Like my first book in this series, The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions, Walking with the Sin Eater is offered as a work of semi-fiction, a narrative which describes in story form events and practices that are true and people who existed and, in some cases, continue to exist.
Specifically, there is (or was) a Cad (short for Cadwallader, a name that in Welsh means “leader of the battle”), just as there is (or was) an Adam, a sin eater who was born in Wales and whom I met in the Herefordshire village of Ullingswick during my childhood (a story told in The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions). There was also a Melanie who owned a guesthouse in Glastonbury and still does so, whom I met in the way I described.
The myths and legends of Britain presented in this book, including the connections in Glastonbury and Wales to King Arthur, Jesus, and the Grail are also accurate, and these days, thanks to films like The Da Vinci Code, some of them are well known.
Finally, it is true that the journey at the heart of this book took place and is one of many pilgrimages I have now undertaken, for, as Adam writes, “there are many times when a pilgrimage may be useful to settle the mind and restore the soul.” Nowadays, however, my annual pilgrimage is to the mountains and jungles of Peru to work with the shamans there and experience the magic of their teacher plants, ayahuasca and San Pedro.
Still, I cannot say that this book is entirely true because, once again, it has been written from the perspective of a grown man looking back on the events and undertakings of a child, so I have had to journey back in my imagination to reconnect with my thoughts and feelings then.
This, I suppose, is the way it is for all of us, for as the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards” although “it must be lived forwards.” With this looking backwards we also reinvent ourselves, so we continually create, re-create, and “update” the story of our lives, which we invent anew each day to help us make sense of the world. It is for this reason, if no other, that I offer this book as semi-fiction.
The word semi-fiction, however, implies, of course, that it is also semi-fact, and certainly the spiritual exercises I present here are valid and verifiable through your own practice. I teach many of them in the workshops I run.
It is these—the practices more than the story—which are important, since, as Adam wrote, “We must put our faith in what sings to us and in the places where truth can be found”—in our own experience, that is, rather than the words of others, because “what is truly sacred is a matter for each human heart to discover.”
To be pilgrims is what we came to this world to do. I wish you the love and luck you deserve on your journey.
Ross Heaven
Brighton, January 2009