OBSERVATORY

in which we report and comment upon happenings of geomantic interest in Britain and around the wonderful world of the desacralized cosmos. Cuttings gratefully received.
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Christian Curse

A church of England vicar has laid an ancient curse invoking “God’s anger and judgement” on thieves who raided his church in Gloucestershire. He used the obsolete Commination service to bring down God’s wrath upon criminals who refuse to repent. In the 1662 version of the Prayer Book, each paragraph begins “Cursed be he” against a whole range of transgressions, including “he who moveth his neighbour’s land-mark”, a reference to geomantic mark-stones. The vicar, Major the Reverend Robert Nesham, 65, a retired regular Indian Army officer, held the service before the meagre congregation of 30 in All Saints, Down Ampney, near Cirecnester on the Sunday before Christmas. A week earlier raiders had appropriated an alms box from the vestry. The vicar is well known for his use of paranormal invocations. In 1978 he exorcised two ghosts from the church, and on two previous occasions he ‘comminated’ thieves. “I don’t go for this modern do-goody wallah-wallah” quoth the priest. “Neither do my Parishioners. Sinners can be forgiven once they have repented. If they are punished on this earth, their souls can be redeemed. The curse will bring them to repentance.” The first curse used by Major the Reverend Nesham was when villains literally ripped off roof lead. They were caught a year later. Next, two {13} youths stole two brass candlesticks from the church, and, soon after being comminated were in the custody of the constabulary. The sticks were recovered. His exorcisms resulted from a sense of ‘something wrong’ at All Saints. Major the Reverend Nesham found he could only go into the church after dark if he constantly repeated the Lord’s Prayer. “I am not a man who is easily afraid” said Major the Reverend. “But this was different: a spiritual chill.” He found that a long-serving church warden never entered the church after dark. Workmen called in to do repairs reported hearing the vestry door slam shut when it was already shut. They also heard people moving about. Two visitors to All Saints were narrowly missed by a vase that flew off the rood screen as they knelt down to pray. Major the Rev. called in the diocesan exorcist who put him in touch with a Christian medium who identified the spirit as a member of the Hungerford family, once powerful in the area. She said that he confessed to murder and bestiality.

The medium arranged for an exorcism to be held at a neighbouring church, showing the orthodox Christian belief held among exorcists that churches are linked by spiritual lines, the heilige linien of German geomants like Kurt Gerlach. After the exorcism, the spirit seems to have left. Another ghost, said to be that of a witch, was also identified by the diocesan exorcist, who sent her on her way “with holy water and love” according to the Major Rev. Since then his congregation has greatly increased to 30. The Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Reverend John Yates, said that he was not aware that the Major Rev. had comminated the villains, though he regarded the commination as a reminder of God’s judgement rather than a curse. According to the Major Rev. the retribution possible from the latest comminating of thieves could take the form of a road accident or nothing more serious than a fall downstairs and a broken collar bone. But whatever punishment they get from God, the Major Rev. insisted, it would bring ample reward in the next life. “They will be clobbered, probably by the civil authorities,” asserted the ex-Imperial Major, “or God may clobber them on His own”.
cr Rupert Pennick
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A 2000 year old mosaic tablet depicting Leda and the Swan has been stolen from the museum at the Temple of Aphrodite near Paphos, Cyrus. Thieves broke the lock of the museum’s door and carried off the heavy tablet. Antiquities such as this are being stolen at an ever increasing rate, as we can see from the Pictish symbol stones which have been removed by the authorities from the places they have occupied for 1500 years. Old stones of all kinds are finding their way across the Atlantic to the insatiable collectors of the United States.
cr Rupert Pennick
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OS threat

Mrs Thatcher’s government has now, amid the welter of cuts and reorganizations in the so-called ‘public sector’, suggested the selling off of the Ordnance Survey to private enterprise. We all know what that means to geomants and ley-hunters, don’t we. If private enterprise has its way, the old stones of Lands End and anywhere else for that matter will be expunged as of no commercial interest, to be replaced by Little Chefs and Chevron Petrol Stations, not to mention Petropolis, which will be the nearest to any antiquity bar Stonehenge still left on the ‘privatized’ maps. IGR advises members and readers to write to your MP about it and protest against a threat to our fine map service.
cr ‘Public Servant’
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An Iron Age shrine has been discovered by archaeologists at a dig at Lancing Clump, Sussex. After 3 weeks digging, a Roman Temple was unearthed. They also found markings of the fence which enclosed the holy fane, wheel ruts and pre-Roman pottery.
cr Alan Gardiner