The Dead Roam the Earth by Alasdair Wickham

Author:Alasdair Wickham [Wickham, Alasdair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101603741
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

The rarity of cases like this make it hard to identify any form of pattern. Indeed one has to go back sixty-five years to find another, but it is worth examining because many of the elements in this earlier story bear an uncanny resemblance to the ones just described.

These centre around one Netta Fornario who died on the remote Hebridean island of Iona. Fornario was a member of the Alpha et Omega Temple. The Temple grew out of the more famous Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which included Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley in its membership, and involved the use of ritual magic to develop the soul, perform acts such as astral travel and, at the highest levels, to enter into direct communication with higher beings, known as Secret Chiefs. Although a world away from the black magic that was being practised in the previous story, high magick of this sort does leave the practitioner exposed to attack from non-physical beings – spirits, demons, astral vampires, call them what you will. One member, Dion Fortune, even wrote a book about how people could protect themselves from such attacks. Members themselves were not immune to attacking each other in this way. (When Aleister Crowley left the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to start his own order, Astrum Argentium, it sparked a psychic battle between him and the leader of the Golden Dawn, MacGregor Mathers.)

But there was no hint of this sort of behaviour in Netta Fornario. Earnest, studious and reflective, she left her home in London for Iona as so many others have done, for its crystal seas and rain-washed skies. And, as the place where St Columba landed and founded a monastery to bring Christianity to the British mainland, this beautiful island is associated with spirituality. Whatever her purpose, she intended to bed herself into the island. She took packing cases of luggage with her that included enough furniture to fill a small house.

Fornario found lodgings with an islander, a Mrs Macrae, and they spent evenings together, deep in conversation. Fornario told Mrs Macrae about her telepathic healing and told her that if she went into a trance, under no circumstances should she call for a doctor. The housekeeper agreed with some misgivings as Netta had told her of a previous trance that had lasted a full week.

She passed her time in her predictably eccentric way, walking around the island in all weathers as she established communications with its spirits. We can say in retrospect that she was gathering herself and perhaps making her mind up, because after a few weeks she sent a letter to her housekeeper which stated that she would be incommunicado for a few weeks as she ‘had a terrible case of healing on’.

After that, her mood changed. Her housekeeper noted that she became more agitated and Netta told her that she was under psychic attack and had to leave for London. Moreover, she had had visions of a rudderless boat in the sky and was receiving messages from other worlds.

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