3

Wormholes and
Dragon Paths

Curiosity does,

No less than devotion,
Pilgrims make.

Abraham Cowley,
English poet and essayist
(1618–1667)

The next day started dark. Fog clung to the hillsides in thick strands and was denser in the hollows of the land, as if they were basins holding a grey-white broth.

Not even the sun shone through. In the watery sky there was a pale spotlight only, obscured by curtains of chilled mist, which gave an emotional coldness to the world as well as a physical one.

I went to work dismantling my tent, which was wet with dew and fog, while Cad took a shovel to the field and buried the dog that had come there to die. Then we waited for the weather to lift and the sun to warm the land.

It never quite did, though, and so, despite a reasonably early start to the day, it was only in the afternoon that we decided to leave, having abandoned all hope of setting out in anything other than sheets of still, grey fog.

Cad’s car, although ostensibly green, looked as if it had not been washed for years, and instead of factory brightness, it had taken on the colors of the lands it had driven through. Shades of brown caked its sides where it had caught the mud from country lanes, and leaves of various hues, from rust to lime, had worked their way into the fenders and the treads of the tires. It looked either camouflaged or like a living, organic thing more than a machine. I wondered if this was deliberate and remembered that Adam had never much cared for the man-made either. “Metal trying to be trees,” he had muttered one day while looking out over the valleys to a range of pylons beyond. I loaded my belongings into the back of Cad’s ‘organic car’ and climbed into the passenger seat next to him.

“At this time of day, in these conditions, and in this old car, we can be sure that we will arrive in Glastonbury and certain that it will not be today,” said Cad.

“But then, had we risen before dawn, had the day been perfect for travel, and were we driving a shiny new Aston Martin … we would still not get there today! We are not just driving to a place picked at random from a map, you see; we are making a pilgrimage—a considered journey to a holy land—and we must approach our travel in a reverent and reflective way, as befits such an enterprise.

“There are places of power along our route that I wish to show you as well—places where we must say our prayers and seek blessings, so our journey inevitably will be slow. I estimate that you will arrive at your destination in three days. I hope that is satisfactory?”

It was fine. Three days was not such a long time, and I had nowhere else to be, in any case. I sat back for the drive, and as we set off, I pulled Adam’s journal out of my pack so I could re-read the message of yesterday and think again about the questions it had raised.

As I flicked through the book, however, I came first to another entry that seemed more appropriate to the journey that, consciously or otherwise, I had committed myself to.

Pilgrimage. The word is from peregrinus (Latin), which means “foreign.” This, in turn, comes from peregre—“going,” or, I believe, “to go.”

It arises in turn from two other words: per (through) and ager (field). The very root of the idea, then, is this: “To journey through fields” … to enter the garden of nature again.

The absolute goal of the pilgrimage, however, is not to go further and further afield but to return home—to arrive back where we started. It is not a one-way journey but a circle that completes itself.

The point, along the way, is to open our eyes … to change ourselves because of the mission we have undertaken and the visions it affords us … so we see ourselves once more in “the Garden,” not just afield. A pilgrimage is not an act of abandonment and refusal, therefore, but of embracing and atonement. It is not a “running away from” but a “running towards”…

Every pilgrimage takes place in the betwixt-and-between: the point between departure and return. Any action might therefore be a pilgrimage, whether the journey takes a moment or a lifetime—because we are always acting. To be pilgrims is what we came to this world to do. It is our destiny, and chance can only intercede if we allow it.

The difference between the two—chance and destiny—is intent. When we are clear on our actions and commit to them fully, there arises a Total Act: a decisive movement by which we call to destiny and direct it so our lives become what our souls intended.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same:
You would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid …
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always. [1]

It doesn’t really matter where our pilgrimages take us, as long as they have meaning for us. The timeless moment is what pilgrims seek—the place beyond sense and notion.

We wish to stand in the presence of God and, as His shadow descends on us, to see that He holds a mirror. Then we can return to the home we left and know that our sins are forgiven … because we forgave them in ourselves.

8B

The same curious mark finished the entry, as it did in the first one I had read. In Adam’s handwriting, it looked like an ampersand (&) followed by a capital B.

“Do you know what this is?” I asked Cad.

“It seems to be a pilgrim mark,” he said, taking his eyes briefly off the road.

“Those on a journey of the soul often carry such a sign as proof of their pilgrimage and for protection along the way. When they reach their destination, they might then carve the mark near the shrine they are visiting as evidence of their journey and to absorb some of the power and grace of whatever holy thing is there. The design represents, in effect, the mark of a pilgrim’s soul, and by carving it, the spirit of the traveler blends with the spirit of that place and receives its benefactions and blessings.

