A weekend in Scotland.

Firstly we go to Inverness for a Kilt fitting for the impending wedding of my eldest.

‘Take the Flower of Scotland Tartan’ the tailor said, ‘it’will gie nae offence’. I’d forgotten that the stuff is basically jealously guarded battle dress and we don’t want any Glasgow kisses exchanged at the reception. Plus most will carry dirks in their socks, although as a man of peace I shall have but a discreet pocket wand in mine.

Then to lunch on the shores of Loch Ness, the winds raise white topped waves on the dark and deeply forbidding waters but we see no monsters, maybe they don’t work at weekends.

Thence to Boleskine House, the sacred Kibla of Thelema. Its size surprises, AC must have inherited a massive shedload of money for such a plush holiday home.

I had equipped myself with a fresh Pentachoron, an instrument variously miss-described as an eye in a triangle, the distorted five pointed star with burning eye of the elder sign, and the shining trapezohedroid. It will at least force any demon to appear in its true form. Taking a reading with it from the house I discover that Aiwass = Nyarlathotep.

The Nyarlathotep phenomena, as mentioned by Lovecraft, occurs when the Elder Gods interface with humans who tend to channel rather garbled versions of what they have to offer. The communication gets filtered through a fog of the recipients own prejudices and subconscious desires and often leads to megalomania and cult formation. The Elder Gods themselves consist of what we can imagine as the ‘morphic field’ of the knowledge possessed by the countless numbers of races of more advanced intelligent aliens in the universe. A taste of this knowledge often tempts people to indulge in violent power crazed fantasies rather than try to understand the dangerous technologies implied. Thus despite, or perhaps because of, the spittle flecked fury of the third chapter of The Book of the Law, details of the fabled ‘war machine’ do not emerge.

The next day we take a look at Castle Urquart, a romantic looking and once imposing but now ruined fortress on a promontory by the shores of the Loch. Two chemicals explain so much of our history, calcium hydroxide and potassium nitrate, and the evidence lies in piles of mortared stone and gunpowder shattered masonry.

Thence to Culloden battlefield on Drunmossie Moor, a cold and dour wet place to die after five hundred miles of marching, but as the father of my prospective son in law observed, it was a good thing we lost, it brought to an end the fifteenth century style thuggery and warlordism of the clan system. Plus I suppose it also prepared the ground for the delightful sanitised romantic revival of all things tartan a century later. Comte de Glenstrae and all…..........