The Daughter of the Earth.
Daughter take the broken Son And she put him back together. And she give him kiss of life. Now they live forever
In the Spirit, in the Flesh, In the Fire, in the Water, Where the Sky and Earth mesh In The Son, in The Daughter.
Hark! Hark! A Spark in the Dark In the Dance of Death and Rebirth, The Son of the Sky is arisen on high With the beautiful Bride of the Earth.’
(‘Spark In The Dark’ from ‘GRAIL’ by John Constable Here performed live by Hawklords, Islington Town Hall 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1btyzqlvQA Music by Ron Tree)
If you’re unable to be at the Redcross Way gates in the flesh, you can participate in Spirit, connecting with The Goose and the Crossbones Vigil on The Astral.
To help those who’d like to fully participate, with or without the Zoom, here’s our basic ‘order of service’ – with opening, 3 ritual observances and closing. When conducting the ritual, the aim is to get out of the way, allowing The Goose to work her magic through you. Do it at your own altar and be part of it all. Like this:
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 this act of mutual healing taking place within a single, undivided consciousness. Remind yourselves that Crossbones is a pauper’s graveyard, the final resting place for the sex workers (Winchester Geese) who worked in brothels owned and licensed by the Bishop of Winchester in Southwark’s ‘Liberty of the Clink’.
Thanks to our work 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. 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.”
4. Bardic offerings. Perform a short poem or song from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’, or something of your own dedicated to The Goose – or to St John the Baptist and the summer solstice.
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!”
The 257th Cross Bones 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.
The 255th consecutive Vigil held at Crossbones Graveyard to renew the shrine, to remember the outcast, dead and alive, and to reconnect with The Goose and Her Southwark Mysteries.
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.