“That mark”—he pointed to the ampersand—“is a lemniscate, one of the most powerful of magical symbols.

“In plain script, it would look like the number 8: two circles that meet at the center and wrap around each other. It stands for the meeting of souls: saint and sinner, man and God as one.

“You will often see similar marks on the staffs of healers. The caduceus—or Wand of Hermes—for example, is the emblem of God’s messenger: the conductor of souls, carrier of prayers, and protector of certain tradesmen—notably, merchants and thieves (if you make a distinction between the two)!

“The symbol also appears on the staff of Asclepius, the lord of healing and medicine, where the 8 is made from two snakes twined in the form of a helix and adorned with wings so they become flying serpents: dragons.”

“So it is a mark of healing, then?” I asked.

“Healing and protection, yes, but more importantly, of direction and purpose. It means that its bearer can never be lost because the circles double back on each other. By following them, the traveler may therefore go as far as he wishes into the worlds of spirit and matter but always find his way home.

“As for the other mark—the B—I would imagine that it represents Adam’s true name. Sin eaters and healers often take a magical or sacred name, which connects them with nature and protects them from the Devil. But you know that, of course. I have never been told Adam’s true name, but you were, I think?”

He was referring to the time in Wales when I had spent a night in the “cave of a dragon” as a form of ritual purification. Adam and Cad had both been there, keeping vigil outside, and in the morning, Adam had taken me to one side and revealed his true name to me: B*****.

We had then chosen a “true name” for me. “It is to save you from the Devil,” Adam had said. “Now, if you ever find yourself standing before the old goat on a day of judgment, he will never find your true name in his register, but only your given, or Christian, name—and that will not help him at all!”

Reflecting now on that night in the dragon cave, I was reminded of something Adam had written in the first journal entry I had read: that on the hill in his dream there was a “dragon path” that snaked its way to the summit. I turned to the page again and asked Cad what it meant.

“What is a dragon path?” He smiled. “There are many answers to that question—the first of which is to look around you, because you are already on one!

“Some say they are the trails of dead men or places that spirits haunt, but really they are threads of energy that link one place or soul to another.

“The world, as you know, is not a simple matter and bears little resemblance to the way we think things are. Beneath everything we know—or think we know—there is a web of energy that holds our reality together and exists beyond the visible world. A dragon path is a particular thread in that web that will lead us to someone or something—a place, a person, or a passage in time—with which we have some business because we share something in common: a mood or a taste or, more likely, a sacred purpose.

“The thread you are following connects you to Adam. Precisely how is for you to discover, but it will certainly be because you are both looking for something, and the quest you are on unites you. So this is a dragon path you have created together. You sensed it when you arrived in Hereford and followed its trail to Wales, walking in Adam’s footsteps—or, rather, in the threads of his energy. Through it, you found your way to me, just as he did when he visited me and left his journal for you. You sensed it again when you held that journal and in the field when you took counsel from nature and allowed its signs to guide you.

“Adam did not, after all, write down where he was going or invite you to join him, and I did not immediately reveal his destination; but somehow, still, you discovered it. You are here now, if you like, at the invitation of the clouds, and because you saw ripples in the threads of reality, one of which you have chosen to follow.

“There was an element of chance in your decision, of course, because, truly, there are millions of such threads all around us, and you could therefore have picked any one, but destiny also led you to the one you have chosen—or, at least, it is your destiny now!

“The Welsh are a poetic people, and we speak of the world in myth, but what we know is literal and factual too. We say that there are tunnels beneath the earth that are the crawling spaces of dragons and serpents: the great worms.

“They are wormholes, in other words … and you know what wormholes are, I take it? They are shortcuts through time and space.

“Scientists think they invented them,” he laughed. “They use the analogy of a worm on an apple who, under normal circumstances, would take quite a while to navigate its sphere and arrive at the other side. But if an inspiration occurred to it and it bored through the apple’s center … well, how much quicker and easier its journey might be. It is the same for us: those who travel dragon paths pass through a wormhole, which, in their case, leads to the other side of the universe.”

“You believe in such things, then?” I asked. “In the tunnels and travel through time? You are saying such things exist?”

He pondered the question for a moment. “ ‘Reality’ and ‘what really exists’ are odd concepts,” he said finally. “What is ‘real’ except what we experience as real? There are as many ways, then, to ‘explain’ dragon paths as there are to experience them, but the ‘correct’ explanation is only the one that has meaning for you.

“Let me say first that they are a pathway or a bridge to those people and places we feel most at home with, who have wisdom to impart to us, power to give us, or who can strengthen our purpose and sweeten our journeys. What attracts us to them is not physical but a mood, an emotion, or an affinity we have for them. It is, in other words, a sense of the purpose we share. They teach us more about who we are.

“If we develop this sense by becoming aware of the subtle forces around us, we therefore find a shortcut to a rich and more fruitful life. If we do not hone our senses, however, it will take us longer to get where we wanted, and our paths may seem harder and less ‘juicy.’ We will be the worms on the apple who, without inspiration, are trying to find our ways. We may still get there, but our efforts will be greater and there is more chance that we will get lost.

“Now let me answer your question in a different way and say that a dragon path is also a ley line: a roadway of energies that crosses the land. Those sensitive to the passing of dragons have always walked these paths, built their landmarks, monuments, and towns on them, and made trade on the routes they provide.

“There is no compulsion to follow ley lines, of course, but people have done so throughout history because they have found meaning in them, and they have also noticed that those who stray from them encounter problems in their lives. It is best, therefore, to stick to what is known—even if it is, in some ways, unknown!”

The idea of ley lines was familiar to me, partly because Adam had explained the concept when I was a child and partly because the term itself had been coined by a Herefordshire man, Alfred Watkins.

Watkins was born in January 1855 at the hotel his father owned: The Imperial, on Hereford’s Widemarsh Street. His family was rich by country standards, and Alfred was provided with the finest schooling the county could offer. It was an education through which, he would say later, he learned “absolutely nothing,” for, like most Herefordians, Watkins was practical and down-to-earth, in tune with the rhythms of nature, and in no way an academic who enjoyed study for its own sake.

He was highly intelligent and innovative, though, introducing the town to a number of new ideas, including the installation of a dynamo, which gave Hereford its first electric light, and, later, the invention of a pocket calculator used in photography (another of his passions). It was employed, amongst other things, to take the photographs for Scott’s famous Antarctic expedition in 1910, the year when Watkins was also awarded the Progress Medal for his work.

Some of his other ideas were less successful, however, and some were downright eccentric. He was, for example, a founder of the Herefordshire Beekeepers Association and believed that bees had mystical powers. He provided the Association with a horse-drawn “bee van” that trundled along the lanes instructing those who would listen in the art of beekeeping and the use of bees in magic.

The esoteric world is blessed with geniuses, but it is also beset by as many oddballs as there are twigs to a great tree, and perhaps bee magic was not Watkins’ finest hour. But better ideas were to follow.

In 1926, he formed the Old Straight Track Club to research one such idea received in a vision while he was walking a Herefordshire hillside. From his elevated position, he noticed that the landscape for miles around was crossed by routes that were marked along their way by churches, standing stones, and other landmarks that seemed linked by invisible lines of force. These he called “old straight tracks,” or ley lines: threads of power that have drawn men to them throughout history. The Old Straight Track Club continued until the mid-1940s, and its records are now preserved in Hereford’s city library, along with Watkins’ photographs and glass-plate negatives.

Watkins died in 1935 at the age of eighty. The Hereford Times, in its obituary of April that year, described him as “intense, abrupt, hurrying to some business or engaged in animated conversation, oblivious to anything save the object in hand … First and foremost he was a Herefordshire man, as native to the county as the hop and the apple.”

With his passing, Watkins bequeathed a legacy. Before his death, in rapid succession he published The Ley Hunter’s Manual, Early British Trackways, and his most famous work, The Old Straight Track, which explain his theory of ley lines, today so well established that it is regarded as obvious by those who know the land. These ley lines—or messages from the earth—were, in one sense, the dragon paths that Cad was referring to.

What sparked my imagination more was Cad’s reference to wormholes. In science, they are linked to the idea of parallel universes, or multiverses—portals to alternate realities and other dimensions—where, right now, each of us may also exist as a double of ourselves in a slightly (or considerably) different form.

In a parallel universe, for example, a dirt-poor farmer might be a cash-rich millionaire … or a president, priest, or panhandler. Apart from that change in status or occupation—or in hair color, shoe size, or the house they lived in—they would be the same person as us, and both of us would be alive right now, living the same lives in different universes alongside each other, oblivious to the existence of the other except for flashes of déjà vu or information received from dreams and visionary experiences, where these universes blend or collide and we may meet ourselves.

Some scientists even believe that multiple realities are possible in our own dimension, on this Earth that we know. Every moment is a decision point, they say, and every decision we make, however slight, changes the nature of the world around us. Neither the fate of a man nor the fate of a universe is predetermined, therefore, because every second forks into a Y-shaped moment where decisions are taken and our lives go in one way or another depending on the choices we make.

Even apparently trivial decisions can make a difference that is profound. The swatting of a fly might save the world, for example, if it was carrying a disease that would otherwise have killed a president. The abolition of slavery, the moon landing, or the invasion of a country may never have happened if that fly had lived. Indeed, the world itself might no longer exist.

Alertness to purpose and the more subtle nature of destiny’s essence around us is therefore vital, because through it we have the ability to make conscious decisions that are sometimes of monumental, though easily missed, importance. This is what Adam had meant when he spoke of a “crucial hour”—really a series of crucial moments—where every action we take changes the world as a whole.

I looked down at the journal on my lap and read Adam’s words again—that “any action we make might be a pilgrimage, whether the journey takes a moment or a lifetime—because we are always acting … The point, along the way, is to open our eyes … to change ourselves …

“The difference is intent: to be clear on our actions and commit to them with purpose.”

Through the journey we take and the opportunity it gives us to rediscover or reinvent ourselves, perhaps we do, in some way, enter a parallel universe—one where we become new people through the choices we make. In that sense, at least, a dragon path really was a wormhole into another dimension of being.

I had drifted off to sleep, “lost in wonder at the strangeness of the world,” as Adam had once said about me—before adding the word “unfortunate” to describe this flaw he saw in my character.

When I opened my eyes again, it was late afternoon and we were stopped at the side of a road. Fields surrounded us, and in one of them Cad was completing the work of putting up two tents.

I watched him for a while, thinking how different he was to Adam in both character and looks. Adam would be a very old man by now, and though he was hardly frail (and there was no reason, anyway, why a man of any age should not make a pilgrimage if he chose), I had some concerns for him. Cad, on the other hand, gave me no such worries. He was younger than Adam, stockier, and had a strength that came from the land and the elements.

His personality was an odd mixture, though: brusquer and less gentle, but more philosophical than Adam and perhaps better-read. I could never have imagined Adam talking about wormholes and parallel universes, for example. If he had wanted to make a point, it would more likely have been illustrated by the qualities of a particular plant or tree.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure that I even liked Cad, but that could just have been because I didn’t know him that well. He was pleasant enough, but he had a certain impenetrability to him. Although I was grateful for the lift, for example, I wasn’t quite sure why he had offered it or what we were doing now in this field. I made a note to myself that I would be more open after this and try to know him better.

I walked over to join him, passing an area of woodland to the left of what appeared to be our camping grounds for the night. “Welcome back!” he said, catching sight of me. “It was getting late, and I thought we needed a rest—the car most of all! I suggest we make camp here and continue our journey tomorrow.”

We were just outside a village near Bath in the south-west of England, which meant that we had been on the road for four or five hours. Now evening was falling, although the day itself was still bright, the fog that had surrounded us in Wales having long ago vanished into the winds.

Bath is a city with a mythical past of its own. To the Celts, its thermal spring was a shrine to Sulis, the mother goddess, whose bubbling waters arrived from the tunnels beneath the earth, carrying underworld gifts of healing, prophecy, and the knowledge of other realms.

The Romans, arriving later, identified Sulis with Minerva, their virgin goddess of warriorship, poetry, wisdom, and medicine. Whether for matters of politics or as an acknowledgement of her greater supernatural powers, the Romans continued to regard Sulis as the primary goddess, however, and her spirit gave rise to their name for the city: Aquae Sulis—“the waters of Sulis.” Archeologists have recovered prayers to the goddess scratched into metal and thrown into her sacred spring by penitents and those seeking power. There were others, too, called curse tablets, which were invocations for bad fortune to fall on enemies.

The Romans withdrew from the town early in the fifth century, and the baths they had made at the healing springs fell into disrepair—that is, until Thomas Guidott, a writer, “doctor of physik,” and alchemist, moved to the town in 1668 to set up a medical practice. His Discourse of Bathe, about the curative properties of the waters, brought its spring back to life through the attentions of the aristocracy, who started to arrive there as a consequence and partake in the healing of Sulis. With that, the fortunes of Bath and the powers of the goddess both began a resurgence.

Cad was leaning on a shovel, the same one I’d seen him use earlier to bury the sheepdog. I hadn’t noticed him pack it and assumed that he must have thrown it in the trunk of the car when I was dismantling my tent.

“There is another reason besides rest for our camping here, away from towns and people,” he said, “something that Adam asked me to do if you should ever try to find him. He would like to have done it himself, but the opportunity never arose. We have such an opportunity now, though.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing to worry about,” said Cad, laughing. “It is a trifling matter, really.

“He asked me to kill you. That’s all.”

[1] T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” (Four Quartets, Harcourt, 1943).